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“Who measured earth, described the starry spheres, And traced the long records of lunar years.” --Pope.
Richard did not return from the exercise of his official duties until late in the evening of the following day. It had been one portion of his business to superintend the arrest of part of a gang of counterfeiters, that had, even at that early period, buried themselves in the woods, to manufacture their base coin, which they afterward circulated from one end of the Union to the other. The expedition had been completely successful, and about midnight the sheriff entered the village, at the head of a posse of deputies and constables, in the centre of whom rode, pinioned, four of the malefactors. At the gate of the mansion-house they separated, Mr. Jones directing his assist ants to proceed with their charge to the county jail, while he pursued his own way up the gravel walk, with the kind of self-satisfaction that a man of his organization would feel, who had really for once done a very clever thing.
“Holla! Aggy!” shouted the sheriff, when he reached the door; “where are you, you black dog? will you keep me here in the dark all night? Holla! Aggy! Brave! Brave! hoy, hoy--where have you got to, Brave? Off his watch! Everybody is asleep but myself! Poor I must keep my eyes open, that others may sleep in safety. Brave! Brave! Well, I will say this for the dog, lazy as he's grown, that it is the first time I ever knew him to let any one come to the door after dark, without having a smell to know whether it was an honest man or not. He could tell by his nose, almost as well as I could myself by looking at them. Holla! you Agamemnon! where are you? Oh! here comes the dog at last.”
By this time the sheriff had dismounted, and observed a form, which he supposed to be that of Brave, slowly creeping out of the kennel; when, to his astonishment, it reared itself on two legs instead of four, and he was able to distinguish, by the starlight, the curly head and dark visage of the negro.
“Ha! what the devil are you doing there, you black rascal?” he cried. “Is it not hot enough for your Guinea blood in the house this warm night, but you must drive out the poor dog, and sleep in his straw?”
By this time the boy was quite awake, and, with a blubbering whine, he attempted to reply to his master.
“Oh! masser Richard! masser Richard! such a ting! such a ting! I nebber tink a could 'appen! neber tink he die! Oh, Lor-a-gor! ain't bury--keep 'em till masser Richard get back--got a grabe dug--” Here the feelings of the negro completely got the mastery, and, instead of making any intelligible explanation of the causes of his grief, he blubbered aloud.
“Eh! what! buried! grave! dead!” exclaimed Richard, with a tremor in his voice; “nothing serious? Nothing has happened to Benjamin, I hope? I know he has been bilious, but I gave him--” “Oh, worser 'an dat! worser 'an dat!” sobbed the negro. “Oh! de Lor! Miss 'Lizzy an' Miss Grant--walk--mountain--poor Bravy '--kill a lady--painter---Oh, Lor, Lor! --Natty Bumppo--tare he troat open--come a see, masser Richard--here he be--here he be.”
As all this was perfectly inexplicable to the sheriff, he was very glad to wait patiently until the black brought a lantern from the kitchen, when he followed Aggy to the kennel, where he beheld poor Brave, indeed, lying in his blood, stiff and cold, but decently covered with the great coat of the negro. He was on the point of demanding an explanation; but the grief of the black, who had fallen asleep on his voluntary watch, having burst out afresh on his waking, utterly disqualified the lad from giving one. Luckily, at this moment the principal door of the house opened, and the coarse features of Benjamin were thrust over the threshold, with a candle elevated above them, shedding its dim rays around in such a manner as to exhibit the lights and shadows of his countenance. Richard threw his bridle to the black, and, bidding him look to the horse, he entered the hall. “What is the meaning of the dead dog?” he cried.
“Where is Miss Temple?”
Benjamin made one of his square gestures, with the thumb of his left hand pointing over his right shoulder, as he answered: “Turned in.”
“Judge Temple--where is he?”
“In his berth.”
“But explain; why is Brave dead? and what is the cause of Aggy's grief?”
“Why, it's all down, squire,” said Benjamin, pointing to a slate that lay on the table, by the side of a mug of toddy, a short pipe in which the tobacco was yet burning, and a prayer-book.
Among the other pursuits of Richard, he had a passion to keep a register of all passing events; and his diary, which was written in the manner of a journal, or log, book, embraced not only such circumstances as affected himself, but observations on the weather, and all the occurrences of the family, and frequently of the village. Since his appointment to the office of sheriff and his consequent absences from home, he had employed Benjamin to make memoranda on a slate, of whatever might be thought worth remembering, which, on his return, were regularly transferred to the journal with proper notations of the time, manner, and other little particulars. There was, to be sure, one material objection to the clerkship of Benjamin, which the ingenuity of no one but Richard could have overcome. The steward read nothing but his prayer-book, and that only in particular parts, and by the aid of a good deal of spelling, and some misnomers; but he could not form a single letter with a pen. This would have been an insuperable bar to journalizing with most men; but Richard invented a kind of hieroglyphical character, which was intended to note all the ordinary occurrences of a day, such as how the wind blew, whether the sun shone, or whether it rained, the hours, etc.; and for the extraordinary, after giving certain elementary lectures on the subject, the sheriff was obliged to trust to the ingenuity of the major-domo. The reader will at once perceive, that it was to this chronicle that Benjamin pointed, instead of directly answering the sheriff's interrogatory.
When Mr. Jones had drunk a glass of toddy, he brought forth from its secret place his proper journal, and, seating himself by the table, he prepared to transfer the contents of the slate to the paper, at the same time that he appeased his curiosity. Benjamin laid one hand on the back of the sheriff's chair, in a familiar manner, while he kept the other at liberty to make use of a forefinger, that was bent like some of his own characters, as an index to point out his meaning.
The first thing referred to by the sheriff was the diagram of a compass, cut in one corner of the slate for permanent use. The cardinal points were plainly marked on it, and all the usual divisions were indicated in such a manner that no man who had ever steered a ship could mistake them.
“Oh!” said the sheriff, seating himself down comfort ably in his chair, “you'd the wind southeast, I see, all last night I thought it would have blown up rain.”
“Devil the drop, sir,” said Benjamin; “I believe that the scuttle-butt up aloft is emptied, for there hasn't so much water fell in the country for the last three weeks as would float Indian John's canoe, and that draws just one inch nothing, light.”
“Well but didn't the wind change here this morning? there was a change where I was.”
“To be sure it did, squire; and haven't I logged it as a shift of wind?”
“I don't see where, Benjamin--” “Don't see!” interrupted the steward, a little crustily; “ain't there a mark agin' east-and-by-nothe-half-nothe, with summat like a rising sun at the end of it, to show 'twas in the morning watch?”
“Yes, yes, that is very legible; but where is the change noted?”
“Where! why doesn't it see this here tea-kettle, with a mark run from the spout straight, or mayhap a little crooked or so, into west-and-by-southe-half-southe? now I call this a shift of wind, squire. Well, do you see this here boar's head that you made for me, alongside of the compass--” “Ay, ay--Boreas-----I see. Why, you've drawn lines from its mouth, extending from one of your marks to the other.”
“It's no fault of mine, Squire Dickens; 'tis your d----d climate. The wind has been at all them there marks this very day, and that's all round the compass, except a little matter of an Irishman's hurricane at meridium, which you'll find marked right up and down. Now, I've known a sow-wester blow for three weeks, in the channel, with a clean drizzle, in which you might wash your face and hands without the trouble of hauling in water from alongside.”
“Very well, Benjamin,” said the sheriff, writing in his journal; “I believe I have caught the idea. Oh! here's a cloud over the rising sun--so you had it hazy in the morning?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Benjamin.
“Ah it's Sunday, and here are the marks for the length of the sermon--one, two, three, four--what! did Mr. Grant preach forty minutes?”
“Ay, summat like it; it was a good half-hour by my own glass, and then there was the time lost in turning it, and some little allowance for leeway in not being over-smart about it.”
“Benjamin, this is as long as a Presbyterian; you never could have been ten minutes in turning the glass!”
“Why, do you see, Squire, the parson was very solemn, and I just closed my eyes in order to think the better with myself, just the same as you'd put in the dead-lights to make all snug, and when I opened them agin I found the congregation were getting under way for home, so I calculated the ten minutes would cover the leeway after the glass was out. It was only some such matter as a cat's nap.”
“Oh, ho! Master Benjamin, you were asleep, were you? but I'll set down no such slander against an orthodox divine.” Richard wrote twenty-nine minutes in his journal, and continued: “Why, what's this you've got opposite ten o'clock A.M.? A full moon! had you a moon visible by day? I have heard of such portents before now, but--eh! what's this alongside of it? an hour-glass?”
“That!” said Benjamin, looking coolly over the sheriff's shoulder, and rolling the tobacco about in his mouth with a jocular air; “why, that's a small matter of my own. It's no moon, squire, but only Betty Hollister's face; for, dye see, sir, hearing all the same as if she had got up a new cargo of Jamaiky from the river, I called in as I was going to the church this morning--ten A.M. was it? --just the time--and tried a glass; and so I logged it, to put me in mind of calling to pay her like an honest man.”
“That was it, was it?” said the sheriff, with some displeasure at this innovation on his memoranda; “and could you not make a better glass than this? it looks like a death's-head and an hour-glass.”
“Why, as I liked the stuff, squire,” returned the steward, “I turned in, homeward bound, and took t'other glass, which I set down at the bottom of the first, and that gives the thing the shape it has. But as I was there again to-night, and paid for the three at once, your honor may as well run the sponge over the whole business.”
“I will buy you a slate for your own affairs, Benjamin,” said the sheriff; “I don't like to have the journal marked over in this manner.”
“You needn't--you needn't, squire; for, seeing that I was likely to trade often with the woman while this barrel lasted. I've opened a fair account with Betty, and she keeps her marks on the back of her bar-door, and I keeps the tally on this here bit of a stick.” As Benjamin concluded he produced a piece of wood, on which five very large, honest notches were apparent. The sheriff cast his eyes on this new ledger for a moment, and continued: “What have we here! Saturday, two P.M.--Why here's a whole family piece! two wine-glasses upside-down!”
“That's two women; the one this a-way is Miss 'Lizzy, and t'other is the parson's young'un.”
“Cousin Bess and Miss Grant!” exclaimed the sheriff, in amazement; “what have they to do with my journal?”
“They'd enough to do to get out of the jaws of that there painter or panther,” said the immovable steward. “This here thingumy, squire, that maybe looks summat like a rat, is the beast, d'ye see; and this here t'other thing, keel uppermost, is poor old Brave, who died nobly, all the same as an admiral fighting for his king and country; and that there--” “Scarecrow,” interrupted Richard.
“Ay, mayhap it do look a little wild or so,” continued the steward; “but to my judgment, squire, it's the best image I've made, seeing it's most like the man himself; well, that's Natty Bumppo, who shot this here painter, that killed that there dog, who would have eaten or done worse to them here young ladies.”
“And what the devil does all this mean?” cried Richard, impatiently.
“Mean!” echoed Benjamin; “it is as true as the Boadishey's log book--” He was interrupted by the sheriff, who put a few direct questions to him, that obtained more intelligible answers, by which means he became possessed of a tolerably correct idea of the truth, When the wonder, and we must do Richard the justice to say, the feelings also, that were created by this narrative, had in some degree subsided, the sheriff turned his eyes again on his journal, where more inexplicable hieroglyphics met his view.
“What have we here?” he cried; “two men boxing! Has there been a breach of the peace? Ah, that's the way, the moment my back is turned--.”
“That's the Judge and young Master Edwards,” interrupted the steward, very cavalierly.
“How! 'Duke fighting with Oliver! what the devil has got into you all? More things have happened within the last thirty-six hours than in the preceding six months.”
“Yes, it's so indeed, squire,” returned the steward, “I've known a smart chase, and a fight at the tail of it, where less has been logged than I've got on that there slate. Howsomever, they didn't come to facers, only passed a little jaw fore and aft.”
“Explain! explain!” cried Richard; “it was about the mines, ha! Ay, ay, I see it, I see it; here is a man with a pick on his shoulder. So you heard it all, Benjamin?”
“Why, yes, it was about their minds, I believe, squire,” returned the steward; “and, by what I can learn, they spoke them pretty plainly to one another. Indeed, I may say that I overheard a small matter of it myself, seeing that the windows was open, and I hard by. But this here is no pick, but an anchor on a man's shoulder; and here's the other fluke down his back, maybe a little too close, which signifies that the lad has got under way and left his moorings.”
“Has Edwards left the house?”
“He has.”
Richard pursued this advantage; and, after a long and close examination, he succeeded in getting out of Benjamin all that he knew, not only concerning the misunderstanding, but of the attempt to search the hut, and Hiram's discomfiture. The sheriff was no sooner possessed of these facts, which Benjamin related with all possible tenderness to the Leather-Stocking, than, snatching up his hat, and bidding the astonished steward secure the doors and go to his bed, he left the house.
For at least five minutes, after Richard disappeared, Benjamin stood with his arms akimbo, and his eyes fastened on the door; when, having collected his astonished faculties, he prepared to execute the orders he had received.
It has been already said that the “court of common pleas and general sessions of the peace,” or, as it is commonly called, the “county court,” over which Judge Temple presided, held one of its stated sessions on the following morning. The attendants of Richard were officers who had come to the village, as much to discharge their usual duties at this court, as to escort the prisoners and the sheriff knew their habits too well, not to feel confident that he should find most, if not all of them, in the public room of the jail, discussing the qualities of the keeper's liquors. Accordingly he held his way through the silent streets of the village, directly to the small and insecure building that contained all the unfortunate debt ors and some of the criminals of the county, and where justice was administered to such unwary applicants as were so silly as to throw away two dollars in order to obtain one from their neighbors. The arrival of four malefactors in the custody of a dozen officers was an event, at that day, in Templeton; and, when the sheriff reached the jail, he found every indication that his subordinates in tended to make a night of it.
The nod of the sheriff brought two of his deputies to the door, who in their turn drew off six or seven of the constables. With this force Richard led the way through the village, toward the bank of the lake, undisturbed by any noise, except the barking of one or two curs, who were alarmed by the measured tread of the party, and by the low murmurs that ran through their own numbers, as a few cautious questions and answers were exchanged, relative to the object of their expedition. When they had crossed the little bridge of hewn logs that was thrown over the Susquehanna, they left the highway, and struck into that field which had been the scene of the victory over the pigeons. From this they followed their leader into the low bushes of pines and chestnuts which had sprung up along the shores of the lake, where the plough had not succeeded the fall of the trees, and soon entered the forest itself. Here Richard paused and collected his troop around him.
“I have required your assistance, my friends,” he cried, in a low voice, “in order to arrest Nathaniel Bumppo, commonly called the Leather-Stocking He has assaulted a magistrate, and resisted the execution of a search-war rant, by threatening the life of a constable with his rifle. In short, my friends, he has set an example of rebellion to the laws, and has become a kind of outlaw. He is suspected of other misdemeanors and offences against private rights; and I have this night taken on myself, by the virtue of my office as sheriff, to arrest the said Bumppo, and bring him to the county jail, that he may be present and forthcoming to answer to these heavy charges before the court to-morrow morning. In executing this duty, friends and fellow-citizens, you are to use courage and discretion; courage, that you may not be daunted by any lawless attempt that this man may make with his rifle and his dogs to oppose you; and discretion, which here means caution and prudence, that he may not escape from this sudden attack--and for other good reasons that I need not mention. You will form yourselves in a complete circle around his hut, and at the word 'advance,' called aloud by me, you will rush forward and, without giving the criminal time for deliberation, enter his dwelling by force, and make him your prisoner. Spread yourselves for this purpose, while I shall descend to the shore with a deputy, to take charge of that point; and all communications must be made directly to me, under the bank in front of the hut, where I shall station myself and remain, in order to receive them.”
This speech, which Richard had been studying during his walk, had the effect that all similar performances produce, of bringing the dangers of the expedition immediately before the eyes of his forces. The men divided, some plunging deeper into the forest, in order to gain their stations without giving an alarm, and others Continuing to advance, at a gait that would allow the whole party to go in order; but all devising the best plan to repulse the attack of a dog, or to escape a rifle-bullet. It was a moment of dread expectation and interest.
When the sheriff thought time enough had elapsed for the different divisions of his force to arrive at their stations, he raised his voice in the silence of the forest, and shouted the watchword. The sounds played among the arched branches of the trees in hollow cadences; but when the last sinking tone was lost on the ear, in place of the expected howls of the dogs, no other noises were returned but the crackling of torn branches and dried sticks, as they yielded before the advancing steps of the officers. Even this soon ceased, as if by a common consent, when the curiosity and impatience of the sheriff getting the complete ascendency over discretion, he rushed up the bank, and in a moment stood on the little piece of cleared ground in front of the spot where Natty had so long lived, To his amazement, in place of the hut he saw only its smouldering ruins.
The party gradually drew together about the heap of ashes and the ends of smoking logs; while a dim flame in the centre of the ruin, which still found fuel to feed its lingering life, threw its pale light, flickering with the passing currents of the air, around the circle--now showing a face with eyes fixed in astonishment, and then glancing to another countenance, leaving the former shaded in the obscurity of night. Not a voice was raised in inquiry, nor an exclamation made in astonishment. The transition from excitement to disappointment was too powerful for Speech; and even Richard lost the use of an organ that was seldom known to fail him.
The whole group were yet in the fullness of their surprise, when a tall form stalked from the gloom into the circle, treading down the hot ashes and dying embers with callous feet; and, standing over the light, lifted his cap, and exposed the bare head and weather-beaten features of the Leather-Stocking. For a moment he gazed at the dusky figures who surrounded him, more in sorrow than in anger before he spoke.
“What would ye with an old and helpless man?” he said, “You've driven God's creatur's from the wilder ness, where His providence had put them for His own pleasure; and you've brought in the troubles and diviltries of the law, where no man was ever known to disturb another. You have driven me, that have lived forty long years of my appointed time in this very spot, from my home and the shelter of my head, lest you should put your wicked feet and wasty ways in my cabin. You've driven me to burn these logs, under which I've eaten and drunk--the first of Heaven's gifts, and the other of the pure springs--for the half of a hundred years; and to mourn the ashes under my feet, as a man would weep and mourn for the children of his body. You've rankled the heart of an old man, that has never harmed you or your'n, with bitter feelings toward his kind, at a time when his thoughts should be on a better world; and you've driven him to wish that the beasts of the forest, who never feast on the blood of their own families, was his kindred and race; and now, when he has come to see the last brand of his hut, before it is incited into ashes, you follow him up, at midnight, like hungry hounds on the track of a worn-out and dying deer. What more would ye have? for I am here--one too many. I come to mourn, not to fight; and, if it is God's pleasure, work your will on me.”
When the old man ended he stood, with the light glimmering around his thinly covered head, looking earnestly at the group, which receded from the pile with an involuntary movement, without the reach of the quivering rays, leaving a free passage for his retreat into the bushes, where pursuit in the dark would have been fruit less. Natty seemed not to regard this advantage, but stood facing each individual in the circle in succession, as if to see who would be the first to arrest him. After a pause of a few moments Richard began to rally his confused faculties, and, advancing, apologized for his duty, and made him his prisoner. The party flow collected, and, preceded by the sheriff, with Natty in their centre, they took their way toward the village.
During the walk, divers questions were put to the prisoner concerning his reasons for burning the hut, and whither Mohegan had retreated; but to all of them he observed a profound silence, until, fatigued with their previous duties, and the lateness of the hour, the sheriff and his followers reached the village, and dispersed to their several places of rest, after turning the key of a jail on the aged and apparently friendless Leather-Stocking.
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“Fetch here the stocks, ho! You stubborn ancient knave, you reverend bragget, We'll teach you.” --Lear.
The long days and early sun of July allowed time for a gathering of the interested, before the little bell of the academy announced that the appointed hour had arrived for administering right to the wronged, and punishment to the guilty. Ever since the dawn of day, the highways and woodpaths that, issuing from the forests, and winding among the sides of the mountains, centred in Templeton, had been thronged with equestrians and footmen, bound to the haven of justice. There was to be seen a well-clad yeoman, mounted on a sleek, switch-tailed steed, rambling along the highway, with his red face elevated in a manner that said, “I have paid for my land, and fear no man;” while his bosom was swelling with the pride of being one of the grand inquest for the county. At his side rode a companion, his equal in independence of feeling, perhaps, but his inferior in thrift, as in property and consideration. This was a professed dealer in lawsuits--a man whose name appeared in every calendar--whose substance, gained in the multifarious expedients of a settler's change able habits, was wasted in feeding the harpies of the courts. He was endeavoring to impress the mind of the grand juror with the merits of a cause now at issue, Along with these was a pedestrian, who, having thrown a rifle frock over his shirt, and placed his best wool hat above his sunburnt visage, had issued from his retreat in the woods by a footpath, and was striving to keep company with the others, on his way to hear and to decide the disputes of his neighbors, as a petit juror. Fifty similar little knots of countrymen might have been seen, on that morning, journeying toward the shire-town on the same errand.
By ten o'clock the streets of the village were filled with busy faces; some talking of their private concerns, some listening to a popular expounder of political creeds; and others gaping in at the open stores, admiring the finery, or examining scythes, axes, and such other manufactures as attracted their curiosity or excited their admiration. A few women were in the crowd, most carrying infants, and followed, at a lounging, listless gait, by their rustic lords and masters. There was one young couple, in whom connubial love was yet fresh, walking at a respectful distance from each other; while the swain directed the timid steps of his bride, by a gallant offering of a thumb.
At the first stroke of the bell, Richard issued from the door of the “Bold Dragoon,” flourishing a sheathed sword, that he was fond of saying his ancestors had carried in one of Cromwell's victories, and crying, in an authoritative tone, to “clear the way for the court.” The order was obeyed promptly, though not servilely, the members of the crowd nodding familiarly to the members of the procession as it passed. A party of constables with their staves followed the sheriff, preceding Marmaduke and four plain, grave-looking yeomen, who were his associates on the bench. There was nothing to distinguish these Subordinate judges from the better part of the spectators, except gravity, which they affected a little more than common, and that one of their number was attired in an old-fashioned military coat, with skirts that reached no lower than the middle of his thighs, and bearing two little silver epaulets, not half so big as a modern pair of shoulder-knots. This gentleman was a colonel of the militia, in attendance on a court-martial, who found leisure to steal a moment from his military to attend to his civil jurisdiction; but this incongruity excited neither notice nor comment. Three or four clean-shaved lawyers followed, as meek as if they were lambs going to the slaughter. One or two of their number had contrived to obtain an air of scholastic gravity by wearing spectacles. The rear was brought up by another posse of constables, and the mob followed the whole into the room where the court held its sitting.
The edifice was composed of a basement of squared logs, perforated here and there with small grated windows, through which a few wistful faces were gazing at the crowd without. Among the captives were the guilty, downcast countenances of the counterfeiters, and the simple but honest features of the Leather-Stocking. The dungeons were to be distinguished, externally, from the debtors' apartments only by the size of the apertures, the thickness of the grates, and by the heads of the spikes that were driven into the logs as a protection against the illegal use of edge-tools. The upper story was of frame work, regularly covered with boards, and contained one room decently fitted up for the purpose of justice. A bench, raised on a narrow platform to the height of a man above the floor, and protected in front by a light railing, ran along one of its sides. In the centre was a seat, furnished with rude arms, that was always filled by the presiding judge. In front, on a level with the floor of the room, was a large table covered with green baize, and surrounded by benches; and at either of its ends were rows of seats, rising one over the other, for jury-boxes. Each of these divisions was surrounded by a railing. The remainder of the room was an open square, appropriated to the spectators.
When the judges were seated, the lawyers had taken possession of the table, and the noise of moving feet had ceased in the area, the proclamations were made in the usual form, the jurors were sworn, the charge was given, and the court proceeded to hear the business before them.
We shall not detain the reader with a description of the captious discussions that occupied the court for the first two hours, Judge Temple had impressed on the jury, in his charge, the necessity for dispatch on their part, recommending to their notice, from motives of humanity, the prisoners in the jail as the first objects of their attention. Accordingly, after the period we have mentioned had elapsed, the cry of the officer to “clear the way for the grand jury,” announced the entrance of that body. The usual forms were observed, when the foreman handed up to the bench two bills, on both of which the Judge observed, at the first glance of his eye, the name of Nathaniel Bumppo. It was a leisure moment with the court; some low whispering passed between the bench and the sheriff, who gave a signal to his officers, and in a very few minutes the silence that prevailed was interrupted by a general movement in the outer crowd, when presently the Leather-Stocking made his appearance, ushered into the criminal's bar under the custody of two constables, The hum ceased, the people closed into the open space again, and the silence soon became so deep that the hard breathing of the prisoner was audible.
Natty was dressed in his buckskin garments, without his coat, in place of which he wore only a shirt of coarse linen-cheek, fastened at his throat by the sinew of a deer, leaving his red neck and weather-beaten face exposed and bare. It was the first time that he had ever crossed the threshold of a court of justice, and curiosity seemed to be strongly blended with his personal feelings. He raised his eyes to the bench, thence to the jury-boxes, the bar, and the crowd without, meeting everywhere looks fastened on himself. After surveying his own person, as searching the cause of this unusual attraction, he once more turned his face around the assemblage, and opened his mouth in one of his silent and remarkable laughs.
“Prisoner, remove your cap,” said Judge Temple.
The order was either unheard or unheeded.
“Nathaniel Bumppo, be uncovered,” repeated the Judge.
Natty started at the sound of his name, and, raising his face earnestly toward the bench, he said: “Anan!”
Mr. Lippet arose from his seat at the table, and whispered in the ear of the prisoner; when Natty gave him a nod of assent, and took the deer-skin covering from his head.
“Mr. District Attorney,” said the Judge, “the prisoner is ready; we wait for the indictment.”
The duties of public prosecutor were discharged by Dirck Van der School, who adjusted his spectacles, cast a cautious look around him at his brethren of the bar, which he ended by throwing his head aside so as to catch one glance over the glasses, when he proceeded to read the bill aloud. It was the usual charge for an assault and battery on the person of Hiram Doolittle, and was couched in the ancient language of such instruments, especial care having been taken by the scribe not to omit the name of a single offensive weapon known to the law. When he had done, Mr. Van der School removed his spectacles, which he closed and placed in his pocket, seemingly for the pleasure of again opening and replacing them on his nose, After this evolution was repeated once or twice, he handed the bill over to Mr. Lippet, with a cavalier air, that said as much as “Pick a hole in that if you can.”
Natty listened to the charge with great attention, leaning forward toward the reader with an earnestness that denoted his interest; and, when it was ended, he raised his tall body to the utmost, and drew a long sigh. All eyes were turned to the prisoner, whose voice was vainly expected to break the stillness of the room.
“You have heard the presentment that the grand jury have made, Nathaniel Bumppo,” said the Judge; “what do you plead to the charge?”
The old man drooped his head for a moment in a reflecting attitude, and then, raising it, he laughed before he answered: “That I handled the man a little rough or so, is not to be denied; but that there was occasion to make use of all the things that the gentleman has spoken of is downright untrue. I am not much of a wrestler, seeing that I'm getting old; but I was out among the Scotch-Irishers--let me see--it must have been as long ago as the first year of the old war--” “Mr. Lippet, if you are retained for the prisoner,” interrupted Judge Temple, “instruct your client how to plead; if not, the court will assign him counsel.”
Aroused from studying the indictment by this appeal, the attorney got up, and after a short dialogue with the hunter in a low voice, he informed the court that they were ready to proceed.
“Do you plead guilty or not guilty?” said the Judge.
“I may say not guilty, with a clean conscience,” returned Natty; “for there's no guilt in doing what's right; and I'd rather died on the spot, than had him put foot in the hut at that moment.”
Richard started at this declaration and bent his eyes significantly on Hiram, who returned the look with a slight movement of his eyebrows.
“Proceed to open the cause, Mr. District Attorney,” continued the Judge. “Mr. Clerk, enter the plea of not guilty.”
After a short opening address from Mr. Van der School, Hiram was summoned to the bar to give his testimony. It was delivered to the letter, perhaps, but with all that moral coloring which can be conveyed under such expressions as, “thinking no harm,” “feeling it my bounden duty as a magistrate,” and “seeing that the constable was back'ard in the business.” When he had done, and the district attorney declined putting any further interrogatories, Mr. Lippet arose, with an air of keen investigation, and asked the following questions: “Are you a constable of this county, sir?”
“No, sir,” said Hiram, “I'm only a justice-peace.”
“I ask you, Mr. Doolittle, in the face of this court, put ting it to your conscience and your knowledge of the law, whether you had any right to enter that man's dwelling?”
“Hem!” said Hiram, undergoing a violent struggle between his desire for vengeance, and his love of legal fame: “I do suppose--that in--that is--strict law--that supposing--maybe I hadn't a real--lawful right; but as the case was--and Billy was so back'ard--I thought I might come for'ard in the business.”
“I ask you again, sir,” continued the lawyer, following up his success, “whether this old, this friendless old man, did or did not repeatedly forbid your entrance?”
“Why, I must say,” said Hiram, “that he was considerable cross-grained; not what I call clever, seeing that it was only one neighbor wanting to go into the house of another.”
“Oh! then you own it was only meant for a neighborly visit on your part, and without the sanction of law. Remember, gentlemen, the words of the witness, 'one neighbor wanting to enter the house of another.' Now, sir, I ask you if Nathaniel Bumppo did not again and again order you not to enter?”
“There was some words passed between us,” said Hiram, “but I read the warrant to him aloud.”
“I repeat my question; did he tell you not to enter his habitation?”
“There was a good deal passed betwixt us--but I've the warrant in my pocket; maybe the court would wish to see it?”
“Witness,” said Judge Temple, “answer the question directly; did or did not the prisoner forbid your entering his hut?”
“Why, I some think--” “Answer without equivocation,” continued the Judge sternly.
“He did.”
“And did you attempt to enter after his order?”
“I did; but the warrant was in my hand.”
“Proceed, Mr. Lippet, with your examination.”
But the attorney saw that the impression was in favor of his client, and waving his hand with a supercilious manner, as if unwilling to insult the understanding of the jury with any further defence, he replied: “No, sir; I leave it for your honor to charge; I rest my case here.”
“Mr. District Attorney,” said the Judge, “have you anything to say?”
Mr. Van der School removed his spectacles, folded them and, replacing them once more on his nose, eyed the other bill which he held in his hand, and then said, looking at the bar over the top of his glasses; “I shall rest the prosecution here, if the court please.”
Judge Temple arose and began the charge.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “you have heard the testimony, and I shall detain you but a moment. If an officer meet with resistance in the execution of a process, he has an undoubted right to call any citizen to his assistance; and the acts of such assistant come within the protection of the law. I shall leave you to judge, gentlemen, from the testimony, how far the witness in this prosecution can be so considered, feeling less reluctance to submit the case thus informally to your decision, because there is yet another indictment to be tried, which involves heavier charges against the unfortunate prisoner.”
The tone of Marmaduke was mild and insinuating, and, as his sentiments were given with such apparent impartiality, they did not fail of carrying due weight with the jury. The grave-looking yeomen who composed this tribunal laid their heads together for a few minutes, without leaving the box, when the foreman arose, and, after the forms of the court were duly observed, he pronounced the prisoner to be “Not guilty.”
“You are acquitted of this charge, Nathaniel Bumppo,” said the Judge.
“Anan!” said Natty.
“You are found not guilty of striking and assaulting Mr. Doolittle.”
“No, no, I'll not deny but that I took him a little roughly by the shoulders,” said Natty, looking about him with great simplicity, “and that I--” “You are acquitted,” interrupted the Judge, “and there is nothing further to be said or done in the matter.”
A look of joy lighted up the features of the old man, who now comprehended the case, and, placing his cap eagerly on his head again, he threw up the bar of his little prison, and said, feelingly: “I must say this for you, Judge Temple, that the law has not been so hard on me as I dreaded. I hope God will bless you for the kind things you've done to me this day.”
But the staff of the constable was opposed to his egress, and Mr. Lippet whispered a few words in his ear, when the aged hunter sank back into his place, and, removing his cap, stroked down the remnants of his gray and sandy locks, with an air of mortification mingled with submission.
“Mr. District Attorney,” said Judge Temple, affecting to busy himself with his minutes, “proceed with the second indictment.”
Mr. Van der School took great care that no part of the presentment, which he now read, should be lost on his auditors. It accused the prisoner of resisting the execution of a search-warrant, by force of arms, and particularized in the vague language of the law, among a variety of other weapons, the use of the rifle. This was indeed a more serious charge than an ordinary assault and battery, and a corresponding degree of interest was manifested by the spectators in its result. The prisoner was duly arraigned, and his plea again demanded. Mr. Lippet had anticipated the answers of Natty, and in a whisper advised him how to plead. But the feelings of the old hunter were awakened by some of the expressions in the indictment, and, forgetful of his caution, he exclaimed: “'Tis a wicked untruth; I crave no man's blood. Them thieves, the Iroquois, won't say it to any face that I ever thirsted after man's blood, I have fou't as soldier that feared his Maker and his officer, but I never pulled trigger on any but a warrior that was up and awake. No man can say that I ever struck even a Mingo in his blanket. I believe there's some who thinks there's no God in a wilder ness!”
“Attend to your plea, Bumppo,” said the Judge; “you hear that you are accused of using your rifle against an officer of justice? Are you guilty or not guilty?”
By this time the irritated feelings of Natty had found vent: and he rested on the bar for a moment, in a musing posture, when he lifted his face, with his silent laugh, and, pointing to where the wood-chopper stood, he said: “Would Billy Kirby be standing there, d'ye think, if I had used the rifle?”
“Then you deny it,” said Mr. Lippet; “you plead not guilty?”
“Sartain,” said Natty; “Billy knows that I never fired at all. Billy, do you remember the turkey last winter? Ah me! that was better than common firing; but I can't shoot as I used to could.”
“Enter the plea of not guilty,” said Judge Temple, strongly affected by the simplicity of the prisoner.
Hiram was again sworn, and his testimony given on the second charge. He had discovered his former error, and proceeded more cautiously than before. He related very distinctly and, for the man, with amazing terseness, the suspicion against the hunter, the complaint, the issuing of the warrant, and the swearing in of Kirby; all of which, he affirmed, were done in due form of law. He then added the manner in which the constable had been received; and stated, distinctly, that Natty had pointed the rifle at Kirby, and threatened his life if he attempted to execute his duty. All this was confirmed by Jotham, who was observed to adhere closely to the story of the magistrate. Mr. Lippet conducted an artful cross-examination of these two witnesses, but, after consuming much time, was compelled to relinquish the attempt to obtain any advantage, in despair.
At length the District Attorney called the wood-chopper to the bar, Billy gave an extremely confused account of the whole affair, although he evidently aimed at the truth, until Mr. Van der School aided him, by asking some direct questions: “It appears from examining the papers, that you demanded admission into the hut legally; so you were put in bodily fear by his rifle and threats?”
“I didn't mind them that, man,” said Billy, snapping his fingers; “I should be a poor stick to mind old Leather-Stocking.”
“But I understood you to say (referring to your previous words [as delivered here in court] in the commencement of your testimony) that you thought he meant to shoot you?”
“To be sure I did; and so would you, too, squire, if you had seen a chap dropping a muzzle that never misses, and cocking an eye that has a natural squint by long practice I thought there would be a dust on't, and my back was up at once; but Leather-Stocking gi'n up the skin, and so the matter ended.”
“Ah! Billy,” said Natty, shaking his head, “'twas a lucky thought in me to throw out the hide, or there might have been blood spilt; and I'm sure, if it had been your'n, I should have mourned it sorely the little while I have to stay.”
“Well, Leather-Stocking,” returned Billy, facing the prisoner with a freedom and familiarity that utterly disregarded the presence of the court, “as you are on the subject it may be that you've no--” “Go on with your examination, Mr. District Attorney.”
That gentleman eyed the familiarity between his witness and the prisoner with manifest disgust, and indicated to the court that he was done.
“Then you didn't feel frightened, Mr. Kirby?” said the counsel for the prisoner.
“Me! no,” said Billy, casting his eyes oven his own huge frame with evident self-satisfaction; “I'm not to be skeared so easy.”
“You look like a hardy man; where were you born, sir?”
“Varmount State; 'tis a mountaynious place, but there's a stiff soil, and it's pretty much wooded with beech and maple.”
“I have always heard so,” said Mr. Lippet soothingly. “You have been used to the rifle yourself in that country.”
“I pull the second best trigger in this county. I knock under to Natty Bumppo, there, sin' he shot the pigeon.”
Leather-Stocking raised his head, and laughed again, when he abruptly thrust out a wrinkled hand, and said: “You're young yet, Billy, and haven't seen the matches that I have; but here's my hand; I bear no malice to you, I don't.”
Mr. Lippet allowed this conciliatory offering to be accepted, and judiciously paused, while the spirit of peace was exercising its influence over the two; but the Judge interposed his authority.
“This is an improper place for such dialogues,” he said; “proceed with your examination of this witness, Mr. Lippet, or I shall order the next.”
The attorney started, as if unconscious of any impropriety, and continued: “So you settled the matter with Natty amicably on the spot, did you?”
“He gi'n me the skin, and I didn't want to quarrel with an old man; for my part, I see no such mighty matter in shooting a buck!”
“And you parted friends? and you would never have thought of bringing the business up before a court, hadn't you been subpoenaed?”
“I don't think I should; he gi'n the skin, and I didn't feel a hard thought, though Squire Doolittle got some affronted.”
“I have done, sir,” said Mr. Lippet, probably relying on the charge of the Judge, as he again seated himself, with the air of a main who felt that his success was certain.
When Mr. Van der School arose to address the jury, he commenced by saying: “Gentlemen of the jury, I should have interrupted the leading questions put by the prisoner's counsel (by leading questions I mean telling him what to say), did I not feel confident that the law of the land was superior to any ad vantages (I mean legal advantages) which he might obtain by his art. The counsel for the prisoner, gentlemen, has endeavored to persuade you, in opposition to your own good sense, to believe that pointing a rifle at a constable (elected or deputed) is a very innocent affair; and that society (I mean the commonwealth, gentlemen) shall not be endangered thereby. But let me claim your attention, while we look over the particulars of this heinous offence.” Here Mr. Vain der School favored the jury with an abridgment of the testimony, recounted in such a manner as utterly to confuse the faculties of his worthy listeners. After this exhibition he closed as follows: “And now, gentlemen, having thus made plain to your senses the crime of which this unfortunate man has been guilty (unfortunate both on account of his ignorance and his guilt), I shall leave you to your own consciences; not in the least doubting that you will see the importance (notwithstanding the prisoner's counsel [doubtless relying on your former verdict] wishes to appear so confident of success) of punishing the offender, and asserting the dignity of the laws.”
It was now the duty of the Judge to deliver his charge. It consisted of a short, comprehensive summary of the testimony, laying bare the artifice of the prisoner's counsel, and placing the facts in so obvious a light that they could not well be misunderstood. “Living as we do, gentlemen,” he concluded, “on the skirts of society, it becomes doubly necessary to protect the ministers of the law. If you believe the witnesses, in their construction of the acts of the prisoner, it is your duty to convict him; but if you believe that the old man, who this day appears before you, meant not to harm the constable, but was acting more under the influence of habit than by the instigations of malice, it will be your duty to judge him, but to do it with lenity.”
As before, the jury did not leave their box; but, after a consultation of some little time, their foreman arose, and pronounced the prisoner Guilty.
There was but little surprise manifested in the courtroom at this verdict, as the testimony, the greater part of which we have omitted, was too clear and direct to be passed over. The judges seemed to have anticipated this sentiment, for a consultation was passing among them also, during the deliberation of the jury, and the preparatory movements of the “bench” announced the coming sentence.
“Nathaniel Bumppo,” commenced the Judge, making the customary pause.
The old hunter, who had been musing again, with his head on the bar, raised himself, and cried, with a prompt, military tone: “Here.”
The Judge waved his hand for silence, and proceeded: “In forming their sentence, the court have been governed as much by the consideration of your ignorance of the laws as by a strict sense of the importance of punishing such outrages as this of which you have been found guilty. They have therefore passed over the obvious punishment of whipping on the bare back, in mercy to your years; but, as the dignity of the law requires an open exhibition of the consequences of your crime, it is ordered that you be conveyed from this room to the public stocks, where you are to be confined for one hour; that you pay a fine to the State of one hundred dollars; and that you be imprisoned in the jail of this county for one calendar month, and, furthermore, that your imprisonment do not cease until the said fine shall be paid. I feel it my duty, Nathaniel Bumppo--” “And where should I get the money?” interrupted the Leather-Stocking eagerly; “where should I get the money? you'll take away the bounty on the painters, because I cut the throat of a deer; and how is an old man to find so much gold or silver in the woods? No, no, Judge; think better of it, and don't talk of shutting me up in a jail for the little time I have to stay.”
“If you have anything to urge against the passing of the sentence, the court will yet hear you,” said the Judge, mildly.
“I have enough to say agin' it,” cried Natty, grasping the bar on which his fingers were working with a convulsed motion. “Where am I to get the money? Let me out into the woods and hills, where I've been used to breathe the clear air, and though I'm threescore and ten, if you've left game enough in the country, I'll travel night and day but I'll make you up the sum afore the season is over. Yes, yes--you see the reason of the thing, and the wicked ness of shutting up an old man that has spent his days, as one may say, where he could always look into the windows of heaven.”
“I must be governed by the law--” “Talk not to me of law, Marmaduke Temple,” interrupted the hunter. “Did the beast of the forest mind your laws, when it was thirsty and hungering for the blood of your own child? She was kneeling to her God for a greater favor than I ask, and he heard her; and if you now say no to my prayers, do you think he will be deaf?”
“My private feelings must not enter into--” “Hear me, Marmaduke Temple,” interrupted the old man, with melancholy earnestness, “and hear reason. I've travelled these mountains when you was no judge, but an infant in your mother's arms; and I feel as if I had a right and a privilege to travel them agin afore I die. Have you forgot the time that you come on to the lake shore, when there wasn't even a jail to lodge in: and didn't I give you my own bear-skin to sleep on, and the fat of a noble buck to satisfy the cravings of your hunger? Yes, yes--you thought it no sin then to kill a deer! And this I did, though I had no reason to love you, for you had never done anything but harm to them that loved and sheltered me. And now, will you shut me up in your dungeons to pay me for my kindness? A hundred dollars! Where should I get the money? No, no--there's them that says hard things of you, Marmaduke Temple, but you ain't so bad as to wish to see an old man die in a prison, because he stood up for the right. Come, friend, let me pass; it's long sin' I've been used to such crowds, and I crave to be in the woods agin. Don't fear me, Judge--I bid you not to fear me; for if there's beaver enough left on the streams, or the buckskins will sell for a shilling apiece, you shall have the last penny of the fine. Where are ye, pups? come away, dogs, come away! we have a grievous toil to do for our years, but it shall be done--yes, yes, I've promised it, and it shall be done!”
It is unnecessary to say that the movement of the Leather-Stocking was again intercepted by the constable; but, before he had time to speak, a bustling in the crowd, and a loud hem, drew all eyes to another part of the room.
Benjamin had succeeded in edging his way through the people, and was now seen balancing his short body, with one foot in a window and the other on a railing of the jury-box. To the amazement of the whole court, the steward was evidently preparing to speak. After a good deal of difficulty, he succeeded in drawing from his pocket a small bag, and then found utterance.
“If-so-be,” he said, “that your honor is agreeable to trust the poor fellow out on another cruise among the beasts, here's a small matter that will help to bring down the risk, seeing that there's just thirty-five of your Spaniards in it; and I wish, from the bottom of my heart, that they was raal British guineas, for the sake of the old boy. But 'tis as it is; and if Squire Dickens will just be so good as to overhaul this small bit of an account, and take enough from the bag to settle the same, he's welcome to hold on upon the rest, till such time as the Leather-Stocking can grapple with them said beaver, or, for that matter, forever, and no thanks asked.”
As Benjamin concluded, he thrust out the wooden register of his arrears to the “Bold Dragoon” with one hand, while he offered his bag of dollars with the other. Astonishment at this singular interruption produced a profound stillness in the room, which was only interrupted by the sheriff, who struck his sword on the table, and cried: “Silence!”
“There must be an end to this,” said the Judge, struggling to overcome his feelings. “Constable, lead the prisoner to the stocks. Mr. Clerk, what stands next on the calendar?”
Natty seemed to yield to his destiny, for he sank his head on his chest, and followed the officer from the court room in silence. The crowd moved back for the passage of the prisoner, and when his tall form was seen descending from the outer door, a rush of the people to the scene of his disgrace followed.
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{
"id": "2275"
}
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34
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None
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“Ha! ha! look! he wears cruel garters!” --Lear.
The punishments of the common law were still known, at the time of our tale, to the people of New York; and the whipping-post, and its companion, the stocks, were not yet supplanted by the more merciful expedients of the public prison. Immediately in front of the jail those relics of the older times were situated, as a lesson of precautionary justice to the evil-doers of the settlement.
Natty followed the constables to this spot, bowing his head in submission to a power that he was unable to op pose, and surrounded by the crowd that formed a circle about his person, exhibiting in their countenances strong curiosity. A constable raised the upper part of the stocks, and pointed with his finger to the holes where the old man was to place his feet. Without making the least objection to the punishment, the Leather-Stocking quietly seated himself on the ground, and suffered his limbs to be laid in the openings, without even a murmur; though he cast one glance about him, in quest of that sympathy that human nature always seems to require under suffering but he met no direct manifestations of pity, neither did he see any unfeeling exultation, or hear a single reproachful epithet. The character of the mob, if it could be called by such a name, was that of attentive subordination.
The constable was in the act of lowering the upper plank, when Benjamin, who had pressed close to the side of the prisoner, said, in his hoarse tone, as if seeking for some cause to create a quarrel: “Where away, master constable, is the use of clapping a man in them here bilboes? It neither stops his grog nor hurts his back; what for is it that you do the thing?”
“'Tis the sentence of the court, Mr. Penguillium, and there's law for it, I s'pose.”
“Ay, ay, I know that there's law for the thing; but where away do you find the use, I say? it does no harm, and it only keeps a man by the heels for the small matter of two glasses.”
“Is it no harm, Benny Pump,” said Natty, raising his eyes with a piteous look in the face of the steward--“is it no harm to show off a man in his seventy-first year, like a tame bear, for the settlers to look on? Is it no harm to put an old soldier, that has served through the war of 'fifty-six, and seen the enemy in the 'seventy-six business, into a place like this, where the boys can point at him and say, I have known the time when he was a spectacle for the county? Is it no harm to bring down the pride of an honest man to be the equal of the beasts of the forest?”
Benjamin stared about him fiercely, and could he have found a single face that expressed contumely, he would have been prompt to quarrel with its owner; but meeting everywhere with looks of sobriety, and occasionally of commiseration, he very deliberately seated himself by the side of the hunter, and, placing his legs in the two vacant holes of the stocks, he said: “Now lower away, master constable, lower away, I tell ye! If-so-be there's such a thing hereabouts, as a man that wants to see a bear, let him look and be d--d, and he shall find two of them, and mayhap one of the same that can bite as well as growl.”
“But I have no orders to put you in the stocks, Mr. Pump,” cried the constable; “you must get up and let me do my duty.”
“You've my orders, and what do you need better to meddle with my own feet? so lower away, will ye, and let me see the man that chooses to open his mouth with a grin on it.”
“There can't be any harm in locking up a creatur' that will enter the pound,” said the constable, laughing, and closing the stocks on them both.
It was fortunate that this act was executed with decision, for the whole of the spectators, when they saw Benjamin assume the position he took, felt an inclination for merriment, which few thought it worth while to suppress. The steward struggled violently for his liberty again, with an evident intention of making battle on those who stood nearest to him; but the key was already turned, and all his efforts were vain.
“Hark ye, master constable,” he cried, “just clear away your bilboes for the small matter of a log-glass, will ye, and let me show some of them there chaps who it is they are so merry about.”
“No, no, you would go in, and you can't come out,” returned the officer, “until the time has expired that the Judge directed for the keeping of the prisoner.”
Benjamin, finding that his threats and his struggles were useless, had good sense enough to learn patience from the resigned manner of his companion, and soon settled himself down by the side of Natty, with a contemptuousness expressed in his hard features, that showed he had substituted disgust for rage. When the violence of the steward's feelings had in some measure subsided, he turned to his fellow-sufferer, and, with a motive that might have vindicated a worse effusion, he attempted the charitable office of consolation, “Taking it by and large, Master Bump-ho, it's but a small matter after all,” he said. “Now, I've known very good sort of men, aboard of the Boadishey, laid by the heels, for nothing, mayhap, but forgetting that they'd drunk their allowance already, when a glass of grog has come in their way. This is nothing more than riding with two anchors ahead, waiting for a turn in the tide, or a shift of wind, d'ye see, with a soft bottom and plenty of room for the sweep of your hawse. Now I've seen many a man, for over-shooting his reckoning, as I told ye moored head and starn, where he couldn't so much as heave his broadside round, and mayhap a stopper clapped on his tongue too, in the shape of a pump-bolt lashed athwartship his jaws, all the same as an outrigger along side of a taffrel-rail.”
The hunter appeared to appreciate the kind intentions of the other, though he could not understand his eloquence, and, raising his humbled countenance, he attempted a smile, as he said: “Anan!”
“'Tis nothing, I say, but a small matter of a squall that will soon blow over,” continued Benjamin. “To you that has such a length of keel, it must be all the same as nothing; thof, seeing that I am little short in my lower timbers, they've triced my heels up in such a way as to give me a bit of a cant. But what cares I, Master Bump-ho, if the ship strains a little at her anchor? it's only for a dog-watch, and dam'me but she'll sail with you then on that cruise after them said beaver. I'm not much used to small arms, seeing that I was stationed at the ammunition-boxes, being summat too low-rigged to see over the hammock-cloths; but I can carry the game, dye see, and mayhap make out to lend a hand with the traps; and if so, be you're any way so handy with them as ye be with your boat-hook, 'twill be but a short cruise after all, I've squared the yards with Squire Dickens this morning, and I shall send him word that he needn't bear my name on the books again till such time as the cruise is over.”
“You're used to dwell with men, Benny,” said Leather-Stocking, mournfully, “and the ways of the woods would be hard on you, if----” “Not a bit--not a bit,” cried the steward; “I'm none of your fair-weather chaps, Master Bump-ho, as sails only in smooth water. When I find a friend, I sticks by him, dye see. Now, there's no better man a-going than Squire Dickens, and I love him about the same as I loves Mistress Hollister's new keg of Jamaiky.” The steward paused, and turning his uncouth visage on the hunter, he surveyed him with a roguish leer of his eye, and gradually suffered the muscles of his hard features to relax, until his face was illuminated by the display of his white teeth, when he dropped his voice, and added; “I say, Master Leather-Stocking, 'tis fresher and livelier than any Hollands you'll get in Garnsey. But we'll send a hand over and ask the woman for a taste, for I'm so jammed in these here bilboes that I begin to want summat to lighten my upper works.”
Natty sighed, and gazed about him on the crowd, that already began to disperse, and which had now diminished greatly, as its members scattered in their various pursuits. He looked wistfully at Benjamin, but did not reply; a deeply-seated anxiety seeming to absorb every other sensation, and to throw a melancholy gloom over his wrinkled features, which were working with the movements of his mind.
The steward was about to act on the old principle, that silence gives consent, when Hiram Doolittle, attended by Jotham, stalked out of the crowd, across the open space, and approached the stocks. The magistrate passed by the end where Benjamin was seated, and posted himself, at a safe distance from the steward, in front of the Leather-Stocking. Hiram stood, for a moment, cowering before the keen looks that Natty fastened on him, and suffering under an embarrassment that was quite new; when having in some degree recovered himself, he looked at the heavens, and then at the smoky atmosphere, as if it were only an ordinary meeting with a friend, and said in his formal, hesitating way: “Quite a scurcity of rain, lately; I some think we shall have a long drought on't.”
Benjamin was occupied in untying his bag of dollars, and did not observe the approach of the magistrate, while Natty turned his face, in which every muscle was working, away from him in disgust, without answering. Rather encouraged than daunted by this exhibition of dislike, Hiram, after a short pause, continued: “The clouds look as if they'd no water in them, and the earth is dreadfully parched. To my judgment, there'll be short crops this season, if the rain doesn't fail quite speedily.”
The air with which Mr. Doolittle delivered this prophetical opinion was peculiar to his species. It was a jesuitical, cold, unfeeling, and selfish manner, that seemed to say, “I have kept within the law,” to the man he had so cruelly injured. It quite overcame the restraint that the old hunter had been laboring to impose on himself, and he burst out in a warm glow of indignation.
“Why should the rain fall from the clouds,” he cried, “when you force the tears from the eyes of the old, the sick, and the poor! Away with ye--away with ye! you may be formed in the image of the Maker, but Satan dwells in your heart. Away with ye, I say! I am mournful, and the sight of ye brings bitter thoughts.”
Benjamin ceased thumbing his money, and raised his head at the instant that Hiram, who was thrown off his guard by the invectives of the hunter, unluckily trusted his person within reach of the steward, who grasped one of his legs with a hand that had the grip of a vise, and whirled the magistrate from his feet, before he had either time to collect his senses or to exercise the strength he did really possess. Benjamin wanted neither proportions nor manhood in his head, shoulders, and arms, though all the rest of his frame appeared to be originally intended for a very different sort of a man. He exerted his physical powers on the present occasion, with much discretion; and, as he had taken his antagonist at a great disadvantage, the struggle resulted very soon in Benjamin getting the magistrate fixed in a posture somewhat similar to his own, and manfully placed face to face.
“You're a ship's cousin, I tell ye, Master Doo-but-little,” roared the steward; “some such matter as a ship's cousin, sir. I know you, I do, with your fair-weather speeches to Squire Dickens, to his face, and then you go and sarve out your grumbling to all the old women in the town, do ye? Ain't it enough for any Christian, let him harbor never so much malice, to get an honest old fellow laid by the heels in this fashion, without carrying sail so hard on the poor dog, as if you would run him down as he lay at his anchors? But I've logged many a hard thing against your name, master, and now the time's come to foot up the day's work, d'ye see; so square yourself, you lubber, square yourself, and we'll soon know who's the better man.”
“Jotham!” cried the frightened magistrate--“Jotham! call in the constables. Mr. Penguillium, I command the peace--I order you to keep the peace.”
“There's been more peace than love atwixt us, master,” cried the steward, making some very unequivocal demonstrations toward hostility; “so mind yourself! square your self, I say! do you smell this here bit of a sledge-hammer?”
“Lay hands on me if you dare!” exclaimed Hiram, as well as he could, under the grasp which the steward held on his throttle--“lay hands on me if you dare!”
“If you call this laying, master, you are welcome to the eggs,” roared the steward.
It becomes our disagreeable duty to record here, that the acts of Benjamin now became violent; for he darted his sledge-hammer violently on the anvil of Mr. Doolittle's countenance, and the place became in an instant a scene of tumult and confusion. The crowd rushed in a dense circle around the spot, while some ran to the court room to give the alarm, and one or two of the more juvenile part of the multitude had a desperate trial of speed to see who should be the happy man to communicate the critical situation of the magistrate to his wife.
Benjamin worked away, with great industry and a good deal of skill, at his occupation, using one hand to raise up his antagonist, while he knocked him over with the other; for he would have been disgraced in his own estimation, had he struck a blow on a fallen adversary. By this considerate arrangement he had found means to hammer the visage of Hiram out of all shape, by the time Richard succeeded in forcing his way through the throng to the point of combat. The sheriff afterward declared that, independently of his mortification as preserver of the peace of the county, at this interruption to its harmony, he was never so grieved in his life as when he saw this breach of unity between his favorites. Hiram had in some degree become necessary to his vanity, and Benjamin, strange as it may appear, he really loved. This attachment was exhibited in the first words that he uttered.
“Squire Doolittle! Squire Doolittle! I am ashamed to see a man of your character and office forget himself so much as to disturb the peace, insult the court, and beat poor Benjamin in this manner!”
At the sound of Mr. Jones' voice, the steward ceased his employment, and Hiram had an opportunity of raising his discomfited visage toward the mediator. Emboldened by the sight of the sheriff, Mr. Doolittle again had recourse to his lungs.
“I'll have law on you for this,” he cried desperately; “I'll have the law on you for this. I call on you, Mr. Sheriff, to seize this man, and I demand that you take his body into custody.”
By this time Richard was master of the true state of the case, and, turning to the steward, he said reproach fully: “Benjamin, how came you in the stocks? I always thought you were mild and docile as a lamb. It was for your docility that I most esteemed you. Benjamin! Benjamin! you have not only disgraced yourself, but your friends, by this shameless conduct, Bless me! bless me! Mr. Doolittle, he seems to have knocked your face all of one side.”
Hiram by this time had got on his feet again, and with out the reach of the steward, when he broke forth in violent appeals for vengeance. The offence was too apparent to be passed over, and the sheriff, mindful of the impartiality exhibited by his cousin in the recent trial of the Leather-Stocking, came to the painful conclusion that it was necessary to commit his major-domo to prison. As the time of Natty's punishment was expired, and Benjamin found that they were to be confined, for that night at least, in the same apartment, he made no very strong objection to the measure, nor spoke of bail, though, as the sheriff preceded the party of constables that conducted them to the jail, he uttered the following remonstrance: “As to being berthed with Master Bump-ho for a night or so, it's but little I think of it, Squire Dickens, seeing that I calls him an honest man, and one as has a handy way with boat-hooks and rifles; but as for owning that a man desarves anything worse than a double allowance, for knocking that carpenters face a-one-side, as you call it, I'll maintain it's agin' reason and Christianity. If there's a bloodsucker in this 'ere county, it's that very chap. Ay! I know him! and if he hasn't got all the same as dead wood in his headworks, he knows summat of me. Where's the mighty harm, squire, that you take it so much to heart? It's all the same as any other battle, d'ye see sir, being broadside to broadside, only that it was foot at anchor, which was what we did in Port Pray a roads, when Suff'ring came in among us; and a suff'ring time he had of it before he got out again.”
Richard thought it unworthy of him to make any reply to this speech, but when his prisoners were safely lodged in an outer dungeon, ordering the bolts to be drawn and the key turned, he withdrew.
Benjamin held frequent and friendly dialogues with different people, through the iron gratings, during the afternoon; but his companion paced their narrow' limits, in his moccasins, with quick, impatient treads, his face hanging on his breast in dejection, or when lifted, at moments, to the idlers at the window, lighted, perhaps, for an instant, with the childish aspect of aged forgetfulness, which would vanish directly in an expression of deep and obvious anxiety.
At the close of the day, Edwards was seen at the window, in earnest dialogue with his friend; and after he de parted it was thought that he had communicated words of comfort to the hunter, who threw himself on his pallet and was soon in a deep sleep. The curious spectators had exhausted the conversation of the steward, who had drunk good fellowship with half of his acquaintance, and, as Natty was no longer in motion, by eight o'clock, Billy Kirby, who was the last lounger at the window, retired into the “Templeton Coffee-house,” when Natty rose and hung a blanket before the opening, and the prisoners apparently retired for the night.
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{
"id": "2275"
}
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35
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“And to avoid the foe's pursuit, With spurring put their cattle to't; And till all four were out of wind, And danger too, neer looked behind.” --Hudibras.
As the shades of evening approached, the jurors, wit nesses, and other attendants on the court began to disperse, and before nine o'clock the village was quiet, and its streets nearly deserted. At that hour Judge Temple and his daughter, followed at a short distance by Louisa Grant, walked slowly down the avenue, under the slight shadows of the young poplars, holding the following discourse: “You can best soothe his wounded spirit, my child,” said Marmaduke; “but it will be dangerous to touch on the nature of his offence; the sanctity of the laws must be respected.”
“Surely, sir,” cried the impatient Elizabeth, “those laws that condemn a man like the Leather-Stocking to so severe a punishment, for an offence that even I must think very venial, cannot be perfect in themselves.”
“Thou talkest of what thou dost not understand, Elizabeth,” returned her father. “Society cannot exist without wholesome restraints. Those restraints cannot be inflicted without security and respect to the persons of those who administer them; and it would sound ill indeed to report that a judge had extended favor to a convicted criminal, because he had saved the life of his child.”
“I see--I see the difficulty of your situation, dear sir,” cried the daughter; “but, in appreciating the offence of poor Natty, I cannot separate the minister of the law from the man.”
“There thou talkest as a woman, child; it is not for an assault on Hiram Doolittle, but for threatening the life of a constable, who was in the performance of--” “It is immaterial whether it be one or the other,” interrupted Miss Temple, with a logic that contained more feeling than reason; “I know Natty to be innocent, and thinking so I must think all wrong who oppress him.”
“His judge among the number! thy father, Elizabeth?”
“Nay, nay, nay; do not put such questions to me; give me my commission, father, and let me proceed to execute it.”
The Judge paused a moment, smiling fondly on his child, and then dropped his hand affectionately on her shoulder, as he answered: “Thou hast reason, Bess, and much of it, too, but thy heart lies too near thy head, But listen; in this pocketbook are two hundred dollars. Go to the prison--there are none in this pace to harm thee--give this note to the jailer, and, when thou seest Bumppo, say what thou wilt to the poor old man; give scope to the feeling of thy warm heart; but try to remember, Elizabeth, that the laws alone remove us from the condition of the savages; that he has been criminal, and that his judge was thy father.”
Miss Temple made no reply, but she pressed the hand that held the pocket-book to her bosom, and, taking her friend by the arm, they issued together from the inclosure into the principal street of the village.
As they pursued their walk in silence, under the row of houses, where the deeper gloom of the evening effectually concealed their persons, no sound reached them, excepting the slow tread of a yoke of oxen, with the rattling of a cart, that were moving along the street in the same direction with themselves. The figure of the teamster was just discernible by the dim light, lounging by the side of his cattle with a listless air, as if fatigued by the toil of the day. At the corner, where the jail stood, the progress of the ladies was impeded, for a moment, by the oxen, who were turned up to the side of the building, and given a lock of hay, which they had carried on their necks, as a reward for their patient labor, The whole of this was so natural, and so common, that Elizabeth saw nothing to induce a second glance at the team, until she heard the teamster speaking to his cattle in a low voice: “Mind yourself, Brindle; will you, sir! will you!” The language itself was so unusual to oxen, with which all who dwell in a new country are familiar; but there was something in the voice, also, that startled Miss Temple On turning the corner, she necessarily approached the man, and her look was enabled to detect the person of Oliver Edwards, concealed under the coarse garb of a teamster. Their eyes met at the same instant, and, not withstanding the gloom, and the enveloping cloak of Elizabeth, the recognition was mutual.
“Miss Temple!” “Mr. Edwards!” were exclaimed simultaneously, though a feeling that seemed common to both rendered the words nearly inaudible.
“Is it possible!” exclaimed Edwards, after the moment of doubt had passed; “do I see you so nigh the jail! but you are going to the rectory: I beg pardon, Miss Grant, I believe; I did not recognize you at first.”
The sigh which Louisa tittered was so faint, that it was only heard by Elizabeth, who replied quickly, “We are going not only to the jail, Mr. Edwards' but into it. We wish to show the Leather-Stocking that we do not forget his services, and that at the same time we must be just, we are also grateful. I suppose you are on a similar errand; but let me beg that you will give us leave to precede you ten minutes. Good-night, sir; I--I--am quite sorry, Mr. Edwards, to see you reduced to such labor; I am sure my father would--” “I shall wait your pleasure, madam,” interrupted the youth coldly. “May I beg that you will not mention my being here?”
“Certainly,” said Elizabeth, returning his bow by a slight inclination of her head, and urging the tardy Louisa forward. As they entered the jailer's house, however, Miss Grant found leisure to whisper: “Would it not be well to offer part of your money to Oliver? half of it will pay the fine of Bumppo; and he is so unused to hardships! I am sure my father will subscribe much of his little pittance, to place him in a station that is more worthy of him.”
The involuntary smile that passed over the features of Elizabeth was blended with an expression of deep and heartfelt pity. She did not reply, however, and the appearance of the jailer soon recalled the thoughts of both to the object of their visit.
The rescue of the ladies, and their consequent interest in his prisoner, together with the informal manners that prevailed in the country, all united to prevent any surprise on the part of the jailer, at their request for admission to Bumppo. The note of Judge Temple, however, would have silenced all objections, if he had felt them and he led the way without hesitation to the apartment that held the prisoners. The instant the key was put into the lock, the hoarse voice of Benjamin was heard, demanding: “Yo hoy! who comes there?”
“Some visitors that you'll be glad to see,” returned the jailer. “What have you done to the lock, that it won't turn.”
“Handsomely, handsomely, master,” cried the steward: “I have just drove a nail into a berth alongside of this here bolt, as a stopper, d'ye see, so that Master Doo-but-little can't be running in and breezing up another fight atwixt us: for, to my account, there'll be but a han-yan with me soon, seeing that they'll mulct me of my Spaniards, all the same as if I'd over-flogged the lubber. Throw your ship into the wind, and lay by for a small matter, will ye? and I'll soon clear a passage.”
The sounds of hammering gave an assurance that the steward was in earnest, and in a short time the lock yielded, when the door was opened.
Benjamin had evidently been anticipating the seizure of his money, for he had made frequent demands on the favorite cask at the “Bold Dragoon,” during the afternoon and evening, and was now in that state which by marine imagery is called “half-seas-over.” It was no easy thing to destroy the balance of the old tar by the effects of liquor, for, as he expressed it himself, “he was too low-rigged not to carry sail in all weathers;” but he was precisely in that condition which is so expressively termed “muddy.” When he perceived who the visitors were, he retreated to the side of the room where his pallet lay, and, regardless of the presence of his young mistress, seated himself on it with an air of great sobriety, placing his back firmly against the wall.
“If you undertake to spoil my locks in this manner, Mr. Pump,” said the jailer, “I shall put a stopper, as you call it, on your legs, and tie you down to your bed.”
“What for should ye, master?” grumbled Benjamin; “I've rode out one squall to-day anchored by the heels, and I wants no more of them. Where's the harm o' doing all the same as yourself? Leave that there door free out board, and you'll find no locking inboard, I'll promise ye.”
“I must shut up for the night at nine,” said the jailer, “and it's now forty-two minutes past eight.” He placed the little candle on a rough pine table, and withdrew.
“Leather-Stocking!” said Elizabeth, when the key of the door was turned on them again, “my good friend, Leather-Stocking! I have come on a message of gratitude. Had you submitted to the search, worthy old man, the death of the deer would have been a trifle, and all would have been well------” “Submit to the sarch!” interrupted Natty, raising his face from resting on his knees, without rising from the corner where he had seated himself; “d'ye think gal, I would let such a varmint into my hut? No, no--I wouldn't have opened the door to your own sweet countenance then. But they are welcome to search among the coals and ashes now; they'll find only some such heap as is to be seen at every pot-ashery in the mountains.”
The old man dropped his face again on one hand, and seemed to be lost in melancholy.
“The hut can be rebuilt, and made better than before,” returned Miss Temple; “and it shall be my office to see it done, when your imprisonment is ended.”
“Can ye raise the dead, child?” said Natty, in a sorrowful voice: “can ye go into the place where you've laid your fathers, and mothers, and children, and gather together their ashes, and make the same men and women of them as afore? You do not know what 'tis to lay your head for more than forty years under the cover of the same logs, and to look at the same things for the better part of I a man's life. You are young yet, child, but you are one of the most precious of God's creatures. I had hoped for ye that it might come to pass, but it's all over now; this, put to that, will drive the thing quite out of his mind for ever.”
Miss Temple must have understood the meaning of the old man better than the other listeners; for while Louisa stood innocently by her side, commiserating the griefs of the hunter, she bent her head aside, so as to conceal her features. The action and the feeling that caused it lasted but a moment.
“Other logs, and better, though, can be had, and shall be found for you, my old defender,” she continued. “Your confinement will soon be over, and, before that time arrives, I shall have a house prepared for you, where I you may spend the close of your long and harmless life in ease and plenty.”
“Ease and plenty! house!” repeated Natty, slowly. “You mean well, you mean well, and I quite mourn that it cannot be; but he has seen me a sight and a laughing-stock for--” “Damn your stocks,” said Benjamin, flourishing his bottle with one hand, from which he had been taking hasty and repeated draughts, while he made gestures of disdain with the other: “who cares for his bilboes? There's a leg that been stuck up on end like a jibboom for an hour, d'ye see, and what's it the worse for't, ha? canst tell me, what's it the worser, ha?”
“I believe you forget, Mr. Pump, in whose presence you are,” said Elizabeth.
“Forget you, Miss Lizzy?” returned the steward; “if I do, dam'me; you are not to be forgot, like Goody Pretty-bones, up at the big house there. I say, old sharpshooter, she may have pretty bones, but I can't say so much for her flesh, d'ye see, for she looks somewhat like anatomy with another man's jacket on. Now for the skin of her face, it's all the same as a new topsail with a taut bolt-rope, being snug at the leeches, but all in a bight about the inner cloths.”
“Peace--I command you to be silent, sir!” said Elizabeth.
“Ay, ay, ma'am,” returned the steward. “You didn't say I shouldn't drink, though.”
“We will not speak of what is to become of others,” said Miss Temple, turning again to the hunter--“but of your own fortunes, Natty. It shall be my care to see that you pass the rest of your days in ease and plenty.”
“Ease and plenty!” again repeated the Leather-Stocking; “what ease can there be to an old man, who must walk a mile across the open fields, before he can find a shade to hide him from a scorching sun! or what plenty is there where you hunt a day, and not start a buck, or see anything bigger than a mink, or maybe a stray fox! Ah! I shall have a hard time after them very beavers, for this fine. I must go low toward the Pennsylvania line in search of the creatures, maybe a hundred mile; for they are not to be got here-away. No, no--your betterments and clearings have druv the knowing things out of the country, and instead of beaver-dams, which is the nater of the animal, and according to Providence, you turn back the waters over the low grounds with your mill-dams, as if 'twas in man to stay the drops from going where He wills them to go--Benny, unless you stop your hand from going so often to your mouth, you won't be ready to start when the time comes.
“Hark'ee, Master Bump-ho,” said the steward; “don't you fear for Ben, When the watch is called, set me of my legs and give me the bearings and the distance of where you want me to steer, and I'll carry sail with the best of you, I will.”
“The time has come now,” said the hunter, listening; “I hear the horns of the oxen rubbing agin' the side of the jail.”
“Well, say the word, and then heave ahead, shipmate,” said Benjamin.
“You won't betray us, gal?” said Natty, looking simply into the face of Elizabeth--“you won't betray an old man, who craves to breathe the clear air of heaven? I mean no harm; and if the law says that I must pay the hundred dollars, I'll take the season through, but it shall be forthcoming; and this good man will help me.”
“You catch them,” said Benjamin, with a sweeping gesture of his arm, “and if they get away again, call me a slink, that's all.”
“But what mean you?” cried the wondering Elizabeth. “Here you must stay for thirty days; but I have the money for your fine in this purse. Take it; pay it in the morning, and summon patience for your mouth. I will come often to see you, with my friend; we will make up your clothes with our own hands; indeed, indeed, you shall be comfortable.”
“Would ye, children?” said Natty, advancing across the floor with an air of kindness, and taking the hand of Elizabeth, “would ye be so kearful of an old man, and just for shooting a beast which cost him nothing? Such things doesn't run in the blood, I believe, for you seem not to forget a favor. Your little fingers couldn't do much on a buckskin, nor be you used to push such a thread as sinews. But if he hasn't got past hearing, he shalt hear it and know it, that he may see, like me, there is some who know how to remember a kindness.”
“Tell him nothing,” cried Elizabeth, earnestly; “if you love me, if you regard my feelings, tell him nothing. It is of yourself only I would talk, and for yourself only I act. I grieve, Leather-Stocking, that the law requires that you should be detained here so long; but, after all, it will be only a short month, and----” “A month?” exclaimed Natty, opening his mouth with his usual laugh, “not a day, nor a night, nor an hour, gal. Judge Temple may sintence, but he can't keep without a better dungeon than this. I was taken once by the French, and they put sixty-two of us in a block-house, nigh hand to old Frontinac; but 'twas easy to cut through a pine log to them that was used to timber.” The hunter paused, and looked cautiously around the room, when, laughing again, he shoved the steward gently from his post, and removing the bedclothes, discovered a hole recently cut in the logs with a mallet and chisel. “It's only a kick, and the outside piece is off, and then--” “Off! ay, off!” cried Benjamin, rising from his stupor; “well, here's off. Ay! ay! you catch 'em, and I'll hold on to them said beaver-hats.”
“I fear this lad will trouble me much,” said Natty; “'twill be a hard pull for the mountain, should they take the scent soon, and he is not in a state of mind to run.”
“Run!” echoed the steward; “no, sheer alongside, and let's have a fight of it.”
“Peace!” ordered Elizabeth.
“Ay, ay, ma'am.”
“You will not leave us, surely, Leather-Stocking,” continued Miss Temple; “I beseech you, reflect that you will be driven to the woods entirely, and that you are fast getting old. Be patient for a little time, when you can go abroad openly, and with honor.”
“Is there beaver to be catched here, gal?”
“If not, here is money to discharge the fine, and in a month you are free. See, here it is in gold.”
“Gold!” said Natty, with a kind of childish curiosity; “it's long sin' I've seen a gold-piece. We used to get the broad joes, in the old war, as plenty as the bears be now. I remember there was a man in Dieskau's army, that was killed, who had a dozen of the shining things sewed up in his shirt. I didn't handle them myself, but I seen them cut out with my own eyes; they was bigger and brighter than them be.”
“These are English guineas, and are yours,” said Elizabeth; “an earnest of what shall be done for you.”
“Me! why should you give me this treasure!” said Natty, looking earnestly at the maiden.
“Why! have you not saved my life? Did you not rescue me from the jaws of the beast?” exclaimed Elizabeth, veiling her eyes, as if to hide some hideous object from her view.
The hunter took the money, and continued turning it in his hand for some time, piece by piece, talking aloud during the operation.
“There's a rifle, they say, out on the Cherry Valley, that will carry a hundred rods and kill. I've seen good guns in my day, but none quite equal to that. A hundred rods with any sartainty is great shooting! Well, well--I'm old, and the gun I have will answer my time. Here, child, take back your gold. But the hour has come; I hear him talking to the cattle, and I must be going. You won't tell of us, gal--you won't tell of us, will ye?”
“Tell of you!” echoed Elizabeth. “But take the money, old man; take the money, even if you go into the mountains.”
“No, no,” said Natty, shaking his head kindly; “I would not rob you so for twenty rifles. But there's one thing you can do for me, if ye will, that no other is at hand to do.
“Name it--name it.”
“Why, it's only to buy a canister of powder--'twill cost two silver dollars. Benny Pump has the money ready, but we daren't come into the town to get it. Nobody has it but the Frenchman. 'Tis of the best, and just suits a rifle. Will you get it for me, gal? --say, will you get it for me?”
“Will I? I will bring it to you, Leather-Stocking, though I toil a day in quest of you through the woods. But where shall I find you, and how?”
“Where?” said Natty, musing a moment--“to-morrow on the Vision; on the very top of the Vision, I'll meet you, child, just as the sun gets over our heads. See that it's the fine grain; you'll know it by the gloss and the price.”
“I will do it,” said Elizabeth, firmly.
Natty now seated himself, and placing his feet in the hole, with a slight effort he opened a passage through into the street. The ladies heard the rustling of hay, and well understood the reason why Edwards was in the capacity of a teamster.
“Come, Benny,” said the hunter: “'twill be no darker to-night, for the moon will rise in an hour.”
“Stay!” exclaimed Elizabeth; “it should not be said that you escaped in the presence of the daughter of Judge Temple. Return, Leather-Stocking, and let us retire be fore you execute your plan.”
Natty was about to reply, when the approaching footsteps of the jailer announced the necessity of his immediate return. He had barely time to regain his feet, and to conceal the hole with the bedclothes, across which Benjamin very opportunely fell, before the key was turned, and the door of the apartment opened.
“Isn't Miss Temple ready to go?” said the civil jailer; “it's the usual hour for locking up.”
“I follow you, sir,” returned Elizabeth “good-night, Leather-Stocking.”
“It's a fine grain, gal, and I think twill carry lead further than common. I am getting old, and can't follow up the game with the step I used to could.”
Miss Temple waved her hand for silence, and preceded Louisa and the keeper from the apartment. The man turned the key once, and observed that he would return and secure his prisoners, when he had lighted the ladies to the street. Accordingly they parted at the door of the building, when the jailer retired to his dungeons, and the ladies walked, with throbbing hearts, toward the corner.
“Now the Leather-Stocking refuses the money,” whispered Louisa, “it can all be given to Mr. Edwards, and that added to--” “Listen!” said Elizabeth; “I hear the rustling of the hay; they are escaping at this moment. Oh! they will be detected instantly!”
By this time they were at the corner, where Edwards and Natty were in the act of drawing the almost helpless body of Benjamin through the aperture. The oxen had started back from their hay, and were standing with their heads down the street, leaving room for the party to act in.
“Throw the hay into the cart,” said Edwards, “or they will suspect how it has been done. Quick, that they may not see it.”
Natty had just returned from executing this order, when the light of the keeper's candle shone through the hole, and instantly his voice was heard in the jail exclaiming for his prisoners.
“What is to be done now?” said Edwards; “this drunken fellow will cause our detection, and we have not a moment to spare.”
“Who's drunk, ye lubber?” muttered the steward.
“A break-jail! a break-jail!” shouted five or six voices from within.
“We must leave him,” said Edwards.
“'Twouldn't be kind, lad,” returned Natty; “he took half the disgrace of the stocks on himself to-day, and the creatur' has feeling.”
At this moment two or three men were heard issuing from the door of the “Bold Dragoon,” and among them the voice of Billy Kirby.
“There's no moon yet,” cried the wood-chopper; “but it's a clear night. Come, who's for home? Hark! what a rumpus they're kicking up in the jail--here's go and see what it's about.”
“We shall be lost,” said Edwards, “if we don't drop this man.”
At that instant Elizabeth moved close to him, and said rapidly, in a low voice: “Lay him in the cart, and start the oxen; no one will look there.”
“There's a woman's quickness in the thought,” said the youth.
The proposition was no sooner made than executed. The steward was seated on the hay, and enjoined to hold his peace and apply the goad that was placed in his hand, while the oxen were urged on. So soon as this arrangement was completed, Edwards and the hunter stole along the houses for a short distance, when they disappeared through an opening that led into the rear of the buildings.
The oxen were in brisk motion, and presently the cries of pursuit were heard in the street. The ladies quickened their pace, with a wish to escape the crowd of constables and idlers that were approaching, some execrating, and some laughing at the exploit of the prisoners. In the confusion, the voice of Kirby was plainly distinguishable above all the others, shouting and swearing that he would have the fugitives, threatening to bring back Natty in one pocket, and Benjamin in the other.
“Spread yourselves, men,” he cried, as he passed the ladies, his heavy feet sounding along the street like the tread of a dozen; “spread yourselves; to the mountains; they'll be in the mountains in a quarter of an hour, and then look out for a long rifle.”
His cries were echoed from twenty mouths, for not only the jail but the taverns had sent forth their numbers, some earnest in the pursuit, and others joining it as in sport.
As Elizabeth turned in at her father's gate she saw the wood-chopper stop at the cart, when she gave Benjamin up for lost. While they were hurrying up the walk, two figures, stealing cautiously but quickly under the shades of the trees, met the eyes of the ladies, and in a moment Edwards and the hunter crossed their path.
“Miss Temple, I may never see you again,” exclaimed the youth; “let me thank you for all your kindness; you do not, cannot know my motives.”
“Fly! fly!” cried Elizabeth; “the village is alarmed. Do not be found conversing with me at such a moment, and in these grounds.”
“Nay, I must speak, though detection were certain.”
“Your retreat to the bridge is already cut off; before you can gain the wood your pursuers will be there. If--” “If what?” cried the youth. “Your advice has saved me once already; I will follow it to death.”
“The street is now silent and vacant,” said Elizabeth, after a pause; “cross it, and you will find my father's boat in the lake. It would be easy to land from it where you please in the hills.”
“But Judge Temple might complain of the trespass.”
“His daughter shall be accountable, sir.”
The youth uttered something in a low voice, that was heard only by Elizabeth, and turned to execute what she had suggested. As they were separating, Natty approached the females, and said: “You'll remember the canister of powder, children. Them beavers must be had, and I and the pups be getting old; we want the best of ammunition.”
“Come, Natty,” said Edwards, impatiently.
“Coming, lad, coming. God bless you, young ones, both of ye, for ye mean well and kindly to the old man.”
The ladies paused until they had lost sight of the retreating figures, when they immediately entered the mansion-house.
While this scene was passing in the walk, Kirby had overtaken the cart, which was his own, and had been driven by Edwards, without asking the owner, from the place where the patient oxen usually stood at evening, waiting the pleasure of their master.
“Woa--come hither, Golden,” he cried; “why, how come you off the end of the bridge, where I left you, dummies?”
“Heave ahead,” muttered Benjamin, giving a random blow with his lash, that alighted on the shoulder of the other.
“Who the devil be you?” cried Billy, turning round in surprise, but unable to distinguish, in the dark, the hard visage that was just peering over the cart-rails.
“Who be I? why, I'm helmsman aboard of this here craft d'ye see, and a straight wake I'm making of it. Ay, ay! I've got the bridge right ahead, and the bilboes dead aft: I calls that good steerage, boy. Heave ahead.”
“Lay your lash in the right spot, Mr. Benny Pump,” said the wood-chopper, “or I'll put you in the palm of my hand and box your ears. Where be you going with my team?”
“Team!”
“Ay, my cart and oxen.”
“Why, you must know, Master Kirby, that the Leather-Stocking and I--that's Benny Pump--you knows Ben? --well, Benny and I--no, me and Benny; dam'me if I know how 'tis; but some of us are bound after a cargo of beaver-skins, d'ye see, so we've pressed the cart to ship them 'ome in. I say, Master Kirby, what a lubberly oar you pull--you handle an oar, boy, pretty much as a cow would a musket, or a lady would a marling-spike.”
Billy had discovered the state of the steward's mind, and he walked for some time alongside of the cart, musing with himself, when he took the goad from Benjamin (who fell back on the hay and was soon asleep) and drove his cattle down the street, over the bridge, and up the mountain, toward a clearing in which he was to work the next day, without any other interruption than a few hasty questions from parties of the constables.
Elizabeth stood for an hour at the window of her room, and saw the torches of the pursuers gliding along the side of the mountain, and heard their shouts and alarms; but, at the end of that time, the last party returned, wearied and disappointed, and the village became as still as when she issued from the gate on her mission to the jail.
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“And I could weep”-- th' Oneida chief His descant wildly thus begun-- “But that I may not stain with grief The death-song of my father's son.” --Gertrude of Wyoming.
It was yet early on the following morning, when Elizabeth and Louisa met by appointment, and proceeded to the store of Monsieur Le Quoi, in order to redeem the pledge the former had given to the Leather-Stocking. The people were again assembling for the business of the day, but the hour was too soon for a crowd, and the ladies found the place in possession of its polite owner, Billy Kirby, one female customer, and the boy who did the duty of helper or clerk.
Monsieur Le Quoi was perusing a packet of letters with manifest delight, while the wood-chopper, with one hand thrust in his bosom, and the other in the folds of his jacket, holding an axe under his right arm, stood sympathizing in the Frenchman's pleasure with good-natured interest. The freedom of manners that prevailed in the new settlements commonly levelled all difference in rank, and with it, frequently, all considerations of education and intelligence. At the time the ladies entered the store, they were unseen by the owner, who was saying to Kirby: “Ah! ha! Monsieur Beel, dis lettair mak me de most happi of mans. Ah! ma chére France! I vill see you again.”
“I rejoice, monsieur, at anything that contributes to your happiness,” said Elizabeth, “but hope we are not going to lose you entirely.”
The complaisant shopkeeper changed the language to French and recounted rapidly to Elizabeth his hopes of being permitted to return to his own country. Habit had, however, so far altered the manners of this pliable person age, that he continued to serve the wood-chopper, who was in quest of some tobacco, while he related to his more gentle visitor the happy change that had taken place in the dispositions of his own countrymen.
The amount of it all was, that Mr. Le Quoi, who had fled from his own country more through terror than because he was offensive to the ruling powers in France, had succeeded at length in getting an assurance that his return to the West Indies would be unnoticed; and the Frenchman, who had sunk into the character of a country shopkeeper with so much grace, was about to emerge again from his obscurity into his proper level in society.
We need not repeat the civil things that passed between the parties on this occasion, nor recount the endless repetitions of sorrow that the delighted Frenchman expressed at being compelled to quit the society of Miss Temple. Elizabeth took an opportunity, during this expenditure of polite expressions, to purchase the powder privately of the boy, who bore the generic appellation of Jonathan. Be fore they parted, however, Mr. Le Quoi, who seemed to think that he had not said enough, solicited the honor of a private interview with the heiress, with a gravity in his air that announced the importance of the subject. After conceding the favor, and appointing a more favorable time for the meeting, Elizabeth succeeded in getting out of the store, into which the countrymen now began to enter, as usual, where they met with the same attention and bien seance as formerly.
Elizabeth and Louisa pursued their walk as far as the bridge in profound silence; but when they reached that place the latter stopped, and appeared anxious to utter something that her diffidence suppressed.
“Are you ill, Louisa?” exclaimed Miss Temple; “had we not better return, and seek another opportunity to meet the old man?”
“Not ill, but terrified. Oh! I never, never can go on that hill again with you only. I am not equal to it, in deed I am not.”
This was an unexpected declaration to Elizabeth, who, although she experienced no idle apprehension of a danger that no longer existed, felt most sensitively all the delicacy of maiden modesty. She stood for some time, deeply reflecting within herself; but, sensible it was a time for action instead of reflection, she struggled to shake off her hesitation, and replied, firmly: “Well, then it must be done by me alone. There is no other than yourself to be trusted, or poor old Leather-Stocking will be discovered. Wait for me in the edge of these woods, that at least I may not be seen strolling in the hills by myself just now, One would not wish to create remarks, Louisa--if--if--You will wait for me, dear girl?”
“A year, in sight of the village, Miss Temple,” returned the agitated Louisa, “but do not, do not ask me to go on that hill.”
Elizabeth found that her companion was really unable to proceed, and they completed their arrangement by posting Louisa out of the observation of the people who occasionally passed, but nigh the road, and in plain view of the whole valley. Miss Temple then proceeded alone. She ascended the road which has been so often mentioned in our narrative, with an elastic and firm step, fearful that the delay in the store of Mr. Le Quoi, and the time necessary for reaching the summit, would prevent her being punctual to the appointment Whenever she pressed an opening in the bushes, she would pause for breath, or, per haps, drawn from her pursuit by the picture at her feet, would linger a moment to gaze at the beauties of the valley. The long drought had, however, changed its coat of verdure to a hue of brown, and, though the same localities were there, the view wanted the lively and cheering aspect of early summer. Even the heavens seemed to share in the dried appearance of the earth, for the sun was concealed by a haziness in the atmosphere, which looked like a thin smoke without a particle of moisture, if such a thing were possible. The blue sky was scarcely to be seen, though now, and then there was a faint lighting up in spots through which masses of rolling vapor could be discerned gathering around the horizon, as if nature were struggling to collect her floods for the relief of man. The very atmosphere that Elizabeth inhaled was hot and dry, and by the time she reached the point where the course led her from the highway she experienced a sensation like suffocation. But, disregarding her feelings, she hastened to execute her mission, dwelling on nothing but the disappointment, and even the helplessness, the hunter would experience without her aid.
On the summit of the mountain which Judge Temple had named the “Vision,” a little spot had been cleared, in order that a better view might be obtained of the village and the valley. At this point Elizabeth understood the hunter she was to meet him; and thither she urged her way, as expeditiously as the difficulty of the ascent, and the impediment of a forest, in a state of nature, would admit. Numberless were the fragments of rocks, trunks of fallen trees, and branches, with which she had to contend; but every difficulty vanished before her resolution, and, by her own watch, she stood on the desired spot several minutes before the appointed hour.
After resting a moment on the end of a log, Miss Temple cast a glance about her in quest of her old friend, but he was evidently not in the clearing; she arose and walked around its skirts, examining every place where she thought it probable Natty might deem it prudent to conceal him self. Her search was fruitless; and, after exhausting not only herself, but her conjectures, in efforts to discover or imagine his situation, she ventured to trust her voice in that solitary place.
“Natty! Leather-Stocking! old man!” she called aloud, in every direction; but no answer was given, excepting the reverberations of her own clear tones, as they were echoed in the parched forest.
Elizabeth approached the brow of the mountain, where a faint cry, like the noise produced by striking the hand against the mouth, at the same time that the breath is strongly exhaled, was heard answering to her own voice. Not doubting in the least that it was the Leather-Stocking lying in wait for her, and who gave that signal to indicate the place where he was to be found, Elizabeth descended for near a hundred feet, until she gained a little natural terrace, thinly scattered with trees, that grew in the fissures of the rocks, which were covered by a scanty soil. She had advanced to the edge of this platform, and was gazing over the perpendicular precipice that formed its face, when a rustling among the dry leaves near her drew her eyes in another direction. Our heroine certainly was startled by the object that she then saw, but a moment restored her self-possession, and she advanced firmly, and with some interest in her manner, to the spot.
Mohegan was seated on the trunk of a fallen oak, with his tawny visage turned toward her, and his eyes fixed on her face with an expression of wildness and fire, that would have terrified a less resolute female. His blanket had fallen from his shoulders, and was lying in folds around him, leaving his breast, arms, and most of his body bare. 'The medallion of Washington reposed on his chest, a badge of distinction that Elizabeth well knew he only produced on great and solemn occasions. But the whole appearance of the aged chief was more studied than common, and in some particulars it was terrific. The long black hair was plaited on his head, failing away, so as to expose his high forehead and piercing eyes. In the enormous incisions of his ears were entwined ornaments of silver, beads, and porcupine's quills, mingled in a rude taste, and after the Indian fashions. A large drop, composed of similar materials, was suspended from the cartilage of his nose, and, falling below his lips, rested on his chin. Streaks of red paint crossed his wrinkled brow, and were traced down his cheeks, with such variations in the lines as caprice or custom suggested. His body was also colored in the same manner; the whole exhibiting an Indian warrior prepared for some event of more than usual moment.
“John! how fare you, worthy John?” said Elizabeth, as she approached him; “you have long been a stranger in the village. You promised me a willow basket, and I have long had a shirt of calico in readiness for you.”
The Indian looked steadily at her for some time without answering, and then, shaking his head, he replied, in his low, guttural tones: “John's hand can make baskets no more--he wants no shirt.”
“But if he should, he will know where to come for it,” returned Miss Temple. “Indeed old John. I feel as if you had a natural right to order what you will from us.”
“Daughter,” said the Indian, “listen: Six times ten hot summers have passed since John was young tall like a pine; straight like the bullet of Hawk-eye, strong as all buffalo; spry as the cat of the mountain. He was strong, and a warrior like the Young Eagle. If his tribe wanted to track the Maquas for many suns, the eye of Chingachgook found the print of their moccasins. If the people feasted and were glad, as they counted the scalps of their enemies, it was on his pole they hung. If the squaws cried because there was no meat for their children, he was the first in the chase. His bullet was swifter than the deer. Daughter, then Chingachgook struck his tomahawk into the trees; it was to tell the lazy ones where to find him and the Mingoes--but he made no baskets.”
“Those times have gone by, old warrior,” returned Elizabeth; “since then your people have disappeared, and, in place of chasing your enemies, you have learned to fear God and to live at peace.”
“Stand here, daughter, where you can see the great spring, the wigwams of your father, and the land on the crooked river. John was young when his tribe gave away the country, in council, from where the blue mountain stands above the water, to where the Susquehanna is hid by the trees. All this, and all that grew in it, and all that walked over it, and all that fed there, they gave to the Fire-eater----for they loved him. He was strong, and they were women, and he helped them. No Delaware would kill a deer that ran in his woods, nor stop a bird that flew over his land; for it was his. Has John lived in peace? Daughter, since John was young, he has seen the white man from Frontinac come down on his white brothers at Albany and fight. Did they fear God? He has seen his English and his American fathers burying their tomahawks in each other's brains, for this very land. Did they fear God, and live in peace? He has seen the land pass away from the Fire-eater, and his children, and the child of his child, and a new chief set over the country. Did they live in peace who did this? did they fear God?”
“Such is the custom of the whites, John. Do not the Delawares fight, and exchange their lands for powder, and blankets, and merchandise?”
The Indian turned his dark eyes on his companion, and kept them there with a scrutiny that alarmed her a little.
“Where are the blankets and merchandise that bought the right of the Fire-eater?” he replied in a more animated voice; “are they with him in his wigwam? Did they say to him, Brother, sell us your land, and take this gold, this silver, these blankets, these rifles, or even this rum? No; they tore it front him, as a scalp is torn from an enemy; and they that did it looked not behind them, to see whether he lived or died. Do such men live in peace and fear the Great Spirit?”
“But you hardly understand the circumstances,” said Elizabeth, more embarrassed than she would own, even to herself. “If you knew our laws and customs better, you would Judge differently of our acts. Do not believe evil of my father, old Mohegan, for he is just and good.”
“The brother of Miquon is good, and he will do right. I have said it to Hawk-eye---I have said it to the Young Eagle that the brother of Miquon would do justice.”
“Whom call you the Young Eagle?” said Elizabeth, averting her face from the gaze of the Indian, as she asked the question; “whence comes he, and what are his rights?”
“Has my daughter lived so long with him to ask this question?” returned the Indian warily. “Old age freezes up the blood, as the frosts cover the great spring in winter; but youth keeps the streams of the blood open like a sun in the time of blossoms. The Young Eagle has eyes; had he no tongue?”
The loveliness to which the old warrior alluded was in no degree diminished by his allegorical speech; for the blushes of the maiden who listened covered her burning cheeks till her dark eyes seemed to glow with their reflection; but, after struggling a moment with shame, she laughed, as if unwilling to understand him seriously, and replied in pleasantry: “Not to make me the mistress of his secret. He is too much of a Delaware to tell his secret thoughts to a woman.”
“Daughter, the Great Spirit made your father with a white skin, and he made mine with a red; but he colored both their hearts with blood. When young, it is swift and warm; but when old, it is still and cold. Is there difference below the skin? No. Once John had a woman. She was the mother of so many sons”--he raised his hand with three fingers elevated--“and she had daughters that would have made the young Delawares happy. She was kind, daughter, and what I said she did. You have different fashions; but do you think John did not love the wife of his youth--the mother of his children?”
“And what has become of your family, John--your wife and your children?” asked Elizabeth, touched by the Indian's manner.
“Where is the ice that covered the great spring? It is melted, and gone with the waters. John has lived till all his people have left him for the land of spirits; his time has come, and he is ready.”
Mohegan dropped his head in his blanket, and sat in silence. Miss Temple knew not what to say. She wished to draw the thoughts of the old warrior from his gloomy recollections, but there was a dignity in his sorrow, and in his fortitude, that repressed her efforts to speak. After a long pause, however, she renewed the discourse by asking: “Where is the Leather-Stocking, John? I have brought this canister of powder at his request; but he is nowhere to be seen. Will you take charge of it, and see it delivered?”
The Indian raised his head slowly and looked earnestly at the gift, which she put into his hand.
“This is the great enemy of my nation. Without this, when could the white man drive the Delawares? Daughter, the Great Spirit gave your fathers to know how to make guns and powder, that they might sweep the Indians from the land. There will soon be no red-skin in the country. When John has gone, the last will leave these hills, and his family will be dead.” The aged warrior stretched his body forward, leaning an elbow on his knee, and appeared to be taking a parting look at the objects of the vale, which were still visible through the misty atmosphere, though the air seemed to thicken at each moment around Miss Temple, who became conscious of an increased difficulty of respiration. The eye of Mohegan changed gradually from its sorrowful expression to a look of wildness that might be supposed to border on the inspiration of a prophet, as he continued: “But he will go on to the country where his fathers have met. The game shall be plenty as the Ash in the lakes. No woman shall cry for meat: no Mingo can ever come The chase shall be for children; and all just red men shall live together as brothers.”
“John! this is not the heaven of a Christian,” cried Miss Temple; “you deal now in the superstition of your forefathers.”
“Fathers! sons!” said Mohegan, with firmness. --“all gone--all gone! --have no son but the Young Eagle, and he has the blood of a white man.”
“Tell me, John,” said Elizabeth, willing to draw his thoughts to other subjects, and at the same time yielding to her own powerful interest in the youth; “who is this Mr. Edwards? why are you so fond of him, and whence does he come?”
The Indian started at the question, which evidently recalled his recollection to earth. Taking her hand, he drew Miss Temple to a seat beside him, and pointed to the country beneath them.
“See, daughter,” he said, directing her looks toward the north; “as far as your young eyes can see, it was the land of his. But immense volumes of smoke at that moment rolled over their heath, and, whirling in the eddies formed by the mountains, interposed a barrier to their sight, while he was speaking. Startled by this circumstance, Miss Temple sprang to her feet, and, turning her eyes toward the summit of the mountain, she beheld It covered by a similar canopy, while a roaring sound was heard in the forest above her like the rushing of winds.
“What means it, John?” she exclaimed: “we are enveloped in smoke, and I feel a heat like the glow of a furnace.”
Before the Indian could reply, a voice was heard crying In the woods: “John! where are you, old Mohegan! the woods are on fire, and you have but a minute for escape.”
The chief put his hand before his mouth, and, making it lay on his lips, produced the kind of noise that had attracted Elizabeth to the place, when a quick and hurried step was heard dashing through the dried underbrush and bushes, and presently Edwards rushed to his side, with horror an every feature.
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“Love rules the court, the camp, the grove.” --Lay of the Last Minstrel.
“IT would have been sad, indeed, to lose you in such manner, my old friend,” said Oliver, catching his breath for utterance. “Up and away! even now we may be too late; the flames are circling round the point of the rock below, and, unless we can pass there, our only chance must be over the precipice. Away! away! shake off your apathy, John; now is the time of need.”
Mohegan pointed toward Elizabeth, who, forgetting her danger, had sunk back to a projection of the rock as soon as she recognized the sounds of Edwards' voice, and said with something like awakened animation: “Save her--leave John to die.”
“Her! whom mean you?” cried the youth, turning quickly to the place the other indicated; but when he saw the figure of Elizabeth bending toward him in an attitude that powerfully spoke terror, blended with reluctance to meet him in such a place, the shock deprived him of speech.
“Miss Temple!” he cried, when he found words; “you here! is such a death reserved for you!”
“No, no, no--no death, I hope, for any of us, Mr. Edwards,” she replied, endeavoring to speak calmly; there is smoke, but no fire to harm us. “Let us endeavor to retire.”
“Take my arm,” said Edwards; “there must be an opening in some direction for your retreat. Are you equal to the effort?”
“Certainly. You surely magnify the danger, Mr. Edwards. Lead me out the way you came.”
“I will--I will,” cried the youth, with a kind of hysterical utterance. “No, no--there is no danger--I have alarmed you unnecessarily.”
“But shall we leave the Indian--can we leave him, as he says, to die?”
An expression of painful emotion crossed the face of the young man; he stopped and cast a longing look at Mohegan but, dragging his companion after him, even against her will, he pursued his way with enormous strides toward the pass by which he had just entered the circle of flame.
“Do not regard him,” he said, in those tones that de note a desperate calmness; “he is used to the woods, and such scenes; and he will escape up the mountain--over the rock--or he can remain where he is in safety.”
“You thought not so this moment, Edwards! Do not leave him there to meet with such a death,” cried Elizabeth, fixing a look on the countenance of her conductor that seemed to distrust his sanity.
“An Indian born! who ever heard of an Indian dying by fire? An Indian cannot burn; the idea is ridiculous. Hasten, hasten, Miss Temple, or the smoke may incommodate you.”
“Edwards! your look, your eye, terrifies me! Tell me the danger; is it greater than it seems? I am equal to any trial.”
“If we reach the point of yon rock before that sheet of fire, we are safe, Miss Temple,” exclaimed the young man in a voice that burst without the bounds of his forced composure. “Fly! the struggle is for life!”
The place of the interview between Miss Temple and the Indian has already been described as one of those plat forms of rock, which form a sort of terrace in the mountains of that country, and the face of it, we have said, was both high and perpendicular. Its shape was nearly a natural arc, the ends of which blended with the mountain, at points where its sides were less abrupt in their descent. It was round one of these terminations of the sweep of the rock that Edwards had ascended, and it was toward the same place that he urged Elizabeth to a desperate exertion of speed.
Immense clouds of white smoke had been pouring over the summit of the mountain, and had concealed the approach and ravages of the element; but a crackling sound drew the eyes of Miss Temple, as she flew over the ground supported by the young man, toward the outline of smoke where she already perceived the waving flames shooting forward from the vapor, now flaring high in the air, and then bending to the earth, seeming to light into combustion every stick and shrub on which they breathed. The sight aroused them to redoubled efforts; but, unfortunately, a collection of the tops of trees, old and dried, lay directly across their course; and at the very moment when both had thought their safety insured, the warm current of the air swept a forked tongue of flame across the pile, which lighted at the touch; and when they reached the spot, the flying pair were opposed by the surly roaring of a body of fire, as if a furnace were glowing in their path. They recoiled from the heat, and stood on a point of the rock, gazing in a stupor at the flames which were spreading rap idly down the mountain, whose side, too, became a sheet of living fire. It was dangerous for one clad in the light and airy dress of Elizabeth to approach even the vicinity of the raging element; and those flowing robes, that gave such softness and grace to her form, seemed now to be formed for the instruments of her destruction.
The villagers were accustomed to resort to that hill, in quest of timber and fuel; in procuring which, it was their usage to take only the bodies of the trees, leaving the tops and branches to decay under the operations of the weather. Much of the hill was, consequently, covered with such light fuel, which, having been scorched under the sun for the last two months, was ignited with a touch. Indeed, in some cases, there did not appear to be any contact between the fire and these piles, but the flames seemed to dart from heap to heap, as the fabulous fire of the temple is represented to reillumine its neglected lamp.
There was beauty as well as terror in the sight, and Edwards and Elizabeth stood viewing the progress of the desolation, with a strange mixture of horror and interest. The former, however, shortly roused himself to new exertions, and, drawing his companion after him, they skirted the edge of the smoke, the young man penetrating frequently into its dense volumes in search of a passage, but in every instance without success. In this manner they proceeded in a semicircle around the upper part of the terrace, until arriving at the verge of the precipice opposite to the point where Edwards had ascended, the horrid conviction burst on both, at the same instant, that they were completely encircled by fire. So long as a single pass up or down the mountain was unexplored, there was hope: but when retreat seemed to be absolutely impracticable, the horror of their situation broke upon Elizabeth as powerfully as if she had hitherto considered the danger light.
“This mountain is doomed to be fatal to me!” she whispered; “we shall find our graves on it!”
“Say not so, Miss Temple; there is yet hope,” returned the youth, in the same tone, while the vacant expression of his eye contradicted his words; “let us return to the point of the rock--there is--there must be--some place about it where we can descend.
“Lead me there,” exclaimed Elizabeth; “let us leave no effort untried.” She did not wait for his compliance, but turning, retraced her steps to the brow of the precipice, murmuring to herself, in suppressed, hysterical sobs, “My father! my poor, my distracted father!”
Edwards was by her side in an instant, and with aching eyes he examined every fissure in the crags in quest of some opening that might offer facilities for flight. But the smooth, even surface of the rocks afforded hardly a resting-place for a foot, much less those continued projections which would have been necessary for a descent of nearly a hundred feet. Edwards was not slow in feeling the conviction that this hope was also futile, and, with a kind of feverish despair that still urged him to action, he turned to some new expedient.
“There is nothing left, Miss Temple,” he said, “but to lower you from this place to the rock beneath. If Natty were here, or even that Indian could be roused, their ingenuity and long practice would easily devise methods to do it; but I am a child at this moment in everything but daring. Where shall I find means? This dress of mine is so light, and there is so little of it--then the blanket of Mohegan; we must try--we must try--anything is better than to see you a victim to such a death!”
“And what will become of you?” said Elizabeth. “In deed, indeed, neither you nor John must be sacrificed to my safety.”
He heard her not, for he was already by the side of Mohegan, who yielded his blanket without a question, retaining his seat with Indian dignity and composure, though his own situation was even more critical than that of the others. The blanket was cut into shreds, and the fragments fastened together: the loose linen jacket of the youth and the light muslin shawl of Elizabeth were attached to them, and the whole thrown over the rocks with the rapidity of lightning; but the united Pieces did not reach half-way to the bottom.
“It will not do--it will not do!” cried Elizabeth; “for me there is no hope! The fire comes slowly, but certainly. See, it destroys the very earth before it!”
Had the flames spread on that rock with half the quick ness with which they leaped from bush to tree in other parts of the mountain, our painful task would have soon ended; for they would have consumed already the captives they inclosed. But the peculiarity of their situation afforded Elizabeth and her companion the respite of which they had availed themselves to make the efforts we have recorded.
The thin covering of earth on the rock supported but a scanty and faded herbage, and most of the trees that had found root in the fissures had already died, during the in tense heats of preceding summers. Those which still retained the appearance of life bore a few dry and withered leaves, while the others were merely the wrecks of pines, oaks, and maples. No better materials to feed the fire could be found, had there been a communication with the flames; but the ground was destitute of the brush that led the destructive element, like a torrent, over the remainder of the hill. As auxiliary to this scarcity of fuel, one of the large springs which abound in that country gushed out of the side of the ascent above, and, after creeping sluggishly along the level land, saturating the mossy covering of the rock with moisture, it swept around the base of the little cone that formed the pinnacle of the mountain, and, entering the canopy of smoke near one of the terminations of the terrace, found its way to the lake, not by dashing from rock to rock, but by the secret channels of the earth. It would rise to the surface, here and there, in the wet seasons, but in the droughts of summer it was to be traced only by the bogs and moss that announced the proximity of water. When the fire reached this barrier, it was compelled to pause, until a concentration of its heat could overcome the moisture, like an army awaiting the operations of a battering train, to open its way to desolation.
That fatal moment seemed now to have arrived, for the hissing steams of the spring appeared to be nearly exhausted, and the moss of the rocks was already curling under the intense heat, while fragments of bark, that yet clung to the dead trees, began to separate from their trunks, and fall to the ground in crumbling masses. The air seemed quivering with rays of heat, which might be seen playing along the parched stems of the trees. There were moments when dark clouds of smoke would sweep along the little terrace; and, as the eye lost its power, the other senses contributed to give effect to the fearful horror of the scene. At such moments, the roaring of the flames, the crackling of the furious element, with the tearing of falling branches, and occasionally the thundering echoes of some falling tree, united to alarm the victims. Of the three, however, the youth appeared much the most agitated. Elizabeth, having relinquished entirely the idea of escape, was fast obtaining that resigned composure with which the most delicate of her sex are sometimes known to meet unavoidable evils; while Mohegan, who was much nearer to the danger, maintained his seat with the invincible resignation of an Indian warrior. Once or twice the eye of the aged chief, which was ordinarily fixed in the direction of the distant hills, turned toward the young pair, who seemed doomed to so early a death, with a slight indication of pity crossing his composed features, but it would immediately revert again to its former gaze, as if already looking into the womb of futurity. Much of the time he was chanting a kind of low dirge in the Delaware tongue, using the deep and remarkable guttural tones of his people.
“At such a moment, Mr. Edwards, all earthly distinctions end,” whispered Elizabeth; “persuade John to move nearer to us--let us die together.”
“I cannot--he will not stir,” returned the youth, in the same horridly still tones. “He considers this as the happiest moment of his life, he is past seventy, and has been decaying rapidly for some time; he received some injury in chasing that unlucky deer, too, on the lake, Oh! Miss Temple, that was an unlucky chase, indeed! it has led, I fear, to this awful scene.”
The smile of Elizabeth was celestial. “Why name such a trifle now? --at this moment the heart is dead to all earthly emotions!”
“If anything could reconcile a man to this death,” cried the youth, “it would be to meet it in such company!”
“Talk not so, Edwards; talk not so,” interrupted Miss Temple. “I am unworthy of it, and it is unjust to your self. We must die; yes--yes--we must die--it is the will of God, and let us endeavor to submit like his own children.”
“Die!” the youth rather shrieked than exclaimed, “no--no--no--there must yet be hope--you, at least, must-not, shall not die.”
“In what way can we escape?” asked Elizabeth, pointing with a look of heavenly composure toward the fire “Observe! the flame is crossing the barrier of wet ground--it comes slowly, Edwards, but surely. Ah! see! the tree! the tree is already lighted!”
Her words were too true. The heat of the conflagration had at length overcome the resistance of the spring, and the fire was slowly stealing along the half-dried moss; while a dead pine kindled with the touch of a forked flame, that, for a moment, wreathed around the stem of the tree, as it whined, in one of its evolutions, under the influence of the air. The effect was instantaneous, The flames danced along the parched trunk of the pine like lightning quivering on a chain, and immediately a column of living fire was raging on the terrace. It soon spread from tree to tree, and the scene was evidently drawing to a close. The log on which Mohegan was seated lighted at its further end, and the Indian appeared to be surrounded by fire. Still he was unmoved. As his body was unprotected, his sufferings must have been great; but his fortitude was superior to all. His voice could yet be heard even in the midst of these horrors. Elizabeth turned her head from the sight, and faced the valley Furious eddies of wind were created by the heat, and, just at the moment, the canopy of fiery smoke that overhung the valley was cleared away, leaving a distinct view of the peaceful village beneath them. “My father! ----my father!” shrieked Elizabeth “Oh! this--surely might have been spared me--but I submit.”
The distance was not so great but the figure of Judge Temple could be seen, standing in his own grounds, and apparently contemplating, in perfect unconsciousness of the danger of his child, the mountain in flames. This sight was still more painful than the approaching danger; and Elizabeth again faced the hill.
“My intemperate warmth has done this!” cried Edwards, in the accents of despair. “If I had possessed but a moiety of your heavenly resignation, Miss Temple, all might yet have been well.”
“Name it not--name it not,” she said. “It is now of no avail. We must die, Edwards, we must die--let us do so as Christians. But--no--you may yet escape, perhaps. Your dress is not so fatal as mine. Fly! Leave me, An opening may yet be found for you, possibly--certainly it is worth the effort. Fly! leave me--but stay! You will see my father! my poor, my bereaved father! Say to him, then, Edwards, say to him, all that can appease his anguish. Tell him that I died happy and collected; that I have gone to my beloved mother; that the hours of this life are nothing when balanced in the scales of eternity. Say how we shall meet again. And say,” she continued, dropping her voice, that had risen with her feelings, as if conscious of her worldly weakness, “how clear, how very dear, was my love for him; that it was near, too near, to my love for God.”
The youth listened to her touching accents, but moved not. In a moment he found utterance, and replied: “And is it me that you command to leave you! to leave you on the edge of the grave? Oh! Miss Temple, how little have you known me!” he cried, dropping on his knees at her feet, and gathering her flowing robe in his arms as if to shield her from the flames. “I have been driven to the woods in despair, but your society has tamed the lion within me. If I have wasted my time in degradation, 'twas you that charmed me to it. If I have forgotten my name and family, your form supplied the place of memory. If I have forgotten my wrongs, 'twas you that taught me charity. No--no--dearest Elizabeth, I may die with you, but I can never leave you!”
Elizabeth moved not, nor answered. It was plain that her thoughts had been raised from the earth, The recollection of her father, and her regrets at their separation, had been mellowed by a holy sentiment, that lifted her above the level of earthly things, and she was fast losing the weakness of her sex in the near view of eternity. But as she listened to these words she became once more woman. She struggled against these feelings, and smiled, as she thought she was shaking off the last lingering feeling of nature, when the world, and all its seductions, rushed again to her heart, with the sounds of a human, voice, crying in piercing tones: “Gal! where be ye, gal! gladden the heart of an old man, if ye yet belong to 'arth!”
“Hist!” said Elizabeth; “'tis the Leather-Stocking; he seeks me!”
“'Tis Natty!” shouted Edwards, “and we may yet be saved!”
A wide and circling flame glared on their eyes for a moment, even above the fire of the woods, and a loud report followed.
“'Tis the canister, 'tis the powder,” cried the same voice, evidently approaching them. “'Tis the canister, and the precious child is lost.”
At the next instant Natty rushed through the steams of the spring, and appeared on the terrace, without his deerskin cap, his hair burnt to his head, his shirt, of country check, black and filled with holes, and his red features of a deeper color than ever, by the heat he had encountered.
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“Even from the land of shadows, now My father's awful ghost appears.” --Gertrude Of Wyoming.
For an hour after Louisa Grant was left by Miss Temple, in the situation already mentioned, she continued in feverish anxiety, awaiting the return of her friend. But as the time passed by without the reappearance of Elizabeth, the terror of Louisa gradually increased, until her alarmed fancy had conjured every species of danger that appertained to the woods, excepting the one that really existed. The heavens had become obscured by degrees, and vast volumes of smoke were pouring over the valley; but the thoughts of Louisa were still recurring to beasts, without dreaming of the real cause for apprehension. She was stationed in the edge of the low pines and chestnuts that succeed the first or large growth of the forest, and directly above the angle where the highway turned from the straight course to the village, and ascended the mountain laterally. Consequently, she commanded a view, not only of the valley, but of the road beneath her. The few travellers that passed, she observed, were engaged in earnest conversation, and frequently raised their eyes to the hill, and at length she saw the people leaving the court house, and gazing upward also. While under the influence of the alarm excited by such unusual movements, reluctant to go, and yet fearful to remain, Louisa was startled by the low, cracking, but cautious treads of some one approaching through the bushes. She was on the eve of flight, when Natty emerged from the cover, and stood at her side. The old man laughed as he shook her kindly by a hand that was passive with fear.
“I am glad to meet you here, child,” he said; “for the back of the mountain is a-fire, and it would be dangerous to go up it now, till it has been burnt over once, and the dead wood is gone. There's a foolish man, the comrade of that varmint who has given me all this trouble, digging for ore on the east side. I told him that the kearless fellows, who thought to catch a practysed hunter in the woods after dark, had thrown the lighted pine-knots in the brush, and that 'twould kindle like tow, and warned him to leave the hill. But he was set upon his business, and nothing short of Providence could move him, if he isn't burnt and buried in a grave of his own digging, he's made of salamanders. Why, what ails the child? You look as skeary as if you'd seed more painters. I wish there were more to be found! they'd count up faster than the beaver. But where's the good child with a bad father? Did she forget her promise to the old man?”
“The hill! the hill!” shrieked Louisa; “she seeks you on the hill with the powder!”
Natty recoiled several feet at this unexpected intelligence.
“The Lord of Heaven have mercy on her! She's on the Vision, and that's a sheet of fire agin' this. Child, if ye love the dear one, and hope to find a friend when ye need it most, to the village, and give the alarm. The men are used to fighting fire, and there may be a chance left, Fly! I bid ye fly! nor stop even for breath.”
The Leather-Stocking had no sooner uttered this injunction, than he disappeared in the bushes, and, when last seen by Louisa, was rushing up the mountain, with a speed that none but those who were accustomed to the toil could attain.
“Have I found ye!” the old man exclaimed, when he burst out of the smoke; “God be praised that I have found ye; but follow--there's no time for talking.”
“My dress!” said Elizabeth; “it would be fatal to trust myself nearer to the flames in it.”
“I bethought me of your flimsy things,” cried Natty, throwing loose the folds of a covering buckskin that he carried on his arm, and wrapping her form in it, in such a manner as to envelop her whole person; “now follow, for it's a matter of life and death to us all.”
“But John! what will become of John?” cried Edwards; “can we leave the old warrior here to perish?”
The eyes of Natty followed the direction of Edwards' finger, where he beheld the Indian still seated as before, with the very earth under his feet consuming with fire. Without delay the hunter approached the spot, and spoke in Delaware: “Up and away, Chingachgook! will ye stay here to burn, like a Mingo at the stake? The Moravians have teached ye better, I hope; the Lord preserve me if the powder hasn't flashed atween his legs, and the skin of his back is roasting. Will ye come, I say; will ye follow me?”
“Why should Mohegan go?” returned the Indian, gloomily. “He has seen the days of an eagle, and his eye grows dim He looks on the valley; he looks on the water; he looks in the hunting-grounds--but he sees no Delawares. Every one has a white skin. My fathers say, from the far-off land, Come. My women, my young warriors, my tribe, say, Come. The Great Spirit says, Come. Let Mohegan die.”
“But you forget your friend,” cried Edwards, “'Tis useless to talk to an Indian with the death-fit on him, lad,” interrupted Natty, who seized the strips of the blanket, and with wonderful dexterity strapped the passive chieftain to his own back; when he turned, and with a strength that seemed to bid defiance, not only to his years, but to his load, he led the way to the point whence he had issued. As they crossed the little terrace of rock, one of the dead trees, that had been tottering for several minutes, fell on the spot where they had stood, and filled the air with its cinders.
Such an event quickened the steps of the party, who followed the Leather-Stocking with the urgency required by the occasion.
“Tread on the soft ground,” he cried, when they were in a gloom where sight availed them but little, “and keep in the white smoke; keep the skin close on her, lad; she's a precious one--another will be hard to be found.”
Obedient to the hunter's directions, they followed his steps and advice implicitly; and, although the narrow pas sage along the winding of the spring led amid burning logs and falling branches, they happily achieved it in safety. No one but a man long accustomed to the woods could have traced his route through the smoke, in which respiration was difficult, and sight nearly useless; but the experience of Natty conducted them to an opening through the rocks, where, with a little difficulty, they soon descended to another terrace, and emerged at once into a tolerably clear atmosphere.
The feelings of Edwards and Elizabeth at reaching this spot may be imagined, though not easily described. No one seemed to exult more than their guide, who turned, with Mohegan still lashed to his back, and, laughing in his own manner, said: “I knowed 'twa the Frenchman's powder, gal; it went so all together; your coarse grain will squib for a minute. The Iroquois had none of the best powder when I went agin' the Canada tribes, under Sir William. Did I ever tell you the story, lad, consarning the scrimmage with--” “For God's sake, tell me nothing now, Natty, until we are entirely safe. Where shall we go next?”
“Why, on the platform of rock over the cave, to be sure; you will be safe enough there, or we'll go Into It, if you be so minded.” The young man started, and appeared agitated; but, Looking around him with an anxious eye, said quickly: “Shalt we be safe on the rock? cannot the fire reach us there, too?”
“Can't the boy see?” said Natty, with the coolness of one accustomed to the kind of danger he had just encountered. “Had ye stayed in the place above ten minutes longer, you would both have been in ashes, but here you may stay forever, and no fire can touch you, until they burn the rocks as well as the woods.”
With this assurance, which was obviously true, they proceeded to the spot, and Natty deposited his load, placing the Indian on the ground with his back against a fragment of the rocks. Elizabeth sank on the ground, and buried her face in her hands, while her heart was swelling with a variety of conflicting emotions.
“Let me urge you to take a restorative, Miss Temple,” said Edwards respectfully; “your frame will sink else.”
“Leave me, leave me,” she said, raising her beaming eyes for a moment to his; “I feel too much for words! I am grateful, Oliver, for this miraculous escape; and next to my God to you.”
Edwards withdrew to the edge of the rock, and shouted: “Benjamin! where are you, Benjamin?”
A hoarse voice replied, as if from the bowels of the earth: “Hereaway, master; stowed in this here bit of a hole, which is all the time as hot as the cook's coppers. I'm tired of my berth, d'ye see, and if-so-be that Leather Stocking has got much overhauling to do before he sails after them said beaver I'll go into dock again, and ride out my quarantine, till I can get prottick from the law, and so hold on upon the rest of my 'spaniolas.”
“Bring up a glass of water from the spring,” continued Edwards, “and throw a little wine in it; hasten, I entreat you!”
“I knows but little of your small drink, Master Oliver,” returned the steward, his voice issuing out of the cave into the open air, “and the Jamaikey held out no longer than to take a parting kiss with Billy Kirby, when he anchored me alongside the highway last night, where you run me down in the chase. But here's summat of a red color that may suit a weak stomach, mayhap. That Master Kirby is no first-rate in a boat; but he'll tack a cart among the stumps, all the same as a Lon'on pilot will back and fill, through the colliers in the Pool.”
As the steward ascended while talking, by the time he had ended his speech he appeared on the rock with the desired restoratives, exhibiting the worn-out and bloated features of a man who had run deep in a debauch, and that lately.
Elizabeth took from the hands of Edwards the liquor which he offered and then motioned to be left again to herself.
The youth turned at her bidding, and observed Natty kindly assiduous around the person of Mohegan. When their eyes met, the hunter said sorrowfully: “His time has come, lad; see it in his eyes--when an Indian fixes his eye, he means to go but to one place; and what the wilful creatures put their minds on, they're sure to do.”
A quick tread prevented the reply, and in a few moments, to the amazement of the whole party, Mr. Grant was seen clinging to the side of the mountain, and striving to reach the place where they stood. Oliver sprang to his assistance, and by their united efforts the worthy divine was soon placed safely among them.
“How came you added to our number?” cried Edwards. “Is the hill alive with people at a time like this?”
The hasty but pious thanksgivings of the clergyman were soon ejaculated, and, when he succeeded in collecting his bewildered senses, he replied: “I heard that my child was seen coming to the mountain; and, when the fire broke over its summit, my uneasiness drew me up the road, where I found Louisa, in terror for Miss Temple. It was to seek her that I came into this dangerous place; and I think, but for God's mercy, through the dogs of Natty, I should have perished in the flames myself.”
“Ay! follow the hounds, and if there's an opening they'll scent it out,” said Natty; “their noses be given them the same as man's reason.”
“I did so, and they led me to this place; but, praise be to God that I see you all safe and well.”
“No, no,” returned the hunter; “safe we be, but as for well, John can't be called in a good way, unless you'll say that for a man that's taking his last look at 'arth.”
“He speaks the truth!” said the divine, with the holy awe with which he ever approached the dying; “I have been by too many death-beds, not to see that the hand of the tyrant is laid on this old warrior. Oh! how consoling it is to know that he has not rejected the offered mercy in the hour of his strength and of worldly temptations! The offspring of a race of heathens, he has in truth been 'as a brand plucked from the burning.'”
“No, no,” returned Natty, who alone stood with him by the side of the dying warrior; “it is no burning that ails him, though his Indian feelings made him scorn to move, unless it be the burning of man's wicked thoughts for near fourscore years; but it's natur' giving out in a chasm that's run too long. --Down with ye, Hector! down, I say! Flesh Isn't iron, that a man can live forever, and see his kith and kin driven to a far country, and he left to mourn, with none to keep him company.”
“John,” said the divine, tenderly, “do you hear me? do you wish the prayers appointed by the church, at this trying moment?”
The Indian turned his ghastly face toward the speaker, and fastened his dark eyes on him, steadily, but vacantly.
No sign of recognition was made: and in a moment he moved his head again slowly toward the vale, and began to sing, using his own language, in those low, guttural tones, that have been so often mentioned, his notes rising with his theme, till they swelled so loud as to be distinct.
“I will come! I will come! to the land of the just I will come! The Maquas I have slain! I have slain the Maquas! and the Great Spirit calls to his son. I will come! I will come to the land of the just! I will come!”
“What says he, Leather-Stocking?” Inquired the priest, with tender interest; “sings he the Redeemer's praise?”
“No, no--'tis his own praise that he speaks now,” said Natty, turning in a melancholy manner from the sight of his dying friend; “and a good right he has to say it all, for I know every word to be true.”
“May heaven avert such self-righteousness from his heart! Humility and penitence are the seals of Christianity; and, without feeling them deeply seated in the soul, all hope is delusive, and leads to vain expectations. Praise himself when his whole soul and body should unite to praise his Maker! John! you have enjoyed the blessings of a gospel ministry, and have been called from out a multitude of sinners and pagans, and, I trust, for a wise and gracious purpose. Do you now feel what it is to be justified by our Saviour's death, and reject all weak and idle dependence on good works, that spring from man's pride and vainglory?”
The Indian did not regard his interrogator, but he raised his head again, and said in a low, distinct voice: “Who can say that the Maqous know the back of the Mohegan? What enemy that trusted in him did not see the morning? What Mingo that he chased ever sang the song of triumph? Did Mohegan ever he? No; the truth lived in him, and none else could come out of him. In his youth he was a warrior, and his moccasins left the stain of blood. In his age he was wise; his words at the council fire did not blow away with the winds.”
“Ah! he has abandoned that vain relic of paganism, his songs,” cried the divine; “what says he now? is he sensible of his lost state?”
“Lord!! man,” said Natty, “he knows his end is at hand as well as you or I; but, so far from thinking it a loss, he believes it to be a great gain. He is old and stiff, and you have made the game so scarce and shy, that better shots than him find it hard to get a livelihood. Now he thinks he shall travel where it will always be good hunting; Where no wicked or unjust Indians can go; and where he shall meet all his tribe together agin. There's not much loss in that, to a man whose hands are hardly fit for basket-making Loss! if there be any loss, 'twill be to me. I'm sure after he's gone, there will be but little left for me but to follow.”
“His example and end, which, I humbly trust, shall yet be made glorious,” returned Mr. Grant, “should lead your mind to dwell on the things of another life. But I feel it to be my duty to smooth the way for the parting spirit. This is the moment, John, when the reflection that you did not reject the mediation of the Redeemer, will bring balm to your soul. Trust not to any act of former days, but lay the burden of your sins at his feet, and you have his own blessed assurance that he will not desert you.”
“Though all you say be true, and you have scriptur' gospels for it, too,” said Natty, “you will make nothing of the Indian. He hasn't seen a Moravian p sin' the war; and it's hard to keep them from going hack to their native ways. I should think 'twould be as well to let the old man pass in peace. He's happy now; I know it by his eye; and that's more than I would say for the chief, sin' the time the Delawares broke up from the head waters of their river and went west. Ah's me! 'tis a grevious long time that, and many dark days have we seen together sin' it.”
“Hawk-eye!” said Mohegan, rousing with the last glimmering of life. “Hawk-eye! listen to the words of your brother.”
“Yes, John,” said the hunter, in English, strongly affected by the appeal, and drawing to his side, “we have been brothers; and more so than it means in the Indian tongue. What would ye have with me, Chingachgook?”
“Hawk-eye! my fathers call me to the happy hunting grounds. The path is clear, and the eyes of Mohegan grow young. I look--but I see no white-skins; there are none to be seen but just and brave Indians. Farewell, Hawk-eye--you shall go with the Fire-eater and the Young Eagle to the white man's heaven; but I go after my fathers. Let the bow, and tomahawk, and pipe, and the wampum of Mohegan he laid in his grave; for when he starts 'twil be in the night, like a warrior on a war-party, and he can not stop to seek them.”
“What says he, Nathaniel?” cried Mr. Grant, earnestly, and with obvious anxiety; “does he recall the promises of the mediation? and trust his salvation to the Rock of Ages?”
Although the faith of the hunter was by no means clear, yet the fruits of early instruction had not entirely fallen in the wilderness. He believed in one Cod, and one heaven; and when the strong feeling excited by the leave-taking of his old companion, which was exhibited by the powerful working of every muscle in his weather-beaten face, suffered him to speak, he replied: “No--no--he trusts only to the Great Spirit of the savages, and to his own good deeds. He thinks, like all his people, that he is to be young agin, and to hunt, and be happy to the end of etarnity, its pretty much the same with all colors, parson. I could never bring myself to think that I shall meet with these hounds, or my piece, in another world; though the thought of leaving them forever sometimes brings hard feelings over me, and makes me cling to life with a greater craving than beseems three-Score-and-ten.”
“The Lord in his mercy avert such a death from one who has been sealed with the sign of the cross!” cried the minister, in holy fervor. “John--” He paused for the elements. During the period occupied by the events which we have related, the dark clouds in the horizon had continued to increase in numbers and multitude; and the awful stillness that now pervaded the air, announced a crisis in the state of the atmosphere. The flames, which yet continued to rage along the sides of the mountain, no longer whirled in uncertain currents of their own eddies, but blazed high and steadily toward the heavens. There was even a quietude in the ravages of the destructive element, as if it foresaw that a hand greater titan even its own desolating power, was about to stay its progress. The piles of smoke which lay above the valley began to rise, and were dispelling rapidly; and streaks of livid lightning were dancing through the masses of clouds that impended over the western hills. While Mr. Grant was speaking, a flash, which sent its quivering light through the gloom, laying bare the whole opposite horizon, was followed by a loud crash of thunder, that rolled away among the hills, seeming to shake the foundations of the earth to their centre. Mohegan raised him self, as if in obedience to a signal for his departure, and stretched his wasted arm toward the west. His dark face lighted with a look of joy; which, with all other expressions, gradually disappeared; the muscles stiffening as they retreated to a state of rest; a slight convulsion played, for a single instant, about his lips; and his arm slowly dropped by his side, leaving the frame of the dead warrior reposing against the rock with its glassy eyes open, and fixed on the distant hills, as if the deserted shell were tracing the flight of the spirit to its new abode.
All this Mr. Grant witnessed in silent awe; but when the last echoes of the thunder died away he clasped his bands together, with pious energy, and repeated, in the full, rich tones of assured faith; “Lord! how unsearchable are Thy judgments; and Thy ways past finding out! 'I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for my self, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.”
As the divine closed this burst of devotion, he bowed his head meekly to his bosom, and looked all the dependence and humility that the inspired language expressed.
When Mr. Grant retired from the body, the hunter approached, and taking the rigid hand of his friend, looked him wistfully in the face for some time without speaking, when he gave vent to his feelings by saying, in the mournful voice of one who felt deeply: “Red skin or white, it's all over now! he's to be judged by a righteous Judge, and by no laws that's made to suit times, and new ways. Well, there's only one more death, and the world will be left to me and the hounds, Ah's me! a man must wait the time of God's pleasure, but I begin to weary of life. There is scarcely a tree standing that I know, and it's hard to find a face that I was ac-quainted with in my younger days.”
Large drops of rain now began to fall, and diffuse them selves over the dry rock, while the approach of the thunder shower was rapid and certain. The body of the Indian was hastily removed into the cave beneath, followed by the whining hounds, who missed and moaned for the look of intelligence that had always met their salutations to the chief.
Edwards made some hasty and confused excuse for not taking Elizabeth into the same place, which was now completely closed in front with logs and bark, saying some-thing that she hardly understood about its darkness, and the unpleasantness of being with the dead body. Miss Temple, however, found a sufficient shelter against the torrent of rain that fell, under the projection of a rock which overhung them, But long before the shower was over, the sounds of voices were heard below them crying aloud for Elizabeth, and men soon appeared beating the dying embers of the bushes, as they worked their way cautiously among the unextinguished brands.
At the first short cessation in the rain, Oliver conducted Elizabeth to the road, where he left her. Before parting, however, he found time to say, in a fervent manner that his companion was now at no loss to interpret.
“The moment of concealment is over, Miss Temple. By this time to-morrow, I shall remove a veil that perhaps it has been weakness to keep around me and my allaus so long. But I have had romantic and foolish wishes and weakness; and who has not, that is young and torn by conflicting passions? God bless you! I hear your father's voice; he is coming up the road, and I would not, just now, subject myself to detention. Thank Heaven, you are safe again; that alone removes the weight of a world from my spirit!”
He waited for no answer, but sprang into the woods. Elizabeth, notwithstanding she heard the cries of her father as he called upon her name, paused until he was concealed among the smoking trees, when she turned, and in a moment rushed into the arms of her half-distracted Parent.
A carriage had been provided, into which Miss Temple hastily entered; when the cry was passed along the hill, that the lost one was found, and the people returned to the village wet and dirty, but elated with the thought that the daughter of their landlord had escaped from so horrid and untimely an end. * * The probability of a fire in the woods similar to that here described has been questioned. The writer can only say that he once witnessed a fire in another part of New York that compelled a man to desert his wagon and horses in the highway, and in which the latter were destroyed. In order to estimate the probability of such an event, it is necessary to remember the effects of a long drought in that climate and the abundance of dead wood which is found in a forest like that described, The fires in the American forests frequently rage to such an extent as to produce a sensible effect on the atmosphere at a distance of fifty miles. Houses, barns, and fences are quite commonly swept away in their course.
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“Selictar! unsheathe then our chief's scimetar; Tambourgi! thy 'larum gives promise of war; Ye mountains! that see us descend to the shore, Shall view us as victors, or view us no more.” --Byron.
The heavy showers that prevailed during the remainder of the day completely stopped the progress of the flames; though glimmering fires were observed during the night, on different parts of the hill, wherever there was a collection of fuel to feed the element. The next day the woods for 'many miles were black and smoking, and were stripped of every vestige of brush and dead wood; but the pines and hemlocks still reared their heads proudly among the hills, and even the smaller trees of the forest retained a feeble appearance of life and vegetation.
The many tongues of rumor were busy in exaggerating the miraculous escape of Elizabeth; and a report was generally credited, that Mohegan had actually perished in the flames. This belief became confirmed, and was indeed rendered probable, when the direful intelligence reached the village that Jotham Riddel, the miner, was found in his hole, nearly dead with suffocation, and burnt to such a degree that no hopes were entertained of his life.
The public attention became much alive to the events of the last few days; and, just at this crisis, the convicted counterfeiters took the hint from Natty, and, on the night succeeding the fire, found means to cut through their log prison also, and to escape unpunished. When this news began to circulate through the village, blended with the fate of Jotham, and the exaggerated and tortured reports of the events on the hill, the popular opinion was freely expressed, as to the propriety of seizing such of the fugitives as remained within reach. Men talked of the cave as a secret receptacle of guilt; and, as the rumor of ores and metals found its way into the confused medley of conjectures, counterfeiting, and everything else that was wicked and dangerous to the peace of society, suggested themselves to the busy fancies of the populace.
While the public mind was in this feverish state, it was hinted that the wood had been set on fire by Edwards and the Leather-Stocking, and that, consequently, they alone were responsible for the damages. This opinion soon gained ground, being most circulated by those who, by their own heedlessness, had caused the evil; and there was one irresistible burst of the common sentiment that an attempt should be made to punish the offenders. Richard was by no means deaf to this appeal, and by noon he set about in earnest to see the laws executed.
Several stout young men were selected, and taken apart with an appearance of secrecy, where they received some important charge from the sheriff, immediately under the eyes, but far removed from the ears, of all in the village. Possessed of a knowledge of their duty, these youths hurried into the hills, with a bustling manner, as if the fate of the world depended on their diligence, and, at the same time, with an air of mystery as great as if they were engaged on secret matters of the state.
At twelve precisely a drum beat the “long roll” before the “Bold Dragoon,” and Richard appeared, accompanied by Captain Hollister, who was clad in Investments as commander of the “Templeton Light Infantry,” when the former demanded of the latter the aid of the posse comitatus in enforcing the laws of the country. We have not room to record the speeches of the two gentlemen on this occasion, but they are preserved in the columns of the little blue newspaper, which is yet to be found on the file, and are said to be highly creditable to the legal formula of one of the parties, and to the military precision of the other. Everything had been previously arranged, and, as the red-coated drummer continued to roll out his clattering notes, some five-and-twenty privates appeared in the ranks, and arranged themselves in the order of battle.
As this corps was composed of volunteers, and was commanded by a man who had passed the first five-and-thirty years of his life in camps and garrisons, it was the non-parallel of military science in that country, and was confidently pronounced by the judicious part of the Templeton community, to be equal in skill and appearance to any troops in the known world; in physical endowments they were, certainly, much superior! To this assertion there were but three dissenting voices, and one dissenting opinion. The opinion belonged to Marmaduke, who, however, saw no necessity for its promulgation. Of the voices, one, and that a pretty loud one', came from the spouse of the commander himself, who frequently reproached her husband for condescending to lead such an irregular band of warriors, after he had filled the honorable station of sergeant-major to a dashing corps of Virginia cavalry through much of the recent war.
Another of these skeptical sentiments was invariably expressed by Mr. Pump, whenever the company paraded generally in some such terms as these, which were uttered with that sort of meekness that a native of the island of our forefathers is apt to assume when he condescends to praise the customs or character of her truant progeny: “It's mayhap that they knows summat about loading and firing, d'ye see, but as for working ship? why, a corporal's guard of the Boadishey's marines would back and fill on their quarters in such a manner as to surround and captivate them all in half a glass.” As there was no one to deny this assertion, the marines of the Boadicea were held in a corresponding degree of estimation.
The third unbeliever was Monsieur Le Quoi, who merely whispered to the sheriff, that the corps was one of the finest he had ever seen second only to the Mousquetaires of Le Boa Louis! However, as Mrs. Hollister thought there was something like actual service in the present appearances, and was, in consequence, too busily engaged with certain preparations of her own, to make her comments; as Benjamin was absent, and Monsieur Le Quoi too happy to find fault with anything, the corps escaped criticism and comparison altogether on this momentous day, when they certainly had greater need of self-confidence than on any other previous occasion. Marmaduke was said to be again closeted with Mr. Van der School and no interruption was offered to the movements of the troops. At two o'clock precisely the corps shouldered arms, beginning on the right wing, next to the veteran, and carrying the motion through to the left with great regularity. When each musket was quietly fixed in its proper situation, the order was given to wheel to the left, and march. As this was bringing raw troops, at once, to face their enemy, it is not to be supposed that the manoeuver was executed with their usual accuracy; but as the music struck up the inspiring air of Yankee-doodle, and Richard, accompanied by Mr. Doolittle preceded the troops boldly down the street, Captain Hollister led on, with his head elevated to forty-five degrees, with a little, low cocked hat perched on his crown, carrying a tremendous dragoon sabre at a poise, and trailing at his heels a huge steel scabbard, that had war in its very clattering. There was a good deal of difficulty in getting all the platoons (there were six) to look the same way; but, by the time they reached the defile of the bridge, the troops were in sufficiently compact order. In this manner they marched up the hill to the summit of the mountain, no other alteration taking place in the disposition of the forces, excepting that a mutual complaint was made, by the sheriff and the magistrate, of a failure in wind, which gradually' brought these gentlemen to the rear. It will be unnecessary to detail the minute movements that succeeded. We shall briefly say, that the scouts came in and reported, that, so far from retreating, as had been anticipated, the fugitives had evidently gained a knowledge of the attack, and were fortifying for a desperate resistance. This intelligence certainly made a material change, not only in the plans of the leaders, but in the countenances of the soldiery also. The men looked at one another with serious faces, and Hiram and Richard began to consult together, apart.
At this conjuncture, they were joined by Billy Kirby, who came along the highway, with his axe under his arm, as much in advance of his team as Captain Hollister had been of his troops in the ascent. The wood-chopper was amazed at the military array, but the sheriff eagerly availed himself of this powerful reinforcement, and commanded his assistance in putting the laws in force. Billy held Mr. Jones in too much deference to object; and it was finally arranged that he should be the bearer of a summons to the garrison to surrender before they proceeded to extremities. The troops now divided, one party being led by the captain, over the Vision, and were brought in on the left of the cave, while the remainder advanced upon its right, under the orders of the lieutenant. Mr. Jones and Dr. Todd--for the surgeon was in attendance also--appeared on the platform of rock, immediately over the heads of the garrison, though out of their sight. Hiram thought this approaching too near, and he therefore accompanied Kirby along the side of the hill to within a safe distance of the fortifications, where he took shelter behind a tree. Most of the men discovered great accuracy of eye in bringing some object in range between them and their enemy, and the only two of the besiegers, who were left in plain sight of the besieged, were Captain Hollister on one side, and the wood-chopper on the other. The veteran stood up boldly to the front, supporting his heavy sword in one undeviating position, with his eye fixed firmly on his enemy, while the huge form of Billy was placed in that kind of quiet repose, with either hand thrust into his bosom, bearing his axe under his right arm, which permitted him, like his own oxen, to rest standing. So far, not a word had been exchanged between the belligerents. The besieged had drawn together a pile of black logs and branches of trees, which they had formed into a chevaux-de-frise, making a little circular abatis in front of the entrance to the cave. As the ground was steep and slippery in every direction around the place, and Benjamin appeared behind the works on one side, and Natty on the other, the arrangement was by no means contemptible, especially as the front was sufficiently guarded by the difficulty of the approach. By this time, Kirby had received his orders, and he advanced coolly along the mountain, picking his way with the same indifference as if he were pursuing his ordinary business. When he was within a hundred feet of the works, the long and much-dreaded rifle of the Leather-Stocking was seen issuing from the parapet, and his voice cried aloud: “Keep off! Billy Kirby, keep off! I wish ye no harm; but if a man of ye all comes a step nigher, there'll be blood spilt atwixt us. God forgive the one that draws it first, but so it must be.”
“Come, old chap,” said Billy, good-naturedly, “don't be crabb'd, but hear what a man has got to say I've no consarn in the business, only to see right 'twixt man and man; and I don't kear the valie of a beetle-ring which gets the better; but there's Squire Doolittle, yonder be hind the beech sapling, he has invited me to come in and ask you to give up to the law--that's all.”
“I see the varmint! I see his clothes!” cried the indignant Natty: “and if he'll only show so much flesh as will bury a rifle bullet, thirty to the pound, I'll make him feel me. Go away, Billy, I bid ye; you know my aim, and I bear you no malice.”
“You over-calculate your aim, Natty,” said the other, as he stepped behind a pine that stood near him, “if you think to shoot a man through a tree with a three-foot butt. I can lay this tree right across you in ten minutes by any man's watch, and in less time, too; so be civil--I want no more than what's right.”
There was a simple seriousness in the countenance of Natty, that showed he was much in earnest; but it was also evident that he was reluctant to shed human blood. He answered the taunt of the wood-chopper, by saying: “I know you drop a tree where you will, Billy Kirby; but if you show a hand, or an arm, in doing it, there'll be bones to be set, and blood to staunch. If it's only to get into the cave that ye want, wait till a two hours' sun, and you may enter it in welcome; but come in now you shall not. There's one dead body already, lying on the cold rocks, and there's another in which the life can hardly be said to stay. If you will come in, there'll be dead with out as well as within.”
The wood-chopper stepped out fearlessly from his cover, and cried: “That's fair; and what's fair is right. He wants you to stop till it's two hours to sundown; and I see reason in the thing. A man can give up when he's wrong, if you don't crowd him too hard; but you crowd a man, and he gets to be like a stubborn ox--the more you beat, the worse he kicks.”
The sturdy notions of independence maintained by Billy neither suited the emergency nor the impatience of Mr. Jones, who was burning with a desire to examine the hid den mysteries of the cave. He therefore interrupted this amicable dialogue with his own voice; “I command you Nathaniel Bumppo, by my authority, to surrender your person to the law,” he cried. “And I command you, gentlemen, to aid me in performing my duty. Benjamin Penguillan I arrest you, and order you to follow me to the jail of the county, by virtue of this warrant.”
“I'd follow ye, Squire Dickens,” said Benjamin, removing the pipe from his month (for during the whole scene the ex-major-domo had been very composedly smoking); “ay! I'd sail in your wake, to the end of the world, if-so--be that there was such a place, where there isn't, seeing that it's round. Now mayhap, Master Hollister, having lived all your life on shore, you isn't acquainted that the world, d'ye see.”
“Surrender!” interrupted the veteran, in a voice that startled his hearers, and which actually caused his own forces to recoil several paces; “surrender, Benjamin Pengullan, or expect no quarter.'”
“Damn your quarter!” said Benjamin, rising from the log on which he was seated, and taking a squint along the barrel of the swivel, which had been brought on the hill during the night, and now formed the means of defence on his side of the works. “Look you, master or captain, thof I questions if ye know the name of a rope, except the one that's to hang ye, there's no need of singing out, as if ye was hailing a deaf man on a topgallant yard. May-hap you think you've got my true name in your sheep skin; but what British sailor finds it worth while to sail in these seas, without a sham on his stern, in case of need, d'ye see. If you call me Penguillan, you calls me by the name of the man on whose hand, dye see, I hove into daylight; and he was a gentleman; and that's more than my worst enemy will say of any of the family of Benjamin Stubbs.”
“Send the warrant round to me, and I'll put in an alias,” cried Hiram, from behind his cover.
“Put in a jackass, and you'll put in yourself, Mister Doo-but-little,” shouted Benjamin, who kept squinting along his little iron tube, with great steadiness.
“I give you but one moment to yield,” cried Richard. “Benjamin! Benjamin! this is not the gratitude I expected from you.”
“I tell you, Richard Jones,” said Natty, who dreaded the sheriff's influence over his comrade; “though the canister the gal brought be lost, there's powder enough in the cave to lift the rock you stand on. I'll take off my roof if you don't hold your peace.”
“I think it beneath the dignity of my office to parley further with the prisoners,” the sheriff observer to his companion, while they both retired with a precipitancy that Captain Hollister mistook for the signal to advance.
“Charge baggonet!” shouted the veteran; “march!”
Although this signal was certainly expected, it took the assailed a little by surprise, and the veteran approached the works, crying, “Courage, my brave lads! give them no quarter unless they surrender;” and struck a furious blow upward with his sabre, that would have divided the steward into moieties by subjecting him to the process of decapitation, but for the fortunate interference of the muzzle of the swivel. As it was, the gun was dismounted at the critical moment that Benjamin was applying his pipe to the priming, and in consequence some five or six dozen of rifle bullets were projected into the air, in nearly a perpendicular line. Philosophy teaches us that the atmosphere will not retain lead; and two pounds of the metal, moulded into bullets of thirty to the pound, after describing an ellipsis in their journey, returned to the earth rattling among the branches of the trees directly over the heads of the troops stationed in the rear of their captain. Much of the success of an attack, made by irregular soldiers, depends on the direction in which they are first got in motion. In the present instance it was retrograde, and in less than a minute after the bellowing report of the swivel among the rocks and caverns, the whole weight of the attack from the left rested on the prowess of the single arm of the veteran. Benjamin received a severe contusion from the recoil of his gun, which produced a short stupor, during which period the ex-steward was prostrate on the ground. Captain Hollister availed himself of this circumstance to scramble ever the breastwork and obtain a footing in the bastion--for such was the nature of the fortress, as connected with the cave. The moment the veteran found himself within the works of his enemy, he rushed to the edge of the fortification, and, waving his sabre over his head, shouted: “Victory! come on, my brave boys, the work's our own!”
All this was perfectly military, and was such an example as a gallant officer was in some measure bound to exhibit to his men but the outcry was the unlucky cause of turning the tide of success. Natty, who had been keeping a vigalent eye on the wood-chopper, and the enemy immediately before him, wheeled at this alarm, and was appalled at beholding his comrade on the ground, and the veteran standing on his own bulwark, giving forth the cry of victory! The muzzle of the long rifle was turned instantly toward the captain. There was a moment when the life of the old soldier was in great jeopardy but the object to shoot at was both too large and too near for the Leather-Stocking, who, instead of pulling his trigger, applied the gun to the rear of his enemy, and by a powerful shove sent him outside of the works with much greater rapidity than he had entered them. The spot on which Captain Hollister alighted was directly in front, where, as his feet touched the ground, so steep and slippery was the side of the mountain, it seemed to recede from under them. His motion was swift, and so irregular as utterly to confuse the faculties of the old soldier. During its continuance, he supposed himself to be mounted, and charging through the ranks of his enemy. At every tree he made a blow, of course, as at a foot-soldier; and just as he was making the cut “St. George” at a half burnt sapling he landed in the highway, and, to his utter amazement, at the feet of his own spouse. When Mrs. Hollister, who was toiling up the hill, followed by at least twenty curious boys, leaning with one hand on the staff with which she ordinarily walked, and bearing in the other an empty bag, witnessed this exploit of her husband, indignation immediately got the better, not only of her religion, but of her philosophy.
“Why, sargeant! is it flying ye are?” she cried--“that I should live to see a husband of mine turn his hack to an inimy! and such a one! Here I have been telling the b'ys, as we come along, all about the saige of Yorrektown, and how ye was hurted; and how ye'd be acting the same agin the day; and I mate ye retraiting jist as the first gun is fired. Och! I may trow away the bag! for if there's plunder, 'twill not be the wife of sich as yerself that will be privileged to be getting the same. They do say, too, there is a power of goold and silver in the place--the Lord forgive me for setting my heart on woorldly things; but what falls in the battle, there's scriptur' for believing, is the just property of the victor.”
“Retreating!” exclaimed the amazed veteran; “where's my horse? he has been shot under me--I----” “Is the man mad?” interrupted his wife--“devil the horse do ye own, sargeant, and ye're nothing but a shabby captain of malaishy. Oh! if the ra'al captain was here, tis the other way ye'd be riding, dear, or you would not follow your laider!”
While this worthy couple were thus discussing events, the battle began to rage more violently than ever above them. When Leather-Stocking saw his enemy fairly under headway, as Benjamin would express it, he gave his attention to the right wing of the assailants. It would have been easy for Kirby, with his powerful frame, to have seized the moment to scale the bastion, and, with his great strength, to have sent both of its defenders in pursuit of the veteran; but hostility appeared to be the passion that the wood-chopper indulged the least in at that moment, for, in a voice that was heard by the retreating left wing, he shouted: “Hurrah well done, captain! keep it up! how he handles his bush-hook! he makes nothing of a sapling!” and such other encouraging exclamations to the flying veteran, until, overcome by mirth, the good-natured fellow seated himself on the ground, kicking the earth with delight, and giving vent to peal after peal of laughter.
Natty stood all this time in a menacing attitude, with his rifle pointed over the breastwork, watching with a quick and cautions eye the least movement of the assail ants. The outcry unfortunately tempted the ungovernable curiosity of Hiram to take a peep from behind his cover at the state of the battle. Though this evolution was performed with great caution, in protecting his front, he left, like many a better commander, his rear exposed to the attacks of his enemy. Mr. Doolittle belonged physically to a class of his countrymen, to whom Nature has denied, in their formation, the use of curved lines. Every thing about him was either straight or angular. But his tailor was a woman who worked, like a regimental contractor, by a set of rules that gave the same configuration to the whole human species. Consequently, when Mr. Doolittle leaned forward in the manner described, a loose drapery appeared behind the tree, at which the rifle of Natty was pointed with the quickness of lightning. A less experienced man would have aimed at the flowing robe, which hung like a festoon half-way to the earth; but the Leather-Stocking knew both the man and his female tailor better; and when the smart report of the rifle was heard, Kirby, who watched the whole manoeuvre in breath less expectation, saw the bark fly from the beech and the cloth, at some distance above the loose folds, wave at the same instant. No battery was ever unmasked with more promptitiude than Hiram advanced from behind the tree at this summons.
He made two or three steps, with great precision, to the front and, placing one hand on the afflicted part, stretched forth the other with a menacing air toward Natty, and cried aloud: “Gawl darn ye: this shan't he settled so easy; I'll follow it up from the 'common pleas' to the 'court of errors.'”
Such a shocking imprecation, from the mouth of so orderly a man as Squire Doolittle, with the fearless manner in which he exposed himself, together with, perhaps, the knowledge that Natty's rifle was unloaded, encouraged the troops in the rear, who gave a loud shout, and fired a volley into the tree-tops, after the contents of the swivel. Animated by their own noise, the men now rushed on in earnest; and Billy Kirby, who thought the joke, good as it was, had gone far enough, was in the act of scaling the works, when Judge Temple appeared on the opposite side, exclaiming: “Silence and peace! why do I see murder and blood shed attempted? Is not the law sufficient to protect itself, that armed bands must be gathered, as in rebellion and war, to see justice performed?”
“'Tis the posse comitatus,” shouted the sheriff, from a distant rock, “who-” “Say rather a posse of demons. I command the peace.”
“Hold shied not blood!” cried a voice from the top of the Vision. “Hold, for the sake of Heaven, fire no more! all shall be yielded! you shall enter the cave!”
Amazement produced the desired effect. Natty, who had reloaded his piece, quietly seated himself on the logs, and rested his head on his hands, while the “Light Infantry” ceased their military movements, and waited the issue in suspense.
In less than a minute Edwards came rushing down the hill, followed by Major Hartman, with a velocity that was surprising for his years. They reached the terrace in an instant, from which the youth led the way, by the hollow in the rock, to the mouth of the cave, into which they both entered, leaving all without silent, and gazing after them with astonishment.
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“I am dumb. Were you the doctor, and I knew you not?” --Shakespeare.
During the five or six minutes that elapsed before the youth and Major reappeared. Judge Temple and the sheriff together with most of the volunteers, ascended to the terrace, where the latter began to express their conjectures of the result, and to recount their individual services in the conflict. But the sight of the peace-makers ascending the ravine shut every mouth.
On a rude chair, covered with undressed deer-skins, they supported a human being, whom they seated carefully and respectfully in the midst of the assembly. His head was covered by long, smooth locks of the color of snow. His dress, which was studiously neat and clean, was composed of such fabrics as none but the wealthiest classes wear, but was threadbare and patched; and on his feet were placed a pair of moccasins, ornamented in the best manner of Indian ingenuity. The outlines of his face were grave and dignified, though his vacant eye, which opened and turned slowly to the faces of those around him in unmeaning looks, too surely' announced that the period had arrived when age brings the mental imbecility of childhood.
Natty had followed the supporters of this unexpected object to the top of the cave, and took his station at a little distance behind him, leaning no his rifle, in the midst of his pursuers, with a fearlessness that showed that heavier interests than those which affected himself were to be decided. Major Hartmann placed himself beside the aged man, uncovered, with his whole soul beaming through those eyes which so commonly danced with frolic and humor. Edwards rested with one hand familiarly but affectionately on the chair, though his heart was swelling with emotions that denied him utterance.
All eyes were gazing intently, but each tongue continued mute. At length the decrepit stranger, turning his vacant looks from face to face, made a feeble attempt to rise, while a faint smile crossed his wasted face, like an habitual effort at courtesy, as he said, in a hollow, tremulous voice: “Be pleased to be seated, gentlemen. The council will open immediately. Each one who loves a good and virtuous king will wish to see these colonies continue loyal. Be seated--I pray you, be seated, gentlemen. The troops shall halt for the night.”
“This is the wandering of insanity!” said Marmaduke: “who will explain this scene.”
“No, sir,” said Edwards firmly, “'tis only the decay of nature; who is answerable for its pitiful condition, remains to be shown.”
“Will the gentlemen dine with us, my son?” said the old stranger, turning to a voice that he both knew and loved. “Order a repast suitable for his Majesty's officers. You know we have the best of game always at command.”
“Who is this man?” asked Marmaduke, in a hurried voice, in which the dawnings of conjecture united with interest to put the question.
“This man,” returned Edwards calmly, his voice, how ever, gradually rising as he proceeded; “this man, sir, whom you behold hid in caverns, and deprived of every-thing that can make life desirable, was once the companion and counsellor of those who ruled your country. This man, whom you see helpless and feeble, was once a warrior, so brave and fearless, that even the intrepid natives gave him the name of the Fire-eater. This man, whom you now see destitute of even the ordinary comfort of a cabin, in which to shelter his head, was once the owner of great riches--and, Judge Temple, he was the rightful proprietor of this very soil on which we stand. This man was the father of------” “This, then,” cried Marmaduke, with a powerful emotion, “this, then, is the lost Major Effingham!”
“Lost indeed,” said the youth, fixing a piercing eye on the other.
“And you! and you!” continued the Judge, articulating with difficulty.
“I am his grandson.”
A minute passed in profound silence. All eyes were fixed on the speakers, and even the old German appeared to wait the issue in deep anxiety. But the moment of agitation soon passed. Marmaduke raised his head from his bosom, where it had sunk, not in shame, but in devout mental thanksgivings, and, as large tears fell over his fine, manly face, he grasped the hand of the youth warmly, and said: “Oliver, I forgive all thy harshness--all thy suspicions. I now see it all. I forgive thee everything, but suffering this aged man to dwell in such a place, when not only my habitation, but my fortune, were at his and thy command.”
“He's true as ter steel!” shouted Major Hartmann; “titn't I tell you, lat, dat Marmatuke Temple vas a friend dat woult never fail in ter dime as of neet?”
“It is true, Judge Temple, that my opinions of your conduct have been staggered by what this worthy gentle man has told me. When I found it impossible to convey my grandfather back whence the enduring love of this old man brought him, without detection and exposure, I went to the Mohawk in quest of one of his former comrades, in whose justice I had dependence. He is your friend, Judge Temple, but, if what he says be true, both my father and myself may have judged you harshly.”
“You name your father!” said Marmaduke tenderly--“was he, indeed, lost in the packet?”
“He was. He had left me, after several years of fruit less application and comparative poverty, in Nova Scotia, to obtain the compensation for his losses which the British commissioners had at length awarded. After spending a year in England, he was returning to Halifax, on his way to a government to which he had been appointed, in the West Indies, intending to go to the place where my grand father had sojourned during and since the war, and take him with us.”
“But thou!” said Marmaduke, with powerful interest; “I had thought that thou hadst perished with him.”
A flush passed over the cheeks of the young man, who gazed about him at the wondering faces of the volunteers, and continued silent. Marmaduke turned to the veteran captain, who just then rejoined his command, and said: “March thy soldiers back again, and dismiss them, the zeal of the sheriff has much mistaken his duty. --Dr. Todd, I will thank you to attend to the injury which Hiram Doolittle has received in this untoward affair,--Richard, you will oblige me by sending up the carriage to the top of the hill. --Benjamin, return to your duty in my family.”
Unwelcome as these orders were to most of the auditors, the suspicion that they had somewhat exceeded the whole some restraints of the law, and the habitual respect with which all the commands of the Judge were received, induced a prompt compliance.
When they were gone, and the rock was left to the parties most interested in an explanation, Marmaduke, pointing to the aged Major Effingham, said to his grand son: “Had we not better remove thy parent from this open place until my carriage can arrive?”
“Pardon me, sir, the air does him good, and he has taken it whenever there was no dread of a discovery. I know not how to act, Judge Temple; ought I, can I suffer Major Effingham to become an inmate of your family?”
“Thou shalt be thyself the judge,” said Marmaduke. “Thy father was my early friend. He intrusted his fortune to my care. When we separated he had such confidence in me that he wished on security, no evidence of the trust, even had there been time or convenience for exacting it. This thou hast heard?”
“Most truly, sir,” said Edwards, or rather Effingham as we must now call him.
“We differed in politics. If the cause of this country was successful, the trust was sacred with me, for none knew of thy father's interest, if the crown still held its sway, it would be easy to restore the property of so loyal a subject as Colonel Effingham. Is not this plain?'”
“The premises are good, sir,” continued the youth, with the same incredulous look as before.
“Listen--listen, poy,” said the German, “Dere is not a hair as of ter rogue in ter het of Herr Tchooge.”
“We all know the issue of the struggle,” continued Marmaduke, disregarding both. “Thy grandfather was left in Connecticut, regularly supplied by thy father with the means of such a subsistence as suited his wants. This I well knew, though I never had intercourse with him, even in our happiest days. Thy father retired with the troops to prosecute his claims on England. At all events, his losses must be great, for his real estates were sold, and I became the lawful purchaser. It was not unnatural to wish that he might have no bar to its just recovery.”
“There was none, but the difficulty of providing for so many claimants.”
“But there would have been one, and an insuperable one, and I announced to the world that I held these estates, multiplied by the times and my industry, a hundredfold in value, only as his trustee. Thou knowest that I supplied him with considerable sums immediately after the war.”
“You did, until--” “My letters were returned unopened. Thy father had much of thy own spirit, Oliver; he was sometimes hasty and rash.” The Judge continued, in a self-condemning manner; “Perhaps my fault lies the other way: I may possibly look too far ahead, and calculate too deeply. It certainly was a severe trial to allow the man whom I most loved, to think ill of me for seven years, in order that he might honestly apply for his just remunerations. But, had he opened my last letters, thou wouldst have learned the whole truth. Those I sent him to England, by what my agent writes me, he did read. He died, Oliver, knowing all, he died my friend, and I thought thou hadst died with him.”
“Our poverty would not permit us to pay for two passages,” said the youth, with the extraordinary emotion with which he ever alluded to the degraded state of his family; “I was left in the Province to wait for his return, and, when the sad news of his loss reached me, I was nearly penniless.”
“And what didst thou, boy?” asked Marmaduke in a faltering voice.
“I took my passage here in search of my grandfather; for I well knew that his resources were gone, with the half pay of my father. On reaching his abode, I learned that he had left it in secret; though the reluctant hireling, who had deserted him in his poverty, owned to my urgent en treaties, that he believed he had been carried away by an old man who had formerly been his servant. I knew at once it was Natty, for my father often--” “Was Natty a servant of thy grandfather?” exclaimed the Judge.
“Of that too were you ignorant?” said the youth in evident surprise.
“How should I know it? I never met the Major, nor was the name of Bumppo ever mentioned to me. I knew him only as a man of the woods, and one who lived by hunting. Such men are too common to excite surprise.”
“He was reared in the family of my grandfather; served him for many years during their campaigns at the West, where he became attached to the woods; and he was left here as a kind of locum tenens on the lands that old Mohegan (whose life my grandfather once saved) induced the Delawares to grant to him when they admitted him as an honorary member of their tribe.
“This, then, is thy Indian blood?”
“I have no other,” said Edwards, smiling--“Major Effingham was adopted as the son of Mohegan, who at that time was the greatest man in his nation; and my father, who visited those people when a boy, received the name of the Eagle from them, on account of the shape of his face, as I understand. They have extended his title to me, I have no other Indian blood or breeding; though I have seen the hour, Judge Temple, when I could wish that such had been my lineage and education.”
“Proceed with thy tale,” said Marmaduke.
“I have but little more to say, sir, I followed to the lake where I had so often been told that Natty dwelt, and found him maintaining his old master in secret; for even he could not bear to exhibit to the world, in his poverty and dotage, a man whom a whole people once looked up to with respect.”
“And what did you?”
“What did I? I spent my last money in purchasing a rifle, clad myself in a coarse garb, and learned to be a hunter by the side of Leather-Stocking. You know the rest, Judge Temple.”
“Ant vere vas olt Fritz Hartmann?” said the German, reproachfully; “didst never hear a name as of olt Fritz Hartmann from ter mout of ter fader, lat?”
“I may have been mistaken, gentlemen,” returned the youth, “but I had pride, and could not submit to such an exposure as this day even has reluctantly brought to light. I had plans that might have been visionary; but, should my parent survive till autumn, I purposed taking him with me to the city, where we have distant relatives, who must have learned to forget the Tory by this time. He decays rapidly,” he continued mournfully, “and must soon lie by the side of old Mohegan.”
The air being pure, and the day fine, the party continued conversing on the rock, until the wheels of Judge Temple's carriage were heard clattering up the side of the mountain, during which time the conversation was maintained with deep interest, each moment clearing up some doubtful action, and lessening the antipathy of the youth to Marmaduke. He no longer objected to the removal of his grand father, who displayed a childish pleasure when he found himself seated once more in a carriage. When placed in the ample hall of the mansion-house, the eyes of the aged veteran turned slowly to the objects in the apartment, and a look like the dawn of intellect would, for moments flit across his features, when he invariably offered some use less courtesies to those near him, wandering painfully in his subjects. The exercise and the change soon produced an exhaustion that caused them to remove him to his bed, where he lay for hours, evidently sensible of the change in his comforts, and exhibiting that mortifying picture of human nature, which too plainly shows that the propensities of the animal continue even after the nobler part of the creature appears to have vanished.
Until his parent was placed comfortably in bed, with Natty seated at his side, Effingham did not quit him. He then obeyed a summons to the library of the Judge, where he found the latter, with Major Hartmann, waiting for him.
“Read this paper, Oliver,” said Marmaduke to him, as he entered, “and thou wilt find that, so far from intending thy family wrong during life, it has been my care to see that justice should be done at even a later day.”
The youth took the paper, which his first glance told him was the will of the Judge. Hurried and agitated as he was, he discovered that the date corresponded with the time of the unusual depression of Marmaduke. As he proceeded, his eyes began to moisten, and the hand which held the instrument shook violently.
The will commenced with the usual forms, spun out by the ingenuity of Mr. Van der School: but, after this subject was fairly exhausted, the pen of Marmaduke became plainly visible. In clear, distinct, manly, and even eloquent language, he recounted his obligations to Colonel Effingham, the nature of their connection, and the circumstances in which they separated. He then proceeded to relate the motives of his silence, mentioning, however, large sums that he had forwarded to his friend, which had been returned with the letters unopened. After this, he spoke of his search for the grandfather who unaccountably disappeared, and his fears that the direct heir of the trust was buried in the ocean with his father.
After, in short, recounting in a clear narrative, the events which our readers must now be able to connect, he proceeded to make a fair and exact statement of the sums left in his care by Colonel Effingham. A devise of his whole estate to certain responsible trustees followed; to hold the same for the benefit, in equal moieties, of his daughter, on one part, and of Oliver Effingham, formerly a major in the army of Great Britain, and of his son Ed ward Effingham, and of his son Edward Oliver Effingham, or to the survivor of them, and the descendants of such survivor, forever, on the other part. The trust was to endure until 1810, when, if no person appeared, or could be found, after sufficient notice, to claim the moiety so devised, then a certain sum, calculating the principal and interest of his debt to Colonel Effingham, was to be paid to the heirs-at-law of the Effingham family, and the bulk of his estate was to be conveyed in fee to his daughter, or her heirs.
The tears fell from the eyes of the young man, as he read this undeniable testimony of the good faith of Marmaduke, and his bewildered gaze was still fastened on the paper, when a voice, that thrilled on every nerve, spoke near him, saying: “Do you yet doubt us, Oliver?”
“I have never doubted you!” cried the youth, recovering his recollection and his voice, as he sprang to seize the hand of Elizabeth; “no, not one moment has my faith in you wavered.”
“And my father--” “God bless him!”
“I thank thee, my son,” said the Judge, exchanging a warm pressure of the hand with the youth; “but we have both erred: thou hast been too hasty, and I have been too slow. One-half of my estates shall be thine as soon as they can be conveyed to thee; and, if what my suspicions tell me be true, I suppose the other must follow speedily.” He took the hand which he held, and united it with that of his daughter, and motioned toward the door to the Major.
“I telt you vat, gal!” said the old German, good-humoredly; “if I vas as I vas ven I servit mit his grand-fader on ter lakes, ter lazy tog shouldn't vin ter prize as for nottin'.”
“Come, come, old Fritz,” said the Judge; “you are seventy, not seventeen; Richard waits for you with a bowl of eggnog, in the hall.”
“Richart! ter duyvel!” exclaimed the other, hastening out of the room; “he makes ter nog as for ter horse vilt show ter sheriff mit my own hants! Ter duyvel! I pelieve he sweetens mit ter Yankee melasses!”
Marmaduke smiled and nodded affectionately at the young couple, and closed the door after them. If any of our readers expect that we are going to open it again, for their gratification, they are mistaken.
The tete-a-tete continued for a very unreasonable time--how long we shall not say; but it was ended by six o'clock in the evening, for at that hour Monsieur Le Quoi made his appearance agreeably to the appointment of the preceding day, and claimed the ear of Miss Temple. He was admitted; when he made an offer of his hand, with much suavity, together with his “amis beeg and leet', his père, his mere and his sucreboosh.” Elizabeth might, possibly, have previously entered into some embarrassing and binding engagements with Oliver, for she declined the tender of all, in terms as polite, though perhaps a little more decided, than those in which they were made.
The Frenchman soon joined the German and the sheriff in the hall, who compelled him to take a seat with them at the table, where, by the aid of punch, wine, and egg nog, they soon extracted from the complaisant Monsieur Le Quoi the nature of his visit, it was evident that he had made the offer, as a duty which a well-bred man owed to a lady in such a retired place, before he had left the country, and that his feelings were but very little, if at all, interested in the matter. After a few potations, the waggish pair persuaded the exhilarated Frenchman that there was an inexcusable partiality in offering to one lady, and not extending a similar courtesy to another. Consequently, about nine, Monsieur Le Quoi sallied forth to the rectory, on a similar mission to Miss Grant, which proved as successful as his first effort in love.
When he returned to the mansion-house, at ten, Richard and the Major were still seated at the table. They at tempted to persuade the Gaul, as the sheriff called him, that he should next try Remarkable Pettibone. But, though stimulated by mental excitement and wine, two hours of abstruse logic were thrown away on this subject; for he declined their advice, with a pertinacity truly astonishing in so polite a man.
When Benjamin lighted Monsieur Le Quoi from the door, he said, at parting: “If-so-be, Mounsheer, you'd run alongside Mistress Pettybones, as the Squire Dickens was bidding ye, 'tis my notion you'd have been grappled; in which case, d'ye see, you mought have been troubled in swinging clear agin in a handsome manner; for thof Miss Lizzy and the parson's young 'un be tidy little vessels, that shoot by a body on a wind, Mistress Remarkable is summat of a galliot fashion: when you once takes 'em in tow, they doesn't like to be cast off agin.”
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"id": "2275"
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“Yes, sweep ye on! -- We will not leave, For them who triumph those who grieve. With that armada gay Be laughter loud, and jocund shout-- But with that skill Abides the minstrel tale.” --Lord of the Isles.
The events of our tale carry us through the summer; and after making nearly the circle of the year, we must conclude our labors in the delightful month of October. Many important incidents had, however, occurred in the intervening period; a few of which it may be necessary to recount.
The two principal were the marriage of Oliver and Elizabeth, and the death of Major Effingham. They both took place early in September; and the former preceded the latter only a few days. The old man passed away like the last glimmering of a taper; and, though his death cast a melancholy over the family, grief could not follow such an end. One of the chief concerns of Marmaduke was to reconcile the even conduct of a magistrate with the course that his feelings dictated to the criminals. The day succeeding the discovery at the cave, however, Natty and Benjamin re-entered the jail peaceably, where they continued, well fed and comfortable, until the return of an express to Albany, who brought the governor's pardon to the Leather-Stocking. In the mean time, proper means were employed to satisfy Hiram for the assaults on his person; and on the same day the two comrades issued together into society again, with their characters not at all affected by the imprisonment.
Mr. Doolittle began to discover that neither architecture nor his law was quite suitable to the growing wealth and intelligence of the settlement; and after exacting the last cent that was attainable in his compromise, to use the language of the country he “pulled up stakes,” and proceeded farther west, scattering his professional science and legal learning through the land; vestiges of both of which are to be discovered there even to the present hour.
Poor Jotham, whose life paid the forfeiture of his folly, acknowledged, before he died, that his reasons for believing in a mine were extracted from the lips of a sibyl, who, by looking in a magic glass, was enabled to discover the hidden treasures of the earth. Such superstition was frequent in the new settlements; and, after the first surprise was over, the better part of the community forgot the subject. But, at the same time that it removed from the breast of Richard a lingering suspicion of the acts of the three hunter, it conveyed a mortifying lesson to him, which brought many quiet hours, in future, to his cousin Marmaduke. It may be remembered that the sheriff confidently pronounced this to be no “visionary” scheme, and that word was enough to shut his lips, at any time within the next ten years.
Monsieur Le Quoi, who has been introduced to our readers because no picture of that country would be faithful without some such character, found the island of Martinique, and his “sucreboosh,” in possession of the English but Marmaduke and his family were much gratified in soon hearing that he had returned to his bureau, in Paris; where he afterward issued yearly bulletins of his happiness, and of his gratitude to his friends in America.
With this brief explanation, we must return to our narrative. Let the American reader imagine one of our mildest October mornings, when the sun seems a ball of silvery fire, and the elasticity of the air is felt while it is inhaled, imparting vigor and life to the whole system; the weather, neither too warm nor too cold, but of that happy temperature which stirs the blood, without bringing the lassitude of spring. It was on such a morning, about the middle of the month, that Oliver entered the hall where Elizabeth was issuing her usual orders for the day, and requesting her to join him in a short excursion to the lakeside. The tender melancholy in the manner of her husband caught the attention of Elizabeth, who instantly abandoned her concerns, threw a light shawl across her shoulders, and, concealing her raven hair under a gypsy hat, and took his arm, and submitted herself, without a question, to his guidance. They crossed the bridge, and had turned from the highway, along the margin of the lake, before a word was exchanged. Elizabeth well knew, by the direction, the object of the walk, and respected the feelings of her companion too much to indulge in untimely conversation. But when they gained the open fields, and her eye roamed over the placid lake, covered with wild fowl already journeying from the great northern waters to seek a warmer sun, but lingering to play in the limpid sheet of the Otsego, and to the sides of the mountain, which were gay with the thousand dyes of autumn, as if to grace their bridal, the swelling heart of the young wife burst out in speech.
“This is not a time for silence, Oliver!” she said, clinging more fondly to his arm; “everything in Nature seems to speak the praises of the Creator; why should we, who have so much to be grateful for, be silent?”
“Speak on!” said her husband, smiling; “I love the sounds of your voice. You must anticipate our errand hither: I have told you my plans: how do you like them?”
“I must first see them,” returned his wife. “But I have had my plans, too; it is time I should begin to divulge them.”
“You! It is something for the comfort of my old friend, Natty, I know.”
“Certainly of Natty; but we have other friends besides the Leather-Stocking to serve. Do you forget Louisa and her father?”
“No, surely; have I not given one of the best farms in the county to the good divine? As for Louisa, I should wish you to keep her always near us.”
“You do!” said Elizabeth, slightly compressing her lips; “but poor Louisa may have other views for herself; she may wish to follow my example, and marry.”
“I don't think it,” said Effingham, musing a moment, “really don't know any one hereabouts good enough for her.”
“Perhaps not her; but there are other places besides Templeton, and other churches besides 'New St. Paul's.'”
“Churches, Elizabeth! you would not wish to lose Mr. Grant, surely! Though simple, he is an excellent man I shall never find another who has half the veneration for my orthodoxy. You would humble me from a saint to a very common sinner.”
“It must be done, sir,” returned the lady, with a half-concealed smile, “though it degrades you from an angel to a man.”
“But you forget the farm?”
“He can lease it, as others do. Besides, would you have a clergyman toil in the fields?”
“Where can he go? You forget Louisa.”
“No, I do not forget Louisa,” said Elizabeth, again compressing her beautiful lips. “You know, Effingham, that my father has told you that I ruled him, and that I should rule you. I am now about to exert my power.”
“Anything, anything, dear Elizabeth, but not at the expense of us all: not at the expense of your friend.”
“How do you know, sir, that it will be so much at the expense of my friend?” said the lady, fixing her eyes with a searching look on his countenance, where they met only the unsuspecting expression of manly regret.
“How do I know it? Why, it is natural that she should regret us.”
“It is our duty to struggle with our natural feelings,” returned the lady; “and there is but little cause to fear that such a spirit as Louisa's will not effect it.”
“But what is your plan?”
“Listen, and you shall know. My father has procured a call for Mr. Grant, to one of the towns on the Hudson where he can live more at his ease than in journeying through these woods; where he can spend the evening of his life in comfort and quiet; and where his daughter may meet with such society, and form such a connection, as may be proper for one of her years and character.”
“Bess! you amaze me! I did not think you had been such a manager!”
“Oh! I manage more deeply than you imagine, sir,” said the wife, archly smiling again; “but it is thy will and it is your duty to submit--for a time at least.”
Effingham laughed; but, as they approached the end of their walk, the subject was changed by common consent.
The place at which they arrived was the little spot of level ground where the cabin of the Leather-Stocking had so long stood. Elizabeth found it entirely cleared of rubbish, and beautifully laid down in turf, by the removal of sods, which, in common with the surrounding country, had grown gay, under the influence of profuse showers, as if a second spring had passed over the land. This little place was surrounded by a circle of mason-work, and they entered by a small gate, near which, to the surprise of both, the rifle of Natty was leaning against the wall. Hector and the slut reposed on the grass by its side, as if conscious that, however altered, they were lying on the ground and were surrounded by objects with which they were familiar. The hunter himself was stretched on the earth, before a head-stone of white marble, pushing aside with his fingers the long grass that had already sprung up from the luxuriant soil around its base, apparently to lay bare the inscription. By the side of this stone, which was a simple slab at the head of a grave, stood a rich monument, decorated with an urn and ornamented with the chisel.
Oliver and Elizabeth approached the graves with a light tread, unheard by the old hunter, whose sunburnt face was working, and whose eyes twinkled as if something impeded their vision. After some little time Natty raised himself slowly from the ground, and said aloud: “Well, well--I'm bold to say it's all right! There's something that I suppose is reading; but I can't make anything of it; though the pipe and the tomahawk, and the moccasins, be pretty well--pretty well, for a man that, I dares to say, never seed 'ither of the things. Ah's me! there they lie, side by side, happy enough! Who will there be to put me in the 'arth when my time comes?”
“When that unfortunate hour arrives, Natty, friends shall not be wanting to perform the last offices for you,” said Oliver, a little touched at the hunter's soliloquy.
The old man turned, without manifesting surprise, for he had got the Indian habits in this particular, and, running his hand under the bottom of his nose, seemed to wipe away his sorrow with the action.
“You've come out to see the graves, children, have ye?” he said; “well, well, they're wholesome sights to young as well as old.”
“I hope they are fitted to your liking,” said Effingham, “no one has a better right than yourself to be consulted in the matter.”
“Why, seeing that I ain't used to fine graves,” returned the old man, “it is but little matter consarning my taste. Ye laid the Major's head to the west, and Mohegan's to the east, did ye, lad?”
“At your request it was done.”
“It's so best,” said the hunter; “they thought they had to journey different ways, children: though there is One greater than all, who'll bring the just together, at His own time, and who'll whiten the skin of a blackamoor, and place him on a footing with princes.”
“There is but little reason to doubt that,” said Elizabeth, whose decided tones were changed to a soft, melancholy voice; “I trust we shall all meet again, and be happy together.”
“Shall we, child, shall we?” exclaimed the hunter, with unusual fervor, “there's comfort in that thought too. But before I go, I should like to know what 'tis you tell these people, that be flocking into the country like pigeons in the spring, of the old Delaware, and of the bravest white man that ever trod the hills?”
Effingham and Elizabeth were surprised at the manner of the Leather-Stocking, which was unusually impressive and solemn; but, attributing it to the scene, the young man turned to the monument, and read aloud: “Sacred to the memory of Oliver Effingham Esquire, formally a Major in his B. Majesty's 60th Foot; a soldier of tried valor; a subject of chivalrous loyalty; and a man of honesty. To these virtues he added the graces of a Christian. The morning of his life was spent in honor, wealth, and power; but its evening was obscured by poverty, neglect, and disease, which were alleviated only by the tender care of his old, faithful, and upright friend and attendant Nathaniel Bumppo. His descendants rest this stone to the virtues of the master, and to the enduring gratitude of the servant.”
The Leather-Stocking started at the sound of his own name, and a smile of joy illuminated his wrinkled features, as he said: “And did ye say It, lad? have you then got the old man's name cut in the stone, by the side of his master's! God bless ye, children! 'twas a kind thought, and kindness goes to the heart as Life shortens.”
Elizabeth turned her back to the speakers. Effingham made a fruitless effort before he succeeded in saying: “It is there cut in plain marble; but it should have been written in letters of gold!”
“Show me the name, boy,” said Natty, with simple eagerness; “let me see my own name placed in such honor. 'Tis a gin'rous gift to a man who leaves none of his name and family behind him in a country where he has tarried so long.”
Effingham guided his finger to the spot, and Natty followed the windings of the letters to the end with deep interest, when he raised himself from the tomb, and said: “I suppose it's all right; and it's kindly thought, and kindly done! But what have ye put over the red-skin?”
“You shall hear: This stone is raised to the memory of an Indian Chief of the Delaware tribe, who was known by the several names of John Mohegan Mohican------'” “Mo-hee-can, lad, they call theirselves! 'hecan.”
“Mohican; and Chingagook--” “'Gach, boy; 'gach-gook; Chingachgook, which interpreted, means Big-sarpent. The name should be set down right, for an Indian's name has always some meaning in it.”
“I will see it altered. 'He was the last of his people who continued to inhabit this country; and it may be said of him that his faults were those of an Indian, and his virtues those of a man.'”
“You never said truer word, Mr. Oliver; ah's me! if you had knowed him as I did, in his prime, in that very battle where the old gentleman, who sleeps by his side saved his life, when them thieves, the Iroquois, had him at the stake, you'd have said all that, and more too. I cut the thongs with this very hand, and gave him my own tomahawk and knife, seeing that the rifle was always my fav'rite weapon. He did lay about him like a man! I met him as I was coming home from the trail, with eleven Mingo scalps on his pole. You needn't shudder, Madam Effingham, for they was all from shaved heads and warriors. When I look about me, at these hills, where I used to could count sometimes twenty smokes, curling over the tree-tops, from the Delaware camps, it raises mournful thoughts, to think that not a red-skin is left of them all; unless it be a drunken vagabond from the Oneidas, or them Yankee Indians, who, they say, be moving up from the seashore; and who belong to none of Gods creatures, to my seeming, being, as it were, neither fish nor flesh--neither white man nor savage. Well, well! the time has come at last, and I must go----” “Go!” echoed Edwards, “whither do you go?”
The Leather-Stocking; who had imbibed unconsciously, many of the Indian qualities, though he always thought of himself as of a civilized being, compared with even the Delawares, averted his face to conceal the workings of his muscles, as he stooped to lift a large pack from behind the tomb, which he placed deliberately on his shoulders.
“Go!” exclaimed Elizabeth, approaching him with a hurried step; “you should not venture so far in the woods alone, at your time of life, Natty; indeed, it Is Imprudent, He is bent, Effingham, on some distant hunting.”
“What Mrs. Effingham tells you is true, Leather-Stocking,” said Edwards; “there can be no necessity for your submitting to such hardships now. So throw aside your pack, and confine your hunt to the mountains near us, if you will go.”
“Hardship! 'tis a pleasure, children, and the greatest that is left me on this side the grave.”
“No, no; you shall not go to such a distance,” cried Elizabeth, laying her white hand on his deer-skin pack--“I am right! I feel his camp-kettle, and a canister of powder! He must not be suffered to wander so far from us, Oliver; remember how suddenly Mohegan dropped away.”
“I knowed the parting would come hard, children--I knowed it would!” said Natty, “and so I got aside to look at the graves by myself, and thought if I left ye the keep sake which the Major gave me, when we first parted in the woods, ye wouldn't take it unkind, but would know that, let the old man's body go where it might, his feelings stayed behind him.”
“This means something more than common,” exclaimed the youth. “Where is it, Natty, that you purpose going?”
The hunter drew nigh him with a confident, reasoning air, as If what he had to say would silence all objections, and replied: “Why, lad, they tell me that on the big lakes there's the best of hunting, and a great range without a white man on it unless it may be one like myself. I'm weary of living in clearings, and where the hammer is sounding in my ears from sunrise to sundown. And though I'm much bound to ye both, children--I wouldn't say it if It was not true--I crave to go into the woods agin--I do.”
“Woods!” echoed Elizabeth, trembling with her feelings; “do you not call these endless forests woods?”
“Ah! child, these be nothing to a man that's used to the wilderness. I have took but little comfort sin' your father come on with his settlers; but I wouldn't go far, while the life was in the body that lies under the sod there. But now he's gone, and Chingachgook Is gone; and you be both young and happy. Yes! the big house has rung with merriment this month past! And now I thought was the time to get a little comfort in the close of my days. Woods! indeed! I doesn't call these woods, Madam Effingham, where I lose myself every day of my life in the clearings.”
“If there be anything wanting to your comfort, name it, Leather-Stocking; if it be attainable it is yours.”
“You mean all for the best, lad, I know; and so does madam, too; but your ways isn't my ways. 'Tis like the dead there, who thought, when the breath was in them, that one went east, and one went west, to find their heavens; but they'll meet at last, and so shall we, children. Yes, and as you've begun, and we shall meet in the land of the just at last.”
“This is so new! so unexpected!” said Elizabeth, in almost breathless excitement; “I had thought you meant to live with us and die with us, Natty.”
“Words are of no avail,” exclaimed her husband: “the habits of forty years are not to be dispossessed by the ties of a day. I know you too well to urge you further, Natty; unless you will let me build you a hut on one of the distant hills, where we can sometimes see you, and know that you are comfortable.”
“Don't fear for the Leather-Stocking, children; God will see that his days be provided for, and his indian happy. I know you mean all for the best, but our ways doesn't agree. I love the woods, and ye relish the face of man; I eat when hungry, and drink when a-dry; and ye keep stated hours and rules; nay, nay, you even over-feed the dogs, lad, from pure kindness; and hounds should be gaunty to run well. The meanest of God's creatures be made for some use, and I'm formed for the wilderness, If ye love me, let me go where my soul craves to be agin!”
The appeal was decisive; and not another word of en treaty for him to remain was then uttered; but Elizabeth bent her head to her bosom and wept, while her husband dashed away the tears from his eyes; and, with hands that almost refused to perform their office, he procured his pocket-book, and extended a parcel of bank-notes to the hunter.
“Take these,” he said, “at least take these; secure them about your person, and in the hour of need they will do you good service.”
The old man took the notes, and examined them with curious eye.
“This, then, is some of the new-fashioned money that they've been making at Albany, out of paper! It can't be worth much to they that hasn't larning! No, no, lad---- take back the stuff; it will do me no sarvice, I took kear to get all the Frenchman's powder afore he broke up, and they say lead grows where I'm going, it isn't even fit for wads, seeing that I use none but leather! --Madam Effingham, let an old man kiss your hand, and wish God's choicest blessings on you and your'n.” “Once more let me beseech you, stay!” cried Elizabeth. “Do not, Leather-Stocking, leave me to grieve for the man who has twice rescued me from death, and who has served those I love so faithfully. For my sake, if not for your own, stay. I shall see you in those frightful dreams that still haunt my nights, dying in poverty and age, by the side of those terrific beasts you slew. There will be no evil, that sickness, want, and solitude can inflict, that my fancy will not conjure as your fate. Stay with us, old man, if not for your own sake, at least for ours.”
“Such thoughts and bitter dreams, Madam Effingham,” returned the hunter, solemnly, “will never haunt an innocent parson long. They'll pass away with God's pleasure. And if the cat-a-mounts be yet brought to your eyes in sleep, tis not for my sake, but to show you the power of Him that led me there to save you. Trust in God, madam, and your honorable husband, and the thoughts for an old man like me can never be long nor bitter. I pray that the Lord will keep you in mind--the Lord that lives in clearings as well as in the wilderness--and bless you, and all that belong to you, from this time till the great day when the whites shall meet the red-skins in judgement, and justice shall be the law, and not power.”
Elizabeth raised her head, and offered her colorless cheek to his salute, when he lifted his cap and touched it respectfully. His hand was grasped with convulsive fervor by the youth, who continued silent. The hunter prepared himself for his journey, drawing his belt tighter, and wasting his moments in the little reluctant movements of a sorrowful departure. Once or twice he essayed to speak, but a rising in his throat prevented it. At length he shouldered his rifle, and cried with a clear huntsman's call that echoed through the woods: “He-e-e-re, he-e-e-re, pups--away, dogs, away! --ye'll be footsore afore ye see the end of the journey!”
The hounds leaped from the earth at this cry, and scenting around the grave and silent pair, as if conscious of their own destination, they followed humbly at the heels of their master. A short pause succeeded, during which even the youth concealed his face on his grandfather's tomb. When the pride of manhood, however, had sup pressed the feelings of nature, he turned to renew his en treaties, but saw that the cemetery was occupied only by himself and his wife.
“He is gone!” cried Effingham.
Elizabeth raised her face, and saw the old hunter standing looking back for a moment, on the verge of the wood. As he caught their glances, he drew his hard hand hastily across his eyes again, waved it on high for an adieu, and, uttering a forced cry to his dogs, who were crouching at his feet, he entered the forest.
This was the last they ever saw of the Leather-Stocking, whose rapid movements preceded the pursuit which Judge Temple both ordered and conducted. He had gone far toward the setting sun--the foremost in that band of pioneers who are opening the way for the march of the nation across the continent.
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{
"id": "2275"
}
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A long level of dull gray that further away became a faint blue, with here and there darker patches that looked like water. At times an open space, blackened and burnt in an irregular circle, with a shred of newspaper, an old rag, or broken tin can lying in the ashes. Beyond these always a low dark line that seemed to sink into the ground at night, and rose again in the morning with the first light, but never otherwise changed its height and distance. A sense of always moving with some indefinite purpose, but of always returning at night to the same place--with the same surroundings, the same people, the same bedclothes, and the same awful black canopy dropped down from above. A chalky taste of dust on the mouth and lips, a gritty sense of earth on the fingers, and an all-pervading heat and smell of cattle.
This was “The Great Plains” as they seemed to two children from the hooded depth of an emigrant wagon, above the swaying heads of toiling oxen, in the summer of 1852.
It had appeared so to them for two weeks, always the same and always without the least sense to them of wonder or monotony. When they viewed it from the road, walking beside the wagon, there was only the team itself added to the unvarying picture. One of the wagons bore on its canvas hood the inscription, in large black letters, “Off to California!” on the other “Root, Hog, or Die,” but neither of them awoke in the minds of the children the faintest idea of playfulness or jocularity. Perhaps it was difficult to connect the serious men, who occasionally walked beside them and seemed to grow more taciturn and depressed as the day wore on, with this past effusive pleasantry.
Yet the impressions of the two children differed slightly. The eldest, a boy of eleven, was apparently new to the domestic habits and customs of a life to which the younger, a girl of seven, was evidently native and familiar. The food was coarse and less skillfully prepared than that to which he had been accustomed. There was a certain freedom and roughness in their intercourse, a simplicity that bordered almost on rudeness in their domestic arrangements, and a speech that was at times almost untranslatable to him. He slept in his clothes, wrapped up in blankets; he was conscious that in the matter of cleanliness he was left to himself to overcome the difficulties of finding water and towels. But it is doubtful if in his youthfulness it affected him more than a novelty. He ate and slept well, and found his life amusing. Only at times the rudeness of his companions, or, worse, an indifference that made him feel his dependency upon them, awoke a vague sense of some wrong that had been done to him which while it was voiceless to all others and even uneasily put aside by himself, was still always slumbering in his childish consciousness.
To the party he was known as an orphan put on the train at “St. Jo” by some relative of his stepmother, to be delivered to another relative at Sacramento. As his stepmother had not even taken leave of him, but had entrusted his departure to the relative with whom he had been lately living, it was considered as an act of “riddance,” and accepted as such by her party, and even vaguely acquiesced in by the boy himself. What consideration had been offered for his passage he did not know; he only remembered that he had been told “to make himself handy.” This he had done cheerfully, if at times with the unskillfulness of a novice; but it was not a peculiar or a menial task in a company where all took part in manual labor, and where existence seemed to him to bear the charm of a prolonged picnic. Neither was he subjected to any difference of affection or treatment from Mrs. Silsbee, the mother of his little companion, and the wife of the leader of the train. Prematurely old, of ill-health, and harassed with cares, she had no time to waste in discriminating maternal tenderness for her daughter, but treated the children with equal and unbiased querulousness.
The rear wagon creaked, swayed, and rolled on slowly and heavily. The hoofs of the draft-oxen, occasionally striking in the dust with a dull report, sent little puffs like smoke on either side of the track. Within, the children were playing “keeping store.” The little girl, as an opulent and extravagant customer, was purchasing of the boy, who sat behind a counter improvised from a nail-keg and the front seat, most of the available contents of the wagon, either under their own names or an imaginary one as the moment suggested, and paying for them in the easy and liberal currency of dried beans and bits of paper. Change was given by the expeditious method of tearing the paper into smaller fragments. The diminution of stock was remedied by buying the same article over again under a different name. Nevertheless, in spite of these favorable commercial conditions, the market seemed dull.
“I can show you a fine quality of sheeting at four cents a yard, double width,” said the boy, rising and leaning on his fingers on the counter as he had seen the shopmen do. “All wool and will wash,” he added, with easy gravity.
“I can buy it cheaper at Jackson's,” said the girl, with the intuitive duplicity of her bargaining sex.
“Very well,” said the boy. “I won't play any more.”
“Who cares?” said the girl indifferently. The boy here promptly upset the counter; the rolled-up blanket which had deceitfully represented the desirable sheeting falling on the wagon floor. It apparently suggested a new idea to the former salesman. “I say! let's play 'damaged stock.' See, I'll tumble all the things down here right on top o' the others, and sell 'em for less than cost.”
The girl looked up. The suggestion was bold, bad, and momentarily attractive. But she only said “No,” apparently from habit, picked up her doll, and the boy clambered to the front of the wagon. The incomplete episode terminated at once with that perfect forgetfulness, indifference, and irresponsibility common to all young animals. If either could have flown away or bounded off finally at that moment, they would have done so with no more concern for preliminary detail than a bird or squirrel. The wagon rolled steadily on. The boy could see that one of the teamsters had climbed up on the tail-board of the preceding vehicle. The other seemed to be walking in a dusty sleep.
“Kla'uns,” said the girl.
The boy, without turning his head, responded, “Susy.”
“Wot are you going to be?” said the girl.
“Goin' to be?” repeated Clarence.
“When you is growed,” explained Susy.
Clarence hesitated. His settled determination had been to become a pirate, merciless yet discriminating. But reading in a bethumbed “Guide to the Plains” that morning of Fort Lamarie and Kit Carson, he had decided upon the career of a “scout,” as being more accessible and requiring less water. Yet, out of compassion for Susy's possible ignorance, he said neither, and responded with the American boy's modest conventionality, “President.” It was safe, required no embarrassing description, and had been approved by benevolent old gentlemen with their hands on his head.
“I'm goin' to be a parson's wife,” said Susy, “and keep hens, and have things giv' to me. Baby clothes, and apples, and apple sass--and melasses! and more baby clothes! and pork when you kill.”
She had thrown herself at the bottom of the wagon, with her back towards him and her doll in her lap. He could see the curve of her curly head, and beyond, her bare dimpled knees, which were raised, and over which she was trying to fold the hem of her brief skirt.
“I wouldn't be a President's wife,” she said presently.
“You couldn't!”
“Could if I wanted to!”
“Couldn't!”
“Could now!”
“Couldn't!”
“Why?”
Finding it difficult to explain his convictions of her ineligibility, Clarence thought it equally crushing not to give any. There was a long silence. It was very hot and dusty. The wagon scarcely seemed to move. Clarence gazed at the vignette of the track behind them formed by the hood of the rear. Presently he rose and walked past her to the tail-board. “Goin' to get down,” he said, putting his legs over.
“Maw says 'No,'” said Susy.
Clarence did not reply, but dropped to the ground beside the slowly turning wheels. Without quickening his pace he could easily keep his hand on the tail-board.
“Kla'uns.”
He looked up.
“Take me.”
She had already clapped on her sun-bonnet and was standing at the edge of the tail-board, her little arms extended in such perfect confidence of being caught that the boy could not resist. He caught her cleverly. They halted a moment and let the lumbering vehicle move away from them, as it swayed from side to side as if laboring in a heavy sea. They remained motionless until it had reached nearly a hundred yards, and then, with a sudden half-real, half-assumed, but altogether delightful trepidation, ran forward and caught up with it again. This they repeated two or three times until both themselves and the excitement were exhausted, and they again plodded on hand in hand. Presently Clarence uttered a cry.
“My! Susy--look there!”
The rear wagon had once more slipped away from them a considerable distance. Between it and them, crossing its track, a most extraordinary creature had halted.
At first glance it seemed a dog--a discomfited, shameless, ownerless outcast of streets and byways, rather than an honest stray of some drover's train. It was so gaunt, so dusty, so greasy, so slouching, and so lazy! But as they looked at it more intently they saw that the grayish hair of its back had a bristly ridge, and there were great poisonous-looking dark blotches on its flanks, and that the slouch of its haunches was a peculiarity of its figure, and not the cowering of fear. As it lifted its suspicious head towards them they could see that its thin lips, too short to cover its white teeth, were curled in a perpetual sneer.
“Here, doggie!” said Clarence excitedly. “Good dog! Come.”
Susy burst into a triumphant laugh. “Et tain't no dog, silly; it's er coyote.”
Clarence blushed. It wasn't the first time the pioneer's daughter had shown her superior knowledge. He said quickly, to hide his discomfiture, “I'll ketch him, any way; he's nothin' mor'n a ki yi.”
“Ye can't, tho,” said Susy, shaking her sun-bonnet. “He's faster nor a hoss!”
Nevertheless, Clarence ran towards him, followed by Susy. When they had come within twenty feet of him, the lazy creature, without apparently the least effort, took two or three limping bounds to one side, and remained at the same distance as before. They repeated this onset three or four times with more or less excitement and hilarity, the animal evading them to one side, but never actually retreating before them. Finally, it occurred to them both that although they were not catching him they were not driving him away. The consequences of that thought were put into shape by Susy with round-eyed significance.
“Kla'uns, he bites.”
Clarence picked up a hard sun-baked clod, and, running forward, threw it at the coyote. It was a clever shot, and struck him on his slouching haunches. He snapped and gave a short snarling yelp, and vanished. Clarence returned with a victorious air to his companion. But she was gazing intently in the opposite direction, and for the first time he discovered that the coyote had been leading them half round a circle.
“Kla'uns,” said Susy, with a hysterical little laugh.
“Well?”
“The wagon's gone.”
Clarence started. It was true. Not only their wagon, but the whole train of oxen and teamsters had utterly disappeared, vanishing as completely as if they had been caught up in a whirlwind or engulfed in the earth! Even the low cloud of dust that usually marked their distant course by day was nowhere to be seen. The long level plain stretched before them to the setting sun, without a sign or trace of moving life or animation. That great blue crystal bowl, filled with dust and fire by day, with stars and darkness by night, which had always seemed to drop its rim round them everywhere and shut them in, seemed to them now to have been lifted to let the train pass out, and then closed down upon them forever.
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{
"id": "2279"
}
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Their first sensation was one of purely animal freedom.
They looked at each other with sparkling eyes and long silent breaths. But this spontaneous outburst of savage nature soon passed. Susy's little hand presently reached forward and clutched Clarence's jacket. The boy understood it, and said quickly,-- “They ain't gone far, and they'll stop as soon as they find us gone.”
They trotted on a little faster; the sun they had followed every day and the fresh wagon tracks being their unfailing guides; the keen, cool air of the plains, taking the place of that all-pervading dust and smell of the perspiring oxen, invigorating them with its breath.
“We ain't skeered a bit, are we?” said Susy.
“What's there to be afraid of?” said Clarence scornfully. He said this none the less strongly because he suddenly remembered that they had been often left alone in the wagon for hours without being looked after, and that their absence might not be noticed until the train stopped to encamp at dusk, two hours later. They were not running very fast, yet either they were more tired than they knew, or the air was thinner, for they both seemed to breathe quickly. Suddenly Clarence stopped.
“There they are now.”
He was pointing to a light cloud of dust in the far-off horizon, from which the black hulk of a wagon emerged for a moment and was lost. But even as they gazed the cloud seemed to sink like a fairy mirage to the earth again, the whole train disappeared, and only the empty stretching track returned. They did not know that this seemingly flat and level plain was really undulatory, and that the vanished train had simply dipped below their view on some further slope even as it had once before. But they knew they were disappointed, and that disappointment revealed to them the fact that they had concealed it from each other. The girl was the first to succumb, and burst into a quick spasm of angry tears. That single act of weakness called out the boy's pride and strength. There was no longer an equality of suffering; he had become her protector; he felt himself responsible for both. Considering her no longer his equal, he was no longer frank with her.
“There's nothin' to boo-boo for,” he said, with a half-affected brusqueness. “So quit, now! They'll stop in a minit, and send some one back for us. Shouldn't wonder if they're doin' it now.”
But Susy, with feminine discrimination detecting the hollow ring in his voice, here threw herself upon him and began to beat him violently with her little fists. “They ain't! They ain't! They ain't. You know it! How dare you?” Then, exhausted with her struggles, she suddenly threw herself flat on the dry grass, shut her eyes tightly, and clutched at the stubble.
“Get up,” said the boy, with a pale, determined face that seemed to have got much older.
“You leave me be,” said Susy.
“Do you want me to go away and leave you?” asked the boy.
Susy opened one blue eye furtively in the secure depths of her sun-bonnet, and gazed at his changed face.
“Ye-e-s.”
He pretended to turn away, but really to look at the height of the sinking sun.
“Kla'uns!”
“Well?”
“Take me.”
She was holding up her hands. He lifted her gently in his arms, dropping her head over his shoulder. “Now,” he said cheerfully, “you keep a good lookout that way, and I this, and we'll soon be there.”
The idea seemed to please her. After Clarence had stumbled on for a few moments, she said, “Do you see anything, Kla'uns?”
“Not yet.”
“No more don't I.” This equality of perception apparently satisfied her. Presently she lay more limp in his arms. She was asleep.
The sun was sinking lower; it had already touched the edge of the horizon, and was level with his dazzled and straining eyes. At times it seemed to impede his eager search and task his vision. Haze and black spots floated across the horizon, and round wafers, like duplicates of the sun, glittered back from the dull surface of the plains. Then he resolved to look no more until he had counted fifty, a hundred, but always with the same result, the return of the empty, unending plains--the disk growing redder as it neared the horizon, the fire it seemed to kindle as it sank, but nothing more.
Staggering under his burden, he tried to distract himself by fancying how the discovery of their absence would be made. He heard the listless, half-querulous discussion about the locality that regularly pervaded the nightly camp. He heard the discontented voice of Jake Silsbee as he halted beside the wagon, and said, “Come out o' that now, you two, and mighty quick about it.” He heard the command harshly repeated. He saw the look of irritation on Silsbee's dusty, bearded face, that followed his hurried glance into the empty wagon. He heard the query, “What's gone o' them limbs now?” handed from wagon to wagon. He heard a few oaths; Mrs. Silsbee's high rasping voice, abuse of himself, the hurried and discontented detachment of a search party, Silsbee and one of the hired men, and vociferation and blame. Blame always for himself, the elder, who might have “known better!” A little fear, perhaps, but he could not fancy either pity or commiseration. Perhaps the thought upheld his pride; under the prospect of sympathy he might have broken down.
At last he stumbled, and stopped to keep himself from falling forward on his face. He could go no further; his breath was spent; he was dripping with perspiration; his legs were trembling under him; there was a roaring in his ears; round red disks of the sun were scattered everywhere around him like spots of blood. To the right of the trail there seemed to be a slight mound where he could rest awhile, and yet keep his watchful survey of the horizon. But on reaching it he found that it was only a tangle of taller mesquite grass, into which he sank with his burden. Nevertheless, if useless as a point of vantage, it offered a soft couch for Susy, who seemed to have fallen quite naturally into her usual afternoon siesta, and in a measure it shielded her from a cold breeze that had sprung up from the west. Utterly exhausted himself, but not daring to yield to the torpor that seemed to be creeping over him, Clarence half sat, half knelt down beside her, supporting himself with one hand, and, partly hidden in the long grass, kept his straining eyes fixed on the lonely track.
The red disk was sinking lower. It seemed to have already crumbled away a part of the distance with its eating fires. As it sank still lower, it shot out long, luminous rays, diverging fan-like across the plain, as if, in the boy's excited fancy, it too were searching for the lost estrays. And as one long beam seemed to linger over his hiding-place, he even thought that it might serve as a guide to Silsbee and the other seekers, and was constrained to stagger to his feet, erect in its light. But it soon sank, and with it Clarence dropped back again to his crouching watch. Yet he knew that the daylight was still good for an hour, and with the withdrawal of that mystic sunset glory objects became even more distinct and sharply defined than at any other time. And with the merciful sheathing of that flaming sword which seemed to have swayed between him and the vanished train, his eyes already felt a blessed relief.
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{
"id": "2279"
}
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With the setting of the sun an ominous silence fell. He could hear the low breathing of Susy, and even fancied he could hear the beating of his own heart in that oppressive hush of all nature. For the day's march had always been accompanied by the monotonous creaking of wheels and axles, and even the quiet of the night encampment had been always more or less broken by the movement of unquiet sleepers on the wagon beds, or the breathing of the cattle. But here there was neither sound nor motion. Susy's prattle, and even the sound of his own voice, would have broken the benumbing spell, but it was a part of his growing self-denial now that he refrained from waking her even by a whisper. She would awaken soon enough to thirst and hunger, perhaps, and then what was he to do? If that looked-for help would only come now--while she still slept. For it was part of his boyish fancy that if he could deliver her asleep and undemonstrative of fear and suffering, he would be less blameful, and she less mindful of her trouble. If it did not come--but he would not think of that yet! If she was thirsty meantime--well, it might rain, and there was always the dew which they used to brush off the morning grass; he would take off his shirt and catch it in that, like a shipwrecked mariner. It would be funny, and make her laugh. For himself he would not laugh; he felt he was getting very old and grown up in this loneliness.
It was getting darker--they should be looking into the wagons now. A new doubt began to assail him. Ought he not, now that he was rested, make the most of the remaining moments of daylight, and before the glow faded from the west, when he would no longer have any bearings to guide him? But there was always the risk of waking her! --to what? The fear of being confronted again with HER fear and of being unable to pacify her, at last decided him to remain. But he crept softly through the grass, and in the dust of the track traced the four points of the compass, as he could still determine them by the sunset light, with a large printed W to indicate the west! This boyish contrivance particularly pleased him. If he had only had a pole, a stick, or even a twig, on which to tie his handkerchief and erect it above the clump of mesquite as a signal to the searchers in case they should be overcome by fatigue or sleep, he would have been happy. But the plain was barren of brush or timber; he did not dream that this omission and the very unobtrusiveness of his hiding-place would be his salvation from a greater danger.
With the coming darkness the wind arose and swept the plain with a long-drawn sigh. This increased to a murmur, till presently the whole expanse--before sunk in awful silence--seemed to awake with vague complaints, incessant sounds, and low moanings. At times he thought he heard the halloaing of distant voices, at times it seemed as a whisper in his own ear. In the silence that followed each blast he fancied he could detect the creaking of the wagon, the dull thud of the oxen's hoofs, or broken fragments of speech, blown and scattered even as he strained his ears to listen by the next gust. This tension of the ear began to confuse his brain, as his eyes had been previously dazzled by the sunlight, and a strange torpor began to steal over his faculties. Once or twice his head dropped.
He awoke with a start. A moving figure had suddenly uplifted itself between him and the horizon! It was not twenty yards away, so clearly outlined against the still luminous sky that it seemed even nearer. A human figure, but so disheveled, so fantastic, and yet so mean and puerile in its extravagance, that it seemed the outcome of a childish dream. It was a mounted figure, but so ludicrously disproportionate to the pony it bestrode, whose slim legs were stiffly buried in the dust in a breathless halt, that it might have been a straggler from some vulgar wandering circus. A tall hat, crownless and rimless, a castaway of civilization, surmounted by a turkey's feather, was on its head; over its shoulders hung a dirty tattered blanket that scarcely covered the two painted legs which seemed clothed in soiled yellow hose. In one hand it held a gun; the other was bent above its eyes in eager scrutiny of some distant point beyond and east of the spot where the children lay concealed. Presently, with a dozen quick noiseless strides of the pony's legs, the apparition moved to the right, its gaze still fixed on that mysterious part of the horizon. There was no mistaking it now! The painted Hebraic face, the large curved nose, the bony cheek, the broad mouth, the shadowed eyes, the straight long matted locks! It was an Indian! Not the picturesque creature of Clarence's imagination, but still an Indian! The boy was uneasy, suspicious, antagonistic, but not afraid. He looked at the heavy animal face with the superiority of intelligence, at the half-naked figure with the conscious supremacy of dress, at the lower individuality with the contempt of a higher race. Yet a moment after, when the figure wheeled and disappeared towards the undulating west, a strange chill crept over him. Yet he did not know that in this puerile phantom and painted pigmy the awful majesty of Death had passed him by.
“Mamma!”
It was Susy's voice, struggling into consciousness. Perhaps she had been instinctively conscious of the boy's sudden fears.
“Hush!”
He had just turned to the objective point of the Indian's gaze. There WAS something! A dark line was moving along with the gathering darkness. For a moment he hardly dared to voice his thoughts even to himself. It was a following train overtaking them from the rear! And from the rapidity of its movements a train with horses, hurrying forward to evening camp. He had never dreamt of help from that quarter. This was what the Indian's keen eyes had been watching, and why he had so precipitately fled.
The strange train was now coming up at a round trot. It was evidently well appointed with five or six large wagons and several outriders. In half an hour it would be here. Yet he refrained from waking Susy, who had fallen asleep again; his old superstition of securing her safety first being still uppermost. He took off his jacket to cover her shoulders, and rearranged her nest. Then he glanced again at the coming train. But for some unaccountable reason it had changed its direction, and instead of following the track that should have brought it to his side it had turned off to the left! In ten minutes it would pass abreast of him a mile and a half away! If he woke Susy now, he knew she would be helpless in her terror, and he could not carry her half that distance. He might rush to the train himself and return with help, but he would never leave her alone--in the darkness. Never! If she woke she would die of fright, perhaps, or wander blindly and aimlessly away. No! The train would pass and with it that hope of rescue. Something was in his throat, but he gulped it down and was quiet again albeit he shivered in the night wind.
The train was nearly abreast of him now. He ran out of the tall grass, waving his straw hat above his head in the faint hope of attracting attention. But he did not go far, for he found to his alarm that when he turned back again the clump of mesquite was scarcely distinguishable from the rest of the plain. This settled all question of his going. Even if he reached the train and returned with some one, how would he ever find her again in this desolate expanse?
He watched the train slowly pass--still mechanically, almost hopelessly, waving his hat as he ran up and down before the mesquite, as if he were waving a last farewell to his departing hope. Suddenly it appeared to him that three of the outriders who were preceding the first wagon had changed their shape. They were no longer sharp, oblong, black blocks against the horizon but had become at first blurred and indistinct, then taller and narrower, until at last they stood out like exclamation points against the sky. He continued to wave his hat, they continued to grow taller and narrower. He understood it now--the three transformed blocks were the outriders coming towards him.
This is what he had seen-- [Drawing of three black blocks] This is what he saw now-- ! ! !
He ran back to Susy to see if she still slept, for his foolish desire to have her saved unconsciously was stronger than ever now that safety seemed so near. She was still sleeping, although she had moved slightly. He ran to the front again.
The outriders had apparently halted. What were they doing? Why wouldn't they come on?
Suddenly a blinding flash of light seemed to burst from one of them. Away over his head something whistled like a rushing bird, and sped off invisible. They had fired a gun; they were signaling to him--Clarence--like a grown-up man. He would have given his life at that moment to have had a gun. But he could only wave his hat frantically.
One of the figures here bore away and impetuously darted forward again. He was coming nearer, powerful, gigantic, formidable, as he loomed through the darkness. All at once he threw up his arm with a wild gesture to the others; and his voice, manly, frank, and assuring, came ringing before him.
“Hold up! Good God! It's no Injun--it's a child!”
In another moment he had reined up beside Clarence and leaned over him, bearded, handsome, powerful and protecting.
“Hallo! What's all this? What are you doing here?”
“Lost from Mr. Silsbee's train,” said Clarence, pointing to the darkened west.
“Lost? --how long?”
“About three hours. I thought they'd come back for us,” said Clarence apologetically to this big, kindly man.
“And you kalkilated to wait here for 'em?”
“Yes, yes--I did--till I saw you.”
“Then why in thunder didn't you light out straight for us, instead of hanging round here and drawing us out?”
The boy hung his head. He knew his reasons were unchanged, but all at once they seemed very foolish and unmanly to speak out.
“Only that we were on the keen jump for Injins,” continued the stranger, “we wouldn't have seen you at all, and might hev shot you when we did. What possessed you to stay here?”
The boy was still silent. “Kla'uns,” said a faint, sleepy voice from the mesquite, “take me.” The rifle-shot had awakened Susy.
The stranger turned quickly towards the sound. Clarence started and recalled himself. “There,” he said bitterly, “you've done it now, you've wakened her! THAT'S why I stayed. I couldn't carry her over there to you. I couldn't let her walk, for she'd be frightened. I wouldn't wake her up, for she'd be frightened, and I mightn't find her again. There!” He had made up his mind to be abused, but he was reckless now that she was safe.
The men glanced at each other. “Then,” said the spokesman quietly, “you didn't strike out for us on account of your sister?”
“She ain't my sister,” said Clarence quickly. “She's a little girl. She's Mrs. Silsbee's little girl. We were in the wagon and got down. It's my fault. I helped her down.”
The three men reined their horses closely round him, leaning forward from their saddles, with their hands on their knees and their heads on one side. “Then,” said the spokesman gravely, “you just reckoned to stay here, old man, and take your chances with her rather than run the risk of frightening or leaving her--though it was your one chance of life!”
“Yes,” said the boy, scornful of this feeble, grown-up repetition.
“Come here.”
The boy came doggedly forward. The man pushed back the well-worn straw hat from Clarence's forehead and looked into his lowering face. With his hand still on the boy's head he turned him round to the others, and said quietly,-- “Suthin of a pup, eh?”
“You bet,” they responded.
The voice was not unkindly, although the speaker had thrown his lower jaw forward as if to pronounce the word “pup” with a humorous suggestion of a mastiff. Before Clarence could make up his mind if the epithet was insulting or not, the man put out his stirruped foot, and, with a gesture of invitation, said, “Jump up.”
“But Susy,” said Clarence, drawing back.
“Look; she's making up to Phil already.”
Clarence looked. Susy had crawled out of the mesquite, and with her sun-bonnet hanging down her back, her curls tossed around her face, still flushed with sleep, and Clarence's jacket over her shoulders, was gazing up with grave satisfaction in the laughing eyes of one of the men who was with outstretched hands bending over her. Could he believe his senses? The terror-stricken, willful, unmanageable Susy, whom he would have translated unconsciously to safety without this terrible ordeal of being awakened to the loss of her home and parents at any sacrifice to himself--this ingenuous infant was absolutely throwing herself with every appearance of forgetfulness into the arms of the first new-comer! Yet his perception of this fact was accompanied by no sense of ingratitude. For her sake he felt relieved, and with a boyish smile of satisfaction and encouragement vaulted into the saddle before the stranger.
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{
"id": "2279"
}
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4
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None
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The dash forward to the train, securely held in the saddle by the arms of their deliverers, was a secret joy to the children that seemed only too quickly over. The resistless gallop of the fiery mustangs, the rush of the night wind, the gathering darkness in which the distant wagons, now halted and facing them, looked like domed huts in the horizon--all these seemed but a delightful and fitting climax to the events of the day. In the sublime forgetfulness of youth, all they had gone through had left no embarrassing record behind it; they were willing to repeat their experiences on the morrow, confident of some equally happy end. And when Clarence, timidly reaching his hand towards the horse-hair reins lightly held by his companion, had them playfully yielded up to him by that hold and confident rider, the boy felt himself indeed a man.
But a greater surprise was in store for them. As they neared the wagons, now formed into a circle with a certain degree of military formality, they could see that the appointments of the strange party were larger and more liberal than their own, or indeed anything they had ever known of the kind. Forty or fifty horses were tethered within the circle, and the camp fires were already blazing. Before one of them a large tent was erected, and through the parted flaps could be seen a table actually spread with a white cloth. Was it a school feast, or was this their ordinary household arrangement? Clarence and Susy thought of their own dinners, usually laid on bare boards beneath the sky, or under the low hood of the wagon in rainy weather, and marveled. And when they finally halted, and were lifted from their horses, and passed one wagon fitted up as a bedroom and another as a kitchen, they could only nudge each other with silent appreciation. But here again the difference already noted in the quality of the sensations of the two children was observable. Both were equally and agreeably surprised. But Susy's wonder was merely the sense of novelty and inexperience, and a slight disbelief in the actual necessity of what she saw; while Clarence, whether from some previous general experience or peculiar temperament, had the conviction that what he saw here was the usual custom, and what he had known with the Silsbees was the novelty. The feeling was attended with a slight sense of wounded pride for Susy, as if her enthusiasm had exposed her to ridicule.
The man who had carried him, and seemed to be the head of the party, had already preceded them to the tent, and presently reappeared with a lady with whom he had exchanged a dozen hurried words. They seemed to refer to him and Susy; but Clarence was too much preoccupied with the fact that the lady was pretty, that her clothes were neat and thoroughly clean, that her hair was tidy and not rumpled, and that, although she wore an apron, it was as clean as her gown, and even had ribbons on it, to listen to what was said. And when she ran eagerly forward, and with a fascinating smile lifted the astonished Susy in her arms, Clarence, in his delight for his young charge, quite forgot that she had not noticed him. The bearded man, who seemed to be the lady's husband, evidently pointed out the omission, with some additions that Clarence could not catch; for after saying, with a pretty pout, “Well, why shouldn't he?” she came forward with the same dazzling smile, and laid her small and clean white hand upon his shoulder.
“And so you took good care of the dear little thing? She's such an angel, isn't she? and you must love her very much.”
Clarence colored with delight. It was true it had never occurred to him to look at Susy in the light of a celestial visitant, and I fear he was just then more struck with the fair complimenter than the compliment to his companion, but he was pleased for her sake. He was not yet old enough to be conscious of the sex's belief in its irresistible domination over mankind at all ages, and that Johnny in his check apron would be always a hopeless conquest of Jeannette in her pinafore, and that he ought to have been in love with Susy.
Howbeit, the lady suddenly whisked her away to the recesses of her own wagon, to reappear later, washed, curled, and beribboned like a new doll, and Clarence was left alone with the husband and another of the party.
“Well, my boy, you haven't told me your name yet.”
“Clarence, sir.”
“So Susy calls you, but what else?”
“Clarence Brant.”
“Any relation to Colonel Brant?” asked the second man carelessly.
“He was my father,” said the boy, brightening under this faint prospect of recognition in his loneliness.
The two men glanced at each other. The leader looked at the boy curiously, and said,-- “Are you the son of Colonel Brant, of Louisville?”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy, with a dim stirring of uneasiness in his heart. “But he's dead now,” he added finally.
“Ah, when did he die?” said the man quickly.
“Oh, a long time ago. I don't remember him much. I was very little,” said the boy, half apologetically.
“Ah, you don't remember him?”
“No,” said Clarence shortly. He was beginning to fall back upon that certain dogged repetition which in sensitive children arises from their hopeless inability to express their deeper feelings. He also had an instinctive consciousness that this want of a knowledge of his father was part of that vague wrong that had been done him. It did not help his uneasiness that he could see that one of the two men, who turned away with a half-laugh, misunderstood or did not believe him.
“How did you come with the Silsbees?” asked the first man.
Clarence repeated mechanically, with a child's distaste of practical details, how he had lived with an aunt at St. Jo, and how his stepmother had procured his passage with the Silsbees to California, where he was to meet his cousin. All this with a lack of interest and abstraction that he was miserably conscious told against him, but he was yet helpless to resist.
The first man remained thoughtful, and then glanced at Clarence's sunburnt hands. Presently his large, good-humored smile returned.
“Well, I suppose you are hungry?”
“Yes,” said Clarence shyly. “But--” “But what?”
“I should like to wash myself a little,” he returned hesitatingly, thinking of the clean tent, the clean lady, and Susy's ribbons.
“Certainly,” said his friend, with a pleased look. “Come with me.” Instead of leading Clarence to the battered tin basin and bar of yellow soap which had formed the toilet service of the Silsbee party, he brought the boy into one of the wagons, where there was a washstand, a china basin, and a cake of scented soap. Standing beside Clarence, he watched him perform his ablutions with an approving air which rather embarrassed his protege. Presently he said, almost abruptly,-- “Do you remember your father's house at Louisville?”
“Yes, sir; but it was a long time ago.”
Clarence remembered it as being very different from his home at St. Joseph's, but from some innate feeling of diffidence he would have shrunk from describing it in that way. He, however, said he thought it was a large house. Yet the modest answer only made his new friend look at him the more keenly.
“Your father was Colonel Hamilton Brant, of Louisville, wasn't he?” he said, half-confidentially.
“Yes,” said Clarence hopelessly.
“Well,” said his friend cheerfully, as if dismissing an abstruse problem from his mind, “Let's go to supper.”
When they reached the tent again, Clarence noticed that the supper was laid only for his host and wife and the second man--who was familiarly called “Harry,” but who spoke of the former always as “Mr. and Mrs. Peyton”--while the remainder of the party, a dozen men, were at a second camp fire, and evidently enjoying themselves in a picturesque fashion. Had the boy been allowed to choose, he would have joined them, partly because it seemed more “manly,” and partly that he dreaded a renewal of the questioning.
But here, Susy, sitting bolt upright on an extemporized high stool, happily diverted his attention by pointing to the empty chair beside her.
“Kla'uns,” she said suddenly, with her usual clear and appalling frankness, “they is chickens, and hamanaigs, and hot biksquits, and lasses, and Mister Peyton says I kin have 'em all.”
Clarence, who had begun suddenly to feel that he was responsible for Susy's deportment and was balefully conscious that she was holding her plated fork in her chubby fist by its middle, and, from his previous knowledge of her, was likely at any moment to plunge it into the dish before her, said softly,-- “Hush!”
“Yes, you shall, dear,” said Mrs. Peyton, with tenderly beaming assurance to Susy and a half-reproachful glance at the boy. “Eat what you like, darling.”
“It's a fork,” whispered the still uneasy Clarence, as Susy now seemed inclined to stir her bowl of milk with it.
“'Tain't, now, Kla'uns, it's only a split spoon,” said Susy.
But Mrs. Peyton, in her rapt admiration, took small note of these irregularities, plying the child with food, forgetting her own meal, and only stopping at times to lift back the forward straying curls on Susy's shoulders. Mr. Peyton looked on gravely and contentedly. Suddenly the eyes of husband and wife met.
“She'd have been nearly as old as this, John,” said Mrs. Peyton, in a faint voice.
John Peyton nodded without speaking, and turned his eyes away into the gathering darkness. The man “Harry” also looked abstractedly at his plate, as if he was saying grace. Clarence wondered who “she” was, and why two little tears dropped from Mrs. Peyton's lashes into Susy's milk, and whether Susy might not violently object to it. He did not know until later that the Peytons had lost their only child, and Susy comfortably drained this mingled cup of a mother's grief and tenderness without suspicion.
“I suppose we'll come up with their train early tomorrow, if some of them don't find us to-night,” said Mrs. Peyton, with a long sigh and a regretful glance at Susy. “Perhaps we might travel together for a little while,” she added timidly.
Harry laughed, and Mr. Peyton replied gravely, “I am afraid we wouldn't travel with them, even for company's sake; and,” he added, in a lower and graver voice, “it's rather odd the search party hasn't come upon us yet, though I'm keeping Pete and Hank patrolling the trail to meet them.”
“It's heartless--so it is!” said Mrs. Peyton, with sudden indignation. “It would be all very well if it was only this boy, who can take care of himself; but to be so careless of a mere baby like this, it's shameful!”
For the first time Clarence tasted the cruelty of discrimination. All the more keenly that he was beginning to worship, after his boyish fashion, this sweet-faced, clean, and tender-hearted woman. Perhaps Mr. Peyton noticed it, for he came quietly to his aid.
“Maybe they knew better than we in what careful hands they had left her,” he said, with a cheerful nod towards Clarence. “And, again, they may have been fooled as we were by Injin signs and left the straight road.”
This suggestion instantly recalled to Clarence his vision in the mesquite. Should he dare tell them? Would they believe him, or would they laugh at him before her? He hesitated, and at last resolved to tell it privately to the husband. When the meal was ended, and he was made happy by Mrs. Peyton's laughing acceptance of his offer to help her clear the table and wash the dishes, they all gathered comfortably in front of the tent before the large camp fire. At the other fire the rest of the party were playing cards and laughing, but Clarence no longer cared to join them. He was quite tranquil in the maternal propinquity of his hostess, albeit a little uneasy as to his reticence about the Indian.
“Kla'uns,” said Susy, relieving a momentary pause, in her highest voice, “knows how to speak. Speak, Kla'uns!”
It appearing from Clarence's blushing explanation that this gift was not the ordinary faculty of speech, but a capacity to recite verse, he was politely pressed by the company for a performance.
“Speak 'em, Kla'uns, the boy what stood unto the burnin' deck, and said, 'The boy, oh, where was he?'” said Susy, comfortably lying down on Mrs. Peyton's lap, and contemplating her bare knees in the air. “It's 'bout a boy,” she added confidentially to Mrs. Peyton, “whose father wouldn't never, never stay with him on a burnin' ship, though he said, 'Stay, father, stay,' ever so much.”
With this clear, lucid, and perfectly satisfactory explanation of Mrs. Hemans's “Casabianca,” Clarence began. Unfortunately, his actual rendering of this popular school performance was more an effort of memory than anything else, and was illustrated by those wooden gestures which a Western schoolmaster had taught him. He described the flames that “roared around him,” by indicating with his hand a perfect circle, of which he was the axis; he adjured his father, the late Admiral Casabianca, by clasping his hands before his chin, as if wanting to be manacled in an attitude which he was miserably conscious was unlike anything he himself had ever felt or seen before; he described that father “faint in death below,” and “the flag on high,” with one single motion. Yet something that the verses had kindled in his active imagination, perhaps, rather than an illustration of the verses themselves, at times brightened his gray eyes, became tremulous in his youthful voice, and I fear occasionally incoherent on his lips. At times, when not conscious of his affected art, the plain and all upon it seemed to him to slip away into the night, the blazing camp fire at his feet to wrap him in a fateful glory, and a vague devotion to something--he knew not what--so possessed him that he communicated it, and probably some of his own youthful delight in extravagant voice, to his hearers, until, when he ceased with a glowing face, he was surprised to find that the card players had deserted their camp fires and gathered round the tent.
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{
"id": "2279"
}
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5
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None
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“You didn't say 'Stay, father, stay,' enough, Kla'uns,” said Susy critically. Then suddenly starting upright in Mrs. Peyton's lap, she continued rapidly, “I kin dance. And sing. I kin dance High Jambooree.”
“What's High Jambooree, dear?” asked Mrs. Peyton.
“You'll see. Lemme down.” And Susy slipped to the ground.
The dance of High Jambooree, evidently of remote mystical African origin, appeared to consist of three small skips to the right and then to the left, accompanied by the holding up of very short skirts, incessant “teetering” on the toes of small feet, the exhibition of much bare knee and stocking, and a gurgling accompaniment of childish laughter. Vehemently applauded, it left the little performer breathless, but invincible and ready for fresh conquest.
“I kin sing, too,” she gasped hurriedly, as if unwilling that the applause should lapse. “I kin sing. Oh, dear! Kla'uns,” piteously, “WHAT is it I sing?”
“Ben Bolt,” suggested Clarence.
“Oh, yes. Oh, don't you remember sweet Alers Ben Bolt?” began Susy, in the same breath and the wrong key. “Sweet Alers, with hair so brown, who wept with delight when you giv'd her a smile, and--” with knitted brows and appealing recitative, “what's er rest of it, Kla'uns?”
“Who trembled with fear at your frown?” prompted Clarence.
“Who trembled with fear at my frown?” shrilled Susy. “I forget er rest. Wait! I kin sing--” “Praise God,” suggested Clarence.
“Yes.” Here Susy, a regular attendant in camp and prayer-meetings, was on firmer ground.
Promptly lifting her high treble, yet with a certain acquired deliberation, she began, “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.” At the end of the second line the whispering and laughing ceased. A deep voice to the right, that of the champion poker player, suddenly rose on the swell of the third line. He was instantly followed by a dozen ringing voices, and by the time the last line was reached it was given with a full chorus, in which the dull chant of teamsters and drivers mingled with the soprano of Mrs. Peyton and Susy's childish treble. Again and again it was repeated, with forgetful eyes and abstracted faces, rising and falling with the night wind and the leap and gleam of the camp fires, and fading again like them in the immeasurable mystery of the darkened plain.
In the deep and embarrassing silence that followed, at last the party hesitatingly broke up, Mrs. Peyton retiring with Susy after offering the child to Clarence for a perfunctory “good-night” kiss, an unusual proceeding, which somewhat astonished them both--and Clarence found himself near Mr. Peyton.
“I think,” said Clarence timidly, “I saw an Injin to-day.”
Mr. Peyton bent down towards him. “An Injin--where?” he asked quickly, with the same look of doubting interrogatory with which he had received Clarence's name and parentage.
The boy for a moment regretted having spoken. But with his old doggedness he particularized his statement. Fortunately, being gifted with a keen perception, he was able to describe the stranger accurately, and to impart with his description that contempt for its subject which he had felt, and which to his frontier auditor established its truthfulness. Peyton turned abruptly away, but presently returned with Harry and another man.
“You are sure of this?” said Peyton, half-encouragingly.
“Yes, sir.”
“As sure as you are that your father is Colonel Brant and is dead?” said Harry, with a light laugh.
Tears sprang into the boy's lowering eyes. “I don't lie,” he said doggedly.
“I believe you, Clarence,” said Peyton quietly. “But why didn't you say it before?”
“I didn't like to say it before Susy and--her!” stammered the boy.
“Her?”
“Yes, sir--Mrs. Peyton,” said Clarence blushingly.
“Oh,” said Harry sarcastically, “how blessed polite we are!”
“That'll do. Let up on him, will you?” said Peyton, roughly, to his subordinate. “The boy knows what he's about. But,” he continued, addressing Clarence, “how was it the Injin didn't see you?”
“I was very still on account of not waking Susy,” said Clarence, “and--” He hesitated.
“And what?”
“He seemed more keen watching what YOU were doing,” said the boy boldly.
“That's so,” broke in the second man, who happened to be experienced, “and as he was to wind'ard o' the boy he was off HIS scent and bearings. He was one of their rear scouts; the rest o' them's ahead crossing our track to cut us off. Ye didn't see anything else?”
“I saw a coyote first,” said Clarence, greatly encouraged.
“Hold on!” said the expert, as Harry turned away with a sneer. “That's a sign, too. Wolf don't go where wolf hez been, and coyote don't foller Injins--there's no pickin's! How long afore did you see the coyote?”
“Just after we left the wagon,” said Clarence.
“That's it,” said the man, thoughtfully. “He was driven on ahead, or hanging on their flanks. These Injins are betwixt us and that ar train, or following it.”
Peyton made a hurried gesture of warning, as if reminding the speaker of Clarence's presence--a gesture which the boy noticed and wondered at. Then the conversation of the three men took a lower tone, although Clarence distinctly heard the concluding opinion of the expert.
“It ain't no good now, Mr. Peyton, and you'd be only exposing yourself on their ground by breakin' camp agin to-night. And you don't know that it ain't US they're watchin'. You see, if we hadn't turned off the straight road when we got that first scare from these yer lost children, we might hev gone on and walked plump into some cursed trap of those devils. To my mind, we're just in nigger luck, and with a good watch and my patrol we're all right to be fixed where we be till daylight.”
Mr. Peyton presently turned away, taking Clarence with him. “As we'll be up early and on the track of your train to-morrow, my boy, you had better turn in now. I've put you up in my wagon, and as I expect to be in the saddle most of the night, I reckon I won't trouble you much.” He led the way to a second wagon--drawn up beside the one where Susy and Mrs. Peyton had retired--which Clarence was surprised to find fitted with a writing table and desk, a chair, and even a bookshelf containing some volumes. A long locker, fitted like a lounge, had been made up as a couch for him, with the unwonted luxury of clean white sheets and pillow-cases. A soft matting covered the floor of the heavy wagon bed, which, Mr. Peyton explained, was hung on centre springs to prevent jarring. The sides and roof of the vehicle were of lightly paneled wood, instead of the usual hooked canvas frame of the ordinary emigrant wagon, and fitted with a glazed door and movable window for light and air. Clarence wondered why the big, powerful man, who seemed at home on horseback, should ever care to sit in this office like a merchant or a lawyer; and if this train sold things to the other trains, or took goods, like the peddlers, to towns on the route; but there seemed to be nothing to sell, and the other wagons were filled with only the goods required by the party. He would have liked to ask Mr. Peyton who HE was, and have questioned HIM as freely as he himself had been questioned. But as the average adult man never takes into consideration the injustice of denying to the natural and even necessary curiosity of childhood that questioning which he himself is so apt to assume without right, and almost always without delicacy, Clarence had no recourse. Yet the boy, like all children, was conscious that if he had been afterwards questioned about THIS inexplicable experience, he would have been blamed for his ignorance concerning it. Left to himself presently, and ensconced between the sheets, he lay for some moments staring about him. The unwonted comfort of his couch, so different from the stuffy blanket in the hard wagon bed which he had shared with one of the teamsters, and the novelty, order, and cleanliness of his surroundings, while they were grateful to his instincts, began in some vague way to depress him. To his loyal nature it seemed a tacit infidelity to his former rough companions to be lying here; he had a dim idea that he had lost that independence which equal discomfort and equal pleasure among them had given him. There seemed a sense of servitude in accepting this luxury which was not his. This set him endeavoring to remember something of his father's house, of the large rooms, drafty staircases, and far-off ceilings, and the cold formality of a life that seemed made up of strange faces; some stranger--his parents; some kinder--the servants; particularly the black nurse who had him in charge. Why did Mr. Peyton ask him about it? Why, if it were so important to strangers, had not his mother told him more of it? And why was she not like this good woman with the gentle voice who was so kind to--to Susy? And what did they mean by making HIM so miserable? Something rose in his throat, but with an effort he choked it back, and, creeping from the lounge, went softly to the window, opened it to see if it “would work,” and looked out. The shrouded camp fires, the stars that glittered but gave no light, the dim moving bulk of a patrol beyond the circle, all seemed to intensify the darkness, and changed the current of his thoughts. He remembered what Mr. Peyton had said of him when they first met. “Suthin of a pup, ain't he?” Surely that meant something that was not bad! He crept back to the couch again.
Lying there, still awake, he reflected that he wouldn't be a scout when he grew up, but would be something like Mr. Peyton, and have a train like this, and invite the Silsbees and Susy to accompany him. For this purpose, he and Susy, early to-morrow morning, would get permission to come in here and play at that game. This would familiarize him with the details, so that he would be able at any time to take charge of it. He was already an authority on the subject of Indians! He had once been fired at--as an Indian. He would always carry a rifle like that hanging from the hooks at the end of the wagon before him, and would eventually slay many Indians and keep an account of them in a big book like that on the desk. Susy would help him, having grown up a lady, and they would both together issue provisions and rations from the door of the wagon to the gathered crowds. He would be known as the “White Chief,” his Indian name being “Suthin of a Pup.” He would have a circus van attached to the train, in which he would occasionally perform. He would also have artillery for protection. There would be a terrific engagement, and he would rush into the wagon, heated and blackened with gunpowder; and Susy would put down an account of it in a book, and Mrs. Peyton--for she would be there in some vague capacity--would say, “Really, now, I don't see but what we were very lucky in having such a boy as Clarence with us. I begin to understand him better.” And Harry, who, for purposes of vague poetical retaliation, would also drop in at that moment, would mutter and say, “He is certainly the son of Colonel Brant; dear me!” and apologize. And his mother would come in also, in her coldest and most indifferent manner, in a white ball dress, and start and say, “Good gracious, how that boy has grown! I am sorry I did not see more of him when he was young.” Yet even in the midst of this came a confusing numbness, and then the side of the wagon seemed to melt away, and he drifted out again alone into the empty desolate plain from which even the sleeping Susy had vanished, and he was left deserted and forgotten. Then all was quiet in the wagon, and only the night wind moving round it. But lo! the lashes of the sleeping White Chief--the dauntless leader, the ruthless destroyer of Indians--were wet with glittering tears!
Yet it seemed only a moment afterwards that he awoke with a faint consciousness of some arrested motion. To his utter consternation, the sun, three hours high, was shining in the wagon, already hot and stifling in its beams. There was the familiar smell and taste of the dirty road in the air about him. There was a faint creaking of boards and springs, a slight oscillation, and beyond the audible rattle of harness, as if the train had been under way, the wagon moving, and then there had been a sudden halt. They had probably come up with the Silsbee train; in a few moments the change would be effected and all of his strange experience would be over. He must get up now. Yet, with the morning laziness of the healthy young animal, he curled up a moment longer in his luxurious couch.
How quiet it was! There were far-off voices, but they seemed suppressed and hurried. Through the window he saw one of the teamsters run rapidly past him with a strange, breathless, preoccupied face, halt a moment at one of the following wagons, and then run back again to the front.
Then two of the voices came nearer, with the dull beating of hoofs in the dust.
“Rout out the boy and ask him,” said a half-suppressed, impatient voice, which Clarence at once recognized as the man Harry's.
“Hold on till Peyton comes up,” said the second voice, in a low tone; “leave it to him.”
“Better find out what they were like, at once,” grumbled Harry.
“Wait, stand back,” said Peyton's voice, joining the others; “I'LL ask him.”
Clarence looked wonderingly at the door. It opened on Mr. Peyton, dusty and dismounted, with a strange, abstracted look in his face.
“How many wagons are in your train, Clarence?”
“Three, sir.”
“Any marks on them?”
“Yes, sir,” said Clarence, eagerly: “'Off to California' and 'Root, Hog, or Die.'”
Mr. Peyton's eye seemed to leap up and hold Clarence's with a sudden, strange significance, and then looked down.
“How many were you in all?” he continued.
“Five, and there was Mrs. Silsbee.”
“No other woman?”
“No.”
“Get up and dress yourself,” he said gravely, “and wait here till I come back. Keep cool and have your wits about you.” He dropped his voice slightly. “Perhaps something's happened that you'll have to show yourself a little man again for, Clarence!”
The door closed, and the boy heard the same muffled hoofs and voices die away towards the front. He began to dress himself mechanically, almost vacantly, yet conscious always of a vague undercurrent of thrilling excitement. When he had finished he waited almost breathlessly, feeling the same beating of his heart that he had felt when he was following the vanished train the day before. At last he could stand the suspense no longer, and opened the door. Everything was still in the motionless caravan, except--it struck him oddly even then--the unconcerned prattling voice of Susy from one of the nearer wagons. Perhaps a sudden feeling that this was something that concerned HER, perhaps an irresistible impulse overcame him, but the next moment he had leaped to the ground, faced about, and was running feverishly to the front.
The first thing that met his eyes was the helpless and desolate bulk of one of the Silsbee wagons a hundred rods away, bereft of oxen and pole, standing alone and motionless against the dazzling sky! Near it was the broken frame of another wagon, its fore wheels and axles gone, pitched forward on its knees like an ox under the butcher's sledge. Not far away there were the burnt and blackened ruins of a third, around which the whole party on foot and horseback seemed to be gathered. As the boy ran violently on, the group opened to make way for two men carrying some helpless but awful object between them. A terrible instinct made Clarence swerve from it in his headlong course, but he was at the same moment discovered by the others, and a cry arose of “Go back!” “Stop!” “Keep him back!” Heeding it no more than the wind that whistled by him, Clarence made directly for the foremost wagon--the one in which he and Susy had played. A powerful hand caught his shoulder; it was Mr. Peyton's.
“Mrs. Silsbee's wagon,” said the boy, with white lips, pointing to it. “Where is she?”
“She's missing,” said Peyton, “and one other--the rest are dead.”
“She must be there,” said the boy, struggling, and pointing to the wagon; “let me go.”
“Clarence,” said Peyton sternly, accenting his grasp upon the boy's arm, “be a man! Look around you. Try and tell us who these are.”
There seemed to be one or two heaps of old clothes lying on the ground, and further on, where the men at a command from Peyton had laid down their burden, another. In those ragged, dusty heaps of clothes, from which all the majesty of life seemed to have been ruthlessly stamped out, only what was ignoble and grotesque appeared to be left. There was nothing terrible in this. The boy moved slowly towards them; and, incredible even to himself, the overpowering fear of them that a moment before had overcome him left him as suddenly. He walked from the one to the other, recognizing them by certain marks and signs, and mentioning name after name. The groups gazed at him curiously; he was conscious that he scarcely understood himself, still less the same quiet purpose that made him turn towards the furthest wagon.
“There's nothing there,” said Peyton; “we've searched it.” But the boy, without replying, continued his way, and the crowd followed him.
The deserted wagon, more rude, disorderly, and slovenly than it had ever seemed to him before, was now heaped and tumbled with broken bones, cans, scattered provisions, pots, pans, blankets, and clothing in the foul confusion of a dust-heap. But in this heterogeneous mingling the boy's quick eye caught sight of a draggled edge of calico.
“That's Mrs. Silsbee's dress!” he cried, and leapt into the wagon.
At first the men stared at each other, but an instant later a dozen hands were helping him, nervously digging and clearing away the rubbish. Then one man uttered a sudden cry, and fell back with frantic but furious eyes uplifted against the pitiless, smiling sky above him.
“Great God! look here!”
It was the yellowish, waxen face of Mrs. Silsbee that had been uncovered. But to the fancy of the boy it had changed; the old familiar lines of worry, care, and querulousness had given way to a look of remote peace and statue-like repose. He had often vexed her in her aggressive life; he was touched with remorse at her cold, passionless apathy now, and pressed timidly forward. Even as he did so, the man, with a quick but warning gesture, hurriedly threw his handkerchief over the matted locks, as if to shut out something awful from his view. Clarence felt himself drawn back; but not before the white lips of a bystander had whispered a single word-- “Scalped, too! by God!”
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{
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6
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Then followed days and weeks that seemed to Clarence as a dream. At first, an interval of hushed and awed restraint when he and Susy were kept apart, a strange and artificial interest taken little note of by him, but afterwards remembered when others had forgotten it; the burial of Mrs. Silsbee beneath a cairn of stones, with some ceremonies that, simple though they were, seemed to usurp the sacred rights of grief from him and Susy, and leave them cold and frightened; days of frequent and incoherent childish outbursts from Susy, growing fainter and rarer as time went on, until they ceased, he knew not when; the haunting by night of that morning vision of the three or four heaps of ragged clothes on the ground and a half regret that he had not examined them more closely; a recollection of the awful loneliness and desolation of the broken and abandoned wagon left behind on its knees as if praying mutely when the train went on and left it; the trundling behind of the fateful wagon in which Mrs. Silsbee's body had been found, superstitiously shunned by every one, and when at last turned over to the authorities at an outpost garrison, seeming to drop the last link from the dragging chain of the past. The revelation to the children of a new experience in that brief glimpse of the frontier garrison; the handsome officer in uniform and belted sword, an heroic, vengeful figure to be admired and imitated hereafter; the sudden importance and respect given to Susy and himself as “survivors”; the sympathetic questioning and kindly exaggerations of their experiences, quickly accepted by Susy--all these, looking back upon them afterwards, seemed to have passed in a dream.
No less strange and visionary to them seemed the real transitions they noted from the moving train. How one morning they missed the changeless, motionless, low, dark line along the horizon, and before noon found themselves among the rocks and trees and a swiftly rushing river. How there suddenly appeared beside them a few days later a great gray cloud-covered ridge of mountains that they were convinced was that same dark line that they had seen so often. How the men laughed at them, and said that for the last three days they had been CROSSING that dark line, and that it was HIGHER than the great gray-clouded range before them, which it had always hidden from their view! How Susy firmly believed that these changes took place in her sleep, when she always “kinder felt they were crawlin' up,” and how Clarence, in the happy depreciation of extreme youth, expressed his conviction that they “weren't a bit high, after all.” How the weather became cold, though it was already summer, and at night the camp fire was a necessity, and there was a stove in the tent with Susy; and yet how all this faded away, and they were again upon a dazzling, burnt, and sun-dried plain! But always as in a dream!
More real were the persons who composed the party--whom they seemed to have always known--and who, in the innocent caprice of children, had become to them more actual than the dead had even been. There was Mr. Peyton, who they now knew owned the train, and who was so rich that he “needn't go to California if he didn't want to, and was going to buy a great deal of it if he liked it,” and who was also a lawyer and “policeman”--which was Susy's rendering of “politician”--and was called “Squire” and “Judge” at the frontier outpost, and could order anybody to be “took up if he wanted to,” and who knew everybody by their Christian names; and Mrs. Peyton, who had been delicate and was ordered by the doctor to live in the open air for six months, and “never go into a house or a town agin,” and who was going to adopt Susy as soon as her husband could arrange with Susy's relatives, and draw up the papers! How “Harry” was Henry Benham, Mrs. Peyton's brother, and a kind of partner of Mr. Peyton. And how the scout's name was Gus Gildersleeve, or the “White Crow,” and how, through his recognized intrepidity, an attack upon their train was no doubt averted. Then there was “Bill,” the stock herder, and “Texas Jim,” the vaquero--the latter marvelous and unprecedented in horsemanship. Such were their companions, as appeared through the gossip of the train and their own inexperienced consciousness. To them, they were all astounding and important personages. But, either from boyish curiosity or some sense of being misunderstood, Clarence was more attracted by the two individuals of the party who were least kind to him--namely, Mrs. Peyton and her brother Harry. I fear that, after the fashion of most children, and some grown-up people, he thought less of the steady kindness of Mr. Peyton and the others than of the rare tolerance of Harry or the polite concessions of his sister. Miserably conscious of this at times, he quite convinced himself that if he could only win a word of approbation from Harry, or a smile from Mrs. Peyton, he would afterwards revenge himself by “running away.” Whether he would or not, I cannot say. I am writing of a foolish, growing, impressionable boy of eleven, of whose sentiments nothing could be safely predicted but uncertainty.
It was at this time that he became fascinated by another member of the party whose position had been too humble and unimportant to be included in the group already noted. Of the same appearance as the other teamsters in size, habits, and apparel, he had not at first exhibited to Clarence any claim to sympathy. But it appeared that he was actually a youth of only sixteen--a hopeless incorrigible of St. Joseph, whose parents had prevailed on Peyton to allow him to join the party, by way of removing him from evil associations and as a method of reform. Of this Clarence was at first ignorant, not from any want of frankness on the part of the youth, for that ingenious young gentleman later informed him that he had killed three men in St. Louis, two in St. Jo, and that the officers of justice were after him. But it was evident that to precocious habits of drinking, smoking, chewing, and card-playing this overgrown youth added a strong tendency to exaggeration of statement. Indeed, he was known as “Lying Jim Hooker,” and his various qualities presented a problem to Clarence that was attractive and inspiring, doubtful, but always fascinating. With the hoarse voice of early wickedness and a contempt for ordinary courtesy, he had a round, perfectly good-humored face, and a disposition that when not called upon to act up to his self-imposed role of reckless wickedness, was not unkindly.
It was only a few days after the massacre, and while the children were still wrapped in the gloomy interest and frightened reticence which followed it, that “Jim Hooker” first characteristically flashed upon Clarence's perceptions. Hanging half on and half off the saddle of an Indian pony, the lank Jim suddenly made his appearance, dashing violently up and down the track, and around the wagon in which Clarence was sitting, tugging desperately at the reins, with every indication of being furiously run away with, and retaining his seat only with the most dauntless courage and skill. Round and round they went, the helpless rider at times hanging by a single stirrup near the ground, and again recovering himself by--as it seemed to Clarence--almost superhuman effort. Clarence sat open-mouthed with anxiety and excitement, and yet a few of the other teamsters laughed. Then the voice of Mr. Peyton, from the window of his car, said quietly,-- “There, that will do, Jim. Quit it!”
The furious horse and rider instantly disappeared. A few moments after, the bewildered Clarence saw the redoubted horseman trotting along quietly in the dust of the rear, on the same fiery steed, who in that prosaic light bore an astounding resemblance to an ordinary team horse. Later in the day he sought an explanation from the rider.
“You see,” answered Jim gloomily, “thar ain't a galoot in this yer crowd ez knows jist WHAT'S in that hoss! And them ez suspecks daren't say! It wouldn't do for to hev it let out that the Judge hez a Morgan-Mexican plug that's killed two men afore he got him, and is bound to kill another afore he gets through! Why, on'y the week afore we kem up to you, that thar hoss bolted with me at camping! Bucked and throwed me, but I kept my holt o' the stirrups with my foot--so! Dragged me a matter of two miles, head down, and me keepin' away rocks with my hand--so!”
“Why didn't you loose your foot and let go?” asked Clarence breathlessly.
“YOU might,” said Jim, with deep scorn; “that ain't MY style. I just laid low till we kem to a steep pitched hill, and goin' down when the hoss was, so to speak, kinder BELOW me, I just turned a hand spring, so, and that landed me onter his back again.”
This action, though vividly illustrated by Jim's throwing his hands down like feet beneath him, and indicating the parabola of a spring in the air, proving altogether too much for Clarence's mind to grasp, he timidly turned to a less difficult detail.
“What made the horse bolt first, Mr. Hooker?”
“Smelt Injins!” said Jim, carelessly expectorating tobacco juice in a curving jet from the side of his mouth--a singularly fascinating accomplishment, peculiarly his own, “'n' likely YOUR Injins.”
“But,” argued Clarence hesitatingly, “you said it was a week before--and--” “Er Mexican plug kin smell Injins fifty, yes, a hundred miles away,” said Jim, with scornful deliberation; “'n' if Judge Peyton had took my advice, and hadn't been so mighty feared about the character of his hoss gettin' out he'd hev played roots on them Injins afore they tetched ye. But,” he added, with gloomy dejection, “there ain't no sand in this yer crowd, thar ain't no vim, thar ain't nothin'; and thar kan't be ez long ez thar's women and babies, and women and baby fixin's, mixed up with it. I'd hev cut the whole blamed gang ef it weren't for one or two things,” he added darkly.
Clarence, impressed by Jim's mysterious manner, for the moment forgot his contemptuous allusion to Mr. Peyton, and the evident implication of Susy and himself, and asked hurriedly, “What things?”
Jim, as if forgetful of the boy's presence in his fitful mood, abstractedly half drew a glittering bowie knife from his bootleg, and then slowly put it back again. “Thar's one or two old scores,” he continued, in a low voice, although no one was in hearing distance of them, “one or two private accounts,” he went on tragically, averting his eyes as if watched by some one, “thet hev to be wiped out with blood afore I leave. Thar's one or two men TOO MANY alive and breathin' in this yer crowd. Mebbee it's Gus Gildersleeve; mebbee it's Harry Benham; mebbee,” he added, with a dark yet noble disinterestedness, “it's ME.”
“Oh, no,” said Clarence, with polite deprecation.
Far from placating the gloomy Jim, this seemed only to awake his suspicions. “Mebbee,” he said, dancing suddenly away from Clarence, “mebbee you think I'm lyin'. Mebbee you think, because you're Colonel Brant's son, yer kin run ME with this yer train. Mebbee,” he continued, dancing violently back again, “ye kalkilate, because ye run off'n' stampeded a baby, ye kin tote me round too, sonny. Mebbee,” he went on, executing a double shuffle in the dust and alternately striking his hands on the sides of his boots, “mebbee you're spyin' round and reportin' to the Judge.”
Firmly convinced that Jim was working himself up by an Indian war-dance to some desperate assault on himself, but resenting the last unjust accusation, Clarence had recourse to one of his old dogged silences. Happily at this moment an authoritative voice called out, “Now, then, you Jim Hooker!” and the desperate Hooker, as usual, vanished instantly. Nevertheless, he appeared an hour or two later beside the wagon in which Susy and Clarence were seated, with an expression of satiated vengeance and remorseful bloodguiltiness in his face, and his hair combed Indian fashion over his eyes. As he generously contented himself with only passing a gloomy and disparaging criticism on the game of cards that the children were playing, it struck Clarence for the first time that a great deal of his real wickedness resided in his hair. This set him to thinking that it was strange that Mr. Peyton did not try to reform him with a pair of scissors, but not until Clarence himself had for at least four days attempted to imitate Jim by combing his own hair in that fashion.
A few days later, Jim again casually favored him with a confidential interview. Clarence had been allowed to bestride one of the team leaders postillionwise, and was correspondingly elevated, when Jim joined him, on the Mexican plug, which appeared--no doubt a part of its wicked art--heavily docile, and even slightly lame.
“How much,” said Jim, in a tone of gloomy confidence,--“how much did you reckon to make by stealin' that gal-baby, sonny?”
“Nothing,” replied Clarence with a smile. Perhaps it was an evidence of the marked influence that Jim was beginning to exert over him that he already did not attempt to resent this fascinating implication of grownup guilt.
“It orter bin a good job, if it warn't revenge,” continued Jim moodily.
“No, it wasn't revenge,” said Clarence hurriedly.
“Then ye kalkilated ter get er hundred dollars reward ef the old man and old woman hadn't bin scelped afore yet got up to 'em?” said Jim. “That's your blamed dodgasted luck, eh! Enyhow, you'll make Mrs. Peyton plank down suthin' if she adopts the babby. Look yer, young feller,” he said, starting suddenly and throwing his face forward, glaring fiendishly through his matted side-locks, “d'ye mean ter tell me it wasn't a plant--a skin game--the hull thing?”
“A what?” said Clarence.
“D'ye mean to say”--it was wonderful how gratuitously husky his voice became at this moment--“d'ye mean ter tell me ye didn't set on them Injins to wipe out the Silsbees, so that ye could hev an out-an'-out gal ORFEN on hand fer Mrs. Peyton ter adopt--eh?”
But here Clarence was forced to protest, and strongly, although Jim contemptuously ignored it. “Don't lie ter me,” he repeated mysteriously, “I'm fly. I'm dark, young fel. We're cahoots in this thing?” And with this artful suggestion of being in possession of Clarence's guilty secret he departed in time to elude the usual objurgation of his superior, “Phil,” the head teamster.
Nor was his baleful fascination exercised entirely on Clarence. In spite of Mrs. Peyton's jealously affectionate care, Clarence's frequent companionship, and the little circle of admiring courtiers that always surrounded Susy, it became evident that this small Eve had been secretly approached and tempted by the Satanic Jim. She was found one day to have a few heron's feathers in her possession with which she adorned her curls, and at another time was discovered to have rubbed her face and arms with yellow and red ochre, confessedly the free gift of Jim Hooker. It was to Clarence alone that she admitted the significance and purport of these offerings. “Jim gived 'em to me,” she said, “and Jim's a kind of Injin hisself that won't hurt me; and when bad Injins come, they'll think I'm his Injin baby and run away. And Jim said if I'd just told the Injins when they came to kill papa and mamma, that I b'longed to him, they'd hev runned away.”
“But,” said the practical Clarence, “you could not; you know you were with Mrs. Peyton all the time.”
“Kla'uns,” said Susy, shaking her head and fixing her round blue eyes with calm mendacity on the boy, “don't you tell me. I WAS THERE!”
Clarence started back, and nearly fell over the wagon in hopeless dismay at this dreadful revelation of Susy's powers of exaggeration. “But,” he gasped, “you know, Susy, you and me left before--” “Kla'uns,” said Susy calmly, making a little pleat in the skirt of her dress with her small thumb and fingers, “don't you talk to me. I was there. I'se a SERIVER! The men at the fort said so! The SERIVERS is allus, allus there, and allus allus knows everythin'.”
Clarence was too dumfounded to reply. He had a vague recollection of having noticed before that Susy was very much fascinated by the reputation given to her at Fort Ridge as a “survivor,” and was trying in an infantile way to live up to it. This the wicked Jim had evidently encouraged. For a day or two Clarence felt a little afraid of her, and more lonely than ever.
It was in this state, and while he was doggedly conscious that his association with Jim did not prepossess Mrs. Peyton or her brother in his favor, and that the former even believed him responsible for Susy's unhallowed acquaintance with Jim, that he drifted into one of those youthful escapades on which elders are apt to sit in severe but not always considerate judgment. Believing, like many other children, that nobody cared particularly for him, except to RESTRAIN him, discovering, as children do, much sooner than we complacently imagine, that love and preference have no logical connection with desert or character, Clarence became boyishly reckless. But when, one day, it was rumored that a herd of buffalo was in the vicinity, and that the train would be delayed the next morning in order that a hunt might be organized, by Gildersleeve, Benham, and a few others, Clarence listened willingly to Jim's proposition that they should secretly follow it.
To effect their unhallowed purpose required boldness and duplicity. It was arranged that shortly after the departure of the hunting party Clarence should ask permission to mount and exercise one of the team horses--a favor that had been frequently granted him; that in the outskirts of the camp he should pretend that the horse ran away with him, and Jim would start in pursuit. The absence of the shooting party with so large a contingent of horses and men would preclude any further detachment from the camp to assist them. Once clear, they would follow the track of the hunters, and, if discovered by them, would offer the same excuse, with the addition that they had lost their way to the camp. The plan was successful. The details were carried out with almost too perfect effect; as it appeared that Jim, in order to give dramatic intensity to the fractiousness of Clarence's horse, had inserted a thorn apple under the neck of his saddle, which Clarence only discovered in time to prevent himself from being unseated. Urged forward by ostentatious “Whoas!” and surreptitious cuts in the rear from Jim, pursuer and pursued presently found themselves safely beyond the half-dry stream and fringe of alder bushes that skirted the camp. They were not followed. Whether the teamsters suspected and winked at this design, or believed that the boys could take care of themselves, and ran no risk of being lost in the proximity of the hunting party, there was no general alarm.
Thus reassured, and having a general idea of the direction of the hunt, the boys pushed hilariously forward. Before them opened a vast expanse of bottom land, slightly sloping on the right to a distant half-filled lagoon, formed by the main river overflow, on whose tributary they had encamped. The lagoon was partly hidden by straggling timber and “brush,” and beyond that again stretched the unlimitable plains--the pasture of their mighty game. Hither, Jim hoarsely informed his companion, the buffaloes came to water. A few rods further on, he started dramatically, and, alighting, proceeded to slowly examine the ground. It seemed to be scattered over with half-circular patches, which he pointed out mysteriously as “buffalo chip.” To Clarence's inexperienced perception the plain bore a singular resemblance to the surface of an ordinary unromantic cattle pasture that somewhat chilled his heroic fancy. However, the two companions halted and professionally examined their arms and equipments.
These, I grieve to say, though varied, were scarcely full or satisfactory. The necessities of their flight had restricted Jim to an old double-barreled fowling-piece, which he usually carried slung across his shoulders; an old-fashioned “six-shooter,” whose barrels revolved occasionally and unexpectedly, known as “Allen's Pepper Box” on account of its culinary resemblance; and a bowie-knife. Clarence carried an Indian bow and arrow with which he had been exercising, and a hatchet which he had concealed under the flanks of his saddle. To this Jim generously added the six-shooter, taking the hatchet in exchange--a transfer that at first delighted Clarence, until, seeing the warlike and picturesque effect of the hatchet in Jim's belt, he regretted the transfer. The gun, Jim meantime explained “extry charged,” “chuck up” to the middle with slugs and revolver bullets, could only be fired by himself, and even then he darkly added, not without danger. This poverty of equipment was, however, compensated by opposite statements from Jim of the extraordinary results obtained by these simple weapons from “fellers I knew:” how HE himself had once brought down a “bull” by a bold shot with a revolver through its open bellowing mouth that pierced his “innards;” how a friend of his--an intimate in fact--now in jail at Louisville for killing a sheriff's deputy, had once found himself alone and dismounted with a simple clasp-knife and a lariat among a herd of buffaloes; how, leaping calmly upon the shaggy shoulders of the biggest bull, he lashed himself with the lariat firmly to its horns, goading it onward with his clasp-knife, and subsisting for days upon the flesh cut from its living body, until, abandoned by its fellows and exhausted by the loss of blood, it finally succumbed to its victor at the very outskirts of the camp to which he had artfully driven it! It must be confessed that this recital somewhat took away Clarence's breath, and he would have liked to ask a few questions. But they were alone on the prairie, and linked by a common transgression; the glorious sun was coming up victoriously, the pure, crisp air was intoxicating their nerves; in the bright forecast of youth everything WAS possible!
The surface of the bottom land that they were crossing was here and there broken up by fissures and “potholes,” and some circumspection in their progress became necessary. In one of these halts, Clarence was struck by a dull, monotonous jarring that sounded like the heavy regular fall of water over a dam. Each time that they slackened their pace the sound would become more audible, and was at last accompanied by that slight but unmistakable tremor of the earth that betrayed the vicinity of a waterfall. Hesitating over the phenomenon, which seemed to imply that their topography was wrong and that they had blundered from the track, they were presently startled by the fact that the sound was actually APPROACHING them! With a sudden instinct they both galloped towards the lagoon. As the timber opened before them Jim uttered a long ecstatic shout. “Why, it's THEM!”
At a first glance it seemed to Clarence as if the whole plain beyond was broken up and rolling in tumbling waves or furrows towards them. A second glance showed the tossing fronts of a vast herd of buffaloes, and here and there, darting in and out and among them, or emerging from the cloud of dust behind, wild figures and flashes of fire. With the idea of water still in his mind, it seemed as if some tumultuous tidal wave were sweeping unseen towards the lagoon, carrying everything before it. He turned with eager eyes, in speechless expectancy, to his companion.
Alack! that redoubtable hero and mighty hunter was, to all appearances, equally speechless and astonished. It was true that he remained rooted to the saddle, a lank, still heroic figure, alternately grasping his hatchet and gun with a kind of spasmodic regularity. How long he would have continued this would never be known, for the next moment, with a deafening crash, the herd broke through the brush, and, swerving at the right of the lagoon, bore down directly upon them. All further doubt or hesitation on their part was stopped. The farseeing, sagacious Mexican plug with a terrific snort wheeled and fled furiously with his rider. Moved, no doubt, by touching fidelity, Clarence's humbler team-horse instantly followed. In a few moments those devoted animals struggled neck to neck in noble emulation.
“What are we goin' off this way for?” gasped the simple Clarence.
“Peyton and Gildersleeve are back there--and they'll see us,” gasped Jim in reply. It struck Clarence that the buffaloes were much nearer them than the hunting party, and that the trampling hoofs of a dozen bulls were close behind them, but with another gasp he shouted, “When are we going to hunt 'em?”
“Hunt THEM!” screamed Jim, with a hysterical outburst of truth; “why, they're huntin' US--dash it!”
Indeed, there was no doubt that their frenzied horses were flying before the equally frenzied herd behind them. They gained a momentary advantage by riding into one of the fissures, and out again on the other side, while their pursuers were obliged to make a detour. But in a few minutes they were overtaken by that part of the herd who had taken the other and nearer side of the lagoon, and were now fairly in the midst of them. The ground shook with their trampling hoofs; their steaming breath, mingling with the stinging dust that filled the air, half choked and blinded Clarence. He was dimly conscious that Jim had wildly thrown his hatchet at a cow buffalo pressing close upon his flanks. As they swept down into another gully he saw him raise his fateful gun with utter desperation. Clarence crouched low on his horse's outstretched neck. There was a blinding flash, a single stunning report of both barrels; Jim reeled in one way half out of the saddle, while the smoking gun seemed to leap in another over his head, and then rider and horse vanished in a choking cloud of dust and gunpowder. A moment after Clarence's horse stopped with a sudden check, and the boy felt himself hurled over its head into the gully, alighting on something that seemed to be a bounding cushion of curled and twisted hair. It was the shaggy shoulder of an enormous buffalo! For Jim's desperate random shot and double charge had taken effect on the near hind leg of a preceding bull, tearing away the flesh and ham-stringing the animal, who had dropped in the gully just in front of Clarence's horse.
Dazed but unhurt, the boy rolled from the lifted fore quarters of the struggling brute to the ground. When he staggered to his feet again, not only his horse was gone but the whole herd of buffaloes seemed to have passed too, and he could hear the shouts of unseen hunters now ahead of him. They had evidently overlooked his fall, and the gully had concealed him. The sides before him were too steep for his aching limbs to climb; the slope by which he and the bull had descended when the collision occurred was behind the wounded animal. Clarence was staggering towards it when the bull, by a supreme effort, lifted itself on three legs, half turned, and faced him.
These events had passed too quickly for the inexperienced boy to have felt any active fear, or indeed anything but wild excitement and confusion. But the spectacle of that shaggy and enormous front, that seemed to fill the whole gully, rising with awful deliberation between him and escape, sent a thrill of terror through his frame. The great, dull, bloodshot eyes glared at him with a dumb, wondering fury; the large wet nostrils were so near that their first snort of inarticulate rage made him reel backwards as from a blow. The gully was only a narrow and short fissure or subsidence of the plain; a few paces more of retreat and he would be at its end, against an almost perpendicular bank fifteen feet high. If he attempted to climb its crumbling sides and fell, there would be those short but terrible horns waiting to impale him! It seemed too terrible, too cruel! He was so small beside this overgrown monster. It wasn't fair! The tears started to his eyes, and then, in a rage at the injustice of Fate, he stood doggedly still with clenched fists. He fixed his gaze with half-hysterical, childish fury on those lurid eyes; he did not know that, owing to the strange magnifying power of the bull's convex pupils, he, Clarence, appeared much bigger than he really was to the brute's heavy consciousness, the distance from him most deceptive, and that it was to this fact that hunters so often owed their escape. He only thought of some desperate means of attack. Ah! the six-shooter. It was still in his pocket. He drew it nervously, hopelessly--it looked so small compared with his large enemy!
He presented it with flashing eyes, and pulled the trigger. A feeble click followed, another, and again! Even THIS had mocked him. He pulled the trigger once more, wildly; there was a sudden explosion, and another. He stepped back; the balls had apparently flattened themselves harmlessly on the bull's forehead. He pulled again, hopelessly; there was another report, a sudden furious bellow, and the enormous brute threw his head savagely to one side, burying his left horn deep in the crumbling bank beside him. Again and again he charged the bank, driving his left horn home, and bringing down the stones and earth in showers. It was some seconds before Clarence saw in a single glimpse of that wildly tossing crest the reason of this fury. The blood was pouring from his left eye, penetrated by the last bullet; the bull was blinded! A terrible revulsion of feeling, a sudden sense of remorse that was for the moment more awful than even his previous fear, overcame him. HE had done THAT THING! As much to fly from the dreadful spectacle as any instinct of self-preservation, he took advantage of the next mad paroxysms of pain and blindness, that always impelled the suffering beast towards the left, to slip past him on the right, reach the incline, and scramble wildly up to the plain again. Here he ran confusedly forward, not knowing whither--only caring to escape that agonized bellowing, to shut out forever the accusing look of that huge blood-weltering eye.
Suddenly he heard a distant angry shout. To his first hurried glance the plain had seemed empty, but, looking up, he saw two horsemen rapidly advancing with a led horse behind them--his own. With the blessed sense of relief that overtook him now came the fevered desire for sympathy and to tell them all. But as they came nearer he saw that they were Gildersleeve, the scout, and Henry Benham, and that, far from sharing any delight in his deliverance, their faces only exhibited irascible impatience. Overcome by this new defeat, the boy stopped, again dumb and dogged.
“Now, then, blank it all, WILL you get up and come along, or do you reckon to keep the train waiting another hour over your blanked foolishness?” said Gildersleeve savagely.
The boy hesitated, and then mounted mechanically, without a word.
“'Twould have served 'em right to have gone and left 'em,” muttered Benham vindictively.
For one wild instant Clarence thought of throwing himself from his horse and bidding them go on and leave him. But before he could put his thought into action the two men were galloping forward, with his horse led by a lariat fastened to the horn of Gildersleeve's saddle.
In two hours more they had overtaken the train, already on the march, and were in the midst of the group of outriders. Judge Peyton's face, albeit a trifle perplexed, turned towards Clarence with a kindly, half-tolerant look of welcome. The boy's heart instantly melted with forgiveness.
“Well, my boy, let's hear YOUR story. What happened?”
Clarence cast a hurried glance around, and saw Jim, with face averted, riding gloomily behind. Then nervously and hurriedly he told how he had been thrown into the gully on the back of the wounded buffalo, and the manner of his escape. An audible titter ran through the cavalcade. Mr. Peyton regarded him gravely. “But how did the buffalo get so conveniently into the gully?” he asked.
“Jim Hooker lamed him with a shotgun, and he fell over,” said Clarence timidly.
A roar of Homeric laughter went up from the party. Clarence looked up, stung and startled, but caught a single glimpse of Jim Hooker's face that made him forget his own mortification. In its hopeless, heart-sick, and utterly beaten dejection--the first and only real expression he had seen on it--he read the dreadful truth. Jim's REPUTATION had ruined him! The one genuine and striking episode of his life, the one trustworthy account he had given of it, had been unanimously accepted as the biggest and most consummate lie of his record!
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{
"id": "2279"
}
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7
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None
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With this incident of the hunt closed, to Clarence, the last remembered episode of his journey. But he did not know until long after that it had also closed to him what might have been the opening of a new career. For it had been Judge Peyton's intention in adopting Susy to include a certain guardianship and protection of the boy, provided he could get the consent of that vague relation to whom he was consigned. But it had been pointed out by Mrs. Peyton and her brother that Clarence's association with Jim Hooker had made him a doubtful companion for Susy, and even the Judge himself was forced to admit that the boy's apparent taste for evil company was inconsistent with his alleged birth and breeding. Unfortunately, Clarence, in the conviction of being hopelessly misunderstood, and that dogged acquiescence to fate which was one of his characteristics, was too proud to correct the impression by any of the hypocracies of childhood. He had also a cloudy instinct of loyalty to Jim in his disgrace, without, however, experiencing either the sympathy of an equal or the zeal of a partisan, but rather--if it could be said of a boy of his years--with the patronage and protection of a superior. So he accepted without demur the intimation that when the train reached California he would be forwarded from Stockton with an outfit and a letter of explanation to Sacramento, it being understood that in the event of not finding his relative he would return to the Peytons in one of the southern valleys, where they elected to purchase a tract of land.
With this outlook, and the prospect of change, independence, and all the rich possibilities that to the imagination of youth are included in them, Clarence had found the days dragging. The halt at Salt Lake, the transit of the dreary Alkali desert, even the wild passage of the Sierras, were but a blurred picture in his memory. The sight of eternal snows and the rolling of endless ranks of pines, the first glimpse of a hillside of wild oats, the spectacle of a rushing yellow river that to his fancy seemed tinged with gold, were momentary excitements, quickly forgotten. But when, one morning, halting at the outskirts of a struggling settlement, he found the entire party eagerly gathered around a passing stranger, who had taken from his saddle-bags a small buckskin pouch to show them a double handful of shining scales of metal, Clarence felt the first feverish and overmastering thrill of the gold-seekers. Breathlessly he followed the breathless questions and careless replies. The gold had been dug out of a placer only thirty miles away. It might be worth, say, a hundred and fifty dollars; it was only HIS share of a week's work with two partners. It was not much; “the country was getting played out with fresh arrivals and greenhorns.” All this falling carelessly from the unshaven lips of a dusty, roughly dressed man, with a long-handled shovel and pickaxe strapped on his back, and a frying-pan depending from his saddle. But no panoplied or armed knight ever seemed so heroic or independent a figure to Clarence. What could be finer than the noble scorn conveyed in his critical survey of the train, with its comfortable covered wagons and appliances of civilization? “Ye'll hev to get rid of them ther fixin's if yer goin' in for placer diggin'!” What a corroboration of Clarence's real thoughts! What a picture of independence was this! The picturesque scout, the all-powerful Judge Peyton, the daring young officer, all crumbled on their clayey pedestals before this hero in a red flannel shirt and high-topped boots. To stroll around in the open air all day, and pick up those shining bits of metal, without study, without method or routine--this was really life; to some day come upon that large nugget “you couldn't lift,” that was worth as much as the train and horses--such a one as the stranger said was found the other day at Sawyer's Bar--this was worth giving up everything for. That rough man, with his smile of careless superiority, was the living link between Clarence and the Thousand and One Nights; in him were Aladdin and Sindbad incarnate.
Two days later they reached Stockton. Here Clarence, whose single suit of clothes had been reinforced by patching, odds and ends from Peyton's stores, and an extraordinary costume of army cloth, got up by the regimental tailor at Fort Ridge, was taken to be refitted at a general furnishing “emporium.” But alas! in the selection of the clothing for that adult locality scant provision seemed to have been made for a boy of Clarence's years, and he was with difficulty fitted from an old condemned Government stores with “a boy's” seaman suit and a brass-buttoned pea-jacket. To this outfit Mr. Peyton added a small sum of money for his expenses, and a letter of explanation to his cousin. The stage-coach was to start at noon. It only remained for Clarence to take leave of the party. The final parting with Susy had been discounted on the two previous days with some tears, small frights and clingings, and the expressed determination on the child's part “to go with him;” but in the excitement of the arrival at Stockton it was still further mitigated, and under the influence of a little present from Clarence--his first disbursement of his small capital--had at last taken the form and promise of merely temporary separation. Nevertheless, when the boy's scanty pack was deposited under the stage-coach seat, and he had been left alone, he ran rapidly back to the train for one moment more with Susy. Panting and a little frightened, he reached Mrs. Peyton's car.
“Goodness! You're not gone yet,” said Mrs. Peyton sharply. “Do you want to lose the stage?”
An instant before, in his loneliness, he might have answered, “Yes.” But under the cruel sting of Mrs. Peyton's evident annoyance at his reappearance he felt his legs suddenly tremble, and his voice left him. He did not dare to look at Susy. But her voice rose comfortably from the depths of the wagon where she was sitting.
“The stage will be gone away, Kla'uns.”
She too! Shame at his foolish weakness sent the yearning blood that had settled round his heart flying back into his face.
“I was looking for--for--for Jim, ma'am,” he said at last, boldly.
He saw a look of disgust pass over Mrs. Peyton's face, and felt a malicious satisfaction as he turned and ran back to the stage. But here, to his surprise, he actually found Jim, whom he really hadn't thought of, darkly watching the last strapping of luggage. With a manner calculated to convey the impression to the other passengers that he was parting from a brother criminal, probably on his way to a state prison, Jim shook hands gloomily with Clarence, and eyed the other passengers furtively between his mated locks.
“Ef ye hear o' anythin' happenin', ye'll know what's up,” he said, in a low, hoarse, but perfectly audible whisper. “Me and them's bound to part company afore long. Tell the fellows at Deadman's Gulch to look out for me at any time.”
Although Clarence was not going to Deadman's Gulch, knew nothing of it, and had a faint suspicion that Jim was equally ignorant, yet as one or two of the passengers glanced anxiously at the demure, gray-eyed boy who seemed booked for such a baleful destination, he really felt the half-delighted, half-frightened consciousness that he was starting in life under fascinating immoral pretenses. But the forward spring of the fine-spirited horses, the quickened motion, the glittering sunlight, and the thought that he really was leaving behind him all the shackles of dependence and custom, and plunging into a life of freedom, drove all else from his mind. He turned at last from this hopeful, blissful future, and began to examine his fellow passengers with boyish curiosity. Wedged in between two silent men on the front seat, one of whom seemed a farmer, and the other, by his black attire, a professional man, Clarence was finally attracted by a black-mantled, dark-haired, bonnetless woman on the back seat, whose attention seemed to be monopolized by the jocular gallantries of her companions and the two men before her in the middle seat. From her position he could see little more than her dark eyes, which occasionally seemed to meet his frank curiosity in an amused sort of way, but he was chiefly struck by the pretty foreign sound of her musical voice, which was unlike anything he had ever heard before, and--alas for the inconstancy of youth--much finer than Mrs. Peyton's. Presently his farmer companion, casting a patronizing glance on Clarence's pea-jacket and brass buttons, said cheerily-- “Jest off a voyage, sonny?”
“No, sir,” stammered Clarence; “I came across the plains.”
“Then I reckon that's the rig-out for the crew of a prairie schooner, eh?” There was a laugh at this which perplexed Clarence. Observing it, the humorist kindly condescended to explain that “prairie schooner” was the current slang for an emigrant wagon.
“I couldn't,” explained Clarence, naively looking at the dark eyes on the back seat, “get any clothes at Stockton but these; I suppose the folks didn't think there'd ever be boys in California.”
The simplicity of this speech evidently impressed the others, for the two men in the middle seats turned at a whisper from the lady and regarded him curiously. Clarence blushed slightly and became silent. Presently the vehicle began to slacken its speed. They were ascending a hill; on either bank grew huge cottonwoods, from which occasionally depended a beautiful scarlet vine.
“Ah! eet ees pretty,” said the lady, nodding her black-veiled head towards it. “Eet is good in ze hair.”
One of the men made an awkward attempt to clutch a spray from the window. A brilliant inspiration flashed upon Clarence. When the stage began the ascent of the next hill, following the example of an outside passenger, he jumped down to walk. At the top of the hill he rejoined the stage, flushed and panting, but carrying a small branch of the vine in his scratched hands. Handing it to the man on the middle seat, he said, with grave, boyish politeness--“Please--for the lady.”
A slight smile passed over the face of Clarence's neighbors. The bonnetless woman nodded a pleasant acknowledgment, and coquettishly wound the vine in her glossy hair. The dark man at his side, who hadn't spoken yet, turned to Clarence dryly.
“If you're goin' to keep up this gait, sonny, I reckon ye won't find much trouble gettin' a man's suit to fit you by the time you reach Sacramento.”
Clarence didn't quite understand him, but noticed that a singular gravity seemed to overtake the two jocular men on the middle seat, and the lady looked out of the window. He came to the conclusion that he had made a mistake about alluding to his clothes and his size. He must try and behave more manly. That opportunity seemed to be offered two hours later, when the stage stopped at a wayside hotel or restaurant.
Two or three passengers had got down to refresh themselves at the bar. His right and left hand neighbors were, however, engaged in a drawling conversation on the comparative merits of San Francisco sandhill and water lots; the jocular occupants of the middle seat were still engrossed with the lady. Clarence slipped out of the stage and entered the bar-room with some ostentation. The complete ignoring of his person by the barkeeper and his customers, however, somewhat disconcerted him. He hesitated a moment, and then returned gravely to the stage door and opened it.
“Would you mind taking a drink with me, sir?” said Clarence politely, addressing the farmer-looking passenger who had been most civil to him. A dead silence followed. The two men on the middle seat faced entirely around to gaze at him.
“The Commodore asks if you'll take a drink with him,” explained one of the men to Clarence's friend with the greatest seriousness.
“Eh? Oh, yes, certainly,” returned that gentleman, changing his astonished expression to one of the deepest gravity, “seeing it's the Commodore.”
“And perhaps you and your friend will join, too?” said Clarence timidly to the passenger who had explained; “and you too, sir?” he added to the dark man.
“Really, gentlemen, I don't see how we can refuse,” said the latter, with the greatest formality, and appealing to the others. “A compliment of this kind from our distinguished friend is not to be taken lightly.”
“I have observed, sir, that the Commodore's head is level,” returned the other man with equal gravity.
Clarence could have wished they had not treated his first hospitable effort quite so formally, but as they stepped from the coach with unbending faces he led them, a little frightened, into the bar-room. Here, unfortunately, as he was barely able to reach over the counter, the barkeeper would have again overlooked him but for a quick glance from the dark man, which seemed to change even the barkeeper's perfunctory smiling face into supernatural gravity.
“The Commodore is standing treat,” said the dark man, with unbroken seriousness, indicating Clarence, and leaning back with an air of respectful formality. “I will take straight whiskey. The Commodore, on account of just changing climate, will, I believe, for the present content himself with lemon soda.”
Clarence had previously resolved to take whiskey, like the others, but a little doubtful of the politeness of countermanding his guest's order, and perhaps slightly embarrassed by the fact that all the other customers seemed to have gathered round him and his party with equally immovable faces, he said hurriedly: “Lemon soda for me, please.”
“The Commodore,” said the barkeeper with impassive features, as he bent forward and wiped the counter with professional deliberation, “is right. No matter how much a man may be accustomed all his life to liquor, when he is changing climate, gentlemen, he says 'Lemon soda for me' all the time.”
“Perhaps,” said Clarence, brightening, “you will join too?”
“I shall be proud on this occasion, sir.”
“I think,” said the tall man, still as ceremoniously unbending as before, “that there can be but one toast here, gentlemen. I give you the health of the Commodore. May his shadow never be less.”
The health was drunk solemnly. Clarence felt his cheeks tingle and in his excitement drank his own health with the others. Yet he was disappointed that there was not more joviality; he wondered if men always drank together so stiffly. And it occurred to him that it would be expensive. Nevertheless, he had his purse all ready ostentatiously in his hand; in fact, the paying for it out of his own money was not the least manly and independent pleasure he had promised himself. “How much?” he asked, with an affectation of carelessness.
The barkeeper cast his eye professionally over the barroom. “I think you said treats for the crowd; call it twenty dollars to make even change.”
Clarence's heart sank. He had heard already of the exaggeration of California prices. Twenty dollars! It was half his fortune. Nevertheless, with an heroic effort, he controlled himself, and with slightly nervous fingers counted out the money. It struck him, however, as curious, not to say ungentlemanly, that the bystanders craned their necks over his shoulder to look at the contents of his purse, although some slight explanation was offered by the tall man.
“The Commodore's purse, gentlemen, is really a singular one. Permit me,” he said, taking it from Clarence's hand with great politeness. “It is one of the new pattern, you observe, quite worthy of inspection.” He handed it to a man behind him, who in turn handed it to another, while a chorus of “suthin quite new,” “the latest style,” followed it in its passage round the room, and indicated to Clarence its whereabouts. It was presently handed back to the barkeeper, who had begged also to inspect it, and who, with an air of scrupulous ceremony insisted upon placing it himself in Clarence's side pocket, as if it were an important part of his function. The driver here called “all aboard.” The passengers hurriedly reseated themselves, and the episode abruptly ended. For, to Clarence's surprise, these attentive friends of a moment ago at once became interested in the views of a new passenger concerning the local politics of San Francisco, and he found himself utterly forgotten. The bonnetless woman had changed her position, and her head was no longer visible. The disillusion and depression that overcame him suddenly were as complete as his previous expectations and hopefulness had been extravagant. For the first time his utter unimportance in the world and his inadequacy to this new life around him came upon him crushingly.
The heat and jolting of the stage caused him to fall into a slight slumber and when he awoke he found his two neighbors had just got out at a wayside station. They had evidently not cared to waken him to say “Good-by.” From the conversation of the other passengers he learned that the tall man was a well-known gambler, and the one who looked like a farmer was a ship captain who had become a wealthy merchant. Clarence thought he understood now why the latter had asked him if he came off a voyage, and that the nickname of “Commodore” given to him, Clarence, was some joke intended for the captain's understanding. He missed them, for he wanted to talk to them about his relative at Sacramento, whom he was now so soon to see. At last, between sleeping and waking, the end of his journey was unexpectedly reached. It was dark, but, being “steamer night,” the shops and business places were still open, and Mr. Peyton had arranged that the stage-driver should deliver Clarence at the address of his relative in “J Street,”--an address which Clarence had luckily remembered. But the boy was somewhat discomfited to find that it was a large office or banking-house. He, however, descended from the stage, and with his small pack in his hand entered the building as the stage drove off, and, addressing one of the busy clerks, asked for “Mr. Jackson Brant.”
There was no such person in the office. There never had been any such person. The bank had always occupied that building. Was there not some mistake in the number? No; the name, number, and street had been deeply engrafted in the boy's recollection. Stop! it might be the name of a customer who had given his address at the bank. The clerk who made this suggestion disappeared promptly to make inquiries in the counting-room. Clarence, with a rapidly beating heart, awaited him. The clerk returned. There was no such name on the books. Jackson Brant was utterly unknown to every one in the establishment.
For an instant the counter against which the boy was leaning seemed to yield with his weight; he was obliged to steady himself with both hands to keep from falling. It was not his disappointment, which was terrible; it was not a thought of his future, which seemed hopeless; it was not his injured pride at appearing to have willfully deceived Mr. Peyton, which was more dreadful than all else; but it was the sudden, sickening sense that HE himself had been deceived, tricked, and fooled! For it flashed upon him for the first time that the vague sense of wrong which had always haunted him was this--that this was the vile culmination of a plan to GET RID OF HIM, and that he had been deliberately lost and led astray by his relatives as helplessly and completely as a useless cat or dog!
Perhaps there was something of this in his face, for the clerk, staring at him, bade him sit down for a moment, and again vanished into the mysterious interior. Clarence had no conception how long he was absent, or indeed anything but his own breathless thoughts, for he was conscious of wondering afterwards why the clerk was leading him through a door in the counter into an inner room of many desks, and again through a glass door into a smaller office, where a preternaturally busy-looking man sat writing at a desk. Without looking up, but pausing only to apply a blotting-pad to the paper before him, the man said crisply-- “So you've been consigned to some one who don't seem to turn up, and can't be found, eh? Never mind that,” as Clarence laid Peyton's letter before him. “Can't read it now. Well, I suppose you want to be shipped back to Stockton?”
“No!” said the boy, recovering his voice with an effort.
“Eh, that's business, though. Know anybody here?”
“Not a living soul; that's why they sent me,” said the boy, in sudden reckless desperation. He was the more furious that he knew the tears were standing in his eyes.
The idea seemed to strike the man amusingly. “Looks a little like it, don't it?” he said, smiling grimly at the paper before him. “Got any money?”
“A little.”
“How much?”
“About twenty dollars,” said Clarence hesitatingly. The man opened a drawer at his side, mechanically, for he did not raise his eyes, and took out two ten-dollar gold pieces. “I'll go twenty better,” he said, laying them down on the desk. “That'll give you a chance to look around. Come back here, if you don't see your way clear.” He dipped his pen into the ink with a significant gesture as if closing the interview.
Clarence pushed back the coin. “I'm not a beggar,” he said doggedly.
The man this time raised his head and surveyed the boy with two keen eyes. “You're not, hey? Well, do I look like one?”
“No,” stammered Clarence, as he glanced into the man's haughty eyes.
“Yet, if I were in your fix, I'd take that money and be glad to get it.”
“If you'll let me pay you back again,” said Clarence, a little ashamed, and considerably frightened at his implied accusation of the man before him.
“You can,” said the man, bending over his desk again.
Clarence took up the money and awkwardly drew out his purse. But it was the first time he had touched it since it was returned to him in the bar-room, and it struck him that it was heavy and full--indeed, so full that on opening it a few coins rolled out on to the floor. The man looked up abruptly.
“I thought you said you had only twenty dollars?” he remarked grimly.
“Mr. Peyton gave me forty,” returned Clarence, stupefied and blushing. “I spent twenty dollars for drinks at the bar--and,” he stammered, “I--I--I don't know how the rest came here.”
“You spent twenty dollars for DRINKS?” said the man, laying down his pen, and leaning back in his chair to gaze at the boy.
“Yes--that is--I treated some gentlemen of the stage, sir, at Davidson's Crossing.”
“Did you treat the whole stage company?”
“No, sir, only about four or five--and the bar-keeper. But everything's so dear in California. I know that.”
“Evidently. But it don't seem to make much difference with YOU,” said the man, glancing at the purse.
“They wanted my purse to look at,” said Clarence hurriedly, “and that's how the thing happened. Somebody put HIS OWN MONEY back into MY purse by accident.”
“Of course,” said the man grimly.
“Yes, that's the reason,” said Clarence, a little relieved, but somewhat embarrassed by the man's persistent eyes.
“Then, of course,” said the other quietly, “you don't require my twenty dollars now.”
“But,” returned Clarence hesitatingly, “this isn't MY money. I must find out who it belongs to, and give it back again. Perhaps,” he added timidly, “I might leave it here with you, and call for it when I find the man, or send him here.”
With the greatest gravity he here separated the surplus from what was left of Peyton's gift and the twenty dollars he had just received. The balance unaccounted for was forty dollars. He laid it on the desk before the man, who, still looking at him, rose and opened the door.
“Mr. Reed.”
The clerk who had shown Clarence in appeared.
“Open an account with--” He stopped and turned interrogatively to Clarence.
“Clarence Brant,” said Clarence, coloring with excitement.
“With Clarence Brant. Take that deposit”--pointing to the money--“and give him a receipt.” He paused as the clerk retired with a wondering gaze at the money, looked again at Clarence, said, “I think YOU'LL do,” and reentered the private office, closing the door behind him.
I hope it will not be deemed inconceivable that Clarence, only a few moments before crushed with bitter disappointment and the hopeless revelation of his abandonment by his relatives, now felt himself lifted up suddenly into an imaginary height of independence and manhood. He was leaving the bank, in which he stood a minute before a friendless boy, not as a successful beggar, for this important man had disclaimed the idea, but absolutely as a customer! a depositor! a business man like the grown-up clients who were thronging the outer office, and before the eyes of the clerk who had pitied him! And he, Clarence, had been spoken to by this man, whose name he now recognized as the one that was on the door of the building--a man of whom his fellow-passengers had spoken with admiring envy--a banker famous in all California! Will it be deemed incredible that this imaginative and hopeful boy, forgetting all else, the object of his visit, and even the fact that he considered this money was not his own, actually put his hat a little on one side as he strolled out on his way to the streets and prospective fortune?
Two hours later the banker had another visitor. It chanced to be the farmer-looking man who had been Clarence's fellow-passenger. Evidently a privileged person, he was at once ushered as “Captain Stevens” into the presence of the banker. At the end of a familiar business interview the captain asked carelessly-- “Any letters for me?”
The busy banker pointed with his pen to the letter “S” in a row of alphabetically labeled pigeon-holes against the wall. The captain, having selected his correspondence, paused with a letter in his hand.
“Look here, Carden, there are letters here for some chap called 'John Silsbee.' They were here when I called, ten weeks ago.”
“Well?”
“That's the name of that Pike County man who was killed by Injins in the plains. The 'Frisco papers had all the particulars last night; may be it's for that fellow. It hasn't got a postmark. Who left it here?”
Mr. Carden summoned a clerk. It appeared that the letter had been left by a certain Brant Fauquier, to be called for.
Captain Stevens smiled. “Brant's been too busy dealin' faro to think of 'em agin, and since that shootin' affair at Angels' I hear he's skipped to the southern coast somewhere. Cal Johnson, his old chum, was in the up stage from Stockton this afternoon.”
“Did you come by the up stage from Stockton this afternoon?” said Carden, looking up.
“Yes, as far as Ten-mile Station--rode the rest of the way here.”
“Did you notice a queer little old-fashioned kid--about so high--like a runaway school-boy?”
“Did I? By G--d, sir, he treated me to drinks.”
Carden jumped from his chair. “Then he wasn't lying!”
“No! We let him do it; but we made it good for the little chap afterwards. Hello! What's up?”
But Mr. Carden was already in the outer office beside the clerk who had admitted Clarence.
“You remember that boy Brant who was here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where did he go?”
“Don't know, sir.”
“Go and find him somewhere and somehow. Go to all the hotels, restaurants, and gin-mills near here, and hunt him up. Take some one with you, if you can't do it alone. Bring him back here, quick!”
It was nearly midnight when the clerk fruitlessly returned. It was the fierce high noon of “steamer nights”; light flashed brilliantly from shops, counting-houses, drinking-saloons, and gambling-hells. The streets were yet full of eager, hurrying feet--swift of fortune, ambition, pleasure, or crime. But from among these deeper harsher footfalls the echo of the homeless boy's light, innocent tread seemed to have died out forever.
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{
"id": "2279"
}
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8
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When Clarence was once more in the busy street before the bank, it seemed clear to his boyish mind that, being now cast adrift upon the world and responsible to no one, there was no reason why he should not at once proceed to the nearest gold mines! The idea of returning to Mr. Peyton and Susy, as a disowned and abandoned outcast, was not to be thought of. He would purchase some kind of an outfit, such as he had seen the miners carry, and start off as soon as he had got his supper. But although one of his most delightful anticipations had been the unfettered freedom of ordering a meal at a restaurant, on entering the first one he found himself the object of so much curiosity, partly from his size and partly from his dress, which the unfortunate boy was beginning to suspect was really preposterous, and he turned away with a stammered excuse, and did not try another. Further on he found a baker's shop, where he refreshed himself with some gingerbread and lemon soda. At an adjacent grocery he purchased some herrings, smoked beef, and biscuits, as future provisions for his “pack” or kit. Then began his real quest for an outfit. In an hour he had secured--ostensibly for some friend, to avoid curious inquiry--a pan, a blanket, a shovel and pick, all of which he deposited at the baker's, his unostentatious headquarters, with the exception of a pair of disguising high boots that half hid his sailor trousers, which he kept to put on at the last. Even to his inexperience the cost of these articles seemed enormous; when his purchases were complete, of his entire capital scarcely four dollars remained! Yet in the fond illusions of boyhood these rude appointments seemed possessed of far more value than the gold he had given in exchange for them, and he had enjoyed a child's delight in testing the transforming magic of money.
Meanwhile, the feverish contact of the crowded street had, strange to say, increased his loneliness, while the ruder joviality of its dissipations began to fill him with vague uneasiness. The passing glimpse of dancing halls and gaudily whirled figures that seemed only feminine in their apparel; the shouts and boisterous choruses from concert rooms; the groups of drunken roisterers that congregated around the doors of saloons or, hilariously charging down the streets, elbowed him against the wall, or humorously insisted on his company, discomposed and frightened him. He had known rude companionship before, but it was serious, practical, and under control. There was something in this vulgar degradation of intellect and power--qualities that Clarence had always boyishly worshiped--which sickened and disillusioned him. Later on a pistol shot in a crowd beyond, the rush of eager men past him, the disclosure of a limp and helpless figure against the wall, the closing of the crowd again around it, although it stirred him with a fearful curiosity, actually shocked him less hopelessly than their brutish enjoyments and abandonment.
It was in one of these rushes that he had been crushed against a swinging door, which, giving way to his pressure, disclosed to his wondering eyes a long, glitteringly adorned, and brightly lit room, densely filled with a silent, attentive throng in attitudes of decorous abstraction and preoccupation, that even the shouts and tumult at its very doors could not disturb. Men of all ranks and conditions, plainly or elaborately clad, were grouped together under this magic spell of silence and attention. The tables before them were covered with cards and loose heaps of gold and silver. A clicking, the rattling of an ivory ball, and the frequent, formal, lazy reiteration of some unintelligible sentence was all that he heard. But by a sudden instinct he UNDERSTOOD it all. It was a gambling saloon!
Encouraged by the decorous stillness, and the fact that everybody appeared too much engaged to notice him, the boy drew timidly beside one of the tables. It was covered with a number of cards, on which were placed certain sums of money. Looking down, Clarence saw that he was standing before a card that as yet had nothing on it. A single player at his side looked up, glanced at Clarence curiously, and then placed half a dozen gold pieces on the vacant card. Absorbed in the general aspect of the room and the players, Clarence did not notice that his neighbor won twice, and even THRICE, upon that card. Becoming aware, however, that the player while gathering in his gains, was smilingly regarding him he moved in some embarrassment to the other end of the table, where there seemed another gap in the crowd. It so chanced that there was also another vacant card. The previous neighbor of Clarence instantly shoved a sum of money across the table on the vacant card and won! At this the other players began to regard Clarence singularly, one or two of the spectators smiled, and the boy, coloring, moved awkwardly away. But his sleeve was caught by the successful player, who, detaining him gently, put three gold pieces into his hand.
“That's YOUR share, sonny,” he whispered.
“Share--for what?” stammered the astounded Clarence.
“For bringing me 'the luck,'” said the man.
Clarence stared. “Am I--to--to play with it?” he said, glancing at the coins and then at the table, in ignorance of the stranger's meaning.
“No, no!” said the man hurriedly, “don't do that. You'll lose it, sonny, sure! Don't you see, YOU BRING THE LUCK TO OTHERS, not to yourself. Keep it, old man, and run home!”
“I don't want it! I won't have it!” said Clarence with a swift recollection of the manipulation of his purse that morning, and a sudden distrust of all mankind.
“There!” He turned back to the table and laid the money on the first vacant card he saw. In another moment, as it seemed to him, it was raked away by the dealer. A sense of relief came over him.
“There!” said the man, with an awed voice and a strange, fatuous look in his eye. “What did I tell you? You see, it's allus so! Now,” he added roughly, “get up and get out o' this, afore you lose the boots and shirt off ye.”
Clarence did not wait for a second command. With another glance round the room, he began to make his way through the crowd towards the front. But in that parting glance he caught a glimpse of a woman presiding over a “wheel of fortune” in a corner, whose face seemed familiar. He looked again, timidly. In spite of an extraordinary head-dress or crown that she wore as the “Goddess of Fortune,” he recognized, twisted in its tinsel, a certain scarlet vine which he had seen before; in spite of the hoarse formula which she was continually repeating, he recognized the foreign accent. It was the woman of the stage-coach! With a sudden dread that she might recognize him, and likewise demand his services “for luck,” he turned and fled.
Once more in the open air, there came upon him a vague loathing and horror of the restless madness and feverish distraction of this half-civilized city. It was the more powerful that it was vague, and the outcome of some inward instinct. He found himself longing for the pure air and sympathetic loneliness of the plains and wilderness; he began to yearn for the companionship of his humble associates--the teamster, the scout Gildersleeve, and even Jim Hooker. But above all and before all was the wild desire to get away from these maddening streets and their bewildering occupants. He ran back to the baker's, gathered his purchases together, took advantage of a friendly doorway to strap them on his boyish shoulders, slipped into a side street, and struck out at once for the outskirts.
It had been his first intention to take stage to the nearest mining district, but the diminution of his small capital forbade that outlay, and he decided to walk there by the highroad, of whose general direction he had informed himself. In half an hour the lights of the flat, struggling city, and their reflection in the shallow, turbid river before it, had sunk well behind him. The air was cool and soft; a yellow moon swam in the slight haze that rose above the tules; in the distance a few scattered cottonwoods and sycamores marked like sentinels the road. When he had walked some distance he sat down beneath one of them to make a frugal supper from the dry rations in his pack, but in the absence of any spring he was forced to quench his thirst with a glass of water in a wayside tavern. Here he was good-humoredly offered something stronger, which he declined, and replied to certain curious interrogations by saying that he expected to overtake his friends in a wagon further on. A new distrust of mankind had begun to make the boy an adept in innocent falsehood, the more deceptive as his careless, cheerful manner, the result of his relief at leaving the city, and his perfect ease in the loving companionship of night and nature, certainly gave no indication of his homelessness and poverty.
It was long past midnight, when, weary in body, but still hopeful and happy in mind, he turned off the dusty road into a vast rolling expanse of wild oats, with the same sense of security of rest as a traveler to his inn. Here, completely screened from view by the tall stalks of grain that rose thickly around him to the height of a man's shoulder, he beat down a few of them for a bed, on which he deposited his blanket. Placing his pack for a pillow, he curled himself up in his blanket, and speedily fell asleep.
He awoke at sunrise, refreshed, invigorated, and hungry. But he was forced to defer his first self-prepared breakfast until he had reached water, and a less dangerous place than the wild-oat field to build his first camp fire. This he found a mile further on, near some dwarf willows on the bank of a half-dry stream. Of his various efforts to prepare his first meal, the fire was the most successful; the coffee was somewhat too substantially thick, and the bacon and herring lacked definiteness of quality from having been cooked in the same vessel. In this boyish picnic he missed Susy, and recalled, perhaps a little bitterly, her coldness at parting. But the novelty of his situation, the brilliant sunshine and sense of freedom, and the road already awakening to dusty life with passing teams, dismissed everything but the future from his mind. Readjusting his pack, he stepped on cheerily. At noon he was overtaken by a teamster, who in return for a match to light his pipe gave him a lift of a dozen miles. It is to be feared that Clarence's account of himself was equally fanciful with his previous story, and that the teamster parted from him with a genuine regret, and a hope that he would soon be overtaken by his friends along the road. “And mind that you ain't such a fool agin to let 'em make you tote their dod-blasted tools fur them!” he added unsuspectingly, pointing to Clarence's mining outfit. Thus saved the heaviest part of the day's journey, for the road was continually rising from the plains during the last six miles, Clarence was yet able to cover a considerable distance on foot before he halted for supper. Here he was again fortunate. An empty lumber team watering at the same spring, its driver offered to take Clarence's purchases--for the boy had profited by his late friend's suggestion to personally detach himself from his equipment--to Buckeye Mills for a dollar, which would also include a “shakedown passage” for himself on the floor of the wagon. “I reckon you've been foolin' away in Sacramento the money yer parents give yer for return stage fare, eh? Don't lie, sonny,” he added grimly, as the now artful Clarence smiled diplomatically, “I've been thar myself!” Luckily, the excuse that he was “tired and sleepy” prevented further dangerous questioning, and the boy was soon really in deep slumber on the wagon floor.
He awoke betimes to find himself already in the mountains. Buckeye Mills was a straggling settlement, and Clarence prudently stopped any embarrassing inquiry from his friend by dropping off the wagon with his equipment as they entered it, and hurriedly saying “Good-by” from a crossroad through the woods. He had learned that the nearest mining camp was five miles away, and its direction was indicated by a long wooden “flume,” or water-way, that alternately appeared and disappeared on the flank of the mountain opposite. The cooler and drier air, the grateful shadow of pine and bay, and the spicy balsamic odors that everywhere greeted him, thrilled and exhilarated him. The trail plunging sometimes into an undisturbed forest, he started the birds before him like a flight of arrows through its dim recesses; at times he hung breathlessly over the blue depths of canyons where the same forests were repeated a thousand feet below. Towards noon he struck into a rude road--evidently the thoroughfare of the locality--and was surprised to find that it, as well as the adjacent soil wherever disturbed, was a deep Indian red. Everywhere, along its sides, powdering the banks and boles of trees with its ruddy stain, in mounds and hillocks of piled dirt on the road, or in liquid paint-like pools, when a trickling stream had formed a gutter across it, there was always the same deep sanguinary color. Once or twice it became more vivid in contrast with the white teeth of quartz that peeped through it from the hillside or crossed the road in crumbled strata. One of those pieces Clarence picked up with a quickening pulse. It was veined and streaked with shining mica and tiny glittering cubes of mineral that LOOKED like gold!
The road now began to descend towards a winding stream, shrunken by drought and ditching, that glared dazzingly in the sunlight from its white bars of sand, or glistened in shining sheets and channels. Along its banks, and even encroaching upon its bed, were scattered a few mud cabins, strange-looking wooden troughs and gutters, and here and there, glancing through the leaves, the white canvas of tents. The stumps of felled trees and blackened spaces, as of recent fires, marked the stream on either side. A sudden sense of disappointment overcame Clarence. It looked vulgar, common, and worse than all--FAMILIAR. It was like the unlovely outskirts of a dozen other prosaic settlements he had seen in less romantic localities. In that muddy red stream, pouring out of a wooden gutter, in which three or four bearded, slouching, half-naked figures were raking like chiffonniers, there was nothing to suggest the royal metal. Yet he was so absorbed in gazing at the scene, and had walked so rapidly during the past few minutes, that he was startled, on turning a sharp corner of the road, to come abruptly upon an outlying dwelling.
It was a nondescript building, half canvas and half boards. The interior seen through the open door was fitted up with side shelves, a counter carelessly piled with provisions, groceries, clothing, and hardware--with no attempt at display or even ordinary selection--and a table, on which stood a demijohn and three or four dirty glasses. Two roughly dressed men, whose long, matted beards and hair left only their eyes and lips visible in the tangled hirsute wilderness below their slouched hats, were leaning against the opposite sides of the doorway, smoking. Almost thrown against them in the rapid momentum of his descent, Clarence halted violently.
“Well, sonny, you needn't capsize the shanty,” said the first man, without taking his pipe from his lips.
“If yer looking fur yer ma, she and yer Aunt Jane hev jest gone over to Parson Doolittle's to take tea,” observed the second man lazily. “She allowed that you'd wait.”
“I'm--I'm--going to--to the mines,” explained Clarence, with some hesitation. “I suppose this is the way.”
The two men took their pipes from their lips, looked at each other, completely wiped every vestige of expression from their faces with the back of their hands, turned their eyes into the interior of the cabin, and said, “Will yer come yer, now WILL yer?” Thus adjured, half a dozen men, also bearded and carrying pipes in their mouths, straggled out of the shanty, and, filing in front of it, squatted down, with their backs against the boards, and gazed comfortably at the boy. Clarence began to feel uneasy.
“I'll give,” said one, taking out his pipe and grimly eying Clarence, “a hundred dollars for him as he stands.”
“And seein' as he's got that bran-new rig-out o' tools,” said another, “I'll give a hundred and fifty--and the drinks. I've been,” he added apologetically, “wantin' sunthin' like this a long time.”
“Well, gen'lemen,” said the man who had first spoken to him, “lookin' at him by and large; takin' in, so to speak, the gin'ral gait of him in single harness; bearin' in mind the perfect freshness of him, and the coolness and size of his cheek--the easy downyness, previousness, and utter don't-care-a-damnativeness of his coming yer, I think two hundred ain't too much for him, and we'll call it a bargain.”
Clarence's previous experience of this grim, smileless Californian chaff was not calculated to restore his confidence. He drew away from the cabin, and repeated doggedly, “I asked you if this was the way to the mines.”
“It ARE the mines, and these yere are the miners,” said the first speaker gravely. “Permit me to interdoose 'em. This yere's Shasta Jim, this yere's Shotcard Billy, this is Nasty Bob, and this Slumgullion Dick. This yere's the Dook o' Chatham Street, the Livin' Skeleton, and me!”
“May we ask, fair young sir,” said the Living Skeleton, who, however, seemed in fairly robust condition, “whence came ye on the wings of the morning, and whose Marble Halls ye hev left desolate?”
“I came across the plains, and got into Stockton two days ago on Mr. Peyton's train,” said Clarence, indignantly, seeing no reason now to conceal anything. “I came to Sacramento to find my cousin, who isn't living there any more. I don't see anything funny in THAT! I came here to the mines to dig gold--because---because Mr. Silsbee, the man who was to bring me here and might have found my cousin for me, was killed by Indians.”
“Hold up, sonny. Let me help ye,” said the first speaker, rising to his feet. “YOU didn't get killed by Injins because you got lost out of a train with Silsbee's infant darter. Peyton picked you up while you was takin' care of her, and two days arter you kem up to the broken-down Silsbee wagons, with all the folks lyin' there slartered.”
“Yes, sir,” said Clarence, breathlessly with astonishment.
“And,” continued the man, putting his hand gravely to his head as if to assist his memory, “when you was all alone on the plains with that little child you saw one of those redskins, as near to you as I be, watchin' the train, and you didn't breathe or move while he was there?”
“Yes, sir,” said Clarence eagerly.
“And you was shot at by Peyton, he thinkin' you was an Injun in the mesquite grass? And you once shot a buffalo that had been pitched with you down a gully--all by yourself?”
“Yes,” said Clarence, crimson with wonder and pleasure. “You know me, then?”
“Well, ye-e-es,” said the man gravely, parting his mustache with his fingers. “You see, YOU'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE.”
“Before! Me?” repeated the astounded Clarence.
“Yes, before. Last night. You was taller then, and hadn't cut your hair. You cursed a good deal more than you do now. You drank a man's share of whiskey, and you borrowed fifty dollars to get to Sacramento with. I reckon you haven't got it about you now, eh?”
Clarence's brain reeled in utter confusion and hopeless terror.
Was he going crazy, or had these cruel men learned his story from his faithless friends, and this was a part of the plot? He staggered forward, but the men had risen and quickly encircled him, as if to prevent his escape. In vague and helpless desperation he gasped-- “What place is this?”
“Folks call it Deadman's Gulch.”
Deadman's Gulch! A flash of intelligence lit up the boy's blind confusion. Deadman's Gulch! Could it have been Jim Hooker who had really run away, and had taken his name? He turned half-imploringly to the first speaker.
“Wasn't he older than me, and bigger? Didn't he have a smooth, round face and little eyes? Didn't he talk hoarse? Didn't he--” He stopped hopelessly.
“Yes; oh, he wasn't a bit like you,” said the man musingly. “Ye see, that's the h-ll of it! You're altogether TOO MANY and TOO VARIOUS fur this camp.”
“I don't know who's been here before, or what they have said,” said Clarence desperately, yet even in that desperation retaining the dogged loyalty to his old playmate, which was part of his nature. “I don't know, and I don't care--there! I'm Clarence Brant of Kentucky; I started in Silsbee's train from St. Jo, and I'm going to the mines, and you can't stop me!”
The man who had first spoken started, looked keenly at Clarence, and then turned to the others. The gentleman known as the living skeleton had obtruded his huge bulk in front of the boy, and, gazing at him, said reflectively, “Darned if it don't look like one of Brant's pups--sure!”
“Air ye any relation to Kernel Hamilton Brant of Looeyville?” asked the first speaker.
Again that old question! Poor Clarence hesitated, despairingly. Was he to go through the same cross-examination he had undergone with the Peytons? “Yes,” he said doggedly, “I am--but he's dead, and you know it.”
“Dead--of course.” “Sartin.” “He's dead.” “The Kernel's planted,” said the men in chorus.
“Well, yes,” reflected the Living Skeleton ostentatiously, as one who spoke from experience. “Ham Brant's about as bony now as they make 'em.”
“You bet! About the dustiest, deadest corpse you kin turn out,” corroborated Slumgullion Dick, nodding his head gloomily to the others; “in point o' fack, es a corpse, about the last one I should keer to go huntin' fur.”
“The Kernel's tech 'ud be cold and clammy,” concluded the Duke of Chatham Street, who had not yet spoken, “sure. But what did yer mammy say about it? Is she gettin' married agin? Did SHE send ye here?”
It seemed to Clarence that the Duke of Chatham Street here received a kick from his companions; but the boy repeated doggedly-- “I came to Sacramento to find my cousin, Jackson Brant; but he wasn't there.”
“Jackson Brant!” echoed the first speaker, glancing at the others. “Did your mother say he was your cousin?”
“Yes,” said Clarence wearily. “Good-by.”
“Hullo, sonny, where are you going?”
“To dig gold,” said the boy. “And you know you can't prevent me, if it isn't on your claim. I know the law.” He had heard Mr. Peyton discuss it at Stockton, and he fancied that the men, who were whispering among themselves, looked kinder than before, and as if they were no longer “acting” to him. The first speaker laid his hand on his shoulder, and said, “All right, come with me, and I'll show you where to dig.”
“Who are you?” said Clarence. “You called yourself only 'me.'”
“Well, you can call me Flynn--Tom Flynn.”
“And you'll show me where I can dig--myself?”
“I will.”
“Do you know,” said Clarence timidly, yet with a half-conscious smile, “that I--I kinder bring luck?”
The man looked down upon him, and said gravely, but, as it struck Clarence, with a new kind of gravity, “I believe you.”
“Yes,” said Clarence eagerly, as they walked along together, “I brought luck to a man in Sacramento the other day.” And he related with great earnestness his experience in the gambling saloon. Not content with that--the sealed fountains of his childish deep being broken up by some mysterious sympathy--he spoke of his hospitable exploit with the passengers at the wayside bar, of the finding of his Fortunatus purse and his deposit at the bank. Whether that characteristic old-fashioned reticence which had been such an important factor for good or ill in his future had suddenly deserted him, or whether some extraordinary prepossession in his companion had affected him, he did not know; but by the time the pair had reached the hillside Flynn was in possession of all the boy's history. On one point only was his reserve unshaken. Conscious although he was of Jim Hooker's duplicity, he affected to treat it as a comrade's joke.
They halted at last in the middle of an apparently fertile hillside. Clarence shifted his shovel from his shoulders, unslung his pan, and looked at Flynn. “Dig anywhere here, where you like,” said his companion carelessly, “and you'll be sure to find the color. Fill your pan with the dirt, go to that sluice, and let the water run in on the top of the pan--workin' it round so,” he added, illustrating a rotary motion with the vessel. “Keep doing that until all the soil is washed out of it, and you have only the black sand at the bottom. Then work that the same way until you see the color. Don't be afraid of washing the gold out of the pan--you couldn't do it if you tried. There, I'll leave you here, and you wait till I come back.” With another grave nod and something like a smile in the only visible part of his bearded face--his eyes--he strode rapidly away.
Clarence did not lose time. Selecting a spot where the grass was less thick, he broke through the soil and turned up two or three spadefuls of red soil. When he had filled the pan and raised it to his shoulder, he was astounded at its weight. He did not know that it was due to the red precipitate of iron that gave it its color. Staggering along with his burden to the running sluice, which looked like an open wooden gutter, at the foot of the hill, he began to carefully carry out Flynn's direction. The first dip of the pan in the running water carried off half the contents of the pan in liquid paint-like ooze. For a moment he gave way to boyish satisfaction in the sight and touch of this unctuous solution, and dabbled his fingers in it. A few moments more of rinsing and he came to the sediment of fine black sand that was beneath it. Another plunge and swilling of water in the pan, and--could he believe his eyes! --a few yellow tiny scales, scarcely larger than pins' heads, glittered among the sand. He poured it off. But his companion was right; the lighter sand shifted from side to side with the water, but the glittering points remained adhering by their own tiny specific gravity to the smooth surface of the bottom. It was “the color”--gold!
Clarence's heart seemed to give a great leap within him. A vision of wealth, of independence, of power, sprang before his dazzled eyes, and--a hand lightly touched him on the shoulder.
He started. In his complete preoccupation and excitement, he had not heard the clatter of horse-hoofs, and to his amazement Flynn was already beside him, mounted, and leading a second horse.
“You kin ride?” he said shortly.
“Yes” stammered Clarence; “but--” “BUT--we've only got two hours to reach Buckeye Mills in time to catch the down stage. Drop all that, jump up, and come with me!”
“But I've just found gold,” said the boy excitedly.
“And I've just found your--cousin. Come!”
He spurred his horse across Clarence's scattered implements, half helped, half lifted, the boy into the saddle of the second horse, and, with a cut of his riata over the animal's haunches, the next moment they were both galloping furiously away.
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{
"id": "2279"
}
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9
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None
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Torn suddenly from his prospective future, but too much dominated by the man beside him to protest, Clarence was silent until a rise in the road, a few minutes later, partly abated their headlong speed, and gave him chance to recover his breath and courage.
“Where is my cousin?” he asked.
“In the Southern county, two hundred miles from here.”
“Are we going to him?”
“Yes.”
They rode furiously forward again. It was nearly half an hour before they came to a longer ascent. Clarence could see that Flynn was from time to time examining him curiously under his slouched hat. This somewhat embarrassed him, but in his singular confidence in the man no distrust mingled with it.
“Ye never saw your--cousin?” he asked.
“No,” said Clarence; “nor he me. I don't think he knew me much, any way.
“How old mout ye be, Clarence?”
“Eleven.”
“Well, as you're suthin of a pup”--Clarence started, and recalled Peyton's first criticism of him--“I reckon to tell ye suthin. Ye ain't goin' to be skeert, or afeard, or lose yer sand, I kalkilate, for skunkin' ain't in your breed. Well, wot ef I told ye that thish yer--thish yer--COUSIN o' yours was the biggest devil onhung; that he'd just killed a man, and had to lite out elsewhere, and THET'S why he didn't show up in Sacramento--what if I told you that?”
Clarence felt that this was somehow a little too much. He was perfectly truthful, and lifting his frank eyes to Flynn, he said, “I should think you were talking a good deal like Jim Hooker!”
His companion stared, and suddenly reined up his horse; then, bursting into a shout of laughter, he galloped ahead, from time to time shaking his head, slapping his legs, and making the dim woods ring with his boisterous mirth. Then as suddenly becoming thoughtful again, he rode on rapidly for half an hour, only speaking to Clarence to urge him forward, and assisting his progress by lashing the haunches of his horse. Luckily, the boy was a good rider--a fact which Flynn seemed to thoroughly appreciate--or he would have been unseated a dozen times.
At last the straggling sheds of Buckeye Mills came into softer purple view on the opposite mountain. Then laying his hand on Clarence's shoulder as he reined in at his side, Flynn broke the silence.
“There, boy,” he said, wiping the mirthful tears from his eyes. “I was only foolin'--only tryin' yer grit! This yer cousin I'm taking you to be as quiet and soft-spoken and as old-fashioned ez you be. Why, he's that wrapped up in books and study that he lives alone in a big adobe rancherie among a lot o' Spanish, and he don't keer to see his own countrymen! Why, he's even changed his name, and calles himself Don Juan Robinson! But he's very rich; he owns three leagues of land and heaps of cattle and horses, and,” glancing approvingly at Clarence's seat in the saddle, “I reckon you'll hev plenty of fun thar.”
“But,” hesitated Clarence, to whom this proposal seemed only a repetition of Peyton's charitable offer, “I think I'd better stay here and dig gold--WITH YOU.”
“And I think you'd better not,” said the man, with a gravity that was very like a settled determination.
“But my cousin never came for me to Sacramento--nor sent, nor even wrote,” persisted Clarence indignantly.
“Not to YOU, boy; but he wrote to the man whom he reckoned would bring you there--Jack Silsbee--and left it in the care of the bank. And Silsbee, being dead, didn't come for the letter; and as you didn't ask for it when you came, and didn't even mention Silsbee's name, that same letter was sent back to your cousin through me, because the bank thought we knew his whereabouts. It came to the gulch by an express rider, whilst you were prospectin' on the hillside. Rememberin' your story, I took the liberty of opening it, and found out that your cousin had told Silsbee to bring you straight to him. So I'm only doin' now what Silsbee would have done.”
Any momentary doubt or suspicion that might have risen in Clarence's mind vanished as he met his companion's steady and masterful eye. Even his disappointment was forgotten in the charm of this new-found friendship and protection. And as its outset had been marked by an unusual burst of confidence on Clarence's part, the boy, in his gratitude, now felt something of the timid shyness of a deeper feeling, and once more became reticent.
They were in time to snatch a hasty meal at Buckeye Mills before the stage arrived, and Clarence noticed that his friend, despite his rough dress and lawless aspect, provoked a marked degree of respect from those he met--in which, perhaps, a wholesome fear was mingled. It is certain that the two best places in the stage were given up to them without protest, and that a careless, almost supercilious invitation to drink from Flynn was responded to with singular alacrity by all, including even two fastidiously dressed and previously reserved passengers. I am afraid that Clarence enjoyed this proof of his friend's singular dominance with a boyish pride, and, conscious of the curious eyes of the passengers, directed occasionally to himself, was somewhat ostentatious in his familiarity with this bearded autocrat.
At noon the next day they left the stage at a wayside road station, and Flynn briefly informed Clarence that they must again take horses. This at first seemed difficult in that out-of-the-way settlement, where they alone had stopped, but a whisper from the driver in the ear of the station-master produced a couple of fiery mustangs, with the same accompaniment of cautious awe and mystery. For the next two days they traveled on horseback, resting by night at the lodgings of one or other of Flynn's friends in the outskirts of a large town, where they arrived in the darkness, and left before day. To any one more experienced than the simple-minded boy it would have been evident that Flynn was purposely avoiding the more traveled roads and conveyances; and when they changed horses again the next day's ride was through an apparently unbroken wilderness of scattered wood and rolling plain. Yet to Clarence, with his pantheistic reliance and joyous sympathy with nature, the change was filled with exhilarating pleasure. The vast seas of tossing wild oats, the hillside still variegated with strange flowers, the virgin freshness of untrodden woods and leafy aisles, whose floors of moss or bark were undisturbed by human footprint, were a keen delight and novelty. More than this, his quick eye, trained perceptions, and frontier knowledge now stood him in good stead. His intuitive sense of distance, instincts of woodcraft, and his unerring detection of those signs, landmarks, and guideposts of nature, undistinguishable to aught but birds and beasts and some children, were now of the greatest service to his less favored companion. In this part of their strange pilgrimage it was the boy who took the lead. Flynn, who during the past two days seemed to have fallen into a mood of watchful reserve, nodded his approbation. “This sort of thing's yer best holt, boy,” he said. “Men and cities ain't your little game.”
At the next stopping-place Clarence had a surprise. They had again entered a town at nightfall, and lodged with another friend of Flynn's in rooms which from vague sounds appeared to be over a gambling saloon. Clarence woke late in the morning, and, descending into the street to mount for the day's journey, was startled to find that Flynn was not on the other horse, but that a well-dressed and handsome stranger had taken his place. But a laugh, and the familiar command, “Jump up, boy,” made him look again. It WAS Flynn, but completely shaven of beard and mustache, closely clipped of hair, and in a fastidiously cut suit of black!
“Then you didn't know me?” said Flynn.
“Not till you spoke,” replied Clarence.
“So much the better,” said his friend sententiously, as he put spurs to his horse. But as they cantered through the street, Clarence, who had already become accustomed to the stranger's hirsute adornment, felt a little more awe of him. The profile of the mouth and chin now exposed to his sidelong glance was hard and stern, and slightly saturnine. Although unable at the time to identify it with anybody he had ever known, it seemed to the imaginative boy to be vaguely connected with some sad experience. But the eyes were thoughtful and kindly, and the boy later believed that if he had been more familiar with the face he would have loved it better. For it was the last and only day he was to see it, as, late that afternoon, after a dusty ride along more traveled highways, they reached their journey's end.
It was a low-walled house, with red-tiled roofs showing against the dark green of venerable pear and fig trees, and a square court-yard in the centre, where they had dismounted. A few words in Spanish from Flynn to one of the lounging peons admitted them to a wooden corridor, and thence to a long, low room, which to Clarence's eyes seemed literally piled with books and engravings. Here Flynn hurriedly bade him stay while he sought the host in another part of the building. But Clarence did not miss him; indeed, it may be feared, he forgot even the object of their journey in the new sensations that suddenly thronged upon him, and the boyish vista of the future that they seemed to open. He was dazed and intoxicated. He had never seen so many books before; he had never conceived of such lovely pictures. And yet in some vague way he thought he must have dreamt of them at some time. He had mounted a chair, and was gazing spellbound at an engraving of a sea-fight when he heard Flynn's voice.
His friend had quietly reentered the room, in company with an oldish, half-foreign-looking man, evidently his relation. With no helping recollection, with no means of comparison beyond a vague idea that his cousin might look like himself, Clarence stood hopelessly before him. He had already made up his mind that he would have to go through the usual cross-questioning in regard to his father and family; he had even forlornly thought of inventing some innocent details to fill out his imperfect and unsatisfactory recollection. But, glancing up, he was surprised to find that his elderly cousin was as embarrassed as he was, Flynn, as usual, masterfully interposed.
“Of course ye don't remember each other, and thar ain't much that either of you knows about family matters, I reckon,” he said grimly; “and as your cousin calls himself Don Juan Robinson,” he added to Clarence, “it's just as well that you let 'Jackson Brant' slide. I know him better than you, but you'll get used to him, and he to you, soon enough. At least, you'd better,” he concluded, with his singular gravity.
As he turned as if to leave the room with Clarence's embarrassed relative--much to that gentleman's apparent relief--the boy looked up at the latter and said timidly-- “May I look at those books?”
His cousin stopped, and glanced at him with the first expression of interest he had shown.
“Ah, you read; you like books?”
“Yes,” said Clarence. As his cousin remained still looking at him thoughtfully, he added, “My hands are pretty clean, but I can wash them first, if you like.”
“You may look at them,” said Don Juan smilingly; “and as they are old books you can wash your hands afterwards.” And, turning to Flynn suddenly, with an air of relief, “I tell you what I'll do--I'll teach him Spanish!”
They left the room together, and Clarence turned eagerly to the shelves. They were old books, some indeed very old, queerly bound, and worm-eaten. Some were in foreign languages, but others in clear, bold English type, with quaint wood-cuts and illustrations. One seemed to be a chronicle of battles and sieges, with pictured representations of combatants spitted with arrows, cleanly lopped off in limb, or toppled over distinctly by visible cannon-shot. He was deep in its perusal when he heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs in the court-yard and the voice of Flynn. He ran to the window, and was astonished to see his friend already on horseback, taking leave of his host.
For one instant Clarence felt one of those sudden revulsions of feeling common to his age, but which he had always timidly hidden under dogged demeanor. Flynn, his only friend! Flynn, his only boyish confidant! Flynn, his latest hero, was going away and forsaking him without a word of parting! It was true that he had only agreed to take him to his guardian, but still Flynn need not have left him without a word of hope or encouragement! With any one else Clarence would probably have taken refuge in his usual Indian stoicism, but the same feeling that had impelled him to offer Flynn his boyish confidences on their first meeting now overpowered him. He dropped his book, ran out into the corridor, and made his way to the court-yard, just as Flynn galloped out from the arch.
But the boy uttered a despairing shout that reached the rider. He drew rein, wheeled, halted, and sat facing Clarence impatiently. To add to Clarence's embarrassment his cousin had lingered in the corridor, attracted by the interruption, and a peon, lounging in the archway, obsequiously approached Flynn's bridle-rein. But the rider waved him off, and, turning sternly to Clarence, said:-- “What's the matter now?”
“Nothing,” said Clarence, striving to keep back the hot tears that rose in his eyes. “But you were going away without saying 'good-by.' You've been very kind to me, and--and--I want to thank you!”
A deep flush crossed Flynn's face. Then glancing suspiciously towards the corridor, he said hurriedly,-- “Did HE send you?”
“No, I came myself. I heard you going.”
“All right. Good-by.” He leaned forward as if about to take Clarence's outstretched hand, checked himself suddenly with a grim smile, and taking from his pocket a gold coin handed it to the boy.
Clarence took it, tossed it with a proud gesture to the waiting peon, who caught it thankfully, drew back a step from Flynn, and saying, with white cheeks, “I only wanted to say good-by,” dropped his hot eyes to the ground. But it did not seem to be his own voice that had spoken, nor his own self that had prompted the act.
There was a quick interchange of glances between the departing guest and his late host, in which Flynn's eyes flashed with an odd, admiring fire, but when Clarence raised his head again he was gone. And as the boy turned back with a broken heart towards the corridor, his cousin laid his hand upon his shoulder.
“Muy hidalgamente, Clarence,” he said pleasantly. “Yes, we shall make something of you!”
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{
"id": "2279"
}
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Then followed to Clarence three uneventful years. During that interval he learnt that Jackson Brant, or Don Juan Robinson--for the tie of kinship was the least factor in their relations to each other, and after the departure of Flynn was tacitly ignored by both--was more Spanish than American. An early residence in Lower California, marriage with a rich Mexican widow, whose dying childless left him sole heir, and some strange restraining idiosyncrasy of temperament had quite denationalized him. A bookish recluse, somewhat superfastidious towards his own countrymen, the more Clarence knew him the more singular appeared his acquaintance with Flynn; but as he did not exhibit more communicativeness on this point than upon their own kinship, Clarence finally concluded that it was due to the dominant character of his former friend, and thought no more about it. He entered upon the new life at El Refugio with no disturbing past. Quickly adapting himself to the lazy freedom of this hacienda existence, he spent the mornings on horseback ranging the hills among his cousin's cattle, and the afternoons and evenings busied among his cousin's books with equally lawless and undisciplined independence. The easy-going Don Juan, it is true, attempted to make good his rash promise to teach the boy Spanish, and actually set him a few tasks; but in a few weeks the quick-witted Clarence acquired such a colloquial proficiency from his casual acquaintance with vaqueros and small traders that he was glad to leave the matter in his young kinsman's hands. Again, by one of those illogical sequences which make a lifelong reputation depend upon a single trivial act, Clarence's social status was settled forever at El Refugio Rancho by his picturesque diversion of Flynn's parting gift. The grateful peon to whom the boy had scornfully tossed the coin repeated the act, gesture, and spirit of the scene to his companion, and Don Juan's unknown and youthful relation was at once recognized as hijo de la familia, and undeniably a hidalgo born and bred. But in the more vivid imagination of feminine El Refugio the incident reached its highest poetic form. “It is true, Mother of God,” said Chucha of the Mill; “it was Domingo who himself relates it as it were the Creed. When the American escort had arrived with the young gentleman, this escort, look you, being not of the same quality, he is departing again without a word of permission. Comes to him at this moment my little hidalgo. 'You have yourself forgotten to take from me your demission,' he said. This escort, thinking to make his peace with a mere muchacho, gives to him a gold piece of twenty pesos. The little hidalgo has taken it SO, and with the words, 'Ah! you would make of me your almoner to my cousin's people,' has given it at the moment to Domingo, and with a grace and fire admirable.” But it is certain that Clarence's singular simplicity and truthfulness, a faculty of being picturesquely indolent in a way that suggested a dreamy abstraction of mind rather than any vulgar tendency to bodily ease and comfort, and possibly the fact that he was a good horseman, made him a popular hero at El Refugio. At the end of three years Don Juan found that this inexperienced and apparently idle boy of fourteen knew more of the practical ruling of the rancho than he did himself; also that this unlettered young rustic had devoured nearly all the books in his library with boyish recklessness of digestion. He found, too, that in spite of his singular independence of action, Clarence was possessed of an invincible loyalty of principle, and that, asking no sentimental affection, and indeed yielding none, he was, without presuming on his relationship, devoted to his cousin's interest. It seemed that from being a glancing ray of sunshine in the house, evasive but never obtrusive, he had become a daily necessity of comfort and security to his benefactor.
Clarence was, however, astonished, when, one morning, Don Juan, with the same embarrassed manner he had shown at their first meeting, suddenly asked him, “what business he expected to follow.” It seemed the more singular, as the speaker, like most abstracted men, had hitherto always studiously ignored the future, in their daily intercourse. Yet this might have been either the habit of security or the caution of doubt. Whatever it was, it was some sudden disturbance of Don Juan's equanimity, as disconcerting to himself as it was to Clarence. So conscious was the boy of this that, without replying to his cousin's question, but striving in vain to recall some delinquency of his own, he asked, with his usual boyish directness-- “Has anything happened? Have I done anything wrong?”
“No, no,” returned Don Juan hurriedly. “But, you see, it's time that you should think of your future--or at least prepare for it. I mean you ought to have some more regular education. You will have to go to school. It's too bad,” he added fretfully, with a certain impatient forgetfulness of Clarence's presence, and as if following his own thought. “Just as you are becoming of service to me, and justifying your ridiculous position here--and all this d--d nonsense that's gone before--I mean, of course, Clarence,” he interrupted himself, catching sight of the boy's whitening cheek and darkening eye, “I mean, you know--this ridiculousness of my keeping you from school at your age, and trying to teach you myself--don't you see.”
“You think it is--ridiculous,” repeated Clarence, with dogged persistency.
“I mean I am ridiculous,” said Don Juan hastily. “There! there! let's say no more about it. To-morrow we'll ride over to San Jose and see the Father Secretary at the Jesuits' College about your entering at once. It's a good school, and you'll always be near the rancho!” And so the interview ended.
I am afraid that Clarence's first idea was to run away. There are few experiences more crushing to an ingenuous nature than the sudden revelation of the aspect in which it is regarded by others. The unfortunate Clarence, conscious only of his loyalty to his cousin's interest and what he believed were the duties of his position, awoke to find that position “ridiculous.” In an afternoon's gloomy ride through the lonely hills, and later in the sleepless solitude of his room at night, he concluded that his cousin was right. He would go to school; he would study hard--so hard that in a little, a very little while, he could make a living for himself. He awoke contented. It was the blessing of youth that this resolve and execution seemed as one and the same thing.
The next day found him installed as a pupil and boarder in the college. Don Juan's position and Spanish predilections naturally made his relation acceptable to the faculty; but Clarence could not help perceiving that Father Sobriente, the Principal, regarded him at times with a thoughtful curiosity that made him suspect that his cousin had especially bespoken that attention, and that he occasionally questioned him on his antecedents in a way that made him dread a renewal of the old questioning about his progenitor. For the rest, he was a polished, cultivated man; yet, in the characteristic, material criticism of youth, I am afraid that Clarence chiefly identified him as a priest with large hands, whose soft palms seemed to be cushioned with kindness, and whose equally large feet, encased in extraordinary shapeless shoes of undyed leather, seemed to tread down noiselessly--rather than to ostentatiously crush--the obstacles that beset the path of the young student. In the cloistered galleries of the court-yard Clarence sometimes felt himself borne down by the protecting weight of this paternal hand; in the midnight silence of the dormitory he fancied he was often conscious of the soft browsing tread and snuffly muffled breathing of his elephantine-footed mentor.
His relations with his school-fellows were at first far from pleasant. Whether they suspected favoritism; whether they resented that old and unsympathetic manner which sprang from his habits of association with his elders; or whether they rested their objections on the broader grounds of his being a stranger, I do not know, but they presently passed from cruel sneers to physical opposition. It was then found that this gentle and reserved youth had retained certain objectionable, rude, direct, rustic qualities of fist and foot, and that, violating all rules and disdaining the pomp and circumstance of school-boy warfare, of which he knew nothing, he simply thrashed a few of his equals out of hand, with or without ceremony, as the occasion or the insult happened. In this emergency one of the seniors was selected to teach this youthful savage his proper position. A challenge was given, and accepted by Clarence with a feverish alacrity that surprised himself as much as his adversary. This was a youth of eighteen, his superior in size and skill.
The first blow bathed Clarence's face in his own blood. But the sanguinary chrism, to the alarm of the spectators, effected an instantaneous and unhallowed change in the boy. Instantly closing with his adversary, he sprang at his throat like an animal, and locking his arm around his neck began to strangle him. Blind to the blows that rained upon him, he eventually bore his staggering enemy by sheer onset and surprise to the earth. Amidst the general alarm, the strength of half a dozen hastily summoned teachers was necessary to unlock his hold. Even then he struggled to renew the conflict. But his adversary had disappeared, and from that day forward Clarence was never again molested.
Seated before Father Sobriente in the infirmary, with swollen and bandaged face, and eyes that still seemed to see everything in the murky light of his own blood, Clarence felt the soft weight of the father's hand upon his knee.
“My son,” said the priest gently, “you are not of our religion, or I should claim as a right to ask a question of your own heart at this moment. But as to a good friend, Claro, a good friend,” he continued, patting the boy's knee, “you will tell me, old Father Sobriente, frankly and truthfully, as is your habit, one little thing. Were you not afraid?”
“No,” said Clarence doggedly. “I'll lick him again to-morrow.”
“Softly, my son! It was not of HIM I speak, but of something more terrible and awful. Were you not afraid of--of--” he paused, and suddenly darting his clear eyes into the very depths of Clarence's soul, added--“of YOURSELF?”
The boy started, shuddered, and burst into tears.
“So, so,” said the priest gently, “we have found our real enemy. Good! Now, by the grace of God, my little warrior, we shall fight HIM and conquer.”
Whether Clarence profited by this lesson, or whether this brief exhibition of his quality prevented any repetition of the cause, the episode was soon forgotten. As his school-fellows had never been his associates or confidants, it mattered little to him whether they feared or respected him, or were hypocritically obsequious, after the fashion of the weaker. His studies, at all events, profited by this lack of distraction. Already his two years of desultory and omnivorous reading had given him a facile familiarity with many things, which left him utterly free of the timidity, awkwardness, or non-interest of a beginner. His usually reserved manner, which had been lack of expression rather than of conviction, had deceived his tutors. The audacity of a mind that had never been dominated by others, and owed no allegiance to precedent, made his merely superficial progress something marvelous.
At the end of the first year he was a phenomenal scholar, who seemed capable of anything. Nevertheless, Father Sobriente had an interview with Don Juan, and as a result Clarence was slightly kept back in his studies, a little more freedom from the rules was conceded to him, and he was even encouraged to take some diversion. Of such was the privilege to visit the neighboring town of Santa Clara unrestricted and unattended. He had always been liberally furnished with pocket-money, for which, in his companionless state and Spartan habits, he had a singular and unboyish contempt. Nevertheless, he always appeared dressed with scrupulous neatness, and was rather distinguished-looking in his older reserve and melancholy self-reliance.
Lounging one afternoon along the Alameda, a leafy avenue set out by the early Mission Fathers between the village of San Jose and the convent of Santa Clara, he saw a double file of young girls from the convent approaching, on their usual promenade. A view of this procession being the fondest ambition of the San Jose collegian, and especially interdicted and circumvented by the good Fathers attending the college excursions, Clarence felt for it the profound indifference of a boy who, in the intermediate temperate zone of fifteen years, thinks that he is no longer young and romantic! He was passing them with a careless glance, when a pair of deep violet eyes caught his own under the broad shade of a coquettishly beribboned hat, even as it had once looked at him from the depths of a calico sunbonnet. Susy! He started, and would have spoken; but with a quick little gesture of caution and a meaning glance at the two nuns who walked at the head and foot of the file, she indicated him to follow. He did so at a respectful distance, albeit wondering. A little further on Susy dropped her handkerchief, and was obliged to dart out and run back to the end of the file to recover it. But she gave another swift glance of her blue eyes as she snatched it up and demurely ran back to her place. The procession passed on, but when Clarence reached the spot where she had paused he saw a three-cornered bit of paper lying in the grass. He was too discreet to pick it up while the girls were still in sight, but continued on, returning to it later. It contained a few words in a schoolgirl's hand, hastily scrawled in pencil: “Come to the south wall near the big pear-tree at six.”
Delighted as Clarence felt, he was at the same time embarrassed. He could not understand the necessity of this mysterious rendezvous. He knew that if she was a scholar she was under certain conventual restraints; but with the privileges of his position and friendship with his teachers, he believed that Father Sobriente would easily procure him an interview with this old play-fellow, of whom he had often spoken, and who was, with himself, the sole survivor of his tragical past. And trusted as he was by Sobriente, there was something in this clandestine though innocent rendezvous that went against his loyalty. Nevertheless, he kept the appointment, and at the stated time was at the south wall of the convent, over which the gnarled boughs of the distinguishing pear-tree hung. Hard by in the wall was a grated wicket door that seemed unused.
Would she appear among the boughs or on the edge of the wall? Either would be like the old Susy. But to his surprise he heard the sound of the key turning in the lock. The grated door suddenly swung on its hinges, and Susy slipped out. Grasping his hand, she said, “Let's run, Clarence,” and before he could reply she started off with him at a rapid pace. Down the lane they flew--very much, as it seemed to Clarence's fancy, as they had flown from the old emigrant wagon on the prairie, four years before. He glanced at the fluttering, fairy-like figure beside him. She had grown taller and more graceful; she was dressed in exquisite taste, with a minuteness of luxurious detail that bespoke the spoilt child; but there was the same prodigal outburst of rippling, golden hair down her back and shoulders, violet eyes, capricious little mouth, and the same delicate hands and feet he had remembered. He would have preferred a more deliberate survey, but with a shake of her head and an hysteric little laugh she only said, “Run, Clarence, run,” and again darted forward. Arriving at the cross-street, they turned the corner, and halted breathlessly.
“But you're not running away from school, Susy, are you?” said Clarence anxiously.
“Only a little bit. Just enough to get ahead of the other girls,” she said, rearranging her brown curls and tilted hat. “You see, Clarence,” she condescended to explain, with a sudden assumption of older superiority, “mother's here at the hotel all this week, and I'm allowed to go home every night, like a day scholar. Only there's three or four other girls that go out at the same time with me, and one of the Sisters, and to-day I got ahead of 'em just to see YOU.”
“But” began Clarence.
“Oh, it's all right; the other girls knew it, and helped me. They don't start out for half an hour yet, and they'll say I've just run ahead, and when they and the Sister get to the hotel I'll be there already--don't you see?”
“Yes,” said Clarence dubiously.
“And we'll go to an ice-cream saloon now, shan't we? There's a nice one near the hotel. I've got some money,” she added quickly, as Clarence looked embarrassed.
“So have I,” said Clarence, with a faint accession of color. “Let's go!” She had relinquished his hand to smooth out her frock, and they were walking side by side at a more moderate pace. “But,” he continued, clinging to his first idea with masculine persistence, and anxious to assure his companion of his power, of his position, “I'm in the college, and Father Sobriente, who knows your lady superior, is a good friend of mine and gives me privileges; and--and--when he knows that you and I used to play together--why, he'll fix it that we may see each other whenever we want.”
“Oh, you silly!” said Susy. “WHAT! --when you're--” “When I'm WHAT?”
The young girl shot a violet blue ray from under her broad hat. “Why--when we're grown up now?” Then with a certain precision, “Why, they're VERY particular about young gentlemen! Why, Clarence, if they suspected that you and I were--” Another violet ray from under the hat completed this unfinished sentence.
Pleased and yet confused, Clarence looked straight ahead with deepening color. “Why,” continued Susy, “Mary Rogers, that was walking with me, thought you were ever so old--and a distinguished Spaniard! And I,” she said abruptly--“haven't I grown? Tell me, Clarence,” with her old appealing impatience, “haven't I grown? Do tell me!”
“Very much,” said Clarence.
“And isn't this frock pretty--it's only my second best--but I've a prettier one with lace all down in front; but isn't this one pretty, Clarence, tell me?”
Clarence thought the frock and its fair owner perfection, and said so. Whereat Susy, as if suddenly aware of the presence of passers-by, assumed an air of severe propriety, dropped her hands by her side, and with an affected conscientiousness walked on, a little further from Clarence's side, until they reached the ice-cream saloon.
“Get a table near the back, Clarence,” she said, in a confidential whisper, “where they can't see us--and strawberry, you know, for the lemon and vanilla here are just horrid!”
They took their seats in a kind of rustic arbor in the rear of the shop, which gave them the appearance of two youthful but somewhat over-dressed and over-conscious shepherds. There was an interval of slight awkwardness, which Susy endeavored to displace. “There has been,” she remarked, with easy conversational lightness, “quite an excitement about our French teacher being changed. The girls in our class think it most disgraceful.”
And this was all she could say after a separation of four years! Clarence was desperate, but as yet idealess and voiceless. At last, with an effort over his spoon, he gasped a floating recollection: “Do you still like flapjacks, Susy?”
“Oh, yes,” with a laugh, “but we don't have them now.”
“And Mose” (a black pointer, who used to yelp when Susy sang), “does he still sing with you?”
“Oh, HE'S been lost ever so long,” said Susy composedly; “but I've got a Newfoundland and a spaniel and a black pony;” and here, with a rapid inventory of her other personal effects, she drifted into some desultory details of the devotion of her adopted parents, whom she now readily spoke of as “papa” and “mamma,” with evidently no disturbing recollection of the dead. From which it appeared that the Peytons were very rich, and, in addition to their possessions in the lower country, owned a rancho in Santa Clara and a house in San Francisco. Like all children, her strongest impressions were the most recent. In the vain hope to lead her back to this material yesterday, he said-- “You remember Jim Hooker?”
“Oh, HE ran away, when you left. But just think of it! The other day, when papa and I went into a big restaurant in San Francisco, who should be there WAITING on the table--yes, Clarence, a real waiter--but Jim Hooker! Papa spoke to him; but of course,” with a slight elevation of her pretty chin, “I couldn't, you know; fancy--a waiter!”
The story of how Jim Hooker had personated him stopped short upon Clarence's lips. He could not bring himself now to add that revelation to the contempt of his small companion, which, in spite of its naivete, somewhat grated on his sensibilities.
“Clarence,” she said, suddenly turning towards him mysteriously, and indicating the shopman and his assistants, “I really believe these people suspect us.”
“Of what?” said the practical Clarence.
“Don't be silly! Don't you see how they are staring?”
Clarence was really unable to detect the least curiosity on the part of the shopman, or that any one exhibited the slightest concern in him or his companion. But he felt a return of the embarrassed pleasure he was conscious of a moment before.
“Then you're living with your father?” said Susy, changing the subject.
“You mean my COUSIN,” said Clarence, smiling. “You know my father died long before I ever knew you.”
“Yes; that's what YOU used to say, Clarence, but papa says it isn't so.” But seeing the boy's wondering eyes fixed on her with a troubled expression, she added quickly, “Oh, then, he IS your cousin!”
“Well, I think I ought to know,” said Clarence, with a smile, that was, however, far from comfortable, and a quick return of his old unpleasant recollections of the Peytons. “Why, I was brought to him by one of his friends.” And Clarence gave a rapid boyish summary of his journey from Sacramento, and Flynn's discovery of the letter addressed to Silsbee. But before he had concluded he was conscious that Susy was by no means interested in these details, nor in the least affected by the passing allusion to her dead father and his relation to Clarence's misadventures. With her rounded chin in her hand, she was slowly examining his face, with a certain mischievous yet demure abstraction. “I tell you what, Clarence,” she said, when he had finished, “you ought to make your cousin get you one of those sombreros, and a nice gold-braided serape. They'd just suit you. And then--then you could ride up and down the Alameda when we are going by.”
“But I'm coming to see you at--at your house, and at the convent,” he said eagerly. “Father Sobriente and my cousin will fix it all right.”
But Susy shook her head, with superior wisdom. “No; they must never know our secret! --neither papa nor mamma, especially mamma. And they mustn't know that we've met again--AFTER THESE YEARS!” It is impossible to describe the deep significance which Susy's blue eyes gave to this expression. After a pause she went on-- “No! We must never meet again, Clarence, unless Mary Rogers helps. She is my best, my ONLIEST friend, and older than I; having had trouble herself, and being expressly forbidden to see him again. You can speak to her about Suzette--that's my name now; I was rechristened Suzette Alexandra Peyton by mamma. And now, Clarence,” dropping her voice and glancing shyly around the saloon, “you may kiss me just once under my hat, for good-by.” She adroitly slanted her broad-brimmed hat towards the front of the shop, and in its shadow advanced her fresh young cheek to Clarence.
Coloring and laughing, the boy pressed his lips to it twice. Then Susy arose, with the faintest affectation of a sigh, shook out her skirt, drew on her gloves with the greatest gravity, and saying, “Don't follow me further than the door--they're coming now,” walked with supercilious dignity past the preoccupied proprietor and waiters to the entrance. Here she said, with marked civility, “Good-afternoon, Mr. Brant,” and tripped away towards the hotel. Clarence lingered for a moment to look after the lithe and elegant little figure, with its shining undulations of hair that fell over the back and shoulders of her white frock like a golden mantle, and then turned away in the opposite direction.
He walked home in a state, as it seemed to him, of absurd perplexity. There were many reasons why his encounter with Susy should have been of unmixed pleasure. She had remembered him of her own free will, and, in spite of the change in her fortune, had made the first advances. Her doubts about her future interviews had affected him but little; still less, I fear, did he think of the other changes in her character and disposition, for he was of that age when they added only a piquancy and fascination to her--as of one who, in spite of her weakness of nature, was still devoted to him! But he was painfully conscious that this meeting had revived in him all the fears, vague uneasiness, and sense of wrong that had haunted his first boyhood, and which he thought he had buried at El Refugio four years ago. Susy's allusion to his father and the reiteration of Peyton's skepticism awoke in his older intellect the first feeling of suspicion that was compatible with his open nature. Was this recurring reticence and mystery due to any act of his father's? But, looking back upon it in after-years, he concluded that the incident of that day was a premonition rather than a recollection.
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{
"id": "2279"
}
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When he reached the college the Angelus had long since rung. In the corridor he met one of the Fathers, who, instead of questioning him, returned his salutation with a grave gentleness that struck him. He had turned into Father Sobriente's quiet study with the intention of reporting himself, when he was disturbed to find him in consultation with three or four of the faculty, who seemed to be thrown into some slight confusion by his entrance. Clarence was about to retire hurriedly when Father Sobriente, breaking up the council with a significant glance at the others, called him back. Confused and embarrassed, with a dread of something impending, the boy tried to avert it by a hurried account of his meeting with Susy, and his hopes of Father Sobriente's counsel and assistance. Taking upon himself the idea of suggesting Susy's escapade, he confessed the fault. The old man gazed into his frank eyes with a thoughtful, half-compassionate smile. “I was just thinking of giving you a holiday with--with Don Juan Robinson.” The unusual substitution of this final title for the habitual “your cousin” struck Clarence uneasily. “But we will speak of that later. Sit down, my son; I am not busy. We shall talk a little. Father Pedro says you are getting on fluently with your translations. That is excellent, my son, excellent.”
Clarence's face beamed with relief and pleasure. His vague fears began to dissipate.
“And you translate even from dictation! Good! We have an hour to spare, and you shall give to me a specimen of your skill. Eh? Good! I will walk here and dictate to you in my poor English, and you shall sit there and render it to me in your good Spanish. Eh? So we shall amuse and instruct ourselves.”
Clarence smiled. These sporadic moments of instruction and admonition were not unusual to the good Father. He cheerfully seated himself at the Padre's table before a blank sheet of paper, with a pen in his hand. Father Sobriente paced the apartment, with his usual heavy but noiseless tread. To his surprise, the good priest, after an exhaustive pinch of snuff, blew his nose, and began, in his most lugubrious style of pulpit exhortation:-- “It has been written that the sins of the father shall be visited upon the children, and the unthinking and worldly have sought refuge from this law by declaring it harsh and cruel. Miserable and blind! For do we not see that the wicked man, who in the pride of his power and vainglory is willing to risk punishment to HIMSELF--and believes it to be courage--must pause before the awful mandate that condemns an equal suffering to those he loves, which he cannot withhold or suffer for? In the spectacle of these innocents struggling against disgrace, perhaps disease, poverty, or desertion, what avails his haughty, all-defying spirit? Let us imagine, Clarence.”
“Sir?” said the literal Clarence, pausing in his exercise.
“I mean,” continued the priest, with a slight cough, “let the thoughtful man picture a father: a desperate, self-willed man, who scorned the laws of God and society--keeping only faith with a miserable subterfuge he called 'honor,' and relying only on his own courage and his knowledge of human weakness. Imagine him cruel and bloody--a gambler by profession, an outlaw among men, an outcast from the Church; voluntarily abandoning friends and family,--the wife he should have cherished, the son he should have reared and educated--for the gratification of his deadly passions. Yet imagine that man suddenly confronted with the thought of that heritage of shame and disgust which he had brought upon his innocent offspring--to whom he cannot give even his own desperate recklessness to sustain its vicarious suffering. What must be the feelings of a parent--” “Father Sobriente,” said Clarence softly.
To the boy's surprise, scarcely had he spoken when the soft protecting palm of the priest was already upon his shoulder, and the snuffy but kindly upper lip, trembling with some strange emotion, close beside his cheek.
“What is it, Clarence?” he said hurriedly. “Speak, my son, without fear! You would ask--” “I only wanted to know if 'padre' takes a masculine verb here,” replied Clarence naively.
Father Sobriente blew his nose violently. “Truly--though used for either gender, by the context masculine,” he responded gravely. “Ah,” he added, leaning over Clarence, and scanning his work hastily, “Good, very good! And now, possibly,” he continued, passing his hand like a damp sponge over his heated brow, “we shall reverse our exercise. I shall deliver to you in Spanish what you shall render back in English, eh? And--let us consider--we shall make something more familiar and narrative, eh?”
To this Clarence, somewhat bored by these present solemn abstractions, assented gladly, and took up his pen. Father Sobriente, resuming his noiseless pacing, began: “On the fertile plains of Guadalajara lived a certain caballero, possessed of flocks and lands, and a wife and son. But, being also possessed of a fiery and roving nature, he did not value them as he did perilous adventure, feats of arms, and sanguinary encounters. To this may be added riotous excesses, gambling and drunkenness, which in time decreased his patrimony, even as his rebellious and quarrelsome spirit had alienated his family and neighbors. His wife, borne down by shame and sorrow, died while her son was still an infant. In a fit of equal remorse and recklessness the caballero married again within the year. But the new wife was of a temper and bearing as bitter as her consort. Violent quarrels ensued between them, ending in the husband abandoning his wife and son, and leaving St. Louis--I should say Guadalajara--for ever. Joining some adventurers in a foreign land, under an assumed name, he pursued his reckless course, until, by one or two acts of outlawry, he made his return to civilization impossible. The deserted wife and step-mother of his child coldly accepted the situation, forbidding his name to be spoken again in her presence, announced that he was dead, and kept the knowledge of his existence from his own son, whom she placed under the charge of her sister. But the sister managed to secretly communicate with the outlawed father, and, under a pretext, arranged between them, of sending the boy to another relation, actually dispatched the innocent child to his unworthy parent. Perhaps stirred by remorse, the infamous man--” “Stop!” said Clarence suddenly.
He had thrown down his pen, and was standing erect and rigid before the Father.
“You are trying to tell me something, Father Sobriente,” he said, with an effort. “Speak out, I implore you. I can stand anything but this mystery. I am no longer a child. I have a right to know all. This that you are telling me is no fable--I see it in your face, Father Sobriente; it is the story of--of--” “Your father, Clarence!” said the priest, in a trembling voice.
The boy drew back, with a white face. “My father!” he repeated. “Living, or dead?”
“Living, when you first left your home,” said the old man hurriedly, seizing Clarence's hand, “for it was he who in the name of your cousin sent for you. Living--yes, while you were here, for it was he who for the past three years stood in the shadow of this assumed cousin, Don Juan, and at last sent you to this school. Living, Clarence, yes; but living under a name and reputation that would have blasted you! And now DEAD--dead in Mexico, shot as an insurgent and in a still desperate career! May God have mercy on his soul!”
“Dead!” repeated Clarence, trembling, “only now?”
“The news of the insurrection and his fate came only an hour since,” continued the Padre quickly; “his complicity with it and his identity were known only to Don Juan. He would have spared you any knowledge of the truth, even as this dead man would; but I and my brothers thought otherwise. I have broken it to you badly, my son, but forgive me?”
An hysterical laugh broke from Clarence and the priest recoiled before him. “Forgive YOU! What was this man to me?” he said, with boyish vehemence. “He never LOVED me! He deserted me; he made my life a lie. He never sought me, came near me, or stretched a hand to me that I could take?”
“Hush! hush!” said the priest, with a horrified look, laying his huge hand upon the boy's shoulder and bearing him down to his seat. “You know not what you say. Think--think, Clarence! Was there none of all those who have befriended you--who were kind to you in your wanderings--to whom your heart turned unconsciously? Think, Clarence! You yourself have spoken to me of such a one. Let your heart speak again, for his sake--for the sake of the dead.”
A gentler light suffused the boy's eyes, and he started. Catching convulsively at his companion's sleeve, he said in an eager, boyish whisper, “There was one, a wicked, desperate man, whom they all feared--Flynn, who brought me from the mines. Yes, I thought that he was my cousin's loyal friend--more than all the rest; and I told him everything--all, that I never told the man I thought my cousin, or anyone, or even you; and I think, I think, Father, I liked him best of all. I thought since it was wrong,” he continued, with a trembling smile, “for I was foolishly fond even of the way the others feared him, he that I feared not, and who was so kind to me. Yet he, too, left me without a word, and when I would have followed him--” But the boy broke down, and buried his face in his hands.
“No, no,” said Father Sobriente, with eager persistence, “that was his foolish pride to spare you the knowledge of your kinship with one so feared, and part of the blind and mistaken penance he had laid upon himself. For even at that moment of your boyish indignation, he never was so fond of you as then. Yes, my poor boy, this man, to whom God led your wandering feet at Deadman's Gulch; the man who brought you here, and by some secret hold--I know not what--on Don Juan's past, persuaded him to assume to be your relation; this man Flynn, this Jackson Brant the gambler, this Hamilton Brant the outlaw--WAS YOUR FATHER! Ah, yes! Weep on, my son; each tear of love and forgiveness from thee hath vicarious power to wash away his sin.”
With a single sweep of his protecting hand he drew Clarence towards his breast, until the boy slowly sank upon his knees at his feet. Then, lifting his eyes towards the ceiling, he said softly in an older tongue, “And THOU, too, unhappy and perturbed spirit, rest!”
* * * * * It was nearly dawn when the good Padre wiped the last tears from Clarence's clearer eyes. “And now, my son,” he said, with a gentle smile, as he rose to his feet, “let us not forget the living. Although your step-mother has, through her own act, no legal claim upon you, far be it from me to indicate your attitude towards her. Enough that YOU are independent.” He turned, and, opening a drawer in his secretaire, took out a bank-book, and placed it in the hands of the wondering boy.
“It was HIS wish, Clarence, that even after his death you should never have to prove your kinship to claim your rights. Taking advantage of the boyish deposit you had left with Mr. Carden at the bank, with his connivance and in your name he added to it, month by month and year by year; Mr. Carden cheerfully accepting the trust and management of the fund. The seed thus sown has produced a thousandfold, Clarence, beyond all expectations. You are not only free, my son, but of yourself and in whatever name you choose--your own master.”
“I shall keep my father's name,” said the boy simply.
“Amen!” said Father Sobriente.
Here closes the chronicle of Clarence Brant's boyhood. How he sustained his name and independence in after years, and who, of those already mentioned in these pages, helped him to make or mar it, may be a matter for future record.
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{
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When Alvin Mulrady announced his intention of growing potatoes and garden "truck" on the green slopes of Los Gatos, the mining community of that region, and the adjacent hamlet of "Rough-and-Ready," regarded it with the contemptuous indifference usually shown by those adventurers towards all bucolic pursuits. There was certainly no active objection to the occupation of two hillsides, which gave so little promise to the prospector for gold that it was currently reported that a single prospector, called "Slinn," had once gone mad or imbecile through repeated failures. The only opposition came, incongruously enough, from the original pastoral owner of the soil, one Don Ramon Alvarado, whose claim for seven leagues of hill and valley, including the now prosperous towns of Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog, was met with simple derision from the squatters and miners. "Looks ez ef we woz goin' to travel three thousand miles to open up his d--d old wilderness, and then pay for the increased valoo we give it--don't it? Oh, yes, certainly!" was their ironical commentary. Mulrady might have been pardoned for adopting this popular opinion; but by an equally incongruous sentiment, peculiar, however, to the man, he called upon Don Ramon, and actually offered to purchase the land, or "go shares" with him in the agricultural profits. It was alleged that the Don was so struck with this concession that he not only granted the land, but struck up a quaint reserved friendship for the simple-minded agriculturist and his family. It is scarcely necessary to add that this intimacy was viewed by the miners with the contempt that it deserved. They would have been more contemptuous, however, had they known the opinion that Don Ramon entertained of their particular vocation, and which he early confided to Mulrady.
"They are savages who expect to reap where they have not sown; to take out of the earth without returning anything to it but their precious carcasses; heathens, who worship the mere stones they dig up." "And was there no Spaniard who ever dug gold?" asked Mulrady, simply. "Ah, there are Spaniards and Moors," responded Don Ramon, sententiously. "Gold has been dug, and by caballeros; but no good ever came of it. There were Alvarados in Sonora, look you, who had mines of SILVER, and worked them with peons and mules, and lost their money--a gold mine to work a silver one--like gentlemen! But this grubbing in the dirt with one's fingers, that a little gold may stick to them, is not for caballeros. And then, one says nothing of the curse."
"The curse!" echoed Mary Mulrady, with youthful feminine superstition. "What is that?"
"You knew not, friend Mulrady, that when these lands were given to my ancestors by Charles V., the Bishop of Monterey laid a curse upon any who should desecrate them. Good! Let us see! Of the three Americanos who founded yonder town, one was shot, another died of a fever--poisoned, you understand, by the soil--and the last got himself crazy of aguardiente. Even the scientifico,[1] who came here years ago and spied into the trees and the herbs: he was afterwards punished for his profanation, and died of an accident in other lands. But," added Don Ramon, with grave courtesy, "this touches not yourself. Through me, YOU are of the soil."
Indeed, it would seem as if a secure if not a rapid prosperity was the result of Don Ramon's manorial patronage. The potato patch and market garden flourished exceedingly; the rich soil responded with magnificent vagaries of growth; the even sunshine set the seasons at defiance with extraordinary and premature crops. The salt pork and biscuit consuming settlers did not allow their contempt of Mulrady's occupation to prevent their profiting by this opportunity for changing their diet. The gold they had taken from the soil presently began to flow into his pockets in exchange for his more modest treasures. The little cabin, which barely sheltered his family--a wife, son, and daughter--was enlarged, extended, and refitted, but in turn abandoned for a more pretentious house on the opposite hill. A whitewashed fence replaced the rudely-split rails, which had kept out the wilderness. By degrees, the first evidences of cultivation--the gashes of red soil, the piles of brush and undergrowth, the bared boulders, and heaps of stone--melted away, and were lost under a carpet of lighter green, which made an oasis in the tawny desert of wild oats on the hillside. Water was the only free boon denied this Garden of Eden; what was necessary for irrigation had to be brought from a mining ditch at great expense, and was of insufficient quantity. In this emergency Mulrady thought of sinking an artesian well on the sunny slope beside his house; not, however, without serious consultation and much objection from his Spanish patron. With great austerity Don Ramon pointed out that this trifling with the entrails of the earth was not only an indignity to Nature almost equal to shaft-sinking and tunneling, but was a disturbance of vested interests. "I and my fathers, San Diego rest them!" said Don Ramon, crossing himself, "were content with wells and cisterns, filled by Heaven at its appointed seasons; the cattle, dumb brutes though they were, knew where to find water when they wanted it. But thou sayest truly," he added, with a sigh, "that was before streams and rain were choked with hellish engines, and poisoned with their spume. Go on, friend Mulrady, dig and bore if thou wilt, but in a seemly fashion, and not with impious earthquakes of devilish gunpowder."
With this concession Alvin Mulrady began to sink his first artesian shaft. Being debarred the auxiliaries of steam and gunpowder, the work went on slowly. The market garden did not suffer meantime, as Mulrady had employed two Chinamen to take charge of the ruder tillage, while he superintended the engineering work of the well. This trifling incident marked an epoch in the social condition of the family. Mrs. Mulrady at once assumed a conscious importance among her neighbors. She spoke of her husband's "men"; she alluded to the well as "the works"; she checked the easy frontier familiarity of her customers with pretty Mary Mulrady, her seventeen-year-old daughter. Simple Alvin Mulrady looked with astonishment at this sudden development of the germ planted in all feminine nature to expand in the slightest sunshine of prosperity. "Look yer, Malviny; ain't ye rather puttin' on airs with the boys that want to be civil to Mamie? Like as not one of 'em may be makin' up to her already." "You don't mean to say, Alvin Mulrady," responded Mrs. Mulrady, with sudden severity, "that you ever thought of givin' your daughter to a common miner, or that I'm goin' to allow her to marry out of our own set?" "Our own set!" echoed Mulrady feebly, blinking at her in astonishment, and then glancing hurriedly across at his freckle-faced son and the two Chinamen at work in the cabbages. "Oh, you know what I mean," said Mrs. Mulrady sharply; "the set that we move in. The Alvarados and their friends! Doesn't the old Don come here every day, and ain't his son the right age for Mamie? And ain't they the real first families here--all the same as if they were noblemen? No, leave Mamie to me, and keep to your shaft; there never was a man yet had the least sabe about these things, or knew what was due to his family." Like most of his larger minded, but feebler equipped sex, Mulrady was too glad to accept the truth of the latter proposition, which left the meannesses of life to feminine manipulation, and went off to his shaft on the hillside. But during that afternoon he was perplexed and troubled. He was too loyal a husband not to be pleased with this proof of an unexpected and superior foresight in his wife, although he was, like all husbands, a little startled by it. He tried to dismiss it from his mind. But looking down from the hillside upon his little venture, where gradual increase and prosperity had not been beyond his faculties to control and understand, he found himself haunted by the more ambitious projects of his helpmate. From his own knowledge of men, he doubted if Don Ramon, any more than himself, had ever thought of the possibility of a matrimonial connection between the families. He doubted if he would consent to it. And unfortunately it was this very doubt that, touching his own pride as a self-made man, made him first seriously consider his wife's proposition. He was as good as Don Ramon, any day! With this subtle feminine poison instilled in his veins, carried completely away by the logic of his wife's illogical premises, he almost hated his old benefactor. He looked down upon the little Garden of Eden, where his Eve had just tempted him with the fatal fruit, and felt a curious consciousness that he was losing its simple and innocent enjoyment forever.
Happily, about this time Don Ramon died. It is not probable that he ever knew the amiable intentions of Mrs. Mulrady in regard to his son, who now succeeded to the paternal estate, sadly partitioned by relatives and lawsuits. The feminine Mulradys attended the funeral, in expensive mourning from Sacramento; even the gentle Alvin was forced into ready-made broadcloth, which accented his good-natured but unmistakably common presence. Mrs. Mulrady spoke openly of her "loss"; declared that the old families were dying out; and impressed the wives of a few new arrivals at Red Dog with the belief that her own family was contemporary with the Alvarados, and that her husband's health was far from perfect. She extended a motherly sympathy to the orphaned Don Caesar. Reserved, like his father, in natural disposition, he was still more gravely ceremonious from his loss; and, perhaps from the shyness of an evident partiality for Mamie Mulrady, he rarely availed himself of her mother's sympathizing hospitality. But he carried out the intentions of his father by consenting to sell to Mulrady, for a small sum, the property he had leased. The idea of purchasing had originated with Mrs. Mulrady.
"It'll be all in the family," had observed that astute lady, "and it's better for the looks of the things that we shouldn't he his tenants."
It was only a few weeks later that she was startled by hearing her husband's voice calling her from the hillside as he rapidly approached the house. Mamie was in her room putting on a new pink cotton gown, in honor of an expected visit from young Don Caesar, and Mrs. Mulrady was tidying the house in view of the same event. Something in the tone of her good man's voice, and the unusual circumstance of his return to the house before work was done, caused her, however, to drop her dusting cloth, and run to the kitchen door to meet him. She saw him running through the rows of cabbages, his face shining with perspiration and excitement, a light in his eyes which she had not seen for years. She recalled, without sentiment, that he looked like that when she had called him--a poor farm hand of her father's--out of the brush heap at the back of their former home, in Illinois, to learn the consent of her parents. The recollection was the more embarrassing as he threw his arms around her, and pressed a resounding kiss upon her sallow cheek.
"Sakes alive! Mulrady!" she said, exorcising the ghost of a blush that had also been recalled from the past with her housewife's apron, "what are you doin', and company expected every minit?"
"Malviny, I've struck it; and struck it rich!"
She disengaged herself from his arms, without excitement, and looked at him with bright but shrewdly observant eyes.
"I've struck it in the well--the regular vein that the boys have been looking fer. There's a fortin' fer you and Mamie: thousands and tens of thousands!"
"Wait a minit."
She left him quickly, and went to the foot of the stairs. He could hear her wonderingly and distinctly. "Ye can take off that new frock, Mamie," she called out.
There was a sound of undisguised expostulation from Mamie.
"I'm speaking," said Mrs. Mulrady, emphatically.
The murmuring ceased. Mrs. Mulrady returned to her husband. The interruption seemed to have taken off the keen edge of his enjoyment. He at once abdicated his momentary elevation as a discoverer, and waited for her to speak.
"Ye haven't told any one yet?" she asked.
"No. I was alone, down in the shaft. Ye see, Malviny, I wasn't expectin' of anything." He began, with an attempt at fresh enjoyment, "I was just clearin' out, and hadn't reckoned on anythin'."
"You see, I was right when I advised you taking the land," she said, without heeding him.
Mulrady's face fell. "I hope Don Caesar won't think"--he began, hesitatingly. "I reckon, perhaps, I oughter make some sorter compensation--you know."
"Stuff!" said Mrs. Mulrady, decidedly. "Don't be a fool. Any gold discovery, anyhow, would have been yours--that's the law. And you bought the land without any restrictions. Besides, you never had any idea of this!" --she stopped, and looked him suddenly in the face--"had you?"
Mulrady opened his honest, pale-gray eyes widely.
"Why, Malviny! You know I hadn't. I could swear!"
"Don't swear, and don't let on to anybody but what you DID know it was there. Now, Alvin Mulrady, listen to me." Her voice here took the strident form of action. "Knock off work at the shaft, and send your man away at once. Put on your things, catch the next stage to Sacramento at four o'clock, and take Mamie with you."
"Mamie!" echoed Mulrady, feebly.
"You want to see Lawyer Cole and my brother Jim at once," she went on, without heeding him, "and Mamie wants a change and some proper. clothes. Leave the rest to me and Abner. I'll break it to Mamie, and get her ready."
Mulrady passed his hands through his tangled hair, wet with perspiration. He was proud of his wife's energy and action; he did not dream of opposing her, but somehow he was disappointed. The charming glamour and joy of his discovery had vanished before he could fairly dazzle her with it; or, rather, she was not dazzled with it at all. It had become like business, and the expression "breaking it" to Mamie jarred upon him. He would have preferred to tell her himself; to watch the color come into her delicate oval face, to have seen her soft eyes light with an innocent joy he had not seen in his wife's; and he felt a sinking conviction that his wife was the last one to awaken it.
"You ain't got any time to lose," she said, impatiently, as he hesitated.
Perhaps it was her impatience that struck harshly upon him; perhaps, if she had not accepted her good fortune so confidently, he would not have spoken what was in his mind at the time; but he said gravely, "Wait a minit, Malviny; I've suthin' to tell you 'bout this find of mine that's sing'lar."
"Go on," she said, quickly.
"Lyin' among the rotten quartz of the vein was a pick," he said, constrainedly; "and the face of the vein sorter looked ez if it had been worked at. Follering the line outside to the base of the hill there was signs of there having been an old tunnel; but it had fallen in, and was blocked up."
"Well?" said Mrs. Mulrady, contemptuously.
"Well," returned her husband, somewhat disconnectedly, "it kinder looked as if some feller might have discovered it before."
"And went away, and left it for others! That's likely--ain't it?" interrupted his wife, with ill-disguised intolerance. "Everybody knows the hill wasn't worth that for prospectin'; and it was abandoned when we came here. It's your property and you've paid for it. Are you goin' to wait to advertise for the owner, Alvin Mulrady, or are you going to Sacramento at four o'clock to-day?"
Mulrady started. He had never seriously believed in the possibility of a previous discovery; but his conscientious nature had prompted him to give it a fair consideration. She was probably right. What he might have thought had she treated it with equal conscientiousness he did not consider. "All right," he said simply. "I reckon we'll go at once."
"And when you talk to Lawyer Cole and Jim, keep that silly stuff about the pick to yourself. There's no use of putting queer ideas into other people's heads because you happen to have 'em yourself."
When the hurried arrangements were at last completed, and Mr. Mulrady and Mamie, accompanied by a taciturn and discreet Chinaman, carrying their scant luggage, were on their way to the high road to meet the up stage, the father gazed somewhat anxiously and wistfully into his daughter's face. He had looked forward to those few moments to enjoy the freshness and naivete of Mamie's youthful delight and enthusiasm as a relief to his wife's practical, far-sighted realism. There was a pretty pink suffusion in her delicate cheek, the breathless happiness of a child in her half-opened little mouth, and a beautiful absorption in her large gray eyes that augured well for him.
"Well, Mamie, how do we like bein' an heiress? How do we like layin' over all the gals between this and 'Frisco?"
"Eh?"
She had not heard him. The tender beautiful eyes were engaged in an anticipatory examination of the remembered shelves in the "Fancy Emporium" at Sacramento; in reading the admiration of the clerks; in glancing down a little criticisingly at the broad cowhide brogues that strode at her side; in looking up the road for the stage-coach; in regarding the fit of her new gloves--everywhere but in the loving eyes of the man beside her.
He, however, repeated the question, touched with her charming preoccupation, and passing his arm around her little waist.
"I like it well enough, pa, you know!" she said, slightly disengaging his arm, but adding a perfunctory little squeeze to his elbow to soften the separation. "I always had an idea SOMETHING would happen. I suppose I'm looking like a fright," she added; "but ma made me hurry to get away before Don Caesar came."
"And you didn't want to go without seeing him?" he added, archly.
"I didn't want him to see me in this frock," said Mamie, simply. "I reckon that's why ma made me change," she added, with a slight laugh.
"Well I reckon you're allus good enough for him in any dress," said Mulrady, watching her attentively; "and more than a match for him NOW," he added, triumphantly.
"I don't know about that," said Mamie. "He's been rich all the time, and his father and grandfather before him; while we've been poor and his tenants."
His face changed; the look of bewilderment, with which he had followed her words, gave way to one of pain, and then of anger. "Did he get off such stuff as that?" he asked, quickly.
"No. I'd like to catch him at it," responded Mamie, promptly. "There's better nor him to be had for the asking now."
They had walked on a few moments in aggrieved silence, and the Chinaman might have imagined some misfortune had just befallen them. But Mamie's teeth shone again between her parted lips. "La, pa! it ain't that! He cares everything for me, and I do for him; and if ma hadn't got new ideas--" She stopped suddenly.
"What new ideas?" queried her father, anxiously.
"Oh, nothing! I wish, pa, you'd put on your other boots! Everybody can see these are made for the farrows. And you ain't a market gardener any more."
"What am I, then?" asked Mulrady, with a half-pleased, half-uneasy laugh.
"You're a capitalist, I say; but ma says a landed proprietor." Nevertheless, the landed proprietor, when he reached the boulder on the Red Dog highway, sat down in somewhat moody contemplation, with his head bowed over the broad cowhide brogues, that seemed to have already gathered enough of the soil to indicate his right to that title. Mamie, who had recovered her spirits, but had not lost her preoccupation, wandered off by herself in the meadow, or ascended the hillside, as her occasional impatience at the delay of the coach, or the following of some ambitious fancy, alternately prompted her. She was so far away at one time that the stage-coach, which finally drew up before Mulrady, was obliged to wait for her.
When she was deposited safely inside, and Mulrady had climbed to the box beside the driver, the latter remarked, curtly,-- "Ye gave me a right smart skeer, a minit ago, stranger."
"Ez how?"
"Well, about three years ago, I was comin' down this yer grade, at just this time, and sittin' right on that stone, in just your attitude, was a man about your build and years. I pulled up to let him in, when, darn my skin! if he ever moved, but sorter looked at me without speakin'. I called to him, and he never answered, 'cept with that idiotic stare. I then let him have my opinion of him, in mighty strong English, and drove off, leavin' him there. The next morning, when I came by on the up-trip, darn my skin! if he wasn't thar, but lyin' all of a heap on the boulder. Jim drops down and picks him up. Doctor Duchesne, ez was along, allowst it was a played-out prospector, with a big case of paralysis, and we expressed him through to the County Hospital, like so much dead freight. I've allus been kinder superstitious about passin' that rock, and when I saw you jist now, sittin' thar, dazed like, with your head down like the other chap, it rather threw me off my centre."
In the inexplicable and half-superstitious uneasiness that this coincidence awakened in Mulrady's unimaginative mind, he was almost on the point of disclosing his good fortune to the driver, in order to prove how preposterous was the parallel, but checked himself in time.
"Did you find out who he was?" broke in a rash passenger. "Did you ever get over it?" added another unfortunate.
With a pause of insulting scorn at the interruption, the driver resumed, pointedly, to Mulrady: "The pint of the whole thing was my cussin' a helpless man, ez could neither cuss back nor shoot; and then afterwards takin' you for his ghost layin' for me to get even." He paused again, and then added, carelessly, "They say he never kem to enuff to let on who he was or whar he kem from; and he was eventooally taken to a 'Sylum for Doddering Idjits and Gin'ral and Permiskus Imbeciles at Sacramento. I've heerd it's considered a first-class institooshun, not only for them ez is paralyzed and can't talk, as for them ez is the reverse and is too chipper. Now," he added, languidly turning for the first time to his miserable questioners, "how did YOU find it?"
[1] Don Ramon probably alluded to the eminent naturalist Douglas, who visited California before the gold excitement, and died of an accident in the Sandwich Islands.
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"id": "2280"
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When the news of the discovery of gold in Mulrady shaft was finally made public, it created an excitement hitherto unknown in the history of the country. Half of Red Dog and all Rough-and-Ready were emptied upon the yellow hills surrounding Mulrady's, until their circling camp fires looked like a besieging army that had invested his peaceful pastoral home, preparatory to carrying it by assault. Unfortunately for them, they found the various points of vantage already garrisoned with notices of "preemption" for mining purposes in the name of the various members of the Alvarado family. This stroke of business was due to Mrs. Mulrady, as a means of mollifying the conscientious scruples of her husband and of placating the Alvarados, in view of some remote contingency. It is but fair to say that this degradation of his father's Castilian principles was opposed by Don Caesar. "You needn't work them yourself, but sell out to them that will; it's the only way to keep the prospectors from taking it without paying for it at all," argued Mrs. Mulrady. Don Caesar finally assented; perhaps less to the business arguments of Mulrady's wife than to the simple suggestion of Mamie's mother. Enough that he realized a sum in money for a few acres that exceeded the last ten years' income of Don Ramon's seven leagues.
Equally unprecedented and extravagant was the realization of the discovery in Mulrady's shaft. It was alleged that a company, hastily formed in Sacramento, paid him a million of dollars down, leaving him still a controlling two-thirds interest in the mine. With an obstinacy, however, that amounted almost to a moral conviction, he refused to include the house and potato-patch in the property. When the company had yielded the point, he declined, with equal tenacity, to part with it to outside speculators on even the most extravagant offers. In vain Mrs. Mulrady protested; in vain she pointed out to him that the retention of the evidence of his former humble occupation was a green blot upon their social escutcheon.
"If you will keep the land, build on it, and root up the garden." But Mulrady was adamant.
"It's the only thing I ever made myself, and got out of the soil with my own hands; it's the beginning of my fortune, and it may be the end of it. Mebbee I'll be glad enough to have it to come back to some day, and be thankful for the square meal I can dig out of it."
By repeated pressure, however, Mulrady yielded the compromise that a portion of it should be made into a vineyard and flower-garden, and by a suitable coloring of ornament and luxury obliterate its vulgar part. Less successful, however, was that energetic woman in another effort to mitigate the austerities of their earlier state. It occurred to her to utilize the softer accents of Don Caesar in the pronunciation of their family name, and privately had "Mulrade" take the place of Mulrady on her visiting card. "It might be Spanish," she argued with her husband. "Lawyer Cole says most American names are corrupted, and how do you know that yours ain't?" Mulrady, who would not swear that his ancestors came from Ireland to the Carolinas in '98, was helpless to refute the assertion. But the terrible Nemesis of an un-Spanish, American provincial speech avenged the orthographical outrage at once. When Mrs. Mulrady began to be addressed orally, as well as by letter, as "Mrs. Mulraid," and when simple amatory effusions to her daughter rhymed with "lovely maid," she promptly refused the original vowel. But she fondly clung to the Spanish courtesy which transformed her husband's baptismal name, and usually spoke of him--in his absence--as "Don Alvino." But in the presence of his short, square figure, his orange tawny hair, his twinkling gray eyes, and retrousse nose, even that dominant woman withheld his title. It was currently reported at Red Dog that a distinguished foreigner had one day approached Mulrady with the formula, "I believe I have the honor of addressing Don Alvino Mulrady?" "You kin bet your boots, stranger, that's me," had returned that simple hidalgo.
Although Mrs. Mulrady would have preferred that Mamie should remain at Sacramento until she could join her, preparatory to a trip to "the States" and Europe, she yielded to her daughter's desire to astonish Rough-and-Ready, before she left, with her new wardrobe, and unfold in the parent nest the delicate and painted wings with which she was to fly from them forever. "I don't want them to remember me afterwards in those spotted prints, ma, and like as not say I never had a decent frock until I went away." There was something so like the daughter of her mother in this delicate foresight that the touched and gratified parent kissed her, and assented. The result was gratifying beyond her expectation. In that few weeks' sojourn at Sacramento, the young girl seemed to have adapted and assimilated herself to the latest modes of fashion with even more than the usual American girl's pliancy and taste. Equal to all emergencies of style and material, she seemed to supply, from some hitherto unknown quality she possessed, the grace and manner peculiar to each. Untrammeled by tradition, education, or precedent, she had the Western girl's confidence in all things being possible, which made them so often probable. Mr. Mulrady looked at his daughter with mingled sentiments of pride and awe. Was it possible that this delicate creature, so superior to him that he seemed like a degenerate scion of her remoter race, was his own flesh and blood? Was she the daughter of her mother, who even in her remembered youth was never equipped like this? If the thought brought no pleasure to his simple, loving nature, it at least spared him the pain of what might have seemed ingratitude in one more akin to himself. "The fact is, we ain't quite up to her style," was his explanation and apology. A vague belief that in another and a better world than this he might approximate and understand this perfection somewhat soothed and sustained him.
It was quite consistent, therefore, that the embroidered cambric dress which Mamie Mulrady wore one summer afternoon on the hillside at Los Gatos, while to the critical feminine eye at once artistic and expensive, should not seem incongruous to her surroundings or to herself in the eyes of a general audience. It certainly did not seem so to one pair of frank, humorous ones that glanced at her from time to time, as their owner, a young fellow of five-and-twenty, walked at her side. He was the new editor of the "Rough-and-Ready Record," and, having been her fellow-passenger from Sacramento, had already once or twice availed himself of her father's invitation to call upon them. Mrs. Mulrady had not discouraged this mild flirtation. Whether she wished to disconcert Don Caesar for some occult purpose, or whether, like the rest of her sex, she had an overweening confidence in the unheroic, unseductive, and purely platonic character of masculine humor, did not appear.
"When I say I'm sorry you are going to leave us, Miss Mulrady," said the young fellow, lightly, "you will comprehend my unselfishness, since I frankly admit your departure would be a positive relief to me as an editor and a man. The pressure in the Poet's Corner of the 'Record' since it was mistakingly discovered that a person of your name might be induced to seek the 'glade' and 'shade' without being 'afraid,' 'dismayed,' or 'betrayed,' has been something enormous, and, unfortunately, I am debarred from rejecting anything, on the just ground that I am myself an interested admirer."
"It's dreadful to be placarded around the country by one's own full name, isn't it?" said Mamie, without, however, expressing much horror in her face.
"They think it much more respectful than to call you 'Mamie,'" he responded, lightly; "and many of your admirers are middle-aged men, with a mediaeval style of compliment. I've discovered that amatory versifying wasn't entirely a youthful passion. Colonel Cash is about as fatal with a couplet as with a double-barreled gun, and scatters as terribly. Judge Butts and Dr. Wilson have both discerned the resemblance of your gifts to those of Venus, and their own to Apollo. But don't undervalue those tributes, Miss Mulrady," he added, more seriously. "You'll have thousands of admirers where you are going; but you'll be willing to admit in the end, I think, that none were more honest and respectful than your subjects at Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog." He stopped, and added in a graver tone, "Does Don Caesar write poetry?"
"He has something better to do," said the young lady, pertly.
"I can easily imagine that," he returned, mischievously; "it must be a pallid substitute for other opportunities."
"What did you come here for?" she asked, suddenly.
"To see you."
"Nonsense! You know what I mean. Why did you ever leave Sacramento to come here? I should think it would suit you so much better than this place."
"I suppose I was fired by your father's example, and wished to find a gold mine."
"Men like you never do," she said, simply.
"Is that a compliment, Miss Mulrady?"
"I don't know. But I think that you think that it is."
He gave her the pleased look of one who had unexpectedly found a sympathetic intelligence. "Do I? This is interesting. Let's sit down." In their desultory rambling they had reached, quite unconsciously, the large boulder at the roadside. Mamie hesitated a moment, looked up and down the road, and then, with an already opulent indifference to the damaging of her spotless skirt, sat herself upon it, with her furled parasol held by her two little hands thrown over her half-drawn-up knee. The young editor, half sitting, half leaning, against the stone, began to draw figures in the sand with his cane.
"On the contrary, Miss Mulrady, I hope to make some money here. You are leaving Rough-and-Ready because you are rich. We are coming to it because we are poor."
"We?" echoed Mamie, lazily, looking up the road.
"Yes. My father and two sisters."
"I am sorry. I might have known them if I hadn't been going away." At the same moment, it flashed across her mind that, if they were like the man before her, they might prove disagreeably independent and critical. "Is your father in business?" she asked.
He shook his head. After a pause, he said, punctuating his sentences with the point of his stick in the soft dust, "He is paralyzed, and out of his mind, Miss Mulrady. I came to California to seek him, as all news of him ceased three years since; and I found him only two weeks ago, alone, friendless--an unrecognized pauper in the county hospital."
"Two weeks ago? That was when I went to Sacramento."
"Very probably."
"It must have been very shocking to you?"
"It was."
"I should think you'd feel real bad?"
"I do, at times." He smiled, and laid his stick on the stone. "You now see, Miss Mulrady, how necessary to me is this good fortune that you don't think me worthy of. Meantime I must try to make a home for them at Rough-and-Ready."
Miss Mulrady put down her knee and her parasol. "We mustn't stay here much longer, you know."
"Why?"
"Why, the stage-coach comes by at about this time."
"And you think the passengers will observe us sitting here?"
"Of course they will."
"Miss Mulrady, I implore you to stay."
He was leaning over her with such apparent earnestness of voice and gesture that the color came into her cheek. For a moment she scarcely dared to lift her conscious eyes to his. When she did so, she suddenly glanced her own aside with a flash of anger. He was laughing.
"If you have any pity for me, do not leave me now," he repeated. "Stay a moment longer, and my fortune is made. The passengers will report us all over Red Dog as engaged. I shall be supposed to be in your father's secrets, and shall be sought after as a director of all the new companies. The 'Record' will double its circulation; poetry will drop out of its columns, advertising rush to fill its place, and I shall receive five dollars a week more salary, if not seven and a half. Never mind the consequences to yourself at such a moment. I assure you there will be none. You can deny it the next day--I will deny it--nay, more, the 'Record' itself will deny it in an extra edition of one thousand copies, at ten cents each. Linger a moment longer, Miss Mulrady. Fly, oh fly not yet. They're coming--hark! oh! By Jove, it's only Don Caesar!"
It was, indeed, only the young scion of the house of Alvarado, blue-eyed, sallow-skinned, and high-shouldered, coming towards them on a fiery, half-broken mustang, whose very spontaneous lawlessness seemed to accentuate and bring out the grave and decorous ease of his rider. Even in his burlesque preoccupation the editor of the "Record" did not withhold his admiration of this perfect horsemanship. Mamie, who, in her wounded amour propre, would like to have made much of it to annoy her companion, was thus estopped any ostentatious compliment.
Don Caesar lifted his hat with sweet seriousness to the lady, with grave courtesy to the gentleman. While the lower half of this Centaur was apparently quivering with fury, and stamping the ground in his evident desire to charge upon the pair, the upper half, with natural dignity, looked from the one to the other, as if to leave the privilege of an explanation with them. But Mamie was too wise, and her companion too indifferent, to offer one. A slight shade passed over Don Caesar's face. To complicate the situation at that moment, the expected stagecoach came rattling by. With quick feminine intuition, Mamie caught in the faces of the driver and the expressman, and reflected in the mischievous eyes of her companion, a peculiar interpretation of their meeting, that was not removed by the whispered assurance of the editor that the passengers were anxiously looking back "to see the shooting."
The young Spaniard, equally oblivious of humor or curiosity, remained impassive.
"You know Mr. Slinn, of the 'Record," said Mamie, "don't you?"
Don Caesar had never before met the Senor Esslinn. He was under the impression that it was a Senor Robinson that was of the "Record."
"Oh, HE was shot," said Slinn. "I'm taking his place."
"Bueno! To be shot too? I trust not."
Slinn looked quickly and sharply into Don Caesar's grave face. He seemed to be incapable of any double meaning. However, as he had no serious reason for awakening Don Caesar's jealousy, and very little desire to become an embarrassing third in this conversation, and possibly a burden to the young lady, he proceeded to take his leave of her. From a sudden feminine revulsion of sympathy, or from some unintelligible instinct of diplomacy, Mamie said, as she extended her hand, "I hope you'll find a home for your family near here. Mamma wants pa to let our old house. Perhaps it might suit you, if not too far from your work. You might speak to ma about it."
"Thank you; I will," responded the young man, pressing her hand with unaffected cordiality.
Don Caesar watched him until he had disappeared behind the wayside buckeyes.
"He is a man of family--this one--your countryman?"
It seemed strange to her to have a mere acquaintance spoken of as "her countryman"--not the first time nor the last time in her career. As there appeared no trace or sign of jealousy in her questioner's manner, she answered briefly but vaguely: "Yes; it's a shocking story. His father disappeared some years ago, and he has just found him--a helpless paralytic--in the Sacramento Hospital. He'll have to support him--and they're very poor."
"So, then, they are not independent of each other always--these fathers and children of Americans!"
"No," said Mamie, shortly. Without knowing why, she felt inclined to resent Don Caesar's manner. His serious gravity--gentle and high-bred as it was, undoubtedly--was somewhat trying to her at times, and seemed even more so after Slinn's irreverent humor. She picked up her parasol, a little impatiently, as if to go.
But Don Caesar had already dismounted, and tied his horse to a tree with a strong lariat that hung at his saddle-bow.
"Let us walk through the woods towards your home. I can return alone for the horse when you shall dismiss me."
They turned in among the pines that, overcrowding the hollow, crept partly up the side of the hill of Mulrady's shaft. A disused trail, almost hidden by the waxen-hued yerba buena, led from the highway, and finally lost itself in the undergrowth. It was a lovers' walk; they were lovers, evidently, and yet the man was too self-poised in his gravity, the young woman too conscious and critical, to suggest an absorbing or oblivious passion.
"I should not have made myself so obtrusive to-day before your friend," said Don Caesar, with proud humility, "but I could not understand from your mother whether you were alone or whether my company was desirable. It is of this I have now to speak, Mamie. Lately your mother has seemed strange to me; avoiding any reference to our affection; treating it lightly, and even as to-day, I fancy, putting obstacles in the way of our meeting alone. She was disappointed at your return from Sacramento where, I have been told, she intended you to remain until you left the country; and since your return I have seen you but twice. I may be wrong. Perhaps I do not comprehend the American mother; I have--who knows? --perhaps offended in some point of etiquette, omitted some ceremony that was her due. But when you told me, Mamie, that it was not necessary to speak to HER first, that it was not the American fashion--" Mamie started, and blushed slightly.
"Yes," she said hurriedly, "certainly; but ma has been quite queer of late, and she may think--you know--that since--since there has been so much property to dispose of, she ought to have been consulted."
"Then let us consult her at once, dear child! And as to the property, in Heaven's name, let her dispose of it as she will. Saints forbid that an Alvarado should ever interfere. And what is it to us, my little one? Enough that Dona Mameta Alvarado will never have less state than the richest bride that ever came to Los Gatos."
Mamie had not forgotten that, scarcely a month ago, even had she loved the man before her no more than she did at present, she would still have been thrilled with delight at these words! Even now she was moved--conscious as she had become that the "state" of a bride of the Alvarados was not all she had imagined, and that the bare adobe court of Los Gatos was open to the sky and the free criticism of Sacramento capitalists!
"Yes, dear," she murmured with a half childlike pleasure, that lit up her face and eyes so innocently that it stopped any minute investigation into its origin and real meaning. "Yes, dear; but we need not have a fuss made about it at present, and perhaps put ma against us. She wouldn't hear of our marrying now; and she might forbid our engagement."
"But you are going away."
"I should have to go to New York or Europe FIRST, you know," she answered, naively, "even if it were all settled. I should have to get things! One couldn't be decent here."
With the recollection of the pink cotton gown, in which she had first pledged her troth to him, before his eyes, he said, "But you are charming now. You cannot be more so to me. If I am satisfied, little one, with you as you are, let us go together, and then you can get dresses to please others."
She had not expected this importunity. Really, if it came to this, she might have engaged herself to some one like Slinn; he at least would have understood her. He was much cleverer, and certainly more of a man of the world. When Slinn had treated her like a child, it was with the humorous tolerance of an admiring superior, and not the didactic impulse of a guardian. She did not say this, nor did her pretty eyes indicate it, as in the instance of her brief anger with Slinn. She only said gently,-- "I should have thought you, of all men, would have been particular about your wife doing the proper thing. But never mind! Don't let us talk any more about it. Perhaps as it seems such a great thing to you, and so much trouble, there may be no necessity for it at all."
I do not think that the young lady deliberately planned this charmingly illogical deduction from Don Caesar's speech, or that she calculated its effect upon him; but it was part of her nature to say it, and profit by it. Under the unjust lash of it, his pride gave way.
"Ah, do you not see why I wish to go with you?" he said, with sudden and unexpected passion. "You are beautiful; you are good; it has pleased Heaven to make you rich also; but you are a child in experience, and know not your own heart. With your beauty, your goodness, and your wealth, you will attract all to you--as you do here--because you cannot help it. But you will be equally helpless, little one, if THEY should attract YOU, and you had no tie to fall back upon."
It was an unfortunate speech. The words were Don Caesar's; but the thought she had heard before from her mother, although the deduction had been of a very different kind. Mamie followed the speaker with bright but visionary eyes. There must be some truth in all this. Her mother had said it; Mr. Slinn had laughingly admitted it. She HAD a brilliant future before her! Was she right in making it impossible by a rash and foolish tie? He himself had said she was inexperienced. She knew it; and yet, what was he doing now but taking advantage of that inexperience? If he really loved her, he would be willing to submit to the test. She did not ask a similar one from him; and was willing, if she came out of it free, to marry him just the same. There was something so noble in this thought that she felt for a moment carried away by an impulse of compassionate unselfishness, and smiled tenderly as she looked up in his face.
"Then you consent, Mamie?" he said, eagerly, passing his arm around her waist.
"Not now, Caesar," she said, gently disengaging herself. "I must think it over; we are both too young to act upon it rashly; it would be unfair to you, who are so quiet and have seen so few girls--I mean Americans--to tie yourself to the first one you have known. When I am gone you will go more into the world. There are Mr. Slinn's two sisters coming here--I shouldn't wonder if they were far cleverer and talked far better than I do--and think how I should feel if I knew that only a wretched pledge to me kept you from loving them!" She stopped, and cast down her eyes.
It was her first attempt at coquetry, for, in her usual charming selfishness, she was perfectly frank and open; and it might not have been her last, but she had gone too far at first, and was not prepared for a recoil of her own argument.
"If you admit that it is possible--that it is possible to you!" he said, quickly.
She saw her mistake. "We may not have many opportunities to meet alone," she answered, quietly; "and I am sure we would be happier when we meet not to accuse each other of impossibilities. Let us rather see how we can communicate together, if anything should prevent our meeting. Remember, it was only by chance that you were able to see me now. If ma has believed that she ought to have been consulted, our meeting together in this secret way will only make matters worse. She is even now wondering where I am, and may be suspicious. I must go back at once. At any moment some one may come here looking for me."
"But I have so much to say," he pleaded. "Our time has been so short."
"You can write."
"But what will your mother think of that?" he said, in grave astonishment.
She colored again as she returned, quickly, "Of course, you must not write to the house. You can leave a letter somewhere for me--say, somewhere about here. Stop!" she added, with a sudden girlish gayety, "see, here's the very place. Look there!"
She pointed to the decayed trunk of a blasted sycamore, a few feet from the trail. A cavity, breast high, half filled with skeleton leaves and pine-nuts, showed that it had formerly been a squirrel's hoard, but for some reason had been deserted.
"Look! it's a regular letter-box," she continued, gayly, rising on tip-toe to peep into its recesses. Don Caesar looked at her admiringly; it seemed like a return to their first idyllic love-making in the old days, when she used to steal out of the cabbage rows in her brown linen apron and sun-bonnet to walk with him in the woods. He recalled the fact to her with the fatality of a lover already seeking to restore in past recollections something that was wanting in the present. She received it with the impatience of youth, to whom the present is all sufficient.
"I wonder how you could ever have cared for me in that holland apron," she said, looking down upon her new dress.
"Shall I tell you why?" he said, fondly, passing his arm around her waist, and drawing her pretty head nearer his shoulder.
"No--not now!" she said, laughingly, but struggling to free herself. "There's not time. Write it, and put it in the box. There," she added, hastily, "listen! --what's that?"
"It's only a squirrel," he whispered reassuringly in her ear.
"No; it's somebody coming! I must go! Please! Caesar, dear! There, then--" She met his kiss half-way, released herself with a lithe movement of her wrist and shoulder, and the next moment seemed to slip into the woods, and was gone.
Don Caesar listened with a sigh as the last rustling ceased, cast a look at the decayed tree as if to fix it in his memory, and then slowly retraced his steps towards his tethered mustang.
He was right, however, in his surmise of the cause of that interruption. A pair of bright eyes had been watching them from the bough of an adjacent tree. It was a squirrel, who, having had serious and prior intentions of making use of the cavity they had discovered, had only withheld examination by an apparent courteous discretion towards the intruding pair. Now that they were gone he slipped down the tree and ran towards the decayed stump.
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Apparently dissatisfied with the result of an investigation, which proved that the cavity was unfit as a treasure hoard for a discreet squirrel, whatever its value as a receptacle for the love-tokens of incautious humanity, the little animal at once set about to put things in order. He began by whisking out an immense quantity of dead leaves, disturbed a family of tree-spiders, dissipated a drove of patient aphides browsing in the bark, as well as their attendant dairymen, the ants, and otherwise ruled it with the high hand of dispossession and a contemptuous opinion of the previous incumbents. It must not be supposed, however, that his proceedings were altogether free from contemporaneous criticism; a venerable crow sitting on a branch above him displayed great interest in his occupation, and, hopping down a few moments afterwards, disposed of some worm-eaten nuts, a few larvae, and an insect or two, with languid dignity and without prejudice. Certain incumbrances, however, still resisted the squirrel's general eviction; among them a folded square of paper with sharply defined edges, that declined investigation, and, owing to a nauseous smell of tobacco, escaped nibbling as it had apparently escaped insect ravages. This, owing to its sharp angles, which persisted in catching in the soft decaying wood in his whirlwind of house-cleaning, he allowed to remain. Having thus, in a general way, prepared for the coming winter, the self-satisfied little rodent dismissed the subject from his active mind.
His rage and indignation a few days later may be readily conceived, when he found, on returning to his new-made home, another square of paper, folded like the first, but much fresher and whiter, lying within the cavity, on top of some moss which had evidently been placed there for the purpose. This he felt was really more than he could bear, but it was smaller, and with a few energetic kicks and whisks of his tail he managed to finally dislodge it through the opening, where it fell ignominiously to the earth. The eager eyes of the ever-attendant crow, however, instantly detected it; he flew to the ground, and, turning it over, examined it gravely. It was certainly not edible, but it was exceedingly rare, and, as an old collector of curios, he felt he could not pass it by. He lifted it in his beak, and, with a desperate struggle against the superincumbent weight, regained the branch with his prize. Here, by one of those delicious vagaries of animal nature, he apparently at once discharged his mind of the whole affair, became utterly oblivious of it, allowed it to drop without the least concern, and eventually flew away with an abstracted air, as if he had been another bird entirely. The paper got into a manzanita bush, where it remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that delicately sensitive marauder such a turn that she fled into the adjacent county.
But the troubles of the squirrel were not yet over. On the following day the young man who had accompanied the young woman returned to the trunk, and the squirrel had barely time to make his escape before the impatient visitor approached the opening of the cavity, peered into it, and even passed his hand through its recesses. The delight visible upon his anxious and serious face at the disappearance of the letter, and the apparent proof that it had been called for, showed him to have been its original depositor, and probably awakened a remorseful recollection in the dark bosom of the omnipresent crow, who uttered a conscious-stricken croak from the bough above him. But the young man quickly disappeared again, and the squirrel was once more left in undisputed possession.
A week passed. A weary, anxious interval to Don Caesar, who had neither seen nor heard from Mamie since their last meeting. Too conscious of his own self-respect to call at the house after the equivocal conduct of Mrs. Mulrady, and too proud to haunt the lanes and approaches in the hope of meeting her daughter, like an ordinary lover, he hid his gloomy thoughts in the monastic shadows of the courtyard at Los Gatos, or found relief in furious riding at night and early morning on the highway. Once or twice the up-stage had been overtaken and passed by a rushing figure as shadowy as a phantom horseman, with only the star-like point of a cigarette to indicate its humanity. It was in one of these fierce recreations that he was obliged to stop in early morning at the blacksmith's shop at Rough-and-Ready, to have a loosened horseshoe replaced, and while waiting picked up a newspaper. Don Caesar seldom read the papers, but noticing that this was the "Record," he glanced at its columns. A familiar name suddenly flashed out of the dark type like a spark from the anvil. With a brain and heart that seemed to be beating in unison with the blacksmith's sledge, he read as follows:-- "Our distinguished fellow-townsman, Alvin Mulrady, Esq., left town day before yesterday to attend an important meeting of directors of the Red Dog Ditch Company, in San Francisco. Society will regret to hear that Mrs. Mulrady and her beautiful and accomplished daughter, who are expecting to depart for Europe at the end of the month, anticipated the event nearly a fortnight, by taking this opportunity of accompanying Mr. Mulrady as far as San Francisco, on their way to the East. Mrs. and Miss Mulrady intend to visit London, Paris, and Berlin, and will be absent three years. It is possible that Mr. Mulrady may join them later at one or other of those capitals. Considerable disappointment is felt that a more extended leave-taking was not possible, and that, under the circumstances, no opportunity was offered for a 'send off' suitable to the condition of the parties and the esteem in which they are held in Rough-and-Ready."
The paper dropped from his hands. Gone! and without a word! No, that was impossible! There must be some mistake; she had written; the letter had miscarried; she must have sent word to Los Gatos, and the stupid messenger had blundered; she had probably appointed another meeting, or expected him to follow to San Francisco. "The day before yesterday!" It was the morning's paper--she had been gone scarcely two days--it was not too late yet to receive a delayed message by post, by some forgetful hand--by--ah--the tree!
Of course it was in the tree, and he had not been there for a week! Why had he not thought of it before? The fault was his, not hers. Perhaps she had gone away, believing him faithless, or a country boor.
"In the name of the Devil, will you keep me here till eternity!"
The blacksmith stared at him. Don Caesar suddenly remembered that he was speaking, as he was thinking--in Spanish.
"Ten dollars, my friend, if you have done in five minutes!"
The man laughed. "That's good enough American," he said, beginning to quicken his efforts. Don Caesar again took up the paper. There was another paragraph that recalled his last interview with Mamie:-- "Mr. Harry Slinn, Jr., the editor of this paper, has just moved into the pioneer house formerly occupied by Alvin Mulrady, Esq., which has already become historic in the annals of the county. Mr. Slinn brings with him his father--H. J. Slinn, Esq.,--and his two sisters. Mr. Slinn, Sen., who has been suffering for many years from complete paralysis, we understand is slowly improving; and it is by the advice of his physicians that he has chosen the invigorating air of the foothills as a change to the debilitating heat of Sacramento."
The affair had been quickly settled, certainly, reflected Don Caesar, with a slight chill of jealousy, as he thought of Mamie's interest in the young editor. But the next moment he dismissed it from his mind; all except a dull consciousness that, if she really loved him--Don Caesar--as he loved her, she could not have assisted in throwing into his society the young sisters of the editor, who she expected might be so attractive.
Within the five minutes the horse was ready, and Don Caesar in the saddle again. In less than half an hour he was at the wayside boulder. Here he picketed his horse, and took the narrow foot-trail through the hollow. It did not take him long to reach their old trysting-place. With a beating heart he approached the decaying trunk and looked into the cavity. There was no letter there!
A few blackened nuts and some of the dry moss he had put there were lying on the ground at its roots. He could not remember whether they were there when he had last visited the spot. He began to grope in the cavity with both hands. His fingers struck against the sharp angles of a flat paper packet: a thrill of joy ran through them and stopped his beating heart; he drew out the hidden object, and was chilled with disappointment.
It was an ordinary-sized envelope of yellowish-brown paper, bearing, besides the usual government stamp, the official legend of an express company, and showing its age as much by this record of a now obsolete carrying service as by the discoloration of time and atmosphere. Its weight, which was heavier than that of any ordinary letter of the same size and thickness, was evidently due to some loose enclosures, that slightly rustled and could be felt by the fingers, like minute pieces of metal or grains of gravel. It was within Don Caesar's experience that gold specimens were often sent in that manner. It was in a state of singular preservation, except the address, which, being written in pencil, was scarcely discernible, and even when deciphered appeared to be incoherent and unfinished. The unknown correspondent had written "dear Mary," and then "Mrs. Mary Slinn," with an unintelligible scrawl following for the direction. If Don Caesar's mind had not been lately preoccupied with the name of the editor, he would hardly have guessed the superscription.
In his cruel disappointment and fully aroused indignation, he at once began to suspect a connection of circumstances which at any other moment he would have thought purely accidental, or perhaps not have considered at all. The cavity in the tree had evidently been used as a secret receptacle for letters before; did Mamie know it at the time, and how did she know it? The apparent age of the letter made it preposterous to suppose that it pointed to any secret correspondence of hers with young Mr. Slinn; and the address was not in her handwriting. Was there any secret previous intimacy between the families? There was but one way in which he could connect this letter with Mamie's faithlessness. It was an infamous, a grotesquely horrible idea, a thought which sprang as much from his inexperience of the world and his habitual suspiciousness of all humor as anything else! It was that the letter was a brutal joke of Slinn's--a joke perhaps concocted by Mamie and himself--a parting insult that should at the last moment proclaim their treachery and his own credulity. Doubtless it contained a declaration of their shame, and the reason why she had fled from him without a word of explanation. And the enclosure, of course, was some significant and degrading illustration. Those Americans are full of those low conceits; it was their national vulgarity.
He had the letter in his angry hand. He could break it open if he wished and satisfy himself; but it was not addressed to HIM, and the instinct of honor, strong even in his rage, was the instinct of an adversary as well. No; Slinn should open the letter before him. Slinn should explain everything, and answer for it. If it was nothing--a mere accident--it would lead to some general explanation, and perhaps even news of Mamie. But he would arraign Slinn, and at once. He put the letter in his pocket, quickly retraced his steps to his horse, and, putting spurs to the animal, followed the high road to the gate of Mulrady's pioneer cabin.
He remembered it well enough. To a cultivated taste, it was superior to the more pretentious "new house." During the first year of Mulrady's tenancy, the plain square log-cabin had received those additions and attractions which only a tenant can conceive and actual experience suggest; and in this way the hideous right angles were broken with sheds, "lean-to" extensions, until a certain picturesqueness was given to the irregularity of outline, and a home-like security and companionship to the congregated buildings. It typified the former life of the great capitalist, as the tall new house illustrated the loneliness and isolation that wealth had given him. But the real points of vantage were the years of cultivation and habitation that had warmed and enriched the soil, and evoked the climbing vines and roses that already hid its unpainted boards, rounded its hard outlines, and gave projection and shadow from the pitiless glare of a summer's long sun, or broke the steady beating of the winter rains. It was true that pea and bean poles surrounded it on one side, and the only access to the house was through the cabbage rows that once were the pride and sustenance of the Mulradys. It was this fact, more than any other, that had impelled Mrs. Mulrady to abandon its site; she did not like to read the history of their humble origin reflected in the faces of their visitors as they entered.
Don Caesar tied his horse to the fence, and hurriedly approached the house. The door, however, hospitably opened when he was a few paces from it, and when he reached the threshold he found himself unexpectedly in the presence of two pretty girls. They were evidently Slinn's sisters, whom he had neither thought of nor included in the meeting he had prepared. In spite of his preoccupation, he felt himself suddenly embarrassed, not only by the actual distinction of their beauty, but by a kind of likeness that they seemed to bear to Mamie.
"We saw you coming," said the elder, unaffectedly. "You are Don Caesar Alvarado. My brother has spoken of you."
The words recalled Don Caesar to himself and a sense of courtesy. He was not here to quarrel with these fair strangers at their first meeting; he must seek Slinn elsewhere, and at another time. The frankness of his reception and the allusion to their brother made it appear impossible that they should be either a party to his disappointment, or even aware of it. His excitement melted away before a certain lazy ease, which the consciousness of their beauty seemed to give them. He was able to put a few courteous inquiries, and, thanks to the paragraph in the "Record," to congratulate them upon their father's improvement.
"Oh, pa is a great deal better in his health, and has picked up even in the last few days, so that he is able to walk round with crutches," said the elder sister. "The air here seems to invigorate him wonderfully."
"And you know, Esther," said the younger, "I think he begins to take more notice of things, especially when he is out-of-doors. He looks around on the scenery, and his eye brightens, as if he knew all about it; and sometimes he knits his brows, and looks down so, as if he was trying to remember."
"You know, I suppose," exclaimed Esther, "that since his seizure his memory has been a blank--that is, three or four years of his life seem to have been dropped out of his recollection."
"It might be a mercy sometimes, Senora," said Don Caesar, with a grave sigh, as he looked at the delicate features before him, which recalled the face of the absent Mamie.
"That's not very complimentary," said the younger girl, laughingly; "for pa didn't recognize us, and only remembered us as little girls."
"Vashti!" interrupted Esther, rebukingly; then, turning to Don Caesar, she added, "My sister, Vashti, means that father remembers more what happened before he came to California, when we were quite young, than he does of the interval that elapsed. Dr. Duchesne says it's a singular case. He thinks that, with his present progress, he will recover the perfect use of his limbs; though his memory may never come back again."
"Unless-- You forget what the doctor told us this morning," interrupted Vashti again, briskly.
"I was going to say it," said Esther, a little curtly. "UNLESS he has another stroke. Then he will either die or recover his mind entirely."
Don Caesar glanced at the bright faces, a trifle heightened in color by their eager recital and the slight rivalry of narration, and looked grave. He was a little shocked at a certain lack of sympathy and tenderness towards their unhappy parent. They seemed to him not only to have caught that dry, curious toleration of helplessness which characterizes even relationship in its attendance upon chronic suffering and weakness, but to have acquired an unconscious habit of turning it to account. In his present sensitive condition, he even fancied that they flirted mildly over their parent's infirmity.
"My brother Harry has gone to Red Dog," continued Esther; "he'll be right sorry to have missed you. Mrs. Mulrady spoke to him about you; you seem to have been great friends. I s'pose you knew her daughter, Mamie; I hear she is very pretty."
Although Don Caesar was now satisfied that the Slinns knew nothing of Mamie's singular behavior to him, he felt embarrassed by this conversation. "Miss Mulrady is very pretty," he said, with grave courtesy; "it is a custom of her race. She left suddenly," he added with affected calmness.
"I reckon she did calculate to stay here longer--so her mother said; but the whole thing was settled a week ago. I know my brother was quite surprised to hear from Mr. Mulrady that if we were going to decide about this house we must do it at once; he had an idea himself about moving out of the big one into this when they left."
"Mamie Mulrady hadn't much to keep her here, considerin' the money and the good looks she has, I reckon," said Vashti. "She isn't the sort of girl to throw herself away in the wilderness, when she can pick and choose elsewhere. I only wonder she ever come back from Sacramento. They talk about papa Mulrady having BUSINESS at San Francisco, and THAT hurrying them off! Depend upon it, that 'business' was Mamie herself. Her wish is gospel to them. If she'd wanted to stay and have a farewell party, old Mulrady's business would have been nowhere."
"Ain't you a little rough on Mamie," said Esther, who had been quietly watching the young man's face with her large languid eyes, "considering that we don't know her, and haven't even the right of friends to criticise?"
"I don't call it rough," returned Vashti, frankly, "for I'd do the same if I were in her shoes--and they're four-and-a-halves, for Harry told me so. Give me her money and her looks, and you wouldn't catch me hanging round these diggings--goin' to choir meetings Saturdays, church Sundays, and buggy-riding once a month--for society! No--Mamie's head was level--you bet!"
Don Caesar rose hurriedly. They would present his compliments to their father, and he would endeavor to find their brother at Red Dog. He, alas! had neither father, mother, nor sister, but if they would receive his aunt, the Dona Inez Sepulvida, the next Sunday, when she came from mass, she should be honored and he would be delighted. It required all his self-possession to deliver himself of this formal courtesy before he could take his leave, and on the back of his mustang give way to the rage, disgust and hatred of everything connected with Mamie that filled his heart. Conscious of his disturbance, but not entirely appreciating their own share in it, the two girls somewhat wickedly prolonged the interview by following him into the garden.
"Well, if you MUST leave now," said Esther, at last, languidly, "it ain't much out of your way to go down through the garden and take a look at pa as you go. He's somewhere down there, near the woods, and we don't like to leave him alone too long. You might pass the time of day with him; see if he's right side up. Vashti and I have got a heap of things to fix here yet; but if anything's wrong with him, you can call us. So-long."
Don Caesar was about to excuse himself hurriedly; but that sudden and acute perception of all kindred sorrow which belongs to refined suffering, checked his speech. The loneliness of the helpless old man in this atmosphere of active and youthful selfishness touched him. He bowed assent, and turned aside into one of the long perspectives of bean-poles. The girls watched him until out of sight.
"Well," said Vashti, "don't tell ME. But if there wasn't something between him and that Mamie Mulrady, I don't know a jilted man when I see him."
"Well, you needn't have let him SEE that you knew it, so that any civility of ours would look as if we were ready to take up with her leavings," responded Esther, astutely, as the girls reentered the house.
Meantime, the unconscious object of their criticism walked sadly down the old market-garden, whose rude outlines and homely details he once clothed with the poetry of a sensitive man's first love. Well, it was a common cabbage field and potato patch after all. In his disgust he felt conscious of even the loss of that sense of patronage and superiority which had invested his affection for a girl of meaner condition. His self-respect was humiliated with his love. The soil and dirt of those wretched cabbages had clung to him, but not to her. It was she who had gone higher; it was he who was left in the vulgar ruins of his misplaced passion.
He reached the bottom of the garden without observing any sign of the lonely invalid. He looked up and down the cabbage rows, and through the long perspective of pea-vines, without result. There was a newer trail leading from a gap in the pines to the wooded hollow, which undoubtedly intersected the little path that he and Mamie had once followed from the high road. If the old man had taken this trail he had possibly over-tasked his strength, and there was the more reason why he should continue his search, and render any assistance if required. There was another idea that occurred to him, which eventually decided him to go on. It was that both these trails led to the decayed sycamore stump, and that the older Slinn might have something to do with the mysterious letter. Quickening his steps through the field, he entered the hollow, and reached the intersecting trail as he expected. To the right it lost itself in the dense woods in the direction of the ominous stump; to the left it descended in nearly a straight line to the highway, now plainly visible, as was equally the boulder on which he had last discovered Mamie sitting with young Slinn. If he were not mistaken, there was a figure sitting there now; it was surely a man. And by that half-bowed, helpless attitude, the object of his search!
It did not take him long to descend the track to the highway and approach the stranger. He was seated with his hands upon his knees, gazing in a vague, absorbed fashion upon the hillside, now crowned with the engine-house and chimney that marked the site of Mulrady's shaft. He started slightly, and looked up, as Don Caesar paused before him. The young man was surprised to see that the unfortunate man was not as old as he had expected, and that his expression was one of quiet and beatified contentment.
"Your daughters told me you were here," said Don Caesar, with gentle respect. "I am Caesar Alvarado, your not very far neighbor; very happy to pay his respects to you as he has to them."
"My daughters?" said the old man, vaguely. "Oh, yes! nice little girls. And my boy Harry. Did you see Harry? Fine little fellow, Harry."
"I am glad to hear that you are better," said Don Caesar, hastily, "and that the air of our country does you no harm. God benefit you, senor," he added, with a profoundly reverential gesture, dropping unconsciously into the religious habit of his youth. "May he protect you, and bring you back to health and happiness!"
"Happiness?" said Slinn, amazedly. "I am happy--very happy! I have everything I want: good air, good food, good clothes, pretty little children, kind friends--" He smiled benignantly at Don Caesar. "God is very good to me!"
Indeed, he seemed very happy; and his face, albeit crowned with white hair, unmarked by care and any disturbing impression, had so much of satisfied youth in it that the grave features of his questioner made him appear the elder. Nevertheless, Don Caesar noticed that his eyes, when withdrawn from him, sought the hillside with the same visionary abstraction.
"It is a fine view, Senor Esslinn," said Don Caesar.
"It is a beautiful view, sir," said Slinn, turning his happy eyes upon him for a moment, only to rest them again on the green slope opposite.
"Beyond that hill which you are looking at--not far, Senor Esslinn--I live. You shall come and see me there--you and your family."
"You--you--live there?" stammered the invalid, with a troubled expression--the first and only change to the complete happiness that had hitherto suffused his face. "You--and your name is--is Ma--" "Alvarado," said Don Caesar, gently. "Caesar Alvarado."
"You said Masters," said the old man, with sudden querulousness.
"No, good friend. I said Alvarado," returned Don Caesar, gravely.
"If you didn't say Masters, how could I say it? I don't know any Masters."
Don Caesar was silent. In another moment the happy tranquillity returned to Slinn's face; and Don Caesar continued:-- "It is not a long walk over the hill, though it is far by the road. When you are better you shall try it. Yonder little trail leads to the top of the hill, and then--" He stopped, for the invalid's face had again assumed its troubled expression. Partly to change his thoughts, and partly for some inexplicable idea that had suddenly seized him, Don Caesar continued:-- "There is a strange old stump near the trail, and in it a hole. In the hole I found this letter." He stopped again--this time in alarm. Slinn had staggered to his feet with ashen and distorted features, and was glancing at the letter which Don Caesar had drawn from his pocket. The muscles of his throat swelled as if he was swallowing; his lips moved, but no sound issued from them. At last, with a convulsive effort, he regained a disjointed speech, in a voice scarcely audible.
"My letter! my letter! It's mine! Give it me! It's my fortune--all mine! In the tunnel--hill! Masters stole it--stole my fortune! Stole it all! See, see!"
He seized the letter from Don Caesar with trembling hands, and tore it open forcibly: a few dull yellow grains fell from it heavily, like shot, to the ground.
"See, it's true! My letter! My gold! My strike! My--my--my God!"
A tremor passed over his face. The hand that held the letter suddenly dropped sheer and heavy as the gold had fallen. The whole side of his face and body nearest Don Caesar seemed to drop and sink into itself as suddenly. At the same moment, and without a word, he slipped through Don Caesar's outstretched hands to the ground. Don Caesar bent quickly over him, but no longer than to satisfy himself that he lived and breathed, although helpless. He then caught up the fallen letter, and, glancing over it with flashing eyes, thrust it and the few specimens in his pocket. He then sprang to his feet, so transformed with energy and intelligence that he seemed to have added the lost vitality of the man before him to his own. He glanced quickly up and down the highway. Every moment to him was precious now; but he could not leave the stricken man in the dust of the road; nor could he carry him to the house; nor, having alarmed his daughters, could he abandon his helplessness to their feeble arms. He remembered that his horse was still tied to the garden fence. He would fetch it, and carry the unfortunate man across the saddle to the gate. He lifted him with difficulty to the boulder, and ran rapidly up the road in the direction of his tethered steed. He had not proceeded far when he heard the noise of wheels behind him. It was the up stage coming furiously along. He would have called to the driver for assistance, but even through that fast-sweeping cloud of dust and motion he could see that the man was utterly oblivious of anything but the speed of his rushing chariot, and had even risen in his box to lash the infuriated and frightened animals forward.
An hour later, when the coach drew up at the Red Dog Hotel, the driver descended from the box, white, but taciturn. When he had swallowed a glass of whiskey at a single gulp, he turned to the astonished express agent, who had followed him in.
"One of two things, Jim, hez got to happen," he said, huskily. "Either that there rock hez got to get off the road, or I have. I've seed HIM on it agin!"
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{
"id": "2280"
}
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4
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None
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No further particulars of the invalid's second attack were known than those furnished by Don Caesar's brief statement, that he had found him lying insensible on the boulder. This seemed perfectly consistent with the theory of Dr. Duchesne; and as the young Spaniard left Los Gatos the next day, he escaped not only the active reporter of the "Record," but the perusal of a grateful paragraph in the next day's paper recording his prompt kindness and courtesy. Dr. Duchesne's prognosis, however, seemed at fault; the elder Slinn did not succumb to this second stroke, nor did he recover his reason. He apparently only relapsed into his former physical weakness, losing the little ground he had gained during the last month, and exhibiting no change in his mental condition, unless the fact that he remembered nothing of his seizure and the presence of Don Caesar could be considered as favorable. Dr. Duchesne's gravity seemed to give that significance to this symptom, and his cross-questioning of the patient was characterized by more than his usual curtness.
"You are sure you don't remember walking in the garden before you were ill?" he said. "Come, think again. You must remember that." The old man's eyes wandered restlessly around the room, but he answered by a negative shake of his head. "And you don't remember sitting down on a stone by the road?"
The old man kept his eyes resolutely fixed on the bedclothes before him. "No!" he said, with a certain sharp decision that was new to him.
The doctor's eye brightened. "All right, old man; then don't."
On his way out he took the eldest Miss Slinn aside. "He'll do," he said, grimly: "he's beginning to lie."
"Why, he only said he didn't remember," responded Esther.
"That was because he didn't want to remember," said the doctor, authoritatively. "The brain is acting on some impression that is either painful and unpleasant, or so vague that he can't formulate it; he is conscious of it, and won't attempt it yet. It's a heap better than his old self-satisfied incoherency."
A few days later, when the fact of Slinn's identification with the paralytic of three years ago by the stage-driver became generally known, the doctor came in quite jubilant.
"It's all plain now," he said, decidedly. "That second stroke was caused by the nervous shock of his coming suddenly upon the very spot where he had the first one. It proved that his brain still retained old impressions, but as this first act of his memory was a painful one, the strain was too great. It was mighty unlucky; but it was a good sign."
"And you think, then--" hesitated Harry Slinn.
"I think," said Dr. Duchesne, "that this activity still exists, and the proof of it, as I said before, is that he is trying now to forget it, and avoid thinking of it. You will find that he will fight shy of any allusion to it, and will be cunning enough to dodge it every time."
He certainly did. Whether the doctor's hypothesis was fairly based or not, it was a fact that, when he was first taken out to drive with his watchful physician, he apparently took no notice of the boulder--which still remained on the roadside, thanks to the later practical explanation of the stage-driver's vision--and curtly refused to talk about it. But, more significant to Duchesne, and perhaps more perplexing, was a certain morose abstraction, which took the place of his former vacuity of contentment, and an intolerance of his attendants, which supplanted his old habitual trustfulness to their care, that had been varied only by the occasional querulousness of an invalid. His daughters sometimes found him regarding them with an attention little short of suspicion, and even his son detected a half-suppressed aversion in his interviews with him.
Referring this among themselves to his unfortunate malady, his children, perhaps, justified this estrangement by paying very little attention to it. They were more pleasantly occupied. The two girls succeeded to the position held by Mamie Mulrady in the society of the neighborhood, and divided the attentions of Rough-and-Ready. The young editor of the "Record" had really achieved, through his supposed intimacy with the Mulradys, the good fortune he had jestingly prophesied. The disappearance of Don Caesar was regarded as a virtual abandonment of the field to his rival: and the general opinion was that he was engaged to the millionaire's daughter on a certain probation of work and influence in his prospective father-in-law's interests. He became successful in one or two speculations, the magic of the lucky Mulrady's name befriending him. In the superstition of the mining community, much of this luck was due to his having secured the old cabin.
"To think," remarked one of the augurs of Red Dog, French Pete, a polyglot jester, "that while every fool went to taking up claims where the gold had already been found no one thought of stepping into the old man's old choux in the cabbage-garden!" Any doubt, however, of the alliance of the families was dissipated by the intimacy that sprang up between the elder Slinn and the millionaire, after the latter's return from San Francisco.
It began in a strange kind of pity for the physical weakness of the man, which enlisted the sympathies of Mulrady, whose great strength had never been deteriorated by the luxuries of wealth, and who was still able to set his workmen an example of hard labor; it was sustained by a singular and superstitious reverence for his mental condition, which, to the paternal Mulrady, seemed to possess that spiritual quality with which popular ignorance invests demented people.
"Then you mean to say that during these three years the vein o' your mind, so to speak, was a lost lead, and sorter dropped out o' sight or follerin'?" queried Mulrady, with infinite seriousness.
"Yes," returned Slinn, with less impatience than he usually showed to questions.
"And durin' that time, when you was dried up and waitin' for rain, I reckon you kinder had visions?"
A cloud passed over Slinn's face.
"Of course, of course!" said Mulrady, a little frightened at his tenacity in questioning the oracle. "Nat'rally, this was private, and not to be talked about. I meant, you had plenty of room for 'em without crowdin'; you kin tell me some day when you're better, and kin sorter select what's points and what ain't."
"Perhaps I may some day," said the invalid, gloomily, glancing in the direction of his preoccupied daughters; "when we're alone."
When his physical strength had improved, and his left arm and side had regained a feeble but slowly gathering vitality, Alvin Mulrady one day surprised the family by bringing the convalescent a pile of letters and accounts, and spreading them on a board before Slinn's invalid chair, with the suggestion that he should look over, arrange, and docket them. The idea seemed preposterous, until it was found that the old man was actually able to perform this service, and exhibited a degree of intellectual activity and capacity for this kind of work that was unsuspected. Dr. Duchesne was delighted, and divided with admiration between his patient's progress and the millionaire's sagacity. "And there are envious people," said the enthusiastic doctor, "who believe that a man like him, who could conceive of such a plan for occupying a weak intellect without taxing its memory or judgment, is merely a lucky fool! Look here. May be it didn't require much brains to stumble on a gold mine, and it is a gift of Providence. But, in my experience, Providence don't go round buyin' up d--d fools, or investin' in dead beats."
When Mr. Slinn, finally, with the aid of crutches, was able to hobble every day to the imposing counting-house and the office of Mr. Mulrady, which now occupied the lower part of the new house, and contained some of its gorgeous furniture, he was installed at a rosewood desk behind Mr. Mulrady's chair, as his confidential clerk and private secretary. The astonishment of Red Dog and Rough-and-Ready at this singular innovation knew no bounds; but the boldness and novelty of the idea carried everything before it. Judge Butts, the oracle of Rough-and-Ready, delivered its decision: "He's got a man who's physically incapable of running off with his money, and has no memory to run off with his ideas. How could he do better?" Even his own son, Harry, coming upon his father thus installed, was for a moment struck with a certain filial respect, and for a day or two patronized him.
In this capacity Slinn became the confidant not only of Mulrady's business secrets, but of his domestic affairs. He knew that young Mulrady, from a freckle-faced slow country boy, had developed into a freckle-faced fast city man, with coarse habits of drink and gambling. It was through the old man's hands that extravagant bills and shameful claims passed on their way to be cashed by Mulrady; it was he that at last laid before the father one day his signature perfectly forged by the son.
"Your eyes are not ez good ez mine, you know, Slinn," said Mulrady, gravely. "It's all right. I sometimes make my Y's like that. I'd clean forgot to cash that check. You must not think you've got the monopoly of disremembering," he added, with a faint laugh.
Equally through Slinn's hands passed the record of the lavish expenditure of Mrs. Mulrady and the fair Mamie, as well as the chronicle of their movements and fashionable triumphs. As Mulrady had already noticed that Slinn had no confidence with his own family, he did not try to withhold from them these domestic details, possibly as an offset to the dreary catalogue of his son's misdeeds, but more often in the hope of gaining from the taciturn old man some comment that might satisfy his innocent vanity as father and husband, and perhaps dissipate some doubts that were haunting him.
"Twelve hundred dollars looks to be a good figger for a dress, ain't it? But Malviny knows, I reckon, what ought to be worn at the Tooilleries, and she don't want our Mamie to take a back seat before them furrin' princesses and gran' dukes. It's a slap-up affair, I kalkilate. Let's see. I disremember whether it's an emperor or a king that's rulin' over thar now. It must be suthin' first class and A1, for Malviny ain't the woman to throw away twelve hundred dollars on any of them small-potato despots! She says Mamie speaks French already like them French Petes. I don't quite make out what she means here. She met Don Caesar in Paris, and she says, 'I think Mamie is nearly off with Don Caesar, who has followed her here. I don't care about her dropping him TOO suddenly; the reason I'll tell you hereafter. I think the man might be a dangerous enemy.' Now, what do you make of this? I allus thought Mamie rather cottoned to him, and it was the old woman who fought shy, thinkin' Mamie would do better. Now, I am agreeable that my gal should marry any one she likes, whether it's a dook or a poor man, as long as he's on the square. I was ready to take Don Caesar; but now things seem to have shifted round. As to Don Caesar's being a dangerous enemy if Mamie won't have him, that's a little too high and mighty for me, and I wonder the old woman don't make him climb down. What do you think?"
"Who is Don Caesar?" asked Slinn.
"The man what picked you up that day. I mean," continued Mulrady, seeing the marks of evident ignorance on the old man's face,--"I mean a sort of grave, genteel chap, suthin' between a parson and a circus-rider. You might have seen him round the house talkin' to your gals."
But Slinn's entire forgetfulness of Don Caesar was evidently unfeigned. Whatever sudden accession of memory he had at the time of his attack, the incident that caused it had no part in his recollection. With the exception of these rare intervals of domestic confidences with his crippled private secretary, Mulrady gave himself up to money-getting. Without any especial faculty for it--an easy prey often to unscrupulous financiers--his unfailing luck, however, carried him safely through, until his very mistakes seemed to be simply insignificant means to a large significant end and a part of his original plan. He sank another shaft, at a great expense, with a view to following the lead he had formerly found, against the opinions of the best mining engineers, and struck the artesian spring he did NOT find at that time, with a volume of water that enabled him not only to work his own mine, but to furnish supplies to his less fortunate neighbors at a vast profit. A league of tangled forest and canyon behind Rough-and-Ready, for which he had paid Don Ramon's heirs an extravagant price in the presumption that it was auriferous, furnished the most accessible timber to build the town, at prices which amply remunerated him. The practical schemes of experienced men, the wildest visions of daring dreams delayed or abortive for want of capital, eventually fell into his hands. Men sneered at his methods, but bought his shares. Some who affected to regard him simply as a man of money were content to get only his name to any enterprise. Courted by his superiors, quoted by his equals, and admired by his inferiors, he bore his elevation equally without ostentation or dignity. Bidden to banquets, and forced by his position as director or president into the usual gastronomic feats of that civilization and period, he partook of simple food, and continued his old habit of taking a cup of coffee with milk and sugar at dinner. Without professing temperance, he drank sparingly in a community where alcoholic stimulation was a custom. With neither refinement nor an extended vocabulary, he was seldom profane, and never indelicate. With nothing of the Puritan in his manner or conversation, he seemed to be as strange to the vices of civilization as he was to its virtues. That such a man should offer little to and receive little from the companionship of women of any kind was a foregone conclusion. Without the dignity of solitude, he was pathetically alone.
Meantime, the days passed; the first six months of his opulence were drawing to a close, and in that interval he had more than doubled the amount of his discovered fortune. The rainy season set in early. Although it dissipated the clouds of dust under which Nature and Art seemed to be slowly disappearing, it brought little beauty to the landscape at first, and only appeared to lay bare the crudenesses of civilization. The unpainted wooden buildings of Rough-and-Ready, soaked and dripping with rain, took upon themselves a sleek and shining ugliness, as of second-hand garments; the absence of cornices or projections to break the monotony of the long straight lines of downpour made the town appear as if it had been recently submerged, every vestige of ornamentation swept away, and only the bare outlines left. Mud was everywhere; the outer soil seemed to have risen and invaded the houses even to their most secret recesses, as if outraged Nature was trying to revenge herself. Mud was brought into the saloons and barrooms and express offices, on boots, on clothes, on baggage, and sometimes appeared mysteriously in splashes of red color on the walls, without visible conveyance. The dust of six months, closely packed in cornice and carving, yielded under the steady rain a thin yellow paint, that dropped on wayfarers or unexpectedly oozed out of ceilings and walls on the wretched inhabitants within. The outskirts of Rough-and-Ready and the dried hills round Los Gatos did not appear to fare much better; the new vegetation had not yet made much headway against the dead grasses of the summer; the pines in the hollow wept lugubriously into a small rivulet that had sprung suddenly into life near the old trail; everywhere was the sound of dropping, splashing, gurgling, or rushing waters.
More hideous than ever, the new Mulrady house lifted itself against the leaden sky, and stared with all its large-framed, shutterless windows blankly on the prospect, until they seemed to the wayfarer to become mere mirrors set in the walls, reflecting only the watery landscape, and unable to give the least indication of light or heat within. Nevertheless, there was a fire in Mulrady's private office that December afternoon, of a smoky, intermittent variety, that sufficed more to record the defects of hasty architecture than to comfort the millionaire and his private secretary, who had lingered after the early withdrawal of the clerks. For the next day was Christmas, and, out of deference to the near approach of this festivity, a half-holiday had been given to the employees. "They'll want, some of them, to spend their money before to-morrow; and others would like to be able to rise up comfortably drunk Christmas morning," the superintendent had suggested. Mr. Mulrady had just signed a number of checks indicating his largess to those devoted adherents with the same unostentatious, undemonstrative, matter-of-fact manner that distinguished his ordinary business. The men had received it with something of the same manner. A half-humorous "Thank you, sir"--as if to show that, with their patron, they tolerated this deference to a popular custom, but were a little ashamed of giving way to it--expressed their gratitude and their independence.
"I reckon that the old lady and Mamie are having a high old time in some of them gilded pallises in St. Petersburg or Berlin about this time. Them diamonds that I ordered at Tiffany ought to have reached 'em about now, so that Mamie could cut a swell at Christmas with her war-paint. I suppose it's the style to give presents in furrin' countries ez it is here, and I allowed to the old lady that whatever she orders in that way she is to do in Californy style--no dollar-jewelry and galvanized-watches business. If she wants to make a present to any of them nobles ez has been purlite to her, it's got to be something that Rough-and-Ready ain't ashamed of. I showed you that pin Mamie bought me in Paris, didn't I? It's just come for my Christmas present. No! I reckon I put it in the safe, for them kind o' things don't suit my style: but s'pose I orter sport it to-morrow. It was mighty thoughtful in Mamie, and it must cost a lump; it's got no slouch of a pearl in it. I wonder what Mamie gave for it?"
"You can easily tell; the bill is here. You paid it yesterday," said Slinn. There was no satire in the man's voice, nor was there the least perception of irony in Mulrady's manner, as he returned quietly,-- "That's so; it was suthin' like a thousand francs; but French money, when you pan it out as dollars and cents, don't make so much, after all." There was a few moments' silence, when he continued, in the same tone of voice, "Talkin' o' them things, Slinn, I've got suthin' for you." He stopped suddenly. Ever watchful of any undue excitement in the invalid, he had noticed a slight flush of disturbance pass over his face, and continued carelessly, "But we'll talk it over to-morrow; a day or two don't make much difference to you and me in such things, you know. P'raps I'll drop in and see you. We'll be shut up here."
"Then you're going out somewhere?" asked Slinn, mechanically.
"No," said Mulrady, hesitatingly. It had suddenly occurred to him that he had nowhere to go if he wanted to, and he continued, half in explanation, "I ain't reckoned much on Christmas, myself. Abner's at the Springs; it wouldn't pay him to come here for a day--even if there was anybody here he cared to see. I reckon I'll hang round the shanty, and look after things generally. I haven't been over the house upstairs to put things to rights since the folks left. But YOU needn't come here, you know."
He helped the old man to rise, assisted him in putting on his overcoat, and than handed him the cane which had lately replaced his crutches.
"Good-by, old man! You musn't trouble yourself to say 'Merry Christmas' now, but wait until you see me again. Take care of yourself."
He slapped him lightly on the shoulder, and went back into his private office. He worked for some time at his desk, and then laid his pen aside, put away his papers methodically, placing a large envelope on his private secretary's vacant table. He then opened the office door and ascended the staircase. He stopped on the first landing to listen to the sound of rain on the glass skylight, that seemed to echo through the empty hall like the gloomy roll of a drum. It was evident that the searching water had found out the secret sins of the house's construction, for there were great fissures of discoloration in the white and gold paper in the corners of the wall. There was a strange odor of the dank forest in the mirrored drawing-room, as if the rain had brought out the sap again from the unseasoned timbers; the blue and white satin furniture looked cold, and the marble mantels and centre tables had taken upon themselves the clamminess of tombstones. Mr. Mulrady, who had always retained his old farmer-like habit of taking off his coat with his hat on entering his own house, and appearing in his shirt-sleeves, to indicate domestic ease and security, was obliged to replace it, on account of the chill. He had never felt at home in this room. Its strangeness had lately been heightened by Mrs. Mulrady's purchase of a family portrait of some one she didn't know, but who, she had alleged, resembled her "Uncle Bob," which hung on the wall beside some paintings in massive frames. Mr. Mulrady cast a hurried glance at the portrait that, on the strength of a high coat-collar and high top curl--both rolled with equal precision and singular sameness of color--had always glared at Mulrady as if HE was the intruder; and, passing through his wife's gorgeous bedroom, entered the little dressing-room, where he still slept on the smallest of cots, with hastily improvised surroundings, as if he was a bailiff in "possession." He didn't linger here long, but, taking a key from a drawer, continued up the staircase, to the ominous funeral marches of the beating rain on the skylight, and paused on the landing to glance into his son's and daughter's bedrooms, duplicates of the bizarre extravagance below. If he were seeking some characteristic traces of his absent family, they certainly were not here in the painted and still damp blazoning of their later successes. He ascended another staircase, and, passing to the wing of the house, paused before a small door, which was locked. Already the ostentatious decorations of wall and passages were left behind, and the plain lath-and-plaster partition of the attic lay before him. He unlocked the door, and threw it open.
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The apartment he entered was really only a lumber-room or loft over the wing of the house, which had been left bare and unfinished, and which revealed in its meagre skeleton of beams and joints the hollow sham of the whole structure. But in more violent contrast to the fresher glories of the other part of the house were its contents, which were the heterogeneous collection of old furniture, old luggage, and cast-off clothing, left over from the past life in the old cabin. It was a much plainer record of the simple beginnings of the family than Mrs. Mulrady cared to have remain in evidence, and for that reason it had been relegated to the hidden recesses of the new house, in the hope that it might absorb or digest it. There were old cribs, in which the infant limbs of Mamie and Abner had been tucked up; old looking-glasses, that had reflected their shining, soapy faces, and Mamie's best chip Sunday hat; an old sewing-machine, that had been worn out in active service; old patchwork quilts; an old accordion, to whose long drawn inspirations Mamie had sung hymns; old pictures, books, and old toys. There were one or two old chromos, and, stuck in an old frame, a colored print from the "Illustrated London News" of a Christmas gathering in an old English country house. He stopped and picked up this print, which he had often seen before, gazing at it with a new and singular interest. He wondered if Mamie had seen anything of this kind in England, and why couldn't he have had something like it here, in their own fine house, with themselves and a few friends? He remembered a past Christmas, when he had bought Mamie that now headless doll with the few coins that were left him after buying their frugal Christmas dinner. There was an old spotted hobby-horse that another Christmas had brought to Abner--Abner, who would be driving a fast trotter to-morrow at the Springs! How everything had changed! How they all had got up in the world, and how far beyond this kind of thing--and yet--yet it would have been rather comfortable to have all been together again here. Would THEY have been more comfortable? No! Yet then he might have had something to do, and been less lonely to-morrow. What of that? He HAD something to do: to look after this immense fortune. What more could a man want, or should he want? It was rather mean in him, able to give his wife and children everything they wanted, to be wanting anything more. He laid down the print gently, after dusting its glass and frame with his silk handkerchief, and slowly left the room.
The drum-beat of the rain followed him down the staircase, but he shut it out with his other thoughts, when he again closed the door of his office. He set diligently to work by the declining winter light, until he was interrupted by the entrance of his Chinese waiter to tell him that supper--which was the meal that Mulrady religiously adhered to in place of the late dinner of civilization--was ready in the dining-room. Mulrady mechanically obeyed the summons; but on entering the room the oasis of a few plates in a desert of white table-cloth which awaited him made him hesitate. In its best aspect, the high dark Gothic mahogany ecclesiastical sideboard and chairs of this room, which looked like the appointments of a mortuary chapel, were not exhilarating; and to-day, in the light of the rain-filmed windows and the feeble rays of a lamp half-obscured by the dark shining walls, it was most depressing.
"You kin take up supper into my office," said Mulrady, with a sudden inspiration. "I'll eat it there."
He ate it there, with his usual healthy appetite, which did not require even the stimulation of company. He had just finished, when his Irish cook--the one female servant of the house--came to ask permission to be absent that evening and the next day.
"I suppose the likes of your honor won't be at home on the Christmas Day? And it's me cousins from the old counthry at Rough-and-Ready that are invitin' me."
"Why don't you ask them over here?" said Mulrady, with another vague inspiration. "I'll stand treat."
"Lord preserve you for a jinerous gintleman! But it's the likes of them and myself that wouldn't be at home here on such a day."
There was so much truth in this that Mulrady checked a sigh as he gave the required permission, without saying that he had intended to remain. He could cook his own breakfast: he had done it before; and it would be something to occupy him. As to his dinner, perhaps he could go to the hotel at Rough-and-Ready. He worked on until the night had well advanced. Then, overcome with a certain restlessness that disturbed him, he was forced to put his books and papers away. It had begun to blow in fitful gusts, and occasionally the rain was driven softly across the panes like the passing of childish fingers. This disturbed him more than the monotony of silence, for he was not a nervous man. He seldom read a book, and the county paper furnished him only the financial and mercantile news which was part of his business. He knew he could not sleep if he went to bed. At last he rose, opened the window, and looked out from pure idleness of occupation. A splash of wheels in the distant muddy road and fragments of a drunken song showed signs of an early wandering reveller. There were no lights to be seen at the closed works; a profound darkness encompassed the house, as if the distant pines in the hollow had moved up and round it. The silence was broken now only by the occasional sighing of wind and rain. It was not an inviting night for a perfunctory walk; but an idea struck him--he would call upon the Slinns, and anticipate his next day's visit! They would probably have company, and be glad to see him: he could tell the girls of Mamie and her success. That he had not thought of this before was a proof of his usual self-contained isolation, that he thought of it now was an equal proof that he was becoming at last accessible to loneliness. He was angry with himself for what seemed to him a selfish weakness.
He returned to his office, and, putting the envelope that had been lying on Slinn's desk in his pocket, threw a serape over his shoulders, and locked the front door of the house behind him. It was well that the way was a familiar one to him, and that his feet instinctively found the trail, for the night was very dark. At times he was warned only by the gurgling of water of little rivulets that descended the hill and crossed his path. Without the slightest fear, and with neither imagination nor sensitiveness, he recalled how, the winter before, one of Don Caesar's vaqueros, crossing this hill at night, had fallen down the chasm of a landslip caused by the rain, and was found the next morning with his neck broken in the gully. Don Caesar had to take care of the man's family. Suppose such an accident should happen to him? Well, he had made his will. His wife and children would be provided for, and the work of the mine would go on all the same; he had arranged for that. Would anybody miss him? Would his wife, or his son, or his daughter? No. He felt such a sudden and overwhelming conviction of the truth of this that he stopped as suddenly as if the chasm had opened before him. No! It was the truth. If he were to disappear forever in the darkness of the Christmas night there was none to feel his loss. His wife would take care of Mamie; his son would take care of himself, as he had before--relieved of even the scant paternal authority he rebelled against. A more imaginative man than Mulrady would have combated or have followed out this idea, and then dismissed it; to the millionaire's matter-of-fact mind it was a deduction that, having once presented itself to his perception, was already a recognized fact. For the first time in his life he felt a sudden instinct of something like aversion towards his family, a feeling that even his son's dissipation and criminality had never provoked. He hurried on angrily through the darkness.
It was very strange; the old house should be almost before him now, across the hollow, yet there were no indications of light! It was not until he actually reached the garden fence, and the black bulk of shadow rose out against the sky, that he saw a faint ray of light from one of the lean-to windows. He went to the front door and knocked. After waiting in vain for a reply, he knocked again. The second knock proving equally futile, he tried the door; it was unlocked, and, pushing it open, he walked in. The narrow passage was quite dark, but from his knowledge of the house he knew the "lean-to" was next to the kitchen, and, passing through the dining-room into it, he opened the door of the little room from which the light proceeded. It came from a single candle on a small table, and beside it, with his eyes moodily fixed on the dying embers of the fire, sat old Slinn. There was no other light nor another human being in the whole house.
For the instant Mulrady, forgetting his own feelings in the mute picture of the utter desolation of the helpless man, remained speechless on the threshold. Then, recalling himself, he stepped forward and laid his hand gayly on the bowed shoulders.
"Rouse up out o' this, old man! Come! this won't do. Look! I've run over here in the rain, jist to have a sociable time with you all."
"I knew it," said the old man, without looking up; "I knew you'd come."
"You knew I'd come?" echoed Mulrady, with an uneasy return of the strange feeling of awe with which he regarded Slinn's abstraction.
"Yes; you were alone--like myself--all alone!"
"Then, why in thunder didn't you open the door or sing out just now?" he said, with an affected brusquerie to cover his uneasiness. "Where's your daughters?"
"Gone to Rough-and-Ready to a party."
"And your son?"
"He never comes here when he can amuse himself elsewhere."
"Your children might have stayed home on Christmas Eve."
"So might yours."
He didn't say this impatiently, but with a certain abstracted conviction far beyond any suggestion of its being a retort. Mulrady did not appear to notice it.
"Well, I don't see why us old folks can't enjoy ourselves without them," said Mulrady, with affected cheerfulness. "Let's have a good time, you and me. Let's see--you haven't any one you can send to my house, hev you?"
"They took the servant with them," said Slinn, briefly. "There is no one here."
"All right," said the millionaire, briskly. "I'll go myself. Do you think you can manage to light up a little more, and build a fire in the kitchen while I'm gone? It used to be mighty comfortable in the old times."
He helped the old man to rise from his chair, and seemed to have infused into him some of his own energy. He then added, "Now, don't you get yourself down again into that chair until I come back," and darted out into the night once more.
In a quarter of an hour he returned with a bag on his broad shoulders, which one of his porters would have shrunk from lifting, and laid it before the blazing hearth of the now lighted kitchen. "It's something the old woman got for her party, that didn't come off," he said, apologetically. "I reckon we can pick out enough for a spread. That darned Chinaman wouldn't come with me," he added, with a laugh, "because, he said, he'd knocked off work 'allee same, Mellican man!' Look here, Slinn," he said, with a sudden decisiveness, "my pay-roll of the men around here don't run short of a hundred and fifty dollars a day, and yet I couldn't get a hand to help me bring this truck over for my Christmas dinner."
"Of course," said Slinn, gloomily.
"Of course; so it oughter be," returned Mulrady, shortly. "Why, it's only their one day out of 364; and I can have 363 days off, as I am their boss. I don't mind a man's being independent," he continued, taking off his coat and beginning to unpack his sack--a common "gunny bag"--used for potatoes. "We're independent ourselves, ain't we, Slinn?"
His good spirits, which had been at first labored and affected, had become natural. Slinn, looking at his brightened eye and fresher color, could not help thinking he was more like his own real self at this moment than in his counting-house and offices--with all his simplicity as a capitalist. A less abstracted and more observant critic than Slinn would have seen in this patient aptitude for real work, and the recognition of the force of petty detail, the dominance of the old market-gardener in his former humble, as well as his later more ambitious, successes.
"Heaven keep us from being dependent upon our children!" said Slinn, darkly.
"Let the young ones alone to-night; we can get along without them, as they can without us," said Mulrady, with a slight twinge as he thought of his reflections on the hillside. "But look here, there's some champagne and them sweet cordials that women like; there's jellies and such like stuff, about as good as they make 'em, I reckon; and preserves, and tongues, and spiced beef--take your pick! Stop, let's spread them out." He dragged the table to the middle of the floor, and piled the provisions upon it. They certainly were not deficient in quality or quantity. "Now, Slinn, wade in."
"I don't feel hungry," said the invalid, who had lapsed again into a chair before the fire.
"No more do I," said Mulrady; "but I reckon it's the right thing to do about this time. Some folks think they can't be happy without they're getting outside o' suthin', and my directors down at 'Frisco can't do any business without a dinner. Take some champagne, to begin with."
He opened a bottle, and filled two tumblers. "It's past twelve o'clock, old man, so here's a merry Christmas to you, and both of us ez is here. And here's another to our families--ez isn't."
They both drank their wine stolidly. The rain beat against the windows sharply, but without the hollow echoes of the house on the hill. "I must write to the old woman and Mamie, and say that you and me had a high old time on Christmas Eve."
"By ourselves," added the invalid.
Mr. Mulrady coughed. "Nat'rally--by ourselves. And her provisions," he added, with a laugh. "We're really beholden to HER for 'em. If she hadn't thought of having them--" "For somebody else, you wouldn't have had them--would you?" said Slinn, slowly, gazing at the fire.
"No," said Mulrady, dubiously. After a pause he began more vivaciously, and as if to shake off some disagreeable thought that was impressing him, "But I mustn't forget to give you YOUR Christmas, old man, and I've got it right here with me." He took the folded envelope from his pocket, and, holding it in his hand with his elbow on the table, continued, "I don't mind telling you what idea I had in giving you what I'm goin' to give you now. I've been thinking about it for a day or two. A man like you don't want money--you wouldn't spend it. A man like you don't want stocks or fancy investments, for you couldn't look after them. A man like you don't want diamonds and jewellery, nor a gold-headed cane, when it's got to be used as a crutch. No, sir. What you want is suthin' that won't run away from you; that is always there before you and won't wear out, and will last after you're gone. That's land! And if it wasn't that I have sworn never to sell or give away this house and that garden, if it wasn't that I've held out agin the old woman and Mamie on that point, you should have THIS house and THAT garden. But, mebbee, for the same reason that I've told you, I want that land to keep for myself. But I've selected four acres of the hill this side of my shaft, and here's the deed of it. As soon as you're ready, I'll put you up a house as big as this--that shall be yours, with the land, as long as you live, old man; and after that your children's."
"No; not theirs!" broke in the old man, passionately. "Never!"
Mulrady recoiled for an instant in alarm at the sudden and unexpected vehemence of his manner, "Go slow, old man; go slow," he said, soothingly. "Of course, you'll do with your own as you like." Then, as if changing the subject, he went on cheerfully: "Perhaps you'll wonder why I picked out that spot on the hillside. Well, first, because I reserved it after my strike in case the lead should run that way, but it didn't. Next, because when you first came here you seemed to like the prospect. You used to sit there looking at it, as if it reminded you of something. You never said it did. They say you was sitting on that boulder there when you had that last attack, you know; but," he added, gently, "you've forgotten all about it."
"I have forgotten nothing," said Slinn, rising, with a choking voice. "I wish to God I had; I wish to God I could!"
He was on his feet now, supporting himself by the table. The subtle generous liquor he had drunk had evidently shaken his self-control, and burst those voluntary bonds he had put upon himself for the last six months; the insidious stimulant had also put a strange vigor into his blood and nerves. His face was flushed, but not distorted; his eyes were brilliant, but not fixed; he looked as he might have looked to Masters in his strength three years before on that very hillside.
"Listen to me, Alvin Mulrady," he said, leaning over him with burning eyes. "Listen, while I have brain to think and strength to utter, why I have learnt to distrust, fear, and hate them! You think you know my story. Well, hear the truth from ME to-night, Alvin Mulrady, and do not wonder if I have cause."
He stopped, and, with pathetic inefficiency, passed the fingers and inward-turned thumb of his paralyzed hand across his mouth, as if to calm himself. "Three years ago I was a miner, but not a miner like you! I had experience, I had scientific knowledge, I had a theory, and the patience and energy to carry it out. I selected a spot that had all the indications, made a tunnel, and, without aid, counsel or assistance of any kind, worked it for six months, without rest or cessation, and with scarcely food enough to sustain my body. Well, I made a strike; not like you, Mulrady, not a blunder of good luck, a fool's fortune--there, I don't blame you for it--but in perfect demonstration of my theory, the reward of my labor. It was no pocket, but a vein, a lead, that I had regularly hunted down and found--a fortune!
"I never knew how hard I had worked until that morning; I never knew what privations I had undergone until that moment of my success, when I found I could scarcely think or move! I staggered out into the open air. The only human soul near me was a disappointed prospector, a man named Masters, who had a tunnel not far away. I managed to conceal from him my good fortune and my feeble state, for I was suspicious of him--of any one; and as he was going away that day I thought I could keep my secret until he was gone. I was dizzy and confused, but I remember that I managed to write a letter to my wife, telling her of my good fortune, and begging her to come to me; and I remember that I saw Masters go. I don't remember anything else. They picked me up on the road, near that boulder, as you know."
"I know," said Mulrady, with a swift recollection of the stage-driver's account of his discovery.
"They say," continued Slinn, tremblingly, "that I never recovered my senses or consciousness for nearly three years; they say I lost my memory completely during my illness, and that by God's mercy, while I lay in that hospital, I knew no more than a babe; they say, because I could not speak or move, and only had my food as nature required it, that I was an imbecile, and that I never really came to my senses until after my son found me in the hospital. They SAY that--but I tell you to-night, Alvin Mulrady," he said, raising his voice to a hoarse outcry, "I tell you that it is a lie! I came to my senses a week after I lay on that hospital cot; I kept my senses and memory ever after during the three years that I was there, until Harry brought his cold, hypocritical face to my bedside and recognized me. Do you understand? I, the possessor of millions, lay there a pauper. Deserted by wife and children--a spectacle for the curious, a sport for the doctors--AND I KNEW IT! I heard them speculate on the cause of my helplessness. I heard them talk of excesses and indulgences--I, that never knew wine or woman! I heard a preacher speak of the finger of God, and point to me. May God curse him!"
"Go slow, old man; go slow," said Mulrady, gently.
"I heard them speak of me as a friendless man, an outcast, a criminal--a being whom no one would claim. They were right; no one claimed me. The friends of others visited them; relations came and took away their kindred; a few lucky ones got well; a few, equally lucky, died! I alone lived on, uncared for, deserted.
"The first year," he went on more rapidly, "I prayed for their coming. I looked for them every day. I never lost hope. I said to myself, 'She has not got my letter; but when the time passes she will be alarmed by my silence, and then she will come or send some one to seek me.' A young student got interested in my case, and, by studying my eyes, thought that I was not entirely imbecile and unconscious. With the aid of an alphabet, he got me to spell my name and town in Illinois, and promised by signs to write to my family. But in an evil moment I told him of my cursed fortune, and in that moment I saw that he thought me a fool and an idiot. He went away, and I saw him no more. Yet I still hoped. I dreamed of their joy at finding me, and the reward that my wealth would give them. Perhaps I was a little weak still, perhaps a little flighty, too, at times; but I was quite happy that year, even in my disappointment, for I had still hope!"
He paused, and again composed his face with his paralyzed hand; but his manner had become less excited, and his voice was stronger.
"A change must have come over me the second year, for I only dreaded their coming now and finding me so altered. A horrible idea that they might, like the student, believe me crazy if I spoke of my fortune made me pray to God that they might not reach me until after I had regained my health and strength--and found my fortune. When the third year found me still there--I no longer prayed for them--I cursed them! I swore to myself that they should never enjoy my wealth; but I wanted to live, and let them know I had it. I found myself getting stronger; but as I had no money, no friends, and nowhere to go, I concealed my real condition from the doctors, except to give them my name, and to try to get some little work to do to enable me to leave the hospital and seek my lost treasure. One day I found out by accident that it had been discovered! You understand--my treasure! --that had cost me years of labor and my reason; had left me a helpless, forgotten pauper. That gold I had never enjoyed had been found and taken possession of by another!"
He checked an exclamation from Mulrady with his hand. "They say they picked me up senseless from the floor, where I must have fallen when I heard the news--I don't remember--I recall nothing until I was confronted, nearly three weeks after, by my son, who had called at the hospital, as a reporter for a paper, and had accidentally discovered me through my name and appearance. He thought me crazy, or a fool. I didn't undeceive him. I did not tell him the story of the mine to excite his doubts and derision, or, worse (if I could bring proof to claim it), have it perhaps pass into his ungrateful hands. No; I said nothing. I let him bring me here. He could do no less, and common decency obliged him to do that."
"And what proof could you show of your claim?" asked Mulrady, gravely.
"If I had that letter--if I could find Masters," began Slinn, vaguely.
"Have you any idea where the letter is, or what has become of Masters?" continued Mulrady, with a matter-of-fact gravity, that seemed to increase Slinn's vagueness and excite his irritability.
"I don't know--I sometimes think--" He stopped, sat down again, and passed his hands across his forehead. "I have seen the letter somewhere since. Yes," he went on, with sudden vehemence, "I know it, I have seen it! I--" His brows knitted, his features began to work convulsively; he suddenly brought his paralyzed hand down, partly opened, upon the table. "I WILL remember where."
"Go slow, old man; go slow."
"You asked me once about my visions. Well, that is one of them. I remember a man somewhere showing me that letter. I have taken it from his hands and opened it, and knew it was mine by the specimens of gold that were in it. But where--or when--or what became of it, I cannot tell. It will come to me--it MUST come to me soon."
He turned his eyes upon Mulrady, who was regarding him with an expression of grave curiosity, and said bitterly, "You think me crazy. I know it. It needed only this."
"Where is this mine," asked Mulrady, without heeding him.
The old man's eyes swiftly sought the ground.
"It is a secret, then?"
"No."
"You have spoken of it to any one?"
"No."
"Not to the man who possesses it?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I wouldn't take it from him."
"Why wouldn't you?"
"Because that man is yourself!"
In the instant of complete silence that followed they could hear that the monotonous patter of rain on the roof had ceased.
"Then all this was in MY shaft, and the vein I thought I struck there was YOUR lead, found three years ago in YOUR tunnel. Is that your idea?"
"Yes."
"Then I don't sabe why you don't want to claim it."
"I have told you why I don't want it for my children. I go further, now, and I tell you, Alvin Mulrady, that I was willing that your children should squander it, as they were doing. It has only been a curse to me; it could only be a curse to them; but I thought you were happy in seeing it feed selfishness and vanity. You think me bitter and hard. Well, I should have left you in your fool's paradise, but that I saw to-night, when you came here, that your eyes had been opened like mine. You, the possessor of my wealth, my treasure, could not buy your children's loving care and company with your millions, any more than I could keep mine in my poverty. You were to-night lonely and forsaken, as I was. We were equal, for the first time in our lives. If that cursed gold had dropped down the shaft between us into the hell from which it sprang, we might have clasped hands like brothers across the chasm."
Mulrady, who in a friendly show of being at his ease had not yet resumed his coat, rose in his shirt-sleeves, and, standing before the hearth, straightened his square figure by drawing down his waistcoat on each side with two powerful thumbs. After a moment's contemplative survey of the floor between him and the speaker, he raised his eyes to Slinn. They were small and colorless; the forehead above them was low, and crowned with a shock of tawny reddish hair; even the rude strength of his lower features was enfeebled by a long, straggling, goat-like beard; but for the first time in his life the whole face was impressed and transformed with a strong and simple dignity.
"Ez far ez I kin see, Slinn," he said, gravely, "the pint between you and me ain't to be settled by our children, or wot we allow is doo and right from them to us. Afore we preach at them for playing in the slumgullion, and gettin' themselves splashed, perhaps we mout ez well remember that that thar slumgullion comes from our own sluice-boxes, where we wash our gold. So we'll just put THEM behind us, so," he continued, with a backward sweep of his powerful hand towards the chimney, "and goes on. The next thing that crops up ahead of us is your three years in the hospital, and wot you went through at that time. I ain't sayin' it wasn't rough on you, and that you didn't have it about as big as it's made; but ez you'll allow that you'd hev had that for three years, whether I'd found your mine or whether I hadn't, I think we can put THAT behind us, too. There's nothin' now left to prospect but your story of your strike. Well, take your own proofs. Masters is not here; and if he was, accordin' to your own story, he knows nothin' of your strike that day, and could only prove you were a disappointed prospector in a tunnel; your letter--that the person you wrote to never got--YOU can't produce; and if you did, would be only your own story without proof! There is not a business man ez would look at your claim; there isn't a friend of yours that wouldn't believe you were crazy, and dreamed it all; there isn't a rival of yours ez wouldn't say ez you'd invented it. Slinn, I'm a business man--I am your friend--I am your rival--but I don't think you're lyin'--I don't think you're crazy--and I'm not sure your claim ain't a good one!
"Ef you reckon from that that I'm goin' to hand you over the mine to-morrow," he went on, after a pause, raising his hand with a deprecating gesture, "you're mistaken. For your own sake, and the sake of my wife and children, you've got to prove it more clearly than you hev; but I promise you that from this night forward I will spare neither time nor money to help you to do it. I have more than doubled the amount that you would have had, had you taken the mine the day you came from the hospital. When you prove to me that your story is true--and we will find some way to prove it, if it IS true--that amount will be yours at once, without the need of a word from law or lawyers. If you want my name to that in black and white, come to the office to-morrow, and you shall have it."
"And you think I'll take it now?" said the old man passionately. "Do you think that your charity will bring back my dead wife, the three years of my lost life, the love and respect of my children? Or do you think that your own wife and children, who deserted you in your wealth, will come back to you in your poverty? No! Let the mine stay, with its curse, where it is--I'll have none of it!"
"Go slow, old man; go slow," said Mulrady, quietly, putting on his coat. "You will take the mine if it is yours; if it isn't, I'll keep it. If it is yours, you will give your children a chance to sho what they can do for you in your sudden prosperity, as I shall give mine a chance to show how they can stand reverse and disappointment. If my head is level--and I reckon it is--they'll both pan out all right."
He turned and opened the door. With a quick revulsion of feeling, Slinn suddenly seized Mulrady's hand between both of his own, and raised it to his lips. Mulrady smiled, disengaged his hand gently, and saying soothingly, "Go slow, old man; go slow," closed the door behind him, and passed out into the clear Christmas dawn.
For the stars, with the exception of one that seemed to sparkle brightly over the shaft of his former fortunes, were slowly paling. A burden seemed to have fallen from his square shoulders as he stepped out sturdily into the morning air. He had already forgotten the lonely man behind him, for he was thinking only of his wife and daughter. And at the same moment they were thinking of him; and in their elaborate villa overlooking the blue Mediterranean at Cannes were discussing, in the event of Mamie's marriage with Prince Rosso e Negro, the possibility of Mr. Mulrady's paying two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the gambling debts of that unfortunate but deeply conscientious nobleman.
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{
"id": "2280"
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When Alvin Mulrady reentered his own house, he no longer noticed its loneliness. Whether the events of the last few hours had driven it from his mind, or whether his late reflections had repeopled it with his family under pleasanter auspices, it would be difficult to determine. Destitute as he was of imagination, and matter-of-fact in his judgments, he realized his new situation as calmly as he would have considered any business proposition. While he was decided to act upon his moral convictions purely, he was prepared to submit the facts of Slinn's claim to the usual patient and laborious investigation of his practical mind. It was the least he could do to justify the ready and almost superstitious assent he had given to Slinn's story.
When he had made a few memoranda at his desk by the growing light, he again took the key of the attic, and ascended to the loft that held the tangible memories of his past life. If he was still under the influence of his reflections, it was with very different sensations that he now regarded them. Was it possible that these ashes might be warmed again, and these scattered embers rekindled? His practical sense said No! whatever his wish might have been. A sudden chill came over him; he began to realize the terrible change that was probable, more by the impossibility of his accepting the old order of things than by his voluntarily abandoning the new. His wife and children would never submit. They would go away from this place, far away, where no reminiscence of either former wealth or former poverty could obtrude itself upon them. Mamie--his Mamie--should never go back to the cabin, since desecrated by Slinn's daughters, and take their places. No! Why should she? --because of the half-sick, half-crazy dreams of an old vindictive man?
He stopped suddenly. In moodily turning over a heap of mining clothing, blankets, and india-rubber boots, he had come upon an old pickaxe--the one he had found in the shaft; the one he had carefully preserved for a year, and then forgotten! Why had he not remembered it before? He was frightened, not only at this sudden resurrection of the proof he was seeking, but at his own fateful forgetfulness. Why had he never thought of this when Slinn was speaking? A sense of shame, as if he had voluntarily withheld it from the wronged man, swept over him. He was turning away, when he was again startled.
This time it was by a voice from below--a voice calling him--Slinn's voice. How had the crippled man got here so soon, and what did he want? He hurriedly laid aside the pick, which, in his first impulse, he had taken to the door of the loft with him, and descended the stairs. The old man was standing at the door of his office awaiting him.
As Mulrady approached, he trembled violently, and clung to the doorpost for support.
"I had to come over, Mulrady," he said, in a choked voice; "I could stand it there no longer. I've come to beg you to forget all that I have said; to drive all thought of what passed between us last night out of your head and mine forever! I've come to ask you to swear with me that neither of us will ever speak of this again forever. It is not worth the happiness I have had in your friendship for the last half-year; it is not worth the agony I have suffered in its loss in the last half-hour."
Mulrady grasped his outstretched hand. "P'raps," he said, gravely, "there mayn't be any use for another word, if you can answer one now. Come with me. No matter," he added, as Slinn moved with difficulty; "I will help you."
He half supported, half lifted the paralyzed man up the three flights of stairs, and opened the door of the loft. The pick was leaning against the wall, where he had left it. "Look around, and see if you recognize anything."
The old man's eyes fell upon the implement in a half-frightened way, and then lifted themselves interrogatively to Mulrady's face.
"Do you know that pick?"
Slinn raised it in his trembling hands. "I think I do; and yet--" "Slinn! is it yours?"
"No," he said hurriedly.
"Then what makes you think you know it?"
"It has a short handle like one I've seen."
"And is isn't yours?"
"No. The handle of mine was broken and spliced. I was too poor to buy a new one."
"Then you say that this pick which I found in my shaft is not yours?"
"Yes."
"Slinn!"
The old man passed his hand across his forehead, looked at Mulrady, and dropped his eyes. "It is not mine," he said simply.
"That will do," said Mulrady, gravely.
"And you will not speak of this again?" said the old man, timidly.
"I promise you--not until I have some more evidence."
He kept his word, but not before he had extorted from Slinn as full a description of Masters as his imperfect memory and still more imperfect knowledge of his former neighbor could furnish. He placed this, with a large sum of money and the promise of a still larger reward, in the hands of a trustworthy agent. When this was done he resumed his old relations with Slinn, with the exception that the domestic letters of Mrs. Mulrady and Mamie were no longer a subject of comment, and their bills no longer passed through his private secretary's hands.
Three months passed; the rainy season had ceased, the hillsides around Mulrady's shaft were bridal-like with flowers; indeed, there were rumors of an approaching fashionable marriage in the air, and vague hints in the "Record" that the presence of a distinguished capitalist might soon be required abroad. The face of that distinguished man did not, however, reflect the gayety of nature nor the anticipation of happiness; on the contrary, for the past few weeks, he had appeared disturbed and anxious, and that rude tranquillity which had characterized him was wanting. People shook their heads; a few suggested speculations; all agreed on extravagance.
One morning, after office hours, Slinn, who had been watching the careworn face of his employer, suddenly rose and limped to his side.
"We promised each other," he said, in a voice trembling with emotion; "never to allude to our talk of Christmas Eve again unless we had other proofs of what I told you then. We have none; I don't believe we'll ever have any more. I don't care if we ever do, and I break that promise now because I cannot bear to see you unhappy and know that this is the cause."
Mulrady made a motion of deprecation, but the old man continued-- "You are unhappy, Alvin Mulrady. You are unhappy because you want to give your daughter a dowry of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and you will not use the fortune that you think may be mine."
"Who's been talking about a dowry?" asked Mulrady, with an angry flush.
"Don Caesar Alvarado told my daughter."
"Then that is why he has thrown off on me since he returned," said Mulrady, with sudden small malevolence, "just that he might unload his gossip because Mamie wouldn't have him. The old woman was right in warnin' me agin him."
The outburst was so unlike him, and so dwarfed his large though common nature with its littleness, that it was easy to detect its feminine origin, although it filled Slinn with vague alarm.
"Never mind him," said the old man, hastily; "what I wanted to say now is that I abandon everything to you and yours. There are no proofs; there never will be any more than what we know, than what we have tested and found wanting. I swear to you that, except to show you that I have not lied and am not crazy, I would destroy them on their way to your hands. Keep the money, and spend it as you will. Make your daughter happy, and, through her, yourself. You have made me happy through your liberality; don't make me suffer through your privation."
"I tell you what, old man," said Mulrady, rising to his feet, with an awkward mingling of frankness and shame in his manner and accent, "I should like to pay that money for Mamie, and let her be a princess, if it would make her happy. I should like to shut the lantern jaws of that Don Caesar, who'd be too glad if anything happened to break off Mamie's match. But I shouldn't touch that capital--unless you'd lend it to me. If you'll take a note from me, payable if the property ever becomes yours, I'd thank you. A mortgage on the old house and garden, and the lands I bought of Don Caesar, outside the mine, will screen you."
"If that pleases you," said the old man, with a smile, "have your way; and if I tear up the note, it does not concern you."
It did please the distinguished capitalist of Rough-and-Ready; for the next few days his face wore a brightened expression, and he seemed to have recovered his old tranquillity. There was, in fact, a slight touch of consequence in his manner, the first ostentation he had ever indulged in, when he was informed one morning at his private office that Don Caesar Alvarado was in the counting-house, desiring a few moments' conference. "Tell him to come in," said Mulrady, shortly. The door opened upon Don Caesar--erect, sallow, and grave. Mulrady had not seen him since his return from Europe, and even his inexperienced eyes were struck with the undeniable ease and grace with which the young Spanish-American had assimilated the style and fashion of an older civilization. It seemed rather as if he had returned to a familiar condition than adopted a new one.
"Take a cheer," said Mulrady.
The young man looked at Slinn with quietly persistent significance.
"You can talk all the same," said Mulrady, accepting the significance. "He's my private secretary."
"It seems that for that reason we might choose another moment for our conversation," returned Don Caesar, haughtily. "Do I understand you cannot see me now?"
Mulrady hesitated, he had always revered and recognized a certain social superiority in Don Ramon Alvarado; somehow his son--a young man of half his age, and once a possible son-in-law--appeared to claim that recognition also. He rose, without a word, and preceded Don Caesar up-stairs into the drawing-room. The alien portrait on the wall seemed to evidently take sides with Don Caesar, as against the common intruder, Mulrady.
"I hoped the Senora Mulrady might have saved me this interview," said the young man, stiffly; "or at least have given you some intimation of the reason why I seek it. As you just now proposed my talking to you in the presence of the unfortunate Senor Esslinn himself, it appears she has not."
"I don't know what you're driving at, or what Mrs. Mulrady's got to do with Slinn or you," said Mulrady, in angry uneasiness.
"Do I understand," said Don Caesar, sternly, "that Senora Mulrady has not told you that I entrusted to her an important letter, belonging to Senor Esslinn, which I had the honor to discover in the wood six months ago, and which she said she would refer to you?"
"Letter?" echoed Mulrady, slowly; "my wife had a letter of Slinn's?"
Don Caesar regarded the millionaire attentively. "It is as I feared," he said, gravely. "You do not know or you would not have remained silent." He then briefly recounted the story of his finding Slinn's letter, his exhibition of it to the invalid, its disastrous effect upon him, and his innocent discovery of the contents. "I believed myself at that time on the eve of being allied with your family, Senor Mulrady," he said, haughtily; "and when I found myself in the possession of a secret which affected its integrity and good name, I did not choose to leave it in the helpless hands of its imbecile owner, or his sillier children, but proposed to trust it to the care of the Senora, that she and you might deal with it as became your honor and mine. I followed her to Paris, and gave her the letter there. She affected to laugh at any pretension of the writer, or any claim he might have on your bounty; but she kept the letter, and, I fear, destroyed it. You will understand, Senor Mulrady, that when I found that my attentions were no longer agreeable to your daughter, I had no longer the right to speak to you on the subject, nor could I, without misapprehension, force her to return it. I should have still kept the secret to myself, if I had not since my return here made the nearer acquaintance of Senor Esslinn's daughters. I cannot present myself at his house, as a suitor for the hand of the Senorita Vashti, until I have asked his absolution for my complicity in the wrong that has been done to him. I cannot, as a caballero, do that without your permission. It is for that purpose I am here."
It needed only this last blow to complete the humiliation that whitened Mulrady's face. But his eye was none the less clear and his voice none the less steady as he turned to Don Caesar.
"You know perfectly the contents of that letter?"
"I have kept a copy of it."
"Come with me."
He preceded his visitor down the staircase and back into his private office. Slinn looked up at his employer's face in unrestrained anxiety. Mulrady sat down at his desk, wrote a few hurried lines, and rang a bell. A manager appeared from the counting-room.
"Send that to the bank."
He wiped his pen as methodically as if he had not at that moment countermanded the order to pay his daughter's dowry, and turned quietly to Slinn.
"Don Caesar Alvarado has found the letter you wrote your wife on the day you made your strike in the tunnel that is now my shaft. He gave the letter to Mrs. Mulrady; but he has kept a copy."
Unheeding the frightened gesture of entreaty from Slinn, equally with the unfeigned astonishment of Don Caesar, who was entirely unprepared for this revelation of Mulrady's and Slinn's confidences, he continued, "He has brought the copy with him. I reckon it would be only square for you to compare it with what you remember of the original."
In obedience to a gesture from Mulrady, Don Caesar mechanically took from his pocket a folded paper, and handed it to the paralytic. But Slinn's trembling fingers could scarcely unfold the paper; and as his eyes fell upon its contents, his convulsive lips could not articulate a word.
"P'raps I'd better read it for you," said Mulrady, gently. "You kin follow me and stop me when I go wrong."
He took the paper, and, in dead silence, read as follows:-- "DEAR WIFE,--I've just struck gold in my tunnel, and you must get ready to come here with the children, at once. It was after six months' hard work; and I'm so weak I . . . It's a fortune for us all. We should be rich even if it were only a branch vein dipping west towards the next tunnel, instead of dipping east, according to my theory--" "Stop!" said Slinn, in a voice that shook the room.
Mulrady looked up.
"It's wrong, ain't it?" he asked, anxiously; "it should be EAST towards the next tunnel."
"No! IT'S RIGHT! I am wrong! We're all wrong!"
Slinn had risen to his feet, erect and inspired. "Don't you see," he almost screamed, with passionate vehemence, "it's MASTERS' ABANDONED TUNNEL your shaft has struck? Not mine! It was Masters' pick you found! I know it now!"
"And your own tunnel?" said Mulrady, springing to his feet in excitement. "And YOUR strike?"
"Is still there!"
The next instant, and before another question could be asked, Slinn had darted from the room. In the exaltation of that supreme discovery he regained the full control of his mind and body. Mulrady and Don Caesar, no less excited, followed him precipitately, and with difficulty kept up with his feverish speed. Their way lay along the base of the hill below Mulrady's shaft, and on a line with Masters' abandoned tunnel. Only once he stopped to snatch a pick from the hand of an astonished Chinaman at work in a ditch, as he still kept on his way, a quarter of a mile beyond the shaft. Here he stopped before a jagged hole in the hillside. Bared to the sky and air, the very openness of its abandonment, its unpropitious position, and distance from the strike in Mulrady's shaft had no doubt preserved its integrity from wayfarer or prospector.
"You can't go in there alone, and without a light," said Mulrady, laying his hand on the arm of the excited man. "Let me get more help and proper tools."
"I know every step in the dark as in the daylight," returned Slinn, struggling. "Let me go, while I have yet strength and reason! Stand aside!"
He broke from them, and the next moment was swallowed up in the yawning blackness. They waited with bated breath until, after a seeming eternity of night and silence, they heard his returning footsteps, and ran forward to meet him. As he was carrying something clasped to his breast, they supported him to the opening. But at the same moment the object of his search and his burden, a misshapen wedge of gold and quartz, dropped with him, and both fell together with equal immobility to the ground. He had still strength to turn his fading eyes to the other millionaire of Rough-and-Ready, who leaned over him.
"You--see," he gasped, brokenly, "I was not--crazy!"
No. He was dead!
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{
"id": "2280"
}
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It was a season of unequalled prosperity in Devil's Ford. The half a dozen cabins scattered along the banks of the North Fork, as if by some overflow of that capricious river, had become augmented during a week of fierce excitement by twenty or thirty others, that were huddled together on the narrow gorge of Devil's Spur, or cast up on its steep sides. So sudden and violent had been the change of fortune, that the dwellers in the older cabins had not had time to change with it, but still kept their old habits, customs, and even their old clothes. The flour pan in which their daily bread was mixed stood on the rude table side by side with the “prospecting pans,” half full of gold washed up from their morning's work; the front windows of the newer tenements looked upon the one single thoroughfare, but the back door opened upon the uncleared wilderness, still haunted by the misshapen bulk of bear or the nightly gliding of catamount.
Neither had success as yet affected their boyish simplicity and the frankness of old frontier habits; they played with their new-found riches with the naive delight of children, and rehearsed their glowing future with the importance and triviality of school-boys.
“I've bin kalklatin',” said Dick Mattingly, leaning on his long-handled shovel with lazy gravity, “that when I go to Rome this winter, I'll get one o' them marble sharps to chisel me a statoo o' some kind to set up on the spot where we made our big strike. Suthin' to remember it by, you know.”
“What kind o' statoo--Washington or Webster?” asked one of the Kearney brothers, without looking up from his work.
“No--I reckon one o' them fancy groups--one o' them Latin goddesses that Fairfax is always gassin' about, sorter leadin', directin' and bossin' us where to dig.”
“You'd make a healthy-lookin' figger in a group,” responded Kearney, critically regarding an enormous patch in Mattingly's trousers. “Why don't you have a fountain instead?”
“Where'll you get the water?” demanded the first speaker, in return. “You know there ain't enough in the North Fork to do a week's washing for the camp--to say nothin' of its color.”
“Leave that to me,” said Kearney, with self-possession. “When I've built that there reservoir on Devil's Spur, and bring the water over the ridge from Union Ditch, there'll be enough to spare for that.”
“Better mix it up, I reckon--have suthin' half statoo, half fountain,” interposed the elder Mattingly, better known as “Maryland Joe,” “and set it up afore the Town Hall and Free Library I'm kalklatin' to give. Do THAT, and you can count on me.”
After some further discussion, it was gravely settled that Kearney should furnish water brought from the Union Ditch, twenty miles away, at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars, to feed a memorial fountain erected by Mattingly, worth a hundred thousand dollars, as a crowning finish to public buildings contributed by Maryland Joe, to the extent of half a million more. The disposition of these vast sums by gentlemen wearing patched breeches awakened no sense of the ludicrous, nor did any doubt, reservation, or contingency enter into the plans of the charming enthusiasts themselves. The foundation of their airy castles lay already before them in the strip of rich alluvium on the river bank, where the North Fork, sharply curving round the base of Devil's Spur, had for centuries swept the detritus of gulch and canyon. They had barely crossed the threshold of this treasure-house, to find themselves rich men; what possibilities of affluence might be theirs when they had fully exploited their possessions? So confident were they of that ultimate prospect, that the wealth already thus obtained was religiously expended in engines and machinery for the boring of wells and the conveyance of that precious water which the exhausted river had long since ceased to yield. It seemed as if the gold they had taken out was by some ironical compensation gradually making its way back to the soil again through ditch and flume and reservoir.
Such was the position of affairs at Devil's Ford on the 13th of August, 1860. It was noon of a hot day. Whatever movement there was in the stifling air was seen rather than felt in a tremulous, quivering, upward-moving dust along the flank of the mountain, through which the spires of the pines were faintly visible. There was no water in the bared and burning bars of the river to reflect the vertical sun, but under its direct rays one or two tinned roofs and corrugated zinc cabins struck fire, a few canvas tents became dazzling to the eye, and the white wooded corral of the stage office and hotel insupportable. For two hours no one ventured in the glare of the open, or even to cross the narrow, unshadowed street, whose dull red dust seemed to glow between the lines of straggling houses. The heated shells of these green unseasoned tenements gave out a pungent odor of scorching wood and resin. The usual hurried, feverish toil in the claim was suspended; the pick and shovel were left sticking in the richest “pay gravel;” the toiling millionaires themselves, ragged, dirty, and perspiring, lay panting under the nearest shade, where the pipes went out listlessly, and conversation sank to monosyllables.
“There's Fairfax,” said Dick Mattingly, at last, with a lazy effort. His face was turned to the hillside, where a man had just emerged from the woods, and was halting irresolutely before the glaring expanse of upheaved gravel and glistening boulders that stretched between him and the shaded group. “He's going to make a break for it,” he added, as the stranger, throwing his linen coat over his head, suddenly started into an Indian trot through the pelting sunbeams toward them. This strange act was perfectly understood by the group, who knew that in that intensely dry heat the danger of exposure was lessened by active exercise and the profuse perspiration that followed it. In another moment the stranger had reached their side, dripping as if rained upon, mopping his damp curls and handsome bearded face with his linen coat, as he threw himself pantingly on the ground.
“I struck out over here first, boys, to give you a little warning,” he said, as soon as he had gained breath. “That engineer will be down here to take charge as soon as the six o'clock stage comes in. He's an oldish chap, has got a family of two daughters, and--I--am--d----d if he is not bringing them down here with him.”
“Oh, go long!” exclaimed the five men in one voice, raising themselves on their hands and elbows, and glaring at the speaker.
“Fact, boys! Soon as I found it out I just waltzed into that Jew shop at the Crossing and bought up all the clothes that would be likely to suit you fellows, before anybody else got a show. I reckon I cleared out the shop. The duds are a little mixed in style, but I reckon they're clean and whole, and a man might face a lady in 'em. I left them round at the old Buckeye Spring, where they're handy without attracting attention. You boys can go there for a general wash-up, rig yourselves up without saying anything, and then meander back careless and easy in your store clothes, just as the stage is coming in, sabe?”
“Why didn't you let us know earlier?” asked Mattingly aggrievedly; “you've been back here at least an hour.”
“I've been getting some place ready for THEM,” returned the new-comer. “We might have managed to put the man somewhere, if he'd been alone, but these women want family accommodation. There was nothing left for me to do but to buy up Thompson's saloon.”
“No?” interrupted his audience, half in incredulity, half in protestation.
“Fact! You boys will have to take your drinks under canvas again, I reckon! But I made Thompson let those gold-framed mirrors that used to stand behind the bar go into the bargain, and they sort of furnish the room. You know the saloon is one of them patent houses you can take to pieces, and I've been reckoning you boys will have to pitch in and help me to take the whole shanty over to the laurel bushes, and put it up agin Kearney's cabin.”
“What's all that?” said the younger Kearney, with an odd mingling of astonishment and bashful gratification.
“Yes, I reckon yours is the cleanest house, because it's the newest, so you'll just step out and let us knock in one o' the gables, and clap it on to the saloon, and make ONE house of it, don't you see? There'll be two rooms, one for the girls and the other for the old man.”
The astonishment and bewilderment of the party had gradually given way to a boyish and impatient interest.
“Hadn't we better do the job at once?” suggested Dick Mattingly.
“Or throw ourselves into those new clothes, so as to be ready,” added the younger Kearney, looking down at his ragged trousers. “I say, Fairfax, what are the girls like, eh?”
All the others had been dying to ask the question, yet one and all laughed at the conscious manner and blushing cheek of the questioner.
“You'll find out quick enough,” returned Fairfax, whose curt carelessness did not, however, prevent a slight increase of color on his own cheek. “We'd better get that job off our hands before doing anything else. So, if you're ready, boys, we'll just waltz down to Thompson's and pack up the shanty. He's out of it by this time, I reckon. You might as well be perspiring to some purpose over there as gaspin' under this tree. We won't go back to work this afternoon, but knock off now, and call it half a day. Come! Hump yourselves, gentlemen. Are you ready? One, two, three, and away!”
In another instant the tree was deserted; the figures of the five millionaires of Devil's Ford, crossing the fierce glare of the open space, with boyish alacrity, glistened in the sunlight, and then disappeared in the nearest fringe of thickets.
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{
"id": "2286"
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Six hours later, when the shadow of Devil's Spur had crossed the river, and spread a slight coolness over the flat beyond, the Pioneer coach, leaving the summit, began also to bathe its heated bulk in the long shadows of the descent. Conspicuous among the dusty passengers, the two pretty and youthful faces of the daughters of Philip Carr, mining superintendent and engineer, looked from the windows with no little anxiety towards their future home in the straggling settlement below, that occasionally came in view at the turns of the long zigzagging road. A slight look of comical disappointment passed between them as they gazed upon the sterile flat, dotted with unsightly excrescences that stood equally for cabins or mounds of stone and gravel. It was so feeble and inconsistent a culmination to the beautiful scenery they had passed through, so hopeless and imbecile a conclusion to the preparation of that long picturesque journey, with its glimpses of sylvan and pastoral glades and canyons, that, as the coach swept down the last incline, and the remorseless monotony of the dead level spread out before them, furrowed by ditches and indented by pits, under cover of shielding their cheeks from the impalpable dust that rose beneath the plunging wheels, they buried their faces in their handkerchiefs, to hide a few half-hysterical tears. Happily, their father, completely absorbed in a practical, scientific, and approving contemplation of the topography and material resources of the scene of his future labors, had no time to notice their defection. It was not until the stage drew up before a rambling tenement bearing the inscription, “Hotel and Stage Office,” that he became fully aware of it.
“We can't stop HERE, papa,” said Christie Carr decidedly, with a shake of her pretty head. “You can't expect that.”
Mr. Carr looked up at the building; it was half grocery, half saloon. Whatever other accommodations it contained must have been hidden in the rear, as the flat roof above was almost level with the raftered ceiling of the shop.
“Certainly,” he replied hurriedly; “we'll see to that in a moment. I dare say it's all right. I told Fairfax we were coming. Somebody ought to be here.”
“But they're not,” said Jessie Carr indignantly; “and the few that were here scampered off like rabbits to their burrows as soon as they saw us get down.”
It was true. The little group of loungers before the building had suddenly disappeared. There was the flash of a red shirt vanishing in an adjacent doorway; the fading apparition of a pair of high boots and blue overalls in another; the abrupt withdrawal of a curly blond head from a sashless window over the way. Even the saloon was deserted, although a back door in the dim recess seemed to creak mysteriously. The stage-coach, with the other passengers, had already rattled away.
“I certainly think Fairfax understood that I--” began Mr. Carr.
He was interrupted by the pressure of Christie's fingers on his arm and a subdued exclamation from Jessie, who was staring down the street.
“What are they?” she whispered in her sister's ear. “Nigger minstrels, a circus, or what?”
The five millionaires of Devil's Ford had just turned the corner of the straggling street, and were approaching in single file. One glance was sufficient to show that they had already availed themselves of the new clothing bought by Fairfax, had washed, and one or two had shaved. But the result was startling.
Through some fortunate coincidence in size, Dick Mattingly was the only one who had achieved an entire new suit. But it was of funereal black cloth, and although relieved at one extremity by a pair of high riding boots, in which his too short trousers were tucked, and at the other by a tall white hat, and cravat of aggressive yellow, the effect was depressing. In agreeable contrast, his brother, Maryland Joe, was attired in a thin fawn-colored summer overcoat, lightly worn open, so as to show the unstarched bosom of a white embroidered shirt, and a pair of nankeen trousers and pumps.
The Kearney brothers had divided a suit between them, the elder wearing a tightly-fitting, single-breasted blue frock-coat and a pair of pink striped cotton trousers, while the younger candidly displayed the trousers of his brother's suit, as a harmonious change to a shining black alpaca coat and crimson neckerchief. Fairfax, who brought up the rear, had, with characteristic unselfishness, contented himself with a French workman's blue blouse and a pair of white duck trousers. Had they shown the least consciousness of their finery, or of its absurdity, they would have seemed despicable. But only one expression beamed on the five sunburnt and shining faces--a look of unaffected boyish gratification and unrestricted welcome.
They halted before Mr. Carr and his daughters, simultaneously removed their various and remarkable head coverings, and waited until Fairfax advanced and severally presented them. Jessie Carr's half-frightened smile took refuge in the trembling shadows of her dark lashes; Christie Carr stiffened slightly, and looked straight before her.
“We reckoned--that is--we intended to meet you and the young ladies at the grade,” said Fairfax, reddening a little as he endeavored to conceal his too ready slang, “and save you from trapesing--from dragging yourselves up grade again to your house.”
“Then there IS a house?” said Jessie, with an alarming frank laugh of relief, that was, however, as frankly reflected in the boyishly appreciative eyes of the young men.
“Such as it is,” responded Fairfax, with a shade of anxiety, as he glanced at the fresh and pretty costumes of the young women, and dubiously regarded the two Saratoga trunks resting hopelessly on the veranda. “I'm afraid it isn't much, for what you're accustomed to. But,” he added more cheerfully, “it will do for a day or two, and perhaps you'll give us the pleasure of showing you the way there now.”
The procession was quickly formed. Mr. Carr, alive only to the actual business that had brought him there, at once took possession of Fairfax, and began to disclose his plans for the working of the mine, occasionally halting to look at the work already done in the ditches, and to examine the field of his future operations. Fairfax, not displeased at being thus relieved of a lighter attendance on Mr. Carr's daughters, nevertheless from time to time cast a paternal glance backwards upon their escorts, who had each seized a handle of the two trunks, and were carrying them in couples at the young ladies' side. The occupation did not offer much freedom for easy gallantry, but no sign of discomfiture or uneasiness was visible in the grateful faces of the young men. The necessity of changing hands at times with their burdens brought a corresponding change of cavalier at the lady's side, although it was observed that the younger Kearney, for the sake of continuing a conversation with Miss Jessie, kept his grasp of the handle nearest the young lady until his hand was nearly cut through, and his arm worn out by exhaustion.
“The only thing on wheels in the camp is a mule wagon, and the mules are packin' gravel from the river this afternoon,” explained Dick Mattingly apologetically to Christie, “or we'd have toted--I mean carried--you and your baggage up to the shant--the--your house. Give us two weeks more, Miss Carr--only two weeks to wash up our work and realize--and we'll give you a pair of 2.40 steppers and a skeleton buggy to meet you at the top of the hill and drive you over to the cabin. Perhaps you'd prefer a regular carriage; some ladies do. And a nigger driver. But what's the use of planning anything? Afore that time comes we'll have run you up a house on the hill, and you shall pick out the spot. It wouldn't take long--unless you preferred brick. I suppose we could get brick over from La Grange, if you cared for it, but it would take longer. If you could put up for a time with something of stained glass and a mahogany veranda--” In spite of her cold indignation, and the fact that she could understand only a part of Mattingly's speech, Christie comprehended enough to make her lift her clear eyes to the speaker, as she replied freezingly that she feared she would not trouble them long with her company.
“Oh, you'll get over that,” responded Mattingly, with an exasperating confidence that drove her nearly frantic, from the manifest kindliness of intent that made it impossible for her to resent it. “I felt that way myself at first. Things will look strange and unsociable for a while, until you get the hang of them. You'll naturally stamp round and cuss a little--” He stopped in conscious consternation.
With ready tact, and before Christie could reply, Maryland Joe had put down the trunk and changed hands with his brother.
“You mustn't mind Dick, or he'll go off and kill himself with shame,” he whispered laughingly in her ear. “He means all right, but he's picked up so much slang here that he's about forgotten how to talk English, and it's nigh on to four years since he's met a young lady.”
Christie did not reply. Yet the laughter of her sister in advance with the Kearney brothers seemed to make the reserve with which she tried to crush further familiarity only ridiculous.
“Do you know many operas, Miss Carr?”
She looked at the boyish, interested, sunburnt face so near to her own, and hesitated. After all, why should she add to her other real disappointments by taking this absurd creature seriously?
“In what way?” she returned, with a half smile.
“To play. On the piano, of course. There isn't one nearer here than Sacramento; but I reckon we could get a small one by Thursday. You couldn't do anything on a banjo?” he added doubtfully; “Kearney's got one.”
“I imagine it would be very difficult to carry a piano over those mountains,” said Christie laughingly, to avoid the collateral of the banjo.
“We got a billiard-table over from Stockton,” half bashfully interrupted Dick Mattingly, struggling from his end of the trunk to recover his composure, “and it had to be brought over in sections on the back of a mule, so I don't see why--” He stopped short again in confusion, at a sign from his brother, and then added, “I mean, of course, that a piano is a heap more delicate, and valuable, and all that sort of thing, but it's worth trying for.”
“Fairfax was always saying he'd get one for himself, so I reckon it's possible,” said Joe.
“Does he play?” asked Christie.
“You bet,” said Joe, quite forgetting himself in his enthusiasm. “He can snatch Mozart and Beethoven bald-headed.”
In the embarrassing silence that followed this speech the fringe of pine wood nearest the flat was reached. Here there was a rude “clearing,” and beneath an enormous pine stood the two recently joined tenements. There was no attempt to conceal the point of junction between Kearney's cabin and the newly-transported saloon from the flat--no architectural illusion of the palpable collusion of the two buildings, which seemed to be telescoped into each other. The front room or living room occupied the whole of Kearney's cabin. It contained, in addition to the necessary articles for housekeeping, a “bunk” or berth for Mr. Carr, so as to leave the second building entirely to the occupation of his daughters as bedroom and boudoir.
There was a half-humorous, half-apologetic exhibition of the rude utensils of the living room, and then the young men turned away as the two girls entered the open door of the second room. Neither Christie nor Jessie could for a moment understand the delicacy which kept these young men from accompanying them into the room they had but a few moments before decorated and arranged with their own hands, and it was not until they turned to thank their strange entertainers that they found that they were gone.
The arrangement of the second room was rude and bizarre, but not without a singular originality and even tastefulness of conception. What had been the counter or “bar” of the saloon, gorgeous in white and gold, now sawn in two and divided, was set up on opposite sides of the room as separate dressing-tables, decorated with huge bunches of azaleas, that hid the rough earthenware bowls, and gave each table the appearance of a vestal altar.
The huge gilt plate-glass mirror which had hung behind the bar still occupied one side of the room, but its length was artfully divided by an enormous rosette of red, white, and blue muslin--one of the surviving Fourth of July decorations of Thompson's saloon. On either side of the door two pathetic-looking, convent-like cots, covered with spotless sheeting, and heaped up in the middle, like a snow-covered grave, had attracted their attention. They were still staring at them when Mr. Carr anticipated their curiosity.
“I ought to tell you that the young men confided to me the fact that there was neither bed nor mattress to be had on the Ford. They have filled some flour sacks with clean dry moss from the woods, and put half a dozen blankets on the top, and they hope you can get along until the messenger who starts to-night for La Grange can bring some bedding over.”
Jessie flew with mischievous delight to satisfy herself of the truth of this marvel. “It's so, Christie,” she said laughingly--“three flour-sacks apiece; but I'm jealous: yours are all marked 'superfine,' and mine 'middlings.'”
Mr. Carr had remained uneasily watching Christie's shadowed face.
“What matters?” she said drily. “The accommodation is all in keeping.”
“It will be better in a day or two,” he continued, casting a longing look towards the door--the first refuge of masculine weakness in an impending domestic emergency. “I'll go and see what can be done,” he said feebly, with a sidelong impulse towards the opening and freedom. “I've got to see Fairfax again to-night any way.”
“One moment, father,” said Christie, wearily. “Did you know anything of this place and these--these people--before you came?”
“Certainly--of course I did,” he returned, with the sudden testiness of disturbed abstraction. “What are you thinking of? I knew the geological strata and the--the report of Fairfax and his partners before I consented to take charge of the works. And I can tell you that there is a fortune here. I intend to make my own terms, and share in it.”
“And not take a salary or some sum of money down?” said Christie, slowly removing her bonnet in the same resigned way.
“I am not a hired man, or a workman, Christie,” said her father sharply. “You ought not to oblige me to remind you of that.”
“But the hired men--the superintendent and his workmen--were the only ones who ever got anything out of your last experience with Colonel Waters at La Grange, and--and we at least lived among civilized people there.”
“These young men are not common people, Christie; even if they have forgotten the restraints of speech and manners, they're gentlemen.”
“Who are willing to live like--like negroes.”
“You can make them what you please.”
Christie raised her eyes. There was a certain cynical ring in her father's voice that was unlike his usual hesitating abstraction. It both puzzled and pained her.
“I mean,” he said hastily, “that you have the same opportunity to direct the lives of these young men into more regular, disciplined channels that I have to regulate and correct their foolish waste of industry and material here. It would at least beguile the time for you.”
Fortunately for Mr. Carr's escape and Christie's uneasiness, Jessie, who had been examining the details of the living-room, broke in upon this conversation.
“I'm sure it will be as good as a perpetual picnic. George Kearney says we can have a cooking-stove under the tree outside at the back, and as there will be no rain for three months we can do the cooking there, and that will give us more room for--for the piano when it comes; and there's an old squaw to do the cleaning and washing-up any day--and--and--it will be real fun.”
She stopped breathlessly, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes--a charming picture of youth and trustfulness. Mr. Carr had seized the opportunity to escape.
“Really, now, Christie,” said Jessie confidentially, when they were alone, and Christie had begun to unpack her trunk, and to mechanically put her things away, “they're not so bad.”
“Who?” asked Christie.
“Why, the Kearneys, and Mattinglys, and Fairfax, and the lot, provided you don't look at their clothes. And think of it! they told me--for they tell one EVERYTHING in the most alarming way--that those clothes were bought to please US. A scramble of things bought at La Grange, without reference to size or style. And to hear these creatures talk, why, you'd think they were Astors or Rothschilds. Think of that little one with the curls--I don't believe he is over seventeen, for all his baby moustache--says he's going to build an assembly hall for us to give a dance in next month; and apologizes the next breath to tell us that there isn't any milk to be had nearer than La Grange, and we must do without it, and use syrup in our tea to-morrow.”
“And where is all this wealth?” said Christie, forcing herself to smile at her sister's animation.
“Under our very feet, my child, and all along the river. Why, what we thought was pure and simple mud is what they call 'gold-bearing cement.'”
“I suppose that is why they don't brush their boots and trousers, it's so precious,” returned Christie drily. “And have they ever translated this precious dirt into actual coin?”
“Bless you, yes. Why, that dirty little gutter, you know, that ran along the side of the road and followed us down the hill all the way here, that cost them--let me see--yes, nearly sixty thousand dollars. And fancy! papa's just condemned it--says it won't do; and they've got to build another.”
An impatient sigh from Christie drew Jessie's attention to her troubled eyebrows.
“Don't worry about our disappointment, dear. It isn't so very great. I dare say we'll be able to get along here in some way, until papa is rich again. You know they intend to make him share with them.”
“It strikes me that he is sharing with them already,” said Christie, glancing bitterly round the cabin; “sharing everything--ourselves, our lives, our tastes.”
“Ye-e-s!” said Jessie, with vaguely hesitating assent. “Yes, even these:” she showed two dice in the palm of her little hand. “I found 'em in the drawer of our dressing-table.”
“Throw them away,” said Christie impatiently.
But Jessie's small fingers closed over the dice. “I'll give them to the little Kearney. I dare say they were the poor boy's playthings.”
The appearance of these relics of wild dissipation, however, had lifted Christie out of her sublime resignation. “For Heaven's sake, Jessie,” she said, “look around and see if there is anything more!”
To make sure, they each began to scrimmage; the broken-spirited Christie exhibiting both alacrity and penetration in searching obscure corners. In the dining-room, behind the dresser, three or four books were discovered: an odd volume of Thackeray, another of Dickens, a memorandum-book or diary. “This seems to be Latin,” said Jessie, fishing out a smaller book. “I can't read it.”
“It's just as well you shouldn't,” said Christie shortly, whose ideas of a general classical impropriety had been gathered from pages of Lempriere's dictionary. “Put it back directly.”
Jessie returned certain odes of one Horatius Flaccus to the corner, and uttered an exclamation. “Oh, Christie! here are some letters tied up with a ribbon.”
They were two or three prettily written letters, exhaling a faint odor of refinement and of the pressed flowers that peeped from between the loose leaves. “I see, 'My darling Fairfax.' It's from some woman.”
“I don't think much of her, whosoever she is,” said Christie, tossing the intact packet back into the corner.
“Nor I,” echoed Jessie.
Nevertheless, by some feminine inconsistency, evidently the circumstance did make them think more of HIM, for a minute later, when they had reentered their own room, Christie remarked, “The idea of petting a man by his family name! Think of mamma ever having called papa 'darling Carr'!”
“Oh, but his family name isn't Fairfax,” said Jessie hastily; “that's his FIRST name, his Christian name. I forget what's his other name, but nobody ever calls him by it.”
“Do you mean,” said Christie, with glistening eyes and awful deliberation--“do you mean to say that we're expected to fall in with this insufferable familiarity? I suppose they'll be calling US by our Christian names next.”
“Oh, but they do!” said Jessie, mischievously.
“What!”
“They call me Miss Jessie; and Kearney, the little one, asked me if Christie played.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said that you did,” answered Jessie, with an affectation of cherubic simplicity. “You do, dear; don't you? . . . There, don't get angry, darling; I couldn't flare up all of a sudden in the face of that poor little creature; he looked so absurd--and so--so honest.”
Christie turned away, relapsing into her old resigned manner, and assuming her household duties in a quiet, temporizing way that was, however, without hope or expectation.
Mr. Carr, who had dined with his friends under the excuse of not adding to the awkwardness of the first day's housekeeping returned late at night with a mass of papers and drawings, into which he afterwards withdrew, but not until he had delivered himself of a mysterious package entrusted to him by the young men for his daughters. It contained a contribution to their board in the shape of a silver spoon and battered silver mug, which Jessie chose to facetiously consider as an affecting reminiscence of the youthful Kearney's christening days--which it probably was.
The young girls retired early to their white snow-drifts: Jessie not without some hilarious struggles with hers, in which she was, however, quickly surprised by the deep and refreshing sleep of youth; Christie to lie awake and listen to the night wind, that had changed from the first cool whispers of sunset to the sturdy breath of the mountain. At times the frail house shook and trembled. Wandering gusts laden with the deep resinous odors of the wood found their way through the imperfect jointure of the two cabins, swept her cheek and even stirred her long, wide-open lashes. A broken spray of pine needles rustled along the roof, or a pine cone dropped with a quick reverberating tap-tap that for an instant startled her. Lying thus, wide awake, she fell into a dreamy reminiscence of the past, hearing snatches of old melody in the moving pines, fragments of sentences, old words, and familiar epithets in the murmuring wind at her ear, and even the faint breath of long-forgotten kisses on her cheek. She remembered her mother--a pallid creature, who had slowly faded out of one of her father's vague speculations in a vaguer speculation of her own, beyond his ken--whose place she had promised to take at her father's side. The words, “Watch over him, Christie; he needs a woman's care,” again echoed in her ears, as if borne on the night wind from the lonely grave in the lonelier cemetery by the distant sea. She had devoted herself to him with some little sacrifices of self, only remembered now for their uselessness in saving her father the disappointment that sprang from his sanguine and one-idea'd temperament. She thought of him lying asleep in the other room, ready on the morrow to devote those fateful qualities to the new enterprise that with equally fateful disposition she believed would end in failure. It did not occur to her that the doubts of her own practical nature were almost as dangerous and illogical as his enthusiasm, and that for that reason she was fast losing what little influence she possessed over him. With the example of her mother's weakness before her eyes, she had become an unsparing and distrustful critic, with the sole effect of awakening his distrust and withdrawing his confidence from her.
He was beginning to deceive her as he had never deceived her mother. Even Jessie knew more of this last enterprise than she did herself.
All that did not tend to decrease her utter restlessness. It was already past midnight when she noticed that the wind had again abated. The mountain breeze had by this time possessed the stifling valleys and heated bars of the river in its strong, cold embraces; the equilibrium of Nature was restored, and a shadowy mist rose from the hollow. A stillness, more oppressive and intolerable than the previous commotion, began to pervade the house and the surrounding woods. She could hear the regular breathing of the sleepers; she even fancied she could detect the faint impulses of the more distant life in the settlement. The far-off barking of a dog, a lost shout, the indistinct murmur of some nearer watercourse--mere phantoms of sound--made the silence more irritating. With a sudden resolution she arose, dressed herself quietly and completely, threw a heavy cloak over her head and shoulders, and opened the door between the living-room and her own. Her father was sleeping soundly in his bunk in the corner. She passed noiselessly through the room, opened the lightly fastened door, and stepped out into the night.
In the irritation and disgust of her walk hither, she had never noticed the situation of the cabin, as it nestled on the slope at the fringe of the woods; in the preoccupation of her disappointment and the mechanical putting away of her things, she had never looked once from the window of her room, or glanced backward out of the door that she had entered. The view before her was a revelation--a reproach, a surprise that took away her breath. Over her shoulders the newly risen moon poured a flood of silvery light, stretching from her feet across the shining bars of the river to the opposite bank, and on up to the very crest of the Devil's Spur--no longer a huge bulk of crushing shadow, but the steady exaltation of plateau, spur, and terrace clothed with replete and unutterable beauty. In this magical light that beauty seemed to be sustained and carried along by the river winding at its base, lifted again to the broad shoulder of the mountain, and lost only in the distant vista of death-like, overcrowning snow. Behind and above where she stood the towering woods seemed to be waiting with opened ranks to absorb her with the little cabin she had quitted, dwarfed into insignificance in the vast prospect; but nowhere was there another sign or indication of human life and habitation. She looked in vain for the settlement, for the rugged ditches, the scattered cabins, and the unsightly heaps of gravel. In the glamour of the moonlight they had vanished; a veil of silver-gray vapor touched here and there with ebony shadows masked its site. A black strip beyond was the river bank. All else was changed. With a sudden sense of awe and loneliness she turned to the cabin and its sleeping inmates--all that seemed left to her in the vast and stupendous domination of rock and wood and sky.
But in another moment the loneliness passed. A new and delicious sense of an infinite hospitality and friendliness in their silent presence began to possess her. This same slighted, forgotten, uncomprehended, but still foolish and forgiving Nature seemed to be bending over her frightened and listening ear with vague but thrilling murmurings of freedom and independence. She felt her heart expand with its wholesome breath, her soul fill with its sustaining truth.
She felt-- What was that?
An unmistakable outburst of a drunken song at the foot of the slope:-- “Oh, my name it is Johnny from Pike, I'm h-ll on a spree or a strike.” . . . She stopped as crimson with shame and indignation as if the viewless singer had risen before her.
“I knew when to bet, and get up and get--” “Hush! D--n it all. Don't you hear?”
There was the sound of hurried whispers, a “No” and “Yes,” and then a dead silence.
Christie crept nearer to the edge of the slope in the shadow of a buckeye. In the clearer view she could distinguish a staggering figure in the trail below who had evidently been stopped by two other expostulating shadows that were approaching from the shelter of a tree.
“Sho! --didn't know!”
The staggering figure endeavored to straighten itself, and then slouched away in the direction of the settlement. The two mysterious shadows retreated again to the tree, and were lost in its deeper shadow. Christie darted back to the cabin, and softly reentered her room.
“I thought I heard a noise that woke me, and I missed you,” said Jessie, rubbing her eyes. “Did you see anything?”
“No,” said Christie, beginning to undress.
“You weren't frightened, dear?”
“Not in the least,” said Christie, with a strange little laugh. “Go to sleep.”
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The five impulsive millionaires of Devil's Ford fulfilled not a few of their most extravagant promises. In less than six weeks Mr. Carr and his daughters were installed in a new house, built near the site of the double cabin, which was again transferred to the settlement, in order to give greater seclusion to the fair guests. It was a long, roomy, one-storied villa, with a not unpicturesque combination of deep veranda and trellis work, which relieved the flat monotony of the interior and the barrenness of the freshly-cleared ground. An upright piano, brought from Sacramento, occupied the corner of the parlor. A suite of gorgeous furniture, whose pronounced and extravagant glories the young girls instinctively hid under home-made linen covers, had also been spoils from afar. Elsewhere the house was filled with ornaments and decorations that in their incongruity forcibly recalled the gilded plate-glass mirrors of the bedroom in the old cabin. In the hasty furnishing of this Aladdin's palace, the slaves of the ring had evidently seized upon anything that would add to its glory, without reference always to fitness.
“I wish it didn't look so cussedly like a robber's cave,” said George Kearney, when they were taking a quiet preliminary survey of the unclassified treasures, before the Carrs took possession.
“Or a gambling hell,” said his brother reflectively.
“It's about the same thing, I reckon,” said Dick Mattingly, who was supposed, in his fiery youth, to have encountered the similarity.
Nevertheless, the two girls managed to bestow the heterogeneous collection with tasteful adaptation to their needs. A crystal chandelier, which had once lent a fascinating illusion to the game of Monte, hung unlighted in the broad hall, where a few other bizarre and public articles were relegated. A long red sofa or bench, which had done duty beside a billiard-table found a place here also. Indeed, it is to be feared that some of the more rustic and bashful youths of Devil's Ford, who had felt it incumbent upon them to pay their respects to the new-comers, were more at ease in this vestibule than in the arcana beyond, whose glories they could see through the open door. To others, it represented a recognized state of probation before their re-entree into civilization again. “I reckon, if you don't mind, miss,” said the spokesman of one party, “ez this is our first call, we'll sorter hang out in the hall yer, until you'r used to us.” On another occasion, one Whiskey Dick, impelled by a sense of duty, paid a visit to the new house and its fair occupants, in a fashion frankly recounted by him afterwards at the bar of the Tecumseh Saloon.
“You see, boys, I dropped in there the other night, when some of you fellers was doin' the high-toned 'thankee, marm' business in the parlor. I just came to anchor in the corner of the sofy in the hall, without lettin' on to say that I was there, and took up a Webster's dictionary that was on the table and laid it open--keerless like, on my knees, ez if I was sorter consultin' it--and kinder dozed off there, listenin' to you fellows gassin' with the young ladies, and that yer Miss Christie just snakin' music outer that pianner, and I reckon I fell asleep. Anyhow, I was there nigh on to two hours. It's mighty soothin', them fashionable calls; sorter knocks the old camp dust outer a fellow, and sets him up again.”
It would have been well if the new life of the Devil's Ford had shown no other irregularity than the harmless eccentricities of its original locaters. But the news of its sudden fortune, magnified by report, began presently to flood the settlement with another class of adventurers. A tide of waifs, strays, and malcontents of old camps along the river began to set towards Devil's Ford, in very much the same fashion as the debris, drift, and alluvium had been carried down in bygone days and cast upon its banks. A few immigrant wagons, diverted from the highways of travel by the fame of the new diggings, halted upon the slopes of Devil's Spur and on the arid flats of the Ford, and disgorged their sallow freight of alkali-poisoned, prematurely-aged women and children and maimed and fever-stricken men. Against this rude form of domesticity were opposed the chromo-tinted dresses and extravagant complexions of a few single unattended women--happily seen more often at night behind gilded bars than in the garish light of day--and an equal number of pale-faced, dark-moustached, well-dressed, and suspiciously idle men. A dozen rivals of Thompson's Saloon had sprung up along the narrow main street. There were two new hotels--one a “Temperance House,” whose ascetic quality was confined only to the abnegation of whiskey--a rival stage office, and a small one-storied building, from which the “Sierran Banner” fluttered weekly, for “ten dollars a year, in advance.” Insufferable in the glare of a Sabbath sun, bleak, windy, and flaring in the gloom of a Sabbath night, and hopelessly depressing on all days of the week, the First Presbyterian Church lifted its blunt steeple from the barrenest area of the flats, and was hideous! The civic improvements so enthusiastically contemplated by the five millionaires in the earlier pages of this veracious chronicle--the fountain, reservoir, town-hall, and free library--had not yet been erected. Their sites had been anticipated by more urgent buildings and mining works, unfortunately not considered in the sanguine dreams of the enthusiasts, and, more significant still, their cost and expense had been also anticipated by the enormous outlay of their earnings in the work upon Devil's Ditch.
Nevertheless, the liberal fulfilment of their promise in the new house in the suburbs blinded the young girls' eyes to their shortcomings in the town. Their own remoteness and elevation above its feverish life kept them from the knowledge of much that was strange, and perhaps disturbing to their equanimity. As they did not mix with the immigrant women--Miss Jessie's good-natured intrusion into one of their half-nomadic camps one day having been met with rudeness and suspicion--they gradually fell into the way of trusting the responsibility of new acquaintances to the hands of their original hosts, and of consulting them in the matter of local recreation. It thus occurred that one day the two girls, on their way to the main street for an hour's shopping at the Villa de Paris and Variety Store, were stopped by Dick Mattingly a few yards from their house, with the remark that, as the county election was then in progress, it would be advisable for them to defer their intention for a few hours. As he did not deem it necessary to add that two citizens, in the exercise of a freeman's franchise, had been supplementing their ballots with bullets, in front of an admiring crowd, they knew nothing of that accident that removed from Devil's Ford an entertaining stranger, who had only the night before partaken of their hospitality.
A week or two later, returning one morning from a stroll in the forest, Christie and Jessie were waylaid by George Kearney and Fairfax, and, under pretext of being shown a new and romantic trail, were diverted from the regular path. This enabled Mattingly and Maryland Joe to cut down the body of a man hanged by the Vigilance Committee a few hours before on the regular trail, and to remonstrate with the committee on the incompatibility of such exhibitions with a maidenly worship of nature.
“With the whole county to hang a man in,” expostulated Joe, “you might keep clear of Carr's woods.”
It is needless to add that the young girls never knew of this act of violence, or the delicacy that kept them in ignorance of it. Mr. Carr was too absorbed in business to give heed to what he looked upon as a convulsion of society as natural as a geological upheaval, and too prudent to provoke the criticism of his daughters by comment in their presence.
An equally unexpected confidence, however, took its place. Mr. Carr having finished his coffee one morning, lingered a moment over his perfunctory paternal embraces, with the awkwardness of a preoccupied man endeavoring by the assumption of a lighter interest to veil another abstraction.
“And what are we doing to-day, Christie?” he asked, as Jessie left the dining-room.
“Oh, pretty much the usual thing--nothing in particular. If George Kearney gets the horses from the summit, we're going to ride over to Indian Spring to picnic. Fairfax--Mr. Munroe--I always forget that man's real name in this dreadfully familiar country--well, he's coming to escort us, and take me, I suppose--that is, if Kearney takes Jessie.”
“A very nice arrangement,” returned her father, with a slight nervous contraction of the corners of his mouth and eyelids to indicate mischievousness. “I've no doubt they'll both be here. You know they usually are--ha! ha! And what about the two Mattinglys and Philip Kearney, eh?” he continued; “won't they be jealous?”
“It isn't their turn,” said Christie carelessly; “besides, they'll probably be there.”
“And I suppose they're beginning to be resigned,” said Carr, smiling.
“What on earth are you talking of, father?”
She turned her clear brown eyes upon him, and was regarding him with such manifest unconsciousness of the drift of his speech, and, withal, a little vague impatience of his archness, that Mr. Carr was feebly alarmed. It had the effect of banishing his assumed playfulness, which made his serious explanation the more irritating.
“Well, I rather thought that--that young Kearney was paying considerable attention to--to--to Jessie,” replied her father, with hesitating gravity.
“What! that boy?”
“Young Kearney is one of the original locators, and an equal partner in the mine. A very enterprising young fellow. In fact, much more advanced and bolder in his conceptions than the others. I find no difficulty with him.”
At another time Christie would have questioned the convincing quality of this proof, but she was too much shocked at her father's first suggestion, to think of anything else.
“You don't mean to say, father, that you are talking seriously of these men--your friends--whom we see every day--and our only company?”
“No, no!” said Mr. Carr hastily; “you misunderstand. I don't suppose that Jessie or you--” “Or ME! Am I included?”
“You don't let me speak, Christie. I mean, I am not talking seriously,” continued Mr. Carr, with his most serious aspect, “of you and Jessie in this matter; but it may be a serious thing to these young men to be thrown continually in the company of two attractive girls.”
“I understand--you mean that we should not see so much of them,” said Christie, with a frank expression of relief so genuine as to utterly discompose her father. “Perhaps you are right, though I fail to discover anything serious in the attentions of young Kearney to Jessie--or--whoever it may be--to me. But it will be very easy to remedy it, and see less of them. Indeed, we might begin to-day with some excuse.”
“Yes--certainly. Of course!” said Mr. Carr, fully convinced of his utter failure, but, like most weak creatures, consoling himself with the reflection that he had not shown his hand or committed himself. “Yes; but it would perhaps be just as well for the present to let things go on as they were. We'll talk of it again--I'm in a hurry now,” and, edging himself through the door, he slipped away.
“What do you think is father's last idea?” said Christie, with, I fear, a slight lack of reverence in her tone, as her sister reentered the room. “He thinks George Kearney is paying you too much attention.”
“No!” said Jessie, replying to her sister's half-interrogative, half-amused glance with a frank, unconscious smile.
“Yes, and he says that Fairfax--I think it's Fairfax--is equally fascinated with ME.”
Jessie's brow slightly contracted as she looked curiously at her sister.
“Of all things,” she said, “I wonder if any one has put that idea into his dear old head. He couldn't have thought it himself.”
“I don't know,” said Christie musingly; “but perhaps it's just as well if we kept a little more to ourselves for a while.”
“Did father say so?” said Jessie quickly.
“No, but that is evidently what he meant.”
“Ye-es,” said Jessie slowly, “unless--” “Unless what?” said Christie sharply. “Jessie, you don't for a moment mean to say that you could possibly conceive of anything else?”
“I mean to say,” said Jessie, stealing her arm around her sister's waist demurely, “that you are perfectly right. We'll keep away from these fascinating Devil's Forders, and particularly the youngest Kearney. I believe there has been some ill-natured gossip. I remember that the other day, when we passed the shanty of that Pike County family on the slope, there were three women at the door, and one of them said something that made poor little Kearney turn white and pink alternately, and dance with suppressed rage. I suppose the old lady--M'Corkle, that's her name--would like to have a share of our cavaliers for her Euphemy and Mamie. I dare say it's only right; I would lend them the cherub occasionally, and you might let them have Mr. Munroe twice a week.”
She laughed, but her eyes sought her sister's with a certain watchfulness of expression.
Christie shrugged her shoulders, with a suggestion of disgust.
“Don't joke. We ought to have thought of all this before.”
“But when we first knew them, in the dear old cabin, there wasn't any other woman and nobody to gossip, and that's what made it so nice. I don't think so very much of civilization, do you?” said the young lady pertly.
Christie did not reply. Perhaps she was thinking the same thing. It certainly had been very pleasant to enjoy the spontaneous and chivalrous homage of these men, with no further suggestion of recompense or responsibility than the permission to be worshipped; but beyond that she racked her brain in vain to recall any look or act that proclaimed the lover. These men, whom she had found so relapsed into barbarism that they had forgotten the most ordinary forms of civilization; these men, even in whose extravagant admiration there was a certain loss of self-respect, that as a woman she would never forgive; these men, who seemed to belong to another race--impossible! Yet it was so.
“What construction must they have put upon her father's acceptance of their presents--of their company--of her freedom in their presence? No! they must have understood from the beginning that she and her sister had never looked upon them except as transient hosts and chance acquaintances. Any other idea was preposterous. And yet--” It was the recurrence of this “yet” that alarmed her. For she remembered now that but for their slavish devotion they might claim to be her equal. According to her father's account, they had come from homes as good as their own; they were certainly more than her equal in fortune; and her father had come to them as an employee, until they had taken him into partnership. If there had only been sentiment of any kind connected with any of them! But they were all alike, brave, unselfish, humorous--and often ridiculous. If anything, Dick Mattingly was funniest by nature, and made her laugh more. Maryland Joe, his brother, told better stories (sometimes of Dick), though not so good a mimic as the other Kearney, who had a fairly sympathetic voice in singing. They were all good-looking enough; perhaps they set store on that--men are so vain.
And as for her own rejected suitor, Fairfax Munroe, except for a kind of grave and proper motherliness about his protecting manner, he absolutely was the most indistinctive of them all. He had once brought her some rare tea from the Chinese camp, and had taught her how to make it; he had cautioned her against sitting under the trees at nightfall; he had once taken off his coat to wrap around her. Really, if this were the only evidence of devotion that could be shown, she was safe!
“Well,” said Jessie, “it amuses you, I see.”
Christie checked the smile that had been dimpling the cheek nearest Jessie, and turned upon her the face of an elder sister.
“Tell me, have YOU noticed this extraordinary attention of Mr. Munroe to me?”
“Candidly?” asked Jessie, seating herself comfortably on the table sideways, and endeavoring, to pull her skirt over her little feet. “Honest Injun?”
“Don't be idiotic, and, above all, don't be slangy! Of course, candidly.”
“Well, no. I can't say that I have.”
“Then,” said Christie, “why in the name of all that's preposterous, do they persist in pairing me off with the least interesting man of the lot?”
Jessie leaped from the table.
“Come now,” she said, with a little nervous laugh, “he's not so bad as all that. You don't know him. But what does it matter now, as long as we're not going to see them any more?”
“They're coming here for the ride to-day,” said Christie resignedly. “Father thought it better not to break it off at once.”
“Father thought so!” echoed Jessie, stopping with her hand on the door.
“Yes; why do you ask?”
But Jessie had already left the room, and was singing in the hall.
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{
"id": "2286"
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The afternoon did not, however, bring their expected visitors. It brought, instead, a brief note by the hands of Whiskey Dick from Fairfax, apologizing for some business that kept him and George Kearney from accompanying the ladies. It added that the horses were at the disposal of themselves and any escort they might select, if they would kindly give the message to Whiskey Dick.
The two girls looked at each other awkwardly; Jessie did not attempt to conceal a slight pout.
“It looks as if they were anticipating us,” she said, with a half-forced smile. “I wonder, now, if there really has been any gossip? But no! They wouldn't have stopped for that, unless--” She looked curiously at her sister.
“Unless what?” repeated Christie; “you are horribly mysterious this morning.”
“Am I? It's nothing. But they're wanting an answer. Of course you'll decline.”
“And intimate we only care for their company! No! We'll say we're sorry they can't come, and--accept their horses. We can do without an escort, we two.”
“Capital!” said Jessie, clapping her hands. “We'll show them--” “We'll show them nothing,” interrupted Christie decidedly. “In our place there's only the one thing to do. Where is this--Whiskey Dick?”
“In the parlor.”
“The parlor!” echoed Christie. “Whiskey Dick? What--is he--” “Yes; he's all right,” said Jessie confidently. “He's been here before, but he stayed in the hall; he was so shy. I don't think you saw him.”
“I should think not--Whiskey Dick!”
“Oh, you can call him Mr. Hall, if you like,” said Jessie, laughing. “His real name is Dick Hall. If you want to be funny, you can say Alky Hall, as the others do.”
Christie's only reply to this levity was a look of superior resignation as she crossed the hall and entered the parlor.
Then ensued one of those surprising, mystifying, and utterly inexplicable changes that leave the masculine being so helpless in the hands of his feminine master. Before Christie opened the door her face underwent a rapid transformation: the gentle glow of a refined woman's welcome suddenly beamed in her interested eyes; the impulsive courtesy of an expectant hostess eagerly seizing a long-looked-for opportunity broke in a smile upon her lips as she swept across the room, and stopped with her two white outstretched hands before Whiskey Dick.
It needed only the extravagant contrast presented by that gentleman to complete the tableau. Attired in a suit of shining black alpaca, the visitor had evidently prepared himself with some care for a possible interview. He was seated by the French window opening upon the veranda, as if to secure a retreat in case of an emergency. Scrupulously washed and shaven, some of the soap appeared to have lingered in his eyes and inflamed the lids, even while it lent a sleek and shining lustre, not unlike his coat, to his smooth black hair. Nevertheless, leaning back in his chair, he had allowed a large white handkerchief to depend gracefully from his fingers--a pose at once suggesting easy and elegant langour.
“How kind of you to give me an opportunity to make up for my misfortune when you last called! I was so sorry to have missed you. But it was entirely my fault! You were hurried, I think--you conversed with others in the hall--you--” She stopped to assist him to pick up the handkerchief that had fallen, and the Panama hat that had rolled from his lap towards the window when he had started suddenly to his feet at the apparition of grace and beauty. As he still nervously retained the two hands he had grasped, this would have been a difficult feat, even had he not endeavored at the same moment, by a backward furtive kick, to propel the hat out of the window, at which she laughingly broke from his grasp and flew to the rescue.
“Don't mind it, miss,” he said hurriedly. “It is not worth your demeaning yourself to touch it. Leave it outside thar, miss. I wouldn't have toted it in, anyhow, if some of those high-falutin' fellows hadn't allowed, the other night, ez it were the reg'lar thing to do; as if, miss, any gentleman kalkilated to ever put on his hat in the house afore a lady!”
But Christie had already possessed herself of the unlucky object, and had placed it upon the table. This compelled Whiskey Dick to rise again, and as an act of careless good breeding to drop his handkerchief in it. He then leaned one elbow upon the piano, and, crossing one foot over the other, remained standing in an attitude he remembered to have seen in the pages of an illustrated paper as portraying the hero in some drawing-room scene. It was easy and effective, but seemed to be more favorable to revery than conversation. Indeed, he remembered that he had forgotten to consult the letterpress as to which it represented.
“I see you agree with me, that politeness is quite a matter of intention,” said Christie, “and not of mere fashion and rules. Now, for instance,” she continued, with a dazzling smile, “I suppose, according to the rules, I ought to give you a note to Mr. Munroe, accepting his offer. That is all that is required; but it seems so much nicer, don't you think, to tell it to YOU for HIM, and have the pleasure of your company and a little chat at the same time.”
“That's it, that's just it, Miss Carr; you've hit it in the centre this time,” said Whiskey Dick, now quite convinced that his attitude was not intended for eloquence, and shifting back to his own seat, hat and all; “that's tantamount to what I said to the boys just now. 'You want an excuse,' sez I, 'for not goin' out with the young ladies. So, accorden' to rules, you writes a letter allowin' buzziness and that sorter thing detains you. But wot's the facts? You're a gentleman, and as gentlemen you and George comes to the opinion that you're rather playin' it for all it's worth in this yer house, you know--comin' here night and day, off and on, reg'lar sociable and fam'ly like, and makin' people talk about things they ain't any call to talk about, and, what's a darned sight more, YOU FELLOWS ain't got any right YET to allow 'em to talk about, d'ye see?” he paused, out of breath.
It was Miss Christie's turn to move about. In changing her seat to the piano-stool, so as to be nearer her visitor, she brushed down some loose music, which Whiskey Dick hastened to pick up.
“Pray don't mind it,” she said, “pray don't, really--let it be--” But Whiskey Dick, feeling himself on safe ground in this attention, persisted to the bitter end of a disintegrated and well-worn “Travatore.” “So that is what Mr. Munroe said,” she remarked quietly.
“Not just then, in course, but it's what's bin on his mind and in his talk for days off and on,” returned Dick, with a knowing smile and a nod of mysterious confidence. “Bless your soul, Miss Carr, folks like you and me don't need to have them things explained. That's what I said to him, sez I. 'Don't send no note, but just go up there and hev it out fair and square, and say what you do mean.' But they would hev the note, and I kalkilated to bring it. But when I set my eyes on you, and heard you express yourself as you did just now, I sez to myself, sez I, 'Dick, yer's a young lady, and a fash'nable lady at that, ez don't go foolin' round on rules and etiketts'--excuse my freedom, Miss Carr--'and you and her, sez I, 'kin just discuss this yer matter in a sociable, off-hand, fash'nable way.' They're a good lot o' boys, Miss Carr, a square lot--white men all of 'em; but they're a little soft and green, may be, from livin' in these yer pine woods along o' the other sap. They just worship the ground you and your sister tread on--certain! of course! of course!” he added hurriedly, recognizing Christie's half-conscious, deprecating gesture with more exaggerated deprecation. “I understand. But what I wanter say is that they'd be willin' to be that ground, and lie down and let you walk over them--so to speak, Miss Carr, so to speak--if it would keep the hem of your gown from gettin' soiled in the mud o' the camp. But it wouldn't do for them to make a reg'lar curderoy road o' themselves for the houl camp to trapse over, on the mere chance of your some time passin' that way, would it now?”
“Won't you let me offer you some refreshment, Mr. Hall?” said Christie, rising, with a slight color. “I'm really ashamed of my forgetfulness again, but I'm afraid it's partly YOUR fault for entertaining me to the exclusion of yourself. No, thank you, let me fetch it for you.”
She turned to a handsome sideboard near the door, and presently faced him again with a decanter of whiskey and a glass in her hand, and a return of the bewitching smile she had worn on entering.
“But perhaps you don't take whiskey?” suggested the arch deceiver, with a sudden affected but pretty perplexity of eye, brow, and lips.
For the first time in his life Whiskey Dick hesitated between two forms of intoxication. But he was still nervous and uneasy; habit triumphed, and he took the whiskey. He, however, wiped his lips with a slight wave of his handkerchief, to support a certain easy elegance which he firmly believed relieved the act of any vulgar quality.
“Yes, ma'am,” he continued, after an exhilarated pause. “Ez I said afore, this yer's a matter you and me can discuss after the fashion o' society. My idea is that these yer boys should kinder let up on you and Miss Jessie for a while, and do a little more permiskus attention round the Ford. There's one or two families yer with grown-up gals ez oughter be squared; that is--the boys mighter put in a few fancy touches among them--kinder take 'em buggy riding--or to church--once in a while--just to take the pizen outer their tongues, and make a kind o' bluff to the parents, d'ye see? That would sorter divert their own minds; and even if it didn't, it would kinder get 'em accustomed agin to the old style and their own kind. I want to warn ye agin an idea that might occur to you in a giniral way. I don't say you hev the idea, but it's kind o' nat'ral you might be thinkin' of it some time, and I thought I'd warn you agin it.”
“I think we understand each other too well to differ much, Mr. Hall,” said Christie, still smiling; “but what is the idea?”
The delicate compliment to their confidential relations and the slight stimulus of liquor had tremulously exalted Whiskey Dick. Affecting to look cautiously out of the window and around the room, he ventured to draw nearer the young woman with a half-paternal, half-timid familiarity.
“It might have occurred to you,” he said, laying his handkerchief as if to veil mere vulgar contact, on Christie's shoulder, “that it would be a good thing on YOUR side to invite down some of your high-toned gentlemen friends from 'Frisco to visit you and escort you round. It seems quite nat'ral like, and I don't say it ain't, but--the boys wouldn't stand for it.”
In spite of her self-possession, Christie's eyes suddenly darkened, and she involuntarily drew herself up. But Whiskey Dick, guiltily attributing the movement to his own indiscreet gesture, said, “Excuse me, miss,” recovered himself by lightly dusting her shoulder with his handkerchief, as if to remove the impression, and her smile returned.
“They wouldn't stand for it,” said Dick, “and there'd be some shooting! Not afore you, miss--not afore you, in course! But they'd adjourn to the woods some morning with them city folks, and hev it out with rifles at a hundred yards. Or, seein' ez they're city folks, the boys would do the square thing with pistols at twelve paces. They're good boys, as I said afore; but they're quick and tetchy--George, being the youngest, nat'rally is the tetchiest. You know how it is, Miss Carr; his pretty, gal-like face and little moustaches haz cost him half a dozen scrimmages already. He'z had a fight for every hair that's growed in his moustache since he kem here.”
“Say no more, Mr. Hall!” said Christie, rising and pressing her hands lightly on Dick's tremulous fingers. “If I ever had any such idea, I should abandon it now; you are quite right in this as in your other opinions. I shall never cease to be thankful to Mr. Munroe and Mr. Kearney that they intrusted this delicate matter to your hands.”
“Well,” said the gratified and reddening visitor, “it ain't perhaps the square thing to them or myself to say that they reckoned to have me discuss their delicate affairs for them, but--” “I understand,” interrupted Christie. “They simply gave you the letter as a friend. It was my good fortune to find you a sympathizing and liberal man of the world.” The delighted Dick, with conscious vanity beaming from every feature of his shining face, lightly waved the compliment aside with his handkerchief, as she continued, “But I am forgetting the message. We accept the horses. Of course we COULD do without an escort; but forgive my speaking so frankly, are YOU engaged this afternoon?”
“Excuse me, miss, I don't take--” stammered Dick, scarcely believing his ears.
“Could you give us your company as an escort?” repeated Christie with a smile.
Was he awake or dreaming, or was this some trick of liquor in his often distorted fancy? He, Whiskey Dick! the butt of his friends, the chartered oracle of the barrooms, even in whose wretched vanity there was always the haunting suspicion that he was despised and scorned; he, who had dared so much in speech, and achieved so little in fact! he, whose habitual weakness had even led him into the wildest indiscretion here; he--now offered a reward for that indiscretion! He, Whiskey Dick, the solicited escort of these two beautiful and peerless girls! What would they say at the Ford? What would his friends think? It would be all over the Ford the next day. His past would be vindicated, his future secured. He grew erect at the thought. It was almost in other voice, and with no trace of his previous exaggeration, that he said, “With pleasure.”
“Then, if you will bring the horses at once, we shall be ready when you return.”
In another instant he had vanished, as if afraid to trust the reality of his good fortune to the dangers of delay. At the end of half an hour he reappeared, leading the two horses, himself mounted on a half-broken mustang. A pair of large, jingling silver spurs and a stiff sombrero, borrowed with the mustang from some mysterious source, were donned to do honor to the occasion.
The young girls were not yet ready, but he was shown by the Chinese servant into the parlor to wait for them. The decanter of whiskey and glasses were still invitingly there. He was hot, trembling, and flushed with triumph. He walked to the table and laid his hand on the decanter, when an odd thought flashed upon him. He would not drink this time. No, it should not be said that he, the selected escort of the elite of Devil's Ford, had to fill himself up with whiskey before they started. The boys might turn to each other in their astonishment, as he proudly passed with his fair companions, and say, “It's Whiskey Dick,” but he'd be d----d if they should add, “and full as ever.” No, sir! Nor when he was riding beside these real ladies, and leaning over them at some confidential moment, should they even know it from his breath! No. . . . Yet a thimbleful, taken straight, only a thimbleful, wouldn't be much, and might help to pull him together. He again reached his trembling hand for the decanter, hesitated, and then, turning his back upon it, resolutely walked to the open window. Almost at the same instant he found himself face to face with Christie on the veranda.
She looked into his bloodshot eyes, and cast a swift glance at the decanter.
“Won't you take something before you go?” she said sweetly.
“I--reckon--not, jest now,” stammered Whiskey Dick, with a heroic effort.
“You're right,” said Christie. “I see you are like me. It's too hot for anything fiery. Come with me.”
She led him into the dining-room, and pouring out a glass of iced tea handed it to him. Poor Dick was not prepared for this terrible culmination. Whiskey Dick and iced tea! But under pretence of seeing if it was properly flavored, Christie raised it to her own lips.
“Try it, to please me.”
He drained the goblet.
“Now, then,” said Christie gayly, “let's find Jessie, and be off!”
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{
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Whatever might have been his other deficiencies as an escort, Whiskey Dick was a good horseman, and, in spite of his fractious brute, exhibited such skill and confidence as to at once satisfy the young girls of his value to them in the management of their own horses, to whom side-saddles were still an alarming novelty. Jessie, who had probably already learned from her sister the purport of Dick's confidences, had received him with equal cordiality and perhaps a more unqualified amusement; and now, when fairly lifted into the saddle by his tremulous but respectful hands, made a very charming picture of youthful and rosy satisfaction. And when Christie, more fascinating than ever in her riding-habit, took her place on the other side of Dick, as they sallied from the gate, that gentleman felt his cup of happiness complete. His triumphal entree into the world of civilization and fashion was secure. He did not regret the untasted liquor; here was an experience in after years to lean his back against comfortably in bar-rooms, to entrance or defy mankind. He had even got so far as to formulate in fancy the sentence: “I remember, gentlemen, that one afternoon, being on a pasear with two fash'nable young ladies,” etc., etc.
At present, however, he was obliged to confine himself to the functions of an elegant guide and cicerone--when not engaged in “having it out” with his horse. Their way lay along the slope, crossing the high-road at right angles, to reach the deeper woods beyond. Dick would have lingered on the highway--ostensibly to point out to his companions the new flume that had taken the place of the condemned ditch, but really in the hope of exposing himself in his glory to the curious eyes of the wayfaring world.
Unhappily the road was deserted in the still powerful sunlight, and he was obliged to seek the cover of the woods, with a passing compliment to the parent of his charges. Waving his hands towards the flume, he said, “Look at that work of your father's; there ain't no other man in Californy but Philip Carr ez would hev the grit to hold up such a bluff agin natur and agin luck ez that yer flume stands for. I don't say it 'cause you're his daughters, ladies! That ain't the style, ez YOU know, in sassiety, Miss Carr,” he added, turning to Christie as the more socially experienced. “No! but there ain't another man to be found ez could do it. It cost already two hundred thousand; it'll cost five hundred thousand afore it's done; and every cent of it is got out of the yearth beneath it, or HEZ got to be out of it. 'Tain't ev'ry man, Miss Carr, ez hev got the pluck to pledge not only what he's got, but what he reckons to git.”
“But suppose he don't get it?” said Christie, slightly contracting her brows.
“Then there's the flume to show for it,” said Dick.
“But of what use is the flume, if there isn't any more gold?” continued Christie, almost angrily.
“That's good from YOU, miss,” said Dick, giving way to a fit of hilarity. “That's good for a fash'nable young lady--own daughter of Philip Carr. She sez, says she,” continued Dick, appealing to the sedate pines for appreciation of Christie's rare humor, “'Wot's the use of a flume, when gold ain't there?' I must tell that to the boys.”
“And what's the use of the gold in the ground when the flume isn't there to work it out?” said Jessie to her sister, with a cautioning glance towards Dick.
But Dick did not notice the look that passed between the sisters. The richer humor of Jessie's retort had thrown him into convulsions of laughter.
“And now SHE says, wot's the use o' the gold without the flume? 'Xcuse me, ladies, but that's just puttin' the hull question that's agitatin' this yer camp inter two speeches as clear as crystal. There's the hull crowd outside--and some on 'em inside, like Fairfax, hez their doubts--ez says with Miss Christie; and there's all of us inside, ez holds Miss Jessie's views.”
“I never heard Mr. Munroe say that the flume was wrong,” said Jessie quickly.
“Not to you, nat'rally,” said Dick, with a confidential look at Christie; “but I reckon he'd like some of the money it cost laid out for suthin' else. But what's the odds? The gold is there, and WE'RE bound to get it.”
Dick was the foreman of a gang of paid workmen, who had replaced the millionaires in mere manual labor, and the WE was a polite figure of speech.
The conversation seemed to have taken an unfortunate turn, and both the girls experienced a feeling of relief when they entered the long gulch or defile that led to Indian Spring. The track now becoming narrow, they were obliged to pass in single file along the precipitous hillside, led by this escort. This effectually precluded any further speech, and Christie at once surrendered herself to the calm, obliterating influences of the forest. The settlement and its gossip were far behind and forgotten. In the absorption of nature, her companions passed out of her mind, even as they sometimes passed out of her sight in the windings of the shadowy trail. As she rode alone, the fronds of breast-high ferns seemed to caress her with outstretched and gently-detaining hands; strange wildflowers sprang up through the parting underbrush; even the granite rocks that at times pressed closely upon the trail appeared as if cushioned to her contact with star-rayed mosses, or lightly flung after her long lassoes of delicate vines. She recalled the absolute freedom of their al-fresco life in the old double cabin, when she spent the greater part of her waking hours under the mute trees in the encompassing solitude, and, half regretting the more civilized restraints of this newer and more ambitious abode, forgot that she had ever rebelled against it. The social complication that threatened her now seemed to her rather the outcome of her half-civilized parlor than of the sylvan glade. How easy it would have been to have kept the cabin, and then to have gone away entirely, than for her father to have allowed them to be compromised with the growing fortunes of the settlement! The suspicions and distrust that she had always felt of their fortunes seemed to grow with the involuntary admission of Whiskey Dick that they were shared by others who were practical men. She was fain to have recourse to the prospect again to banish these thoughts, and this opened her eyes to the fact that her companions had been missing from the trail ahead of her for some time. She quickened her pace slightly to reach a projecting point of rock that gave her a more extended prospect. But they had evidently disappeared.
She was neither alarmed nor annoyed. She could easily overtake them soon, for they would miss her, and return or wait for her at the spring. At the worst she would have no difficulty in retracing her steps home. In her present mood, she could readily spare their company; indeed she was not sorry that no other being should interrupt that sympathy with the free woods which was beginning to possess her.
She was destined, however, to be disappointed. She had not proceeded a hundred yards before she noticed the moving figure of a man beyond her in the hillside chaparral above the trail. He seemed to be going in the same direction as herself, and, as she fancied, endeavoring to avoid her. This excited her curiosity to the point of urging her horse forward until the trail broadened into the level forest again, which she now remembered was a part of the environs of Indian Spring. The stranger hesitated, pausing once or twice with his back towards her, as if engaged in carefully examining the dwarf willows to select a switch. Christie slightly checked her speed as she drew nearer; when, as if obedient to a sudden resolution, he turned and advanced towards her. She was relieved and yet surprised to recognize the boyish face and figure of George Kearney. He was quite pale and agitated, although attempting, by a jaunty swinging of the switch he had just cut, to assume the appearance of ease and confidence.
Here was an opportunity. Christie resolved to profit by it. She did not doubt that the young fellow had already passed her sister on the trail, but, from bashfulness, had not dared to approach her. By inviting his confidence, she would doubtless draw something from him that would deny or corroborate her father's opinion of his sentiments. If he was really in love with Jessie, she would learn what reasons he had for expecting a serious culmination of his suit, and perhaps she might be able delicately to open his eyes to the truth. If, as she believed, it was only a boyish fancy, she would laugh him out of it with that camaraderie which had always existed between them. A half motherly sympathy, albeit born quite as much from a contemplation of his beautiful yearning eyes as from his interesting position, lightened the smile with which she greeted him.
“So you contrived to throw over your stupid business and join us, after all,” she said; “or was it that you changed your mind at the last moment?” she added mischievously. “I thought only we women were permitted that!” Indeed, she could not help noticing that there was really a strong feminine suggestion in the shifting color and slightly conscious eyelids of the young fellow.
“Do young girls always change their minds?” asked George, with an embarrassed smile.
“Not, always; but sometimes they don't know their own mind--particularly if they are very young; and when they do at last, you clever creatures of men, who have interpreted their ignorance to please yourselves, abuse them for being fickle.” She stopped to observe the effect of what she believed a rather clear and significant exposition of Jessie's and George's possible situation. But she was not prepared for the look of blank resignation that seemed to drive the color from his face and moisten the fire of his dark eyes.
“I reckon you're right,” he said, looking down.
“Oh! we're not accusing you of fickleness,” said Christie gayly; “although you didn't come, and we were obliged to ask Mr. Hall to join us. I suppose you found him and Jessie just now?”
But George made no reply. The color was slowly coming back to his face, which, as she glanced covertly at him, seemed to have grown so much older that his returning blood might have brought two or three years with it.
“Really, Mr. Kearney,” she said dryly, “one would think that some silly, conceited girl”--she was quite earnest in her epithets, for a sudden, angry conviction of some coquetry and disingenuousness in Jessie had come to her in contemplating its effects upon the young fellow at her side--“some country jilt, had been trying her rustic hand upon you.”
“She is not silly, conceited, nor countrified,” said George, slowly raising his beautiful eyes to the young girl half reproachfully. “It is I who am all that. No, she is right, and you know it.”
Much as Christie admired and valued her sister's charms, she thought this was really going too far. What had Jessie ever done--what was Jessie--to provoke and remain insensible to such a blind devotion as this? And really, looking at him now, he was not so VERY YOUNG for Jessie; whether his unfortunate passion had brought out all his latent manliness, or whether he had hitherto kept his serious nature in the background, certainly he was not a boy. And certainly his was not a passion that he could be laughed out of. It was getting very tiresome. She wished she had not met him--at least until she had had some clearer understanding with her sister. He was still walking beside her, with his hand on her bridle rein, partly to lead her horse over some boulders in the trail, and partly to conceal his first embarrassment. When they had fairly reached the woods, he stopped.
“I am going to say good-by, Miss Carr.”
“Are you not coming further? We must be near Indian Spring, now; Mr. Hall and--and Jessie--cannot be far away. You will keep me company until we meet them?”
“No,” he replied quietly. “I only stopped you to say good-by. I am going away.”
“Not from Devil's Ford?” she asked, in half-incredulous astonishment. “At least, not for long?”
“I am not coming back,” he replied.
“But this is very abrupt,” she said hurriedly, feeling that in some ridiculous way she had precipitated an equally ridiculous catastrophe. “Surely you are not going away in this fashion, without saying good-by to Jessie and--and father?”
“I shall see your father, of course--and you will give my regards to Miss Jessie.”
He evidently was in earnest. Was there ever anything so perfectly preposterous? She became indignant.
“Of course,” she said coldly, “I won't detain you; your business must be urgent, and I forgot--at least I had forgotten until to-day--that you have other duties more important than that of squire of dames. I am afraid this forgetfulness made me think you would not part from us in quite such a business fashion. I presume, if you had not met me just now, we should none of us have seen you again?”
He did not reply.
“Will you say good-by, Miss Carr?”
He held out his hand.
“One moment, Mr. Kearney. If I have said anything which you think justifies this very abrupt leave-taking, I beg you will forgive and forget it--or, at least, let it have no more weight with you than the idle words of any woman. I only spoke generally. You know--I--I might be mistaken.”
His eyes, which had dilated when she began to speak, darkened; his color, which had quickly come, as quickly sank when she had ended.
“Don't say that, Miss Carr. It is not like you, and--it is useless. You know what I meant a moment ago. I read it in your reply. You meant that I, like others, had deceived myself. Did you not?”
She could not meet those honest eyes with less than equal honesty. She knew that Jessie did not love him--would not marry him--whatever coquetry she might have shown.
“I did not mean to offend you,” she said hesitatingly; “I only half suspected it when I spoke.”
“And you wish to spare me the avowal?” he said bitterly.
“To me, perhaps, yes, by anticipating it. I could not tell what ideas you might have gathered from some indiscreet frankness of Jessie--or my father,” she added, with almost equal bitterness.
“I have never spoken to either,” he replied quickly. He stopped, and added, after a moment's mortifying reflection, “I've been brought up in the woods, Miss Carr, and I suppose I have followed my feelings, instead of the etiquette of society.”
Christie was too relieved at the rehabilitation of Jessie's truthfulness to notice the full significance of his speech.
“Good-by,” he said again, holding out his hand.
“Good-by!”
She extended her own, ungloved, with a frank smile. He held it for a moment, with his eyes fixed upon hers. Then suddenly, as if obeying an uncontrollable impulse, he crushed it like a flower again and again against his burning lips, and darted away.
Christie sank back in her saddle with a little cry, half of pain and half of frightened surprise. Had the poor boy suddenly gone mad, or was this vicarious farewell a part of the courtship of Devil's Ford? She looked at her little hand, which had reddened under the pressure, and suddenly felt the flush extending to her cheeks and the roots of her hair. This was intolerable.
“Christie!”
It was her sister emerging from the wood to seek her. In another moment she was at her side.
“We thought you were following,” said Jessie. “Good heavens! how you look! What has happened?”
“Nothing. I met Mr. Kearney a moment ago on the trail. He is going away, and--and--” She stopped, furious and flushing.
“And,” said Jessie, with a burst of merriment, “he told you at last he loved you. Oh, Christie!”
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{
"id": "2286"
}
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6
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The abrupt departure of George Kearney from Devil's Ford excited but little interest in the community, and was soon forgotten. It was generally attributed to differences between himself and his partners on the question of further outlay of their earnings on mining improvements--he and Philip Carr alone representing a sanguine minority whose faith in the future of the mine accepted any risks. It was alleged by some that he had sold out to his brother; it was believed by others that he had simply gone to Sacramento to borrow money on his share, in order to continue the improvements on his own responsibility. The partners themselves were uncommunicative; even Whiskey Dick, who since his remarkable social elevation had become less oracular, much to his own astonishment, contributed nothing to the gossip except a suggestion that as the fiery temper of George Kearney brooked no opposition, even from his brother, it was better they should separate before the estrangement became serious.
Mr. Carr did not disguise his annoyance at the loss of his young disciple and firm ally. But an unlucky allusion to his previous remarks on Kearney's attentions to Jessie, and a querulous regret that he had permitted a disruption of their social intimacy, brought such an ominous and frigid opposition, not only from Christie, but even the frivolous Jessie herself, that Carr sank back in a crushed and terrified silence. “I only meant to say,” he stammered after a pause, in which he, however, resumed his aggrieved manner, “that FAIRFAX seems to come here still, and HE is not such a particular friend of mine.”
“But she is--and has your interest entirely at heart,” said Jessie, stoutly, “and he only comes here to tell us how things are going on at the works.”
“And criticise your father, I suppose,” said Mr. Carr, with an attempt at jocularity that did not, however, disguise an irritated suspiciousness. “He really seems to have supplanted ME as he has poor Kearney in your estimation.”
“Now, father,” said Jessie, suddenly seizing him by the shoulders in affected indignation, but really to conceal a certain embarrassment that sprang quite as much from her sister's quietly observant eye as her father's speech, “you promised to let this ridiculous discussion drop. You will make me and Christie so nervous that we will not dare to open the door to a visitor, until he declares his innocence of any matrimonial intentions. You don't want to give color to the gossip that agreement with your views about the improvements is necessary to getting on with us.”
“Who dares talk such rubbish?” said Carr, reddening; “is that the kind of gossip that Fairfax brings here?”
“Hardly, when it's known that he don't quite agree with you, and DOES come here. That's the best denial of the gossip.”
Christie, who had of late loftily ignored these discussions, waited until her father had taken his departure.
“Then that is the reason why you still see Mr. Munroe, after what you said,” she remarked quietly to Jessie.
Jessie, who would have liked to escape with her father, was obliged to pause on the threshold of the door, with a pretty assumption of blank forgetfulness in her blue eyes and lifted eyebrows.
“Said what? when?” she asked vacantly.
“When--when Mr. Kearney that day--in the woods--went away,” said Christie, faintly coloring.
“Oh! THAT day,” said Jessie briskly; “the day he just gloved your hand with kisses, and then fled wildly into the forest to conceal his emotion.”
“The day he behaved very foolishly,” said Christie, with reproachful calmness, that did not, however, prevent a suspicion of indignant moisture in her eyes--“when you explained”-- “That it wasn't meant for ME,” interrupted Jessie.
“That it was to you that MR. MUNROE'S attentions were directed. And then we agreed that it was better to prevent any further advances of this kind by avoiding any familiar relations with either of them.”
“Yes,” said Jessie, “I remember; but you're not confounding my seeing Fairfax occasionally now with that sort of thing. HE doesn't kiss my hand like anything,” she added, as if in abstract reflection.
“Nor run away, either,” suggested the trodden worm, turning.
There was an ominous silence.
“Do you know we are nearly out of coffee?” said Jessie choking, but moving towards the door with Spartan-like calmness.
“Yes. And something must be done this very day about the washing,” said Christie, with suppressed emotion, going towards the opposite entrance.
Tears stood in each other's eyes with this terrible exchange of domestic confidences. Nevertheless, after a moment's pause, they deliberately turned again, and, facing each other with frightful calmness, left the room by purposeless and deliberate exits other than those they had contemplated--a crushing abnegation of self, that, to some extent, relieved their surcharged feelings.
Meantime the material prosperity of Devil's Ford increased, if a prosperity based upon no visible foundation but the confidences and hopes of its inhabitants could be called material. Few, if any, stopped to consider that the improvements, buildings, and business were simply the outlay of capital brought from elsewhere, and as yet the settlement or town, as it was now called, had neither produced nor exported capital of itself equal to half the amount expended. It was true that some land was cultivated on the further slope, some mills erected and lumber furnished from the inexhaustible forest; but the consumers were the inhabitants themselves, who paid for their produce in borrowed capital or unlimited credit. It was never discovered that while all roads led to Devil's Ford, Devil's Ford led to nowhere. The difficulties overcome in getting things into the settlement were never surmounted for getting things out of it. The lumber was practically valueless for export to other settlements across the mountain roads, which were equally rich in timber. The theory so enthusiastically held by the original locators, that Devil's Ford was a vast sink that had, through ages, exhausted and absorbed the trickling wealth of the adjacent hills and valleys, was suffering an ironical corroboration.
One morning it was known that work was stopped at the Devil's Ford Ditch--temporarily only, it was alleged, and many of the old workmen simply had their labor for the present transferred to excavating the river banks, and the collection of vast heaps of “pay gravel.” Specimens from these mounds, taken from different localities, and at different levels, were sent to San Francisco for more rigid assay and analysis. It was believed that this would establish the fact of the permanent richness of the drifts, and not only justify past expenditure, but a renewed outlay of credit and capital. The suspension of engineering work gave Mr. Carr an opportunity to visit San Francisco on general business of the mine, which could not, however, prevent him from arranging further combinations with capital. His two daughters accompanied him. It offered an admirable opportunity for a shopping expedition, a change of scene, and a peaceful solution of their perplexing and anomalous social relations with Devil's Ford. In the first flush of gratitude to their father for this opportune holiday, something of harmony had been restored to the family circle that had of late been shaken by discord.
But their sanguine hopes of enjoyment were not entirely fulfilled. Both Jessie and Christie were obliged to confess to a certain disappointment in the aspect of the civilization they were now reentering. They at first attributed it to the change in their own habits during the last three months, and their having become barbarous and countrified in their seclusion. Certainly in the matter of dress they were behind the fashions as revealed in Montgomery Street. But when the brief solace afforded them by the modiste and dressmaker was past, there seemed little else to be gained. They missed at first, I fear, the chivalrous and loyal devotion that had only amused them at Devil's Ford, and were the more inclined, I think, to distrust the conscious and more civilized gallantry of the better dressed and more carefully presented men they met. For it must be admitted that, for obvious reasons, their criticisms were at first confined to the sex they had been most in contact with. They could not help noticing that the men were more eager, annoyingly feverish, and self-asserting in their superior elegance and external show than their old associates were in their frank, unrestrained habits. It seemed to them that the five millionaires of Devil's Ford, in their radical simplicity and thoroughness, were perhaps nearer the type of true gentlemanhood than these citizens who imitated a civilization they were unable yet to reach.
The women simply frightened them, as being, even more than the men, demonstrative and excessive in their fine looks, their fine dresses, their extravagant demand for excitement. In less than a week they found themselves regretting--not the new villa on the slope of Devil's Ford, which even in its own bizarre fashion was exceeded by the barbarous ostentation of the villas and private houses around them--but the double cabin under the trees, which now seemed to them almost aristocratic in its grave simplicity and abstention. In the mysterious forests of masts that thronged the city's quays they recalled the straight shafts of the pines on Devil's slopes, only to miss the sedate repose and infinite calm that used to environ them. In the feverish, pulsating life of the young metropolis they often stopped oppressed, giddy, and choking; the roar of the streets and thoroughfares was meaningless to them, except to revive strange memories of the deep, unvarying monotone of the evening wind over their humbler roof on the Sierran hillside. Civic bred and nurtured as they were, the recurrence of these sensations perplexed and alarmed them.
“It seems so perfectly ridiculous,” said Jessie, “for us to feel as out of place here as that Pike County servant girl in Sacramento who had never seen a steamboat before; do you know, I quite had a turn the other day at seeing a man on the Stockton wharf in a red shirt, with a rifle on his shoulder.”
“And you wanted to go and speak to him?” said Christie, with a sad smile.
“No, that's just it; I felt awfully hurt and injured that he did not come up and speak to ME! I wonder if we got any fever or that sort of thing up there; it makes one quite superstitious.”
Christie did not reply; more than once before she had felt that inexplicable misgiving. It had sometimes seemed to her that she had never been quite herself since that memorable night when she had slipped out of their sleeping-cabin, and stood alone in the gracious and commanding presence of the woods and hills. In the solitude of night, with the hum of the great city rising below her--at times even in theatres or crowded assemblies of men and women--she forgot herself, and again stood in the weird brilliancy of that moonlight night in mute worship at the foot of that slowly-rising mystic altar of piled terraces, hanging forests, and lifted plateaus that climbed forever to the lonely skies. Again she felt before her the expanding and opening arms of the protecting woods. Had they really closed upon her in some pantheistic embrace that made her a part of them? Had she been baptized in that moonlight as a child of the great forest? It was easy to believe in the myths of the poets of an idyllic life under those trees, where, free from conventional restrictions, one loved and was loved. If she, with her own worldly experience, could think of this now, why might not George Kearney have thought? . . . She stopped, and found herself blushing even in the darkness. As the thought and blush were the usual sequel of her reflections, it is to be feared that they may have been at times the impelling cause.
Mr. Carr, however, made up for his daughters' want of sympathy with metropolitan life. To their astonishment, he not only plunged into the fashionable gayeties and amusements of the town, but in dress and manner assumed the role of a leader of society. The invariable answer to their half-humorous comment was the necessities of the mine, and the policy of frequenting the company of capitalists, to enlist their support and confidence. There was something in this so unlike their father, that what at any other time they would have hailed as a relief to his habitual abstraction now half alarmed them. Yet he was not dissipated--he did not drink nor gamble. There certainly did not seem any harm in his frequenting the society of ladies, with a gallantry that appeared to be forced and a pleasure that to their critical eyes was certainly apocryphal. He did not drag his daughters into the mixed society of that period; he did not press upon them the company of those he most frequented, and whose accepted position in that little world of fashion was considered equal to their own. When Jessie strongly objected to the pronounced manners of a certain widow, whose actual present wealth and pecuniary influence condoned for a more uncertain prehistoric past, Mr. Carr did not urge a further acquaintance. “As long as you're not thinking of marrying again, papa,” Jessie had said finally, “I don't see the necessity of our knowing her.” “But suppose I were,” had replied Mr. Carr with affected humor. “Then you certainly wouldn't care for any one like her,” his daughter had responded triumphantly. Mr. Carr smiled, and dropped the subject, but it is probable that his daughters' want of sympathy with his acquaintances did not in the least interfere with his social prestige. A gentleman in all his relations and under all circumstances, even his cold scientific abstraction was provocative; rich men envied his lofty ignorance of the smaller details of money-making, even while they mistrusted his judgment. A man still well preserved, and free from weakening vices, he was a dangerous rival to younger and faster San Francisco, in the eyes of the sex, who knew how to value a repose they did not themselves possess.
Suddenly Mr. Carr announced his intention of proceeding to Sacramento, on further business of the mine, leaving his two daughters in the family of a wealthy friend until he should return for them. He opposed their ready suggestion to return to Devil's Ford with a new and unnecessary inflexibility: he even met their compromise to accompany him to Sacramento with equal decision.
“You will be only in my way,” he said curtly. “Enjoy yourselves here while you can.”
Thus left to themselves, they tried to accept his advice. Possibly some slight reaction to their previous disappointment may have already set in; perhaps they felt any distraction to be a relief to their anxiety about their father. They went out more; they frequented concerts and parties; they accepted, with their host and his family, an invitation to one of those opulent and barbaric entertainments with which a noted San Francisco millionaire distracted his rare moments of reflection in his gorgeous palace on the hills. Here they could at least be once more in the country they loved, albeit of a milder and less heroic type, and a little degraded by the overlapping tinsel and scattered spangles of the palace.
It was a three days' fete; the style and choice of amusements left to the guests, and an equal and active participation by no means necessary or indispensable. Consequently, when Christie and Jessie Carr proposed a ride through the adjacent canyon on the second morning, they had no difficulty in finding horses in the well-furnished stables of their opulent entertainers, nor cavaliers among the other guests, who were too happy to find favor in the eyes of the two pretty girls who were supposed to be abnormally fastidious and refined. Christie's escort was a good-natured young banker, shrewd enough to avoid demonstrative attentions, and lucky enough to interest her during the ride with his clear and half-humorous reflections on some of the business speculations of the day. If his ideas were occasionally too clever, and not always consistent with a high sense of honor, she was none the less interested to know the ethics of that world of speculation into which her father had plunged, and the more convinced, with mingled sense of pride and anxiety, that his still dominant gentlemanhood would prevent his coping with it on equal terms. Nor could she help contrasting the conversation of the sharp-witted man at her side with what she still remembered of the vague, touching, boyish enthusiasm of the millionaires of Devil's Ford. Had her escort guessed the result of this contrast, he would hardly have been as gratified as he was with the grave attention of her beautiful eyes.
The fascination of a gracious day and the leafy solitude of the canyon led them to prolong their ride beyond the proposed limit, and it became necessary towards sunset for them to seek some shorter cut home.
“There's a vaquero in yonder field,” said Christie's escort, who was riding with her a little in advance of the others, “and those fellows know every trail that a horse can follow. I'll ride on, intercept him, and try my Spanish on him. If I miss him, as he's galloping on, you might try your hand on him yourself. He'll understand your eyes, Miss Carr, in any language.”
As he dashed away, to cover his first audacity of compliment, Christie lifted the eyes thus apostrophized to the opposite field. The vaquero, who was chasing some cattle, was evidently too preoccupied to heed the shouts of her companion, and wheeling round suddenly to intercept one of the deviating fugitives, permitted Christie's escort to dash past him before that gentleman could rein in his excited steed. This brought the vaquero directly in her path. Perceiving her, he threw his horse back on its haunches, to prevent a collision. Christie rode up to him, suddenly uttered a cry, and halted. For before her, sunburnt in cheek and throat, darker in the free growth of moustache and curling hair, clad in the coarse, picturesque finery of his class, undisguised only in his boyish beauty, sat George Kearney.
The blood, that had forsaken her astonished face, rushed as quickly back. His eyes, which had suddenly sparkled with an electrical glow, sank before hers. His hand dropped, and his cheek flushed with a dark embarrassment.
“You here, Mr. Kearney? How strange! --but how glad I am to meet you again!”
She tried to smile; her voice trembled, and her little hand shook as she extended it to him.
He raised his dark eyes quickly, and impulsively urged his horse to her side. But, as if suddenly awakening to the reality of the situation, he glanced at her hurriedly, down at his barbaric finery, and threw a searching look towards her escort.
In an instant Christie saw the infelicity of her position, and its dangers. The words of Whiskey Dick, “He wouldn't stand that,” flashed across her mind. There was no time to lose. The banker had already gained control over his horse, and was approaching them, all unconscious of the fixed stare with which George was regarding him. Christie hastily seized the hand which he had allowed to fall at his side, and said quickly:-- “Will you ride with me a little way, Mr. Kearney?”
He turned the same searching look upon her. She met it clearly and steadily; he even thought reproachfully.
“Do!” she said hurriedly. “I ask it as a favor. I want to speak to you. Jessie and I are here alone. Father is away. YOU are one of our oldest friends.”
He hesitated. She turned to the astonished young banker, who rode up.
“I have just met an old friend. Will you please ride back as quickly as you can, and tell Jessie that Mr. Kearney is here, and ask her to join us?”
She watched her dazed escort, still speechless from the spectacle of the fastidious Miss Carr tete-a-tete with a common Mexican vaquero, gallop off in the direction of the canyon, and then turned to George.
“Now take me home, the shortest way, as quick as you can.”
“Home?” echoed George.
“I mean to Mr. Prince's house. Quick! before they can come up to us.”
He mechanically put spurs to his horse; she followed. They presently struck into a trail that soon diverged again into a disused logging track through the woods.
“This is the short cut to Prince's, by two miles,” he said, as they entered the woods.
As they were still galloping, without exchanging a word, Christie began to slacken her speed; George did the same. They were safe from intrusion at the present, even if the others had found the short cut. Christie, bold and self-reliant a moment ago, suddenly found herself growing weak and embarrassed. What had she done?
She checked her horse suddenly.
“Perhaps we had better wait for them,” she said timidly.
George had not raised his eyes to hers.
“You said you wanted to hurry home,” he replied gently, passing his hand along his mustang's velvety neck, “and--and you had something to say to me.”
“Certainly,” she answered, with a faint laugh. “I'm so astonished at meeting you here. I'm quite bewildered. You are living here; you have forsaken us to buy a ranche?” she continued, looking at him attentively.
His brow colored slightly.
“No, I'm living here, but I have bought no ranche. I'm only a hired man on somebody else's ranche, to look after the cattle.”
He saw her beautiful eyes fill with astonishment and--something else. His brow cleared; he went on, with his old boyish laugh: “No, Miss Carr. The fact is, I'm dead broke. I've lost everything since I saw you last. But as I know how to ride, and I'm not afraid of work, I manage to keep along.”
“You have lost money in--in the mines?” said Christie suddenly.
“No”--he replied quickly, evading her eyes. “My brother has my interest, you know. I've been foolish on my own account solely. You know I'm rather inclined to that sort of thing. But as long as my folly don't affect others, I can stand it.”
“But it may affect others--and THEY may not think of it as folly--” She stopped short, confused by his brightening color and eyes. “I mean--Oh, Mr. Kearney, I want you to be frank with me. I know nothing of business, but I know there has been trouble about the mine at Devil's Ford. Tell me honestly, has my father anything to do with it? If I thought that through any imprudence of his, you had suffered--if I believed that you could trace any misfortune of yours to him--to US--I should never forgive myself”--she stopped and flashed a single look at him--“I should never forgive YOU for abandoning us.”
The look of pain which had at first shown itself in his face, which never concealed anything, passed, and a quick smile followed her feminine anticlimax.
“Miss Carr,” he said, with boyish eagerness, “if any man suggested to me that your father wasn't the brightest and best of his kind--too wise and clever for the fools about him to understand--I'd--I'd shoot him.”
Confused by his ready and gracious disclaimer of what she had NOT intended to say, there was nothing left for her but to rush upon what she really intended to say, with what she felt was shameful precipitation.
“One word more, Mr. Kearney,” she began, looking down, but feeling the color come to her face as she spoke. “When you spoke to me the day you left, you must have thought me hard and cruel. When I tell you that I thought you were alluding to Jessie and some feeling you had for her--” “For Jessie!” echoed George.
“You will understand that--that--” “That what?” said George, drawing nearer to her.
“That I was only speaking as she might have spoken had you talked to her of me,” added Christie hurriedly, slightly backing her horse away from him.
But this was not so easy, as George was the better rider, and by an imperceptible movement of his wrist and foot had glued his horse to her side. “He will go now,” she had thought, but he didn't.
“We must ride on,” she suggested faintly.
“No,” he said with a sudden dropping of his boyish manner and a slight lifting of his head. “We must ride together no further, Miss Carr. I must go back to the work I am hired to do, and you must go on with your party, whom I hear coming. But when we part here you must bid me good-by--not as Jessie's sister--but as Christie--the one--the only woman that I love, or that I ever have loved.”
He held out his hand. With the recollection of their previous parting, she tremblingly advanced her own. He took it, but did not raise it to his lips. And it was she who found herself half confusedly retaining his hand in hers, until she dropped it with a blush.
“Then is this the reason you give for deserting us as you have deserted Devil's Ford?” she said coldly.
He lifted his eyes to her with a strange smile, and said, “Yes,” wheeled his horse, and disappeared in the forest.
He had left her thus abruptly once before, kissed, blushing, and indignant. He was leaving her now, unkissed, but white and indignant. Yet she was so self-possessed when the party joined her, that the singular rencontre and her explanation of the stranger's sudden departure excited no further comment. Only Jessie managed to whisper in her ear,-- “I hope you are satisfied now that it wasn't me he meant?”
“Not at all,” said Christie coldly.
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{
"id": "2286"
}
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7
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None
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A few days after the girls had returned to San Francisco, they received a letter from their father. His business, he wrote, would detain him in Sacramento some days longer. There was no reason why they should return to Devil's Ford in the heat of the summer; their host had written to beg him to allow them a more extended visit, and, if they were enjoying themselves, he thought it would be well not to disoblige an old friend. He had heard they had a pleasant visit to Mr. Prince's place, and that a certain young banker had been very attentive to Christie.
“Do you know what all this means, dear?” asked Jessie, who had been watching her sister with an unusually grave face.
Christie whose thoughts had wandered from the letter, replied carelessly,-- “I suppose it means that we are to wait here until father sends for us.”
“It means a good deal more. It means that papa has had another reverse; it means that the assay has turned out badly for the mine--that the further they go from the flat the worse it gets--that all the gold they will probably ever see at Devil's Ford is what they have already found or will find on the flat; it means that all Devil's Ford is only a 'pocket,' and not a 'lead.'” She stopped, with unexpected tears in her eyes.
“Who told you this?” asked Christie breathlessly.
“Fairfax--Mr. Munroe,” stammered her sister, “writes to me as if we already knew it--tells me not to be alarmed, that it isn't so bad--and all that.”
“How long has this happened, Jessie?” said Christie, taking her hand, with a white but calm face.
“Nearly ever since we've been here, I suppose. It must be so, for he says poor papa is still hopeful of doing something yet.”
“And Mr. Munroe writes to you?” said Christie abstractedly.
“Of course,” said Jessie quickly. “He feels interested in--us.”
“Nobody tells ME anything,” said Christie.
“Didn't--” “No,” said Christie bitterly.
“What on earth DID you talk about? But people don't confide in you because they're afraid of you. You're so--” “So what?”
“So gently patronizing, and so 'I-don't-suppose-you-can-help-it, poor-thing,' in your general style,” said Jessie, kissing her. “There! I only wish I was like you. What do you say if we write to father that we'll go back to Devil's Ford? Mr. Munroe thinks we will be of service there just now. If the men are dissatisfied, and think we're spending money--” “I'm afraid Mr. Munroe is hardly a disinterested adviser. At least, I don't think it would look quite decent for you to fly back without your father, at his suggestion,” said Christie coldly. “He is not the only partner. We are spending no money. Besides, we have engaged to go to Mr. Prince's again next week.”
“As you like, dear,” said Jessie, turning away to hide a faint smile.
Nevertheless, when they returned from their visit to Mr. Prince's, and one or two uneventful rides, Christie looked grave. It was only a few days later that Jessie burst upon her one morning.
“You were saying that nobody ever tells you anything. Well, here's your chance. Whiskey Dick is below.”
“Whiskey Dick?” repeated Christie. “What does he want?”
“YOU, love. Who else? You know he always scorns me as not being high-toned and elegant enough for his social confidences. He asked for you only.”
With an uneasy sense of some impending revelation, Christie descended to the drawing-room. As she opened the door, a strong flavor of that toilet soap and eau de Cologne with which Whiskey Dick was in the habit of gracefully effacing the traces of dissipation made known his presence. In spite of a new suit of clothes, whose pristine folds refused to adapt themselves entirely to the contour of his figure, he was somewhat subdued by the unexpected elegance of the drawing-room of Christie's host. But a glance at Christie's sad but gracious face quickly reassured him. Taking from his hat a three-cornered parcel, he unfolded a handsome saffrona rose, which he gravely presented to her. Having thus reestablished his position, he sank elegantly into a tete-a-tete ottoman. Finding the position inconvenient to face Christie, who had seated herself on a chair, he transferred himself to the other side of the ottoman, and addressed her over its back as from a pulpit.
“Is this really a fortunate accident, Mr. Hall, or did you try to find us?” said Christie pleasantly.
“Partly promiskuss, and partly coincident, Miss Christie, one up and t'other down,” said Dick lightly. “Work being slack at present at Devil's Ford, I reck'ned I'd take a pasear down to 'Frisco, and dip into the vortex o' fash'nable society and out again.” He lightly waved a new handkerchief to illustrate his swallow-like intrusion. “This yer minglin' with the bo-tong is apt to be wearisome, ez you and me knows, unless combined with experience and judgment. So when them boys up there allows that there's a little too much fash'nable society and San Francisco capital and high-falutin' about the future goin' on fer square surface mining, I sez, 'Look yere, gentlemen,' sez I, 'you don't see the pint. The pint is to get the pop'lar eye fixed, so to speak, on Devil's Ford. When a fash'nable star rises above the 'Frisco horizon--like Miss Carr--and, so to speak, dazzles the gineral eye, people want to know who she is. And when people say that's the accomplished daughter o' the accomplished superintendent of the Devil's Ford claim--otherwise known as the Star-eyed Goddess o' Devil's Ford--every eye is fixed on the mine, and Capital, so to speak, tumbles to her.' And when they sez that the old man--excuse my freedom, but that's the way the boys talk of your father, meaning no harm--the old man, instead o' trying to corral rich widders--grass or otherwise--to spend their money on the big works for the gold that ain't there yet--should stay in Devil's Ford and put all his sabe and genius into grindin' out the little gold that is there, I sez to them that it ain't your father's style. 'His style,' sez I, 'ez to go in and build them works.' When they're done he turns round to Capital, and sez he--'Look yer,' sez he, 'thar's all the works you want, first quality--cost a million; thar's all the water you want, onlimited--cost another million; thar's all the pay gravel you want in and outer the ground--call it two millions more. Now my time's too vally'ble; my professhun's too high-toned to WORK mines. I MAKE 'em. Hand me over a check for ten millions and call it square, and work it for yourself.' So Capital hands over the money and waltzes down to run the mine, and you original locators walks round with yer hands in yer pockets a-top of your six million profit, and you let's Capital take the work and the responsibility.”
Preposterous as this seemed from the lips of Whiskey Dick, Christie had a haunting suspicion that it was not greatly unlike the theories expounded by the clever young banker who had been her escort. She did not interrupt his flow of reminiscent criticism; when he paused for breath, she said, quietly: “I met Mr. George Kearney the other day in the country.”
Whiskey Dick stopped awkwardly, glanced hurriedly at Christie, and coughed behind his handkerchief.
“Mr. Kearney--eh--er--certengly--yes--er--met him, you say. Was he--er--er--well?”
“In health, yes; but otherwise he has lost everything,” said Christie, fixing her eyes on the embarrassed Dick.
“Yes--er--in course--in course--” continued Dick, nervously glancing round the apartment as if endeavoring to find an opening to some less abrupt statement of the fact.
“And actually reduced to take some menial employment,” added Christie, still regarding Dick with her clear glance.
“That's it--that's just it,” said Dick, beaming as he suddenly found his delicate and confidential opportunity. “That's it, Miss Christie; that's just what I was sayin' to the boys. 'Ez it the square thing,' sez I, 'jest because George hez happened to hypothecate every dollar he has, or expects to hev, to put into them works, only to please Mr. Carr, and just because he don't want to distress that intelligent gentleman by letting him see he's dead broke--for him to go and demean himself and Devil's Ford by rushing away and hiring out as a Mexican vaquero on Mexican wages? Look,' sez I, 'at the disgrace he brings upon a high-toned, fash'nable girl, at whose side he's walked and danced, and passed rings, and sentiments, and bokays in the changes o' the cotillion and the mizzourka. And wot,' sez I, 'if some day, prancing along in a fash'nable cavalcade, she all of a suddents comes across him drivin' a Mexican steer?' That's what I said to the boys. And so you met him, Miss Christie, as usual,” continued Dick, endeavoring under the appearance of a large social experience to conceal an eager anxiety to know the details--“so you met him; and, in course, you didn't let on yer knew him, so to speak, nat'rally, or p'raps you kinder like asked him to fix your saddle-girth, and give him a five-dollar piece--eh?”
Christie, who had risen and gone to the window, suddenly turned a very pale face and shining eyes on Dick.
“Mr. Hall,” she said, with a faint attempt at a smile, “we are old friends, and I feel I can ask you a favor. You once before acted as our escort--it was for a short but a happy time--will you accept a larger trust? My father is busy in Sacramento for the mine: will you, without saying anything to anybody, take Jessie and me back at once to Devil's Ford?”
“Will I? Miss Christie,” said Dick, choking between an intense gratification and a desire to keep back its vulgar exhibition, “I shall be proud!”
“When I say keep it a secret”--she hesitated--“I don't mean that I object to your letting Mr. Kearney, if you happen to know where he is, understand that we are going back to Devil's Ford.”
“Cert'nly--nat'rally,” said Dick, waving his hand gracefully; “sorter drop him a line, saying that bizness of a social and delicate nature--being the escort of Miss Christie and Jessie Carr to Devil's Ford--prevents my having the pleasure of calling.”
“That will do very well, Mr. Hall,” said Christie, faintly smiling through her moist eyelashes. “Then will you go at once and secure tickets for to-night's boat, and bring them here? Jessie and I will arrange everything else.”
“Cert'nly,” said Dick impulsively, and preparing to take a graceful leave.
“We'll be impatient until you return with the tickets,” said Christie graciously.
Dick shook hands gravely, got as far as the door, and paused.
“You think it better to take the tickets now?” he said dubiously.
“By all means,” said Christie impetuously. “I've set my heart on going to-night--and unless you secure berths early--” “In course--in course,” interrupted Dick nervously. “But--” “But what?” said Christie impatiently.
Dick hesitated, shut the door carefully, and, looking round the room, lightly shook out his handkerchief, apparently flicked away an embarrassing suggestion, and said, with a little laugh: “It's ridiklous, perfectly ridiklous, Miss Christie; but not bein' in the habit of carryin' ready money, and havin' omitted to cash a draft on Wells, Fargo & Co.--” “Of course,” said Christie rapidly. “How forgetful I am! Pray forgive me, Mr. Hall. I didn't think. I'll run up and get it from our host; he will be glad to be our banker.”
“One moment, Miss Christie,” said Dick lightly, as his thumb and finger relaxed in his waistcoat pocket over the only piece of money in the world that had remained to him after his extravagant purchase of Christie's saffrona rose, “one moment: in this yer monetary transaction, if you like, you are at liberty to use MY name.”
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{
"id": "2286"
}
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8
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As Christie and Jessie Carr looked from the windows of the coach, whose dust-clogged wheels were slowly dragging them, as if reluctant, nearer the last stage of their journey to Devil's Ford, they were conscious of a change in the landscape, which they could not entirely charge upon their changed feelings. The few bared open spaces on the upland, the long stretch of rocky ridge near the summit, so vivid and so velvety during their first journey, were now burnt and yellow; even the brief openings in the forest were seared as if by a hot iron in the scorching rays of a half year's sun. The pastoral slopes of the valley below were cloaked in lustre-leather: the rare watercourses along the road had faded from the waiting eye and ear; it seemed as if the long and dry summer had even invaded the close-set ranks of pines, and had blown a simoom breath through the densest woods, leaving its charred red ashes on every leaf and spray along the tunnelled shade. As they leaned out of the window and inhaled the half-dead spices of the evergreens, they seemed to have entered the atmosphere of some exhausted passion--of some fierce excitement that was even now slowly burning itself out.
It was a relief at last to see the straggling houses of Devil's Ford far below come once more into view, as they rounded the shoulder of Devil's Spur and began the long descent. But as they entered the town a change more ominous and startling than the desiccation of the landscape forced itself upon them. The town was still there, but where were the inhabitants? Four months ago they had left the straggling street thronged with busy citizens--groups at every corner, and a chaos of merchandise and traders in the open plaza or square beside the Presbyterian church. Now all was changed. Only a few wayfarers lifted their heads lazily as the coach rattled by, crossing the deserted square littered with empty boxes, and gliding past empty cabins or vacant shop windows, from which not only familiar faces, but even the window sashes themselves, were gone. The great unfinished serpent-like flume, crossing the river on gigantic trestles, had advanced as far as the town, stooping over it like some enormous reptile that had sucked its life blood and was gorged with its prey.
Whiskey Dick, who had left the stage on the summit to avail himself of a shorter foot trail to the house, that would give him half an hour's grace to make preparations, met them at the stage office with a buggy. A glance at the young girls, perhaps, convinced him that the graces of elegant worldly conversation were out of place with the revelation he read on their faces. Perhaps, he, too, was a trifle indisposed. The short journey to the house was made in profound silence.
The villa had been repainted and decorated, and it looked fresher, and even, to their preoccupied minds, appeared more attractive than ever. Thoughtful hands had taken care of the vines and rose-bushes on the trellises; water--that precious element in Devil's Ford--had not been spared in keeping green through the long drought the plants which the girls had so tenderly nurtured. It was the one oasis in which the summer still lingered; and yet a singular sense of loss came over the girls as they once more crossed its threshold. It seemed no longer their own.
“Ef I was you, Miss Christie, I'd keep close to the house for a day or two, until--until--things is settled,” said Dick; “there's a heap o' tramps and sich cattle trapsin' round. P'raps you wouldn't feel so lonesome if you was nearer town--for instance, 'bout wher' you useter live.”
“In the dear old cabin,” said Christie quickly; “I remember it; I wish we were there now.”
“Do you really? Do you?” said Whiskey Dick, with suddenly twinkling eyes. “That's like you to say it. That's what I allus said,” continued Dick, addressing space generally; “if there's any one ez knows how to come square down to the bottom rock without flinchin', it's your high-toned, fash'nable gals. But I must meander back to town, and let the boys know you're in possession, safe and sound. It's right mean that Fairfax and Mattingly had to go down to Lagrange on some low business yesterday, but they'll be back to-morrow. So long.”
Left alone, the girls began to realize their strange position. They had conceived no settled plan. The night they left San Francisco they had written an earnest letter to their father, telling him that on learning the truth about the reverses of Devil's Ford, they thought it their duty to return and share them with others, without obliging him to prefer the request, and with as little worry to him as possible. He would find them ready to share his trials, and in what must be the scene of their work hereafter.
“It will bring father back,” said Christie; “he won't leave us here alone; and then together we must come to some understanding with him--with THEM--for somehow I feel as if this house belonged to us no longer.”
Her surmise was not far wrong. When Mr. Carr arrived hurriedly from Sacramento the next evening, he found the house deserted. His daughters were gone; there were indications that they had arrived, and, for some reason, suddenly departed. The vague fear that had haunted his guilty soul after receiving their letter, and during his breathless journey, now seemed to be realized. He was turning from the empty house, whose reproachful solitude frightened him, when he was confronted on the threshold by the figure of Fairfax Munroe.
“I came to the stage office to meet you,” he said; “you must have left the stage at the summit.”
“I did,” said Carr angrily. “I was anxious to meet my daughters quickly, to know the reason of their foolish alarm, and to know also who had been frightening them. Where are they?”
“They are safe in the old cabin beyond, that has been put up ready to receive them again,” said Fairfax quietly.
“But what is the meaning of this? Why are they not here?” demanded Carr, hiding his agitation in a burst of querulous rage.
“Do YOU ask, Mr. Carr?” said Fairfax sadly. “Did you expect them to remain here until the sheriff took possession? No one knows better than yourself that the money advanced you on the deeds of this homestead has never been repaid.”
Carr staggered, but recovered himself with feeble violence.
“Since you know so much of my affairs, how do you know that this claim will ever be pressed for payment? How do you know it is not the advance of a--a--friend?”
“Because I have seen the woman who advanced it,” said Fairfax hopelessly. “She was here to look at the property before your daughters came.”
“Well?” said Carr nervously.
“Well! You force me to tell you something I should like to forget. You force me to anticipate a disclosure I expected to make to you only when I came to ask permission to woo your daughter Jessie; and when I tell you what it is, you will understand that I have no right to criticise your conduct. I am only explaining my own.”
“Go on,” said Carr impatiently.
“When I first came to this country, there was a woman I loved passionately. She treated me as women of her kind only treat men like me; she ruined me, and left me. That was four years ago. I love your daughter, Mr. Carr, but she has never heard it from my lips. I would not woo her until I had told you all. I have tried to do it ere this, and failed. Perhaps I should not now, but--” “But what?” said Carr furiously; “speak out!”
“But this. Look!” said Fairfax, producing from his pocket the packet of letters Jessie had found; “perhaps you know the handwriting?”
“What do you mean?” gasped Carr.
“That woman--my mistress--is the woman who advanced you money, and who claims this house.”
The interview, and whatever came of it, remained a secret with the two men. When Mr. Carr accepted the hospitality of the old cabin again, it was understood that he had sacrificed the new house and its furniture to some of the more pressing debts of the mine, and the act went far to restore his waning popularity. But a more genuine feeling of relief was experienced by Devil's Ford when it was rumored that Fairfax Munroe had asked for the hand of Jessie Carr, and that some promise contingent upon the equitable adjustment of the affairs of the mine had been given by Mr. Carr. To the superstitious mind of Devil's Ford and its few remaining locators, this new partnership seemed to promise that unity of interest and stability of fortune that Devil's Ford had lacked. But nothing could be done until the rainy season had fairly set in; until the long-looked-for element that was to magically separate the gold from the dross in those dull mounds of dust and gravel had come of its own free will, and in its own appointed channels, independent of the feeble auxiliaries that had hopelessly riven the rocks on the hillside, or hung incomplete and unfinished in lofty scaffoldings above the settlement.
The rainy season came early. At first in gathered mists on the higher peaks that were lifted in the morning sun only to show a fresher field of dazzling white below; in white clouds that at first seemed to be mere drifts blown across from those fresh snowfields, and obscuring the clear blue above; in far-off murmurs in the hollow hills and gulches; in nearer tinkling melody and baby prattling in the leaves. It came with bright flashes of sunlight by day, with deep, monotonous shadow at night; with the onset of heavy winds, the roar of turbulent woods, the tumultuous tossing of leafy arms, and with what seemed the silent dissolution of the whole landscape in days of steady and uninterrupted downfall. It came extravagantly, for every canyon had grown into a torrent, every gulch a waterspout, every watercourse a river, and all pouring into the North Fork, that, rushing past the settlement, seemed to threaten it with lifted crest and flying mane. It came dangerously, for one night the river, leaping the feeble barrier of Devil's Ford, swept away houses and banks, scattered with unconscious irony the laboriously collected heaps of gravel left for hydraulic machinery, and spread out a vast and silent lake across the submerged flat.
In the hurry and confusion of that night the girls had thrown open their cabin to the escaping miners, who hurried along the slope that was now the bank of the river. Suddenly Christie felt her arm grasped, and she was half-led, half-dragged, into the inner room. Her father stood before her.
“Where is George Kearney?” he asked tremulously.
“George Kearney!” echoed Christie, for a moment believing the excitement had turned her father's brain. “You know he is not here; he is in San Francisco.”
“He is here--I tell you,” said Carr impatiently; “he has been here ever since the high water, trying to save the flume and reservoir.”
“George--here!” Christie could only gasp.
“Yes! He passed here a few moments ago, to see if you were all safe, and he has gone on towards the flume. But what he is trying to do is madness. If you see him, implore him to do no more. Let him abandon the accursed flume to its fate. It has worked already too much woe upon us all; why should it carry his brave and youthful soul down with it?”
The words were still ringing in her ears, when he suddenly passed away, with the hurrying crowd. Scarcely knowing what she did, she ran out, vaguely intent only on one thought, seeking only the one face, lately so dear in recollection that she felt she would die if she never saw it again. Perplexed by confused voices in the woods, she lost track of the crowd, until the voices suddenly were raised in one loud outcry, followed by the crashing of timber, the splashing of water, a silence, and then a dull, continuous roar. She ran vaguely on in the direction of the reservoir, with her father's injunction still in her mind, until a terrible idea displaced it, and she turned at right angles suddenly, and ran towards the slope leading down to the submerged flat. She had barely left the shelter of the trees behind her before the roar of water seemed to rise at her very feet. She stopped, dazed, bewildered, and horror-stricken, on the edge of the slope. It was the slope no longer, but the bank of the river itself!
Even in the gray light of early morning, and with inexperienced eyes, she saw all too clearly now. The trestle-work had given way; the curving mile of flume, fallen into the stream, and, crushed and dammed against the opposite shore, had absolutely turned the whole river through the half-finished ditch and partly excavated mine in its way, a few rods further on to join the old familiar channel. The bank of the river was changed; the flat had become an island, between which and the slope where she stood the North Fork was rolling its resistless yellow torrent. As she gazed spellbound, a portion of the slope beneath her suddenly seemed to sink and crumble, and was swallowed up in the rushing stream. She heard a cry of warning behind her, but, rooted to the spot by a fearful fascination, she heeded it not.
Again there was a sudden disruption, and another part of the slope sank to rise no more; but this time she felt herself seized by the waist and dragged back. It was her father standing by her side.
He was flushed and excited, gazing at the water with a strange exultation.
“Do you see it? Do you know what has happened?” he asked quickly.
“The flume has fallen and turned the river,” said Christie hurriedly. “But--have you seen him--is he safe?”
“He--who?” he answered vacantly.
“George Kearney!”
“He is safe,” he said impatiently. “But, do you see, Christie? Do you know what this means?”
He pointed with his tremulous hand to the stream before them.
“It means we are ruined,” said Christie coldly.
“Nothing of the kind! It means that the river is doing the work of the flume. It is sluicing off the gravel, deepening the ditch, and altering the slope which was the old bend of the river. It will do in ten minutes the work that would take us a year. If we can stop it in time, or control it, we are safe; but if we can not, it will carry away the bed and deposit with the rest, and we are ruined again.”
With a gesture of impotent fury, he dashed away in the direction of an equally excited crowd, that on a point of the slope nearer the island were gesticulating and shouting to a second group of men, who on the opposite shore were clambering on over the choked debris of the flume that had dammed and diverted the current. It was evident that the same idea had occurred to them, and they were risking their lives in the attempt to set free the impediments. Shocked and indignant as Christie had been at the degrading absorption of material interests at such a moment, the element of danger lifted the labors of these men into heroism, and she began to feel a strange exultation as she watched them. Under the skilful blows of their axes, in a few moments the vast body of drift began to disintegrate, and then to swing round and move towards the old channel. A cheer went up, but as suddenly died away again. An overlapping fringe of wreckage had caught on the point of the island and arrested the whole mass.
The men, who had gained the shore with difficulty, looked back with a cry of despair. But the next moment from among them leaped a figure, alert, buoyant, invincible, and, axe in hand, once more essayed the passage. Springing from timber to timber, he at last reached the point of obstruction. A few strokes of the axe were sufficient to clear it; but at the first stroke it was apparent that the striker was also losing his hold upon the shore, and that he must inevitably be carried away with the tossing debris. But this consideration did not seem to affect him; the last blow was struck, and as the freed timbers rolled on, over and over, he boldly plunged into the flood. Christie gave a little cry--her heart had bounded with him; it seemed as if his plunge had splashed the water in her eyes. He did not come to the surface until he had passed the point below where her father stood, and then struggling feebly, as if stunned or disabled by a blow. It seemed to her that he was trying to approach the side of the river where she was. Would he do it? Could she help him? She was alone; he was hidden from the view of the men on the point, and no succor could come from them. There was a fringe of alder nearly opposite their cabin that almost overhung the stream. She ran to it, clutched it with a frantic hand, and, leaning over the boiling water, uttered for the first time his name: “George!”
As if called to the surface by the magic of her voice, he rose a few yards from her in mid-current, and turned his fading eyes towards the bank. In another moment he would have been swept beyond her reach, but with a supreme effort he turned on one side; the current, striking him sideways, threw him towards the bank, and she caught him by his sleeve. For an instant it seemed as if she would be dragged down with him. For one dangerous moment she did not care, and almost yielded to the spell; but as the rush of water pressed him against the bank, she recovered herself, and managed to lift him beyond its reach. And then she sat down, half-fainting, with his white face and damp curls upon her breast.
“George, darling, speak to me! Only one word! Tell me, have I saved you?”
His eyes opened. A faint twinkle of the old days came to them--a boyish smile played upon his lips.
“For yourself--or Jessie?”
She looked around her with a little frightened air. They were alone. There was but one way of sealing those mischievous lips, and she found it!
“That's what I allus said, gentlemen,” lazily remarked Whiskey Dick, a few weeks later, leaning back against the bar, with his glass in his hand. “'George,' sez I, 'it ain't what you SAY to a fash'nable, high-toned young lady; it's what you DOES ez makes or breaks you.' And that's what I sez gin'rally o' things in the Ford. It ain't what Carr and you boys allows to do; it's the gin'ral average o' things ez IS done that gives tone to the hull, and hez brought this yer new luck to you all!”
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{
"id": "2286"
}
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1
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FIRST YEARS.
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Many years ago, before railroads were thought of, a company of Connecticut farmers, who had heard marvellous stories of the richness of the land in the West, sold their farms, packed up their goods, bade adieu to their friends, and with their families started for Ohio.
After weeks of travel over dusty roads, they came to a beautiful valley, watered by a winding river. The hills around were fair and sunny. There were groves of oaks, and maples, and lindens. The air was fragrant with honeysuckle and jasmine. There was plenty of game. The swift-footed deer browsed the tender grass upon the hills. Squirrels chattered in the trees and the ringdoves cooed in the depths of the forest. The place was so fertile and fair, so pleasant and peaceful, that the emigrants made it their home, and called it New Hope.
They built a mill upon the river. They laid out a wide, level street, and a public square, erected a school-house, and then a church. One of their number opened a store. Other settlers came, and, as the years passed by, the village rang with the shouts of children pouring from the school-house for a frolic upon the square. Glorious times they had beneath the oaks and maples.
One of the jolliest of the boys was Paul Parker, only son of Widow Parker, who lived in a little old house, shaded by a great maple, on the outskirts of the village. Her husband died when Paul was in his cradle. Paul's grandfather was still living. The people called him "Old Pensioner Parker," for he fought at Bunker Hill, and received a pension from government. He was hale and hearty, though more than eighty years of age.
The pension was the main support of the family. They kept a cow, a pig, turkeys, and chickens, and, by selling milk and eggs, which Paul carried to their customers, they brought the years round without running in debt. Paul's pantaloons had a patch on each knee, but he laughed just as loud and whistled just as cheerily for all that.
In summer he went barefoot. He did not have to turn out at every mud-puddle, and he could plash into the mill-pond and give the frogs a crack over the head without stopping to take off stockings and shoes. Paul did not often have a dinner of roast beef, but he had an abundance of bean porridge, brown bread, and milk.
"Bean porridge is wholesome food, Paul," said his grandfather. "When I was a boy we used to say,-- 'Bean porridge hot, Bean porridge cold,-- Bean porridge best Nine days old.'
The wood-choppers in winter used to freeze it into cakes and carry it into the woods. Many a time I have made a good dinner on a chunk of frozen porridge."
The Pensioner remembered what took place in his early years, but he lost his reckoning many times a day upon what was going on in the town. He loved to tell stories, and Paul was a willing listener. Pleasant winter-evenings they had in the old kitchen, the hickory logs blazing on the hearth, the tea-kettle singing through its nose, the clock ticking soberly, the old Pensioner smoking his pipe in the arm-chair, Paul's mother knitting,--Bruno by Paul's side, wagging his tail and watching Muff in the opposite corner rolling her great round yellow eyes. Bruno was always ready to give Muff battle whenever Paul tipped him the wink to pitch in.
The Pensioner's stories were of his boyhood,--how he joined the army, and fought the battles of the Revolution. Thus his story ran.
"I was only a little bigger than you are, Paul," he said, "when the red-coats began the war at Lexington. I lived in old Connecticut then; that was a long time before we came out here. The meeting-house bell rung, and the people blew their dinner-horns, till the whole town was alarmed. I ran up to the meeting-house and found the militia forming. The men had their guns and powder-horns. The women were at work melting their pewter porringers into bullets. I wasn't o'd enough to train, but I could fire a gun and bring down a squirrel from the top of a tree. I wanted to go and help drive the red-coats into the ocean. I asked mother if I might. I was afraid that she didn't want me to go. 'Why, Paul,' says she, 'you haven't any clothes.' 'Mother,' says I, 'I can shoot a red-coat just as well as any of the men can.' Says she, 'Do you want to go, Paul?' 'Yes, mother.' 'Then you shall go; I'll fix you out,' she said. As I hadn't any coat she took a meal-bag, cut a hole for my head in the bottom, and made holes for my arms in the sides, cut off a pair of her own stocking-legs, and sewed them on for sleeves, and I was rigged. I took the old gun which father carried at Ticonderoga, and the powder-horn, and started. There is the gun and the horn, Paul, hanging up over the fireplace.
"The red-coats had got back to Boston, but we cooped them up. Our company was in Colonel Knowlton's regiment. I carried the flag, which said, _Qui transtulit sustinet_. I don't know anything about Latin, but those who do say it means that God who hath transported us hither will sustain us; and that is true, Paul. He sustained us at Bunker Hill, and we should have held it if our powder had not given out. Our regiment was by a rail-fence on the northeast side of the hill. Stark, with his New Hampshire boys, was by the river. Prescott was in the redoubt on the top of the hill. Old Put kept walking up and down the lines. This is the way it was, Paul."
The Pensioner laid aside his pipe, bent forward, and traced upon the hearth the positions of the troops.
"There is the redoubt; here is the rail-fence; there is where the red-coats formed their lines. They came up in front of us here. We didn't fire a gun till they got close to us. I'll show you how the fire ran down the line."
He took down the horn, pulled out the stopper, held his finger over the tip, and made a trail of powder.
"There, Paul, that is by the fence. As the red-coats came up, some of us began to be uneasy and wanted to fire; but Old Put kept saying, 'Don't fire yet! Wait till you can see the white of their eyes! Aim at their belts!'"
While the Pensioner was saying this, he took the tongs and picked a live coal from the fire.
"They came up beautifully, Paul,--the tall grenadiers and light-infantry in their scarlet coats, and the sun shining on their gun-barrels and bayonets. They wer'n't more than ten rods off when a soldier on top of the hill couldn't stand it any longer. Pop! went his gun, and the fire ran down the hill quicker than scat! just like this!"
He touched the coal to the powder. There was a flash, a puff of smoke rising to the ceiling, and filling the room.
"Hooray!" shouted Paul, springing to his feet. Muff went with a jump upon the bureau in the corner of the room, her tail as big as Paul's arm, and her back up. Bruno was after her in a twinkling, bouncing about, barking, and looking round to Paul to see if it was all right.
"There, grandpa, you have made a great smut on the hearth," said Mrs. Parker, who kept her house neat and tidy, though it was a crazy old affair.
"Well, mother, I thought it would please Paul."
"S-s-s-s-si'c!" Paul made a hiss which Bruno understood, for he went at Muff more fiercely. It was glorious to see Muff spit fire, and hear her growl low and deep like distant thunder. Paul would not have Muff hurt for anything, but he loved to see Bruno show his teeth at her, for she was gritty when waked up.
"Be still, Paul, and let Muff alone," said Paul's mother.
"Come, Bruno, she ain't worth minding," said Paul.
"They have got good courage, both of 'em," said the Pensioner; "and courage is one half of the battle, and truth and honor is the other half. Paul, I want you to remember that. It will be worth more than a fortune to you. I don't mean that cats and dogs know much about truth and honor, and I have seen some men who didn't know much more about those qualities of character than Muff and Bruno; but what I have said, Paul, is true for all that. They who win success in life are those who love truth, and who follow what is noble and good. No matter how brave a man may be, if he hasn't these qualities he won't succeed. He may get rich, but that won't amount to much. Success, Paul, is to have an unblemished character,--to be true to ourselves, to our country, and to God."
He went on with his story, telling how the British troops ran before the fire of the Yankees,--how they re-formed and came on a second time, and were repulsed again,--how General Clinton went over from Boston with reinforcements,--how Charlestown was set on fire,--how the flames leaped from house to house, and curled round the spire of the church,--how the red-coats advanced a third time beneath the great black clouds of smoke,--how the ammunition of the Yankees gave out, and they were obliged to retreat,--how General Putnam tried to rally them,--how they escaped across Charlestown Neck, where the cannon-balls from the British floating batteries raked the ranks! He made it all so plain, that Paul wished he had been there.
The story completed, Paul climbed the creaking stairway to his narrow chamber, repeated his evening prayer, and scrambled into bed.
"He is a jolly boy," said the Pensioner to Paul's mother, as Paul left the room.
"I don't know what will become of him," she replied, "he is so wild and thoughtless. He leaves the door open, throws his cap into the corner, sets Bruno and Muff to growling, stops to play on his way home from school, sings, whistles, shouts, hurrahs, and tears round like all possessed."
If she could have looked into Paul's desk at school, she would have found whirligigs, tops, pin-boxes, nails, and no end of strings and dancing dandy-jims.
"Paul is a rogue," said the Pensioner. "You remember how he got on top of the house awhile ago and frightened us out of our wits by shouting 'Fire! fire!' down the chimney; how we ran out to see about it; how I asked him 'Where?' and says he, 'Down there in the fireplace, grandpa.' He is a chip of the old block. I used to do just so. But there is one good thing about him, he don't do mean tricks. He don't bend up pins and put them in the boys' seats, or tuck chestnut-burs into the girls' hoods. I never knew him to tell a lie. He will come out all right."
"I hope so," said Mrs. Parker.
Paul could look through the crevices between the shingles, and the cracks in the walls, and behold the stars gleaming from the unfathomable spaces. He wondered how far they were away. He listened to the wind chanting a solemn dirge, filling his soul with longings for he knew not what. He thought over his grandfather's stories, and the words he had spoken about courage, truth, and honor, till a shingle clattering in the wind took up the refrain, and seemed to say, Truth and honor,--truth and honor,--truth and honor,--so steadily and pleasantly, that while he listened the stars faded from his sight, and he sailed away into dream-land.
Paul was twelve years old, stout, hearty, and healthy,--full of life, and brimming over with fun. Once he set the village in a roar. The people permitted their pigs to run at large. The great maple in front of the Pensioner's house was cool and shady,--a delightful place for the pigs through the hot summer days.
Mr. Chrome, the carriage-painter, lived across the road. He painted a great many wagons for the farmers,--the wheels yellow, the bodies blue, green, or red, with scrolls and flowers on the sides. Paul watched him by the hour, and sometimes made up his mind to be a carriage-painter when he became a man.
"Mr. Chrome," said Paul, "don't you think that those pigs would look better if they were painted?"
"Perhaps so."
"I should like to see how they would look painted as you paint your wagons."
Mr. Chrome laughed at the ludicrous fancy. He loved fun, and was ready to help carry out the freak.
"Well, just try your hand on improving nature," he said.
Paul went to work. Knowing that pigs like to have their backs scratched, he had no difficulty in keeping them quiet. To one he gave green legs, blue ears, red rings round its eyes, and a red tail. Another had one red leg, one blue, one yellow, one green, with red and blue stripes and yellow stars on its body. "I will make him a star-spangled pig," Paul shouted to Mr. Chrome. Another had a green head, yellow ears, and a red body. Bruno watched the proceedings, wagging his tail, looking now at Paul and then at the pigs, ready to help on the fun.
"Si'c! --si'c! --si'c!" said Paul. Bruno was upon them with a bound. Away they capered, with him at their heels. As soon as they came into the sunshine the spirits of turpentine in the paint was like fire to their flesh. Faster they ran up the street squealing, with Bruno barking behind. Mr. Chrome laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. All the dogs, great and small, joined Bruno in chase of the strange game. People came out from the stores, windows were thrown up, and all hands--men, women, and children--ran to see what was the matter, laughing and shouting, while the pigs and dogs ran round the square.
"Paul Parker did that, I'll bet," said Mr. Leatherby, the shoemaker, peeping out from his shop. "It is just like him."
An old white horse, belonging to Mr. Smith, also sought the shade of the maple before the Pensioner's house. Bruno barked at him by the hour, but the old horse would not move for anything short of a club or stone.
"I'll see if I can't get rid of him," said Paul to himself.
He went into the barn, found a piece of rope, tied up a little bundle of hay, got a stick five or six feet long, and some old harness-straps. In the evening, when it was so dark that people could not see what he was up to, he caught the old horse, laid the stick between his ears and strapped it to his neck, and tied the hay to the end of the stick, in such a way that it hung a few inches beyond old Whitey's nose. The old horse took a step ahead to nibble the hay,--another,--another,--another! "Don't you wish you may get it?" said Paul. Tramp,--tramp,--tramp. Old Whitey went down the road. Paul heard him go across the bridge by the mill, and up the hill the other side of the brook.
"Go it, old fellow!" he shouted, then listened again. It was a calm night, and he could just hear old Whitey's feet,--tramp,--tramp,--tramp.
The next morning the good people of Fairview, ten miles from New Hope, laughed to see an old white horse, with a bundle of hay a few inches beyond his nose, passing through the place.
Mr. Smith, after breakfast, started out to hunt up old Whitey. He often found him under the maple in front of the Pensioner's house. Paul was swinging on the gate. "Have you seen my horse?" Mr. Smith asked.
"Yes, sir, I saw him going down towards the bridge last evening," Paul replied, chuckling to himself.
Mr. Smith went down to the mill and inquired. The miller heard a horse go over the bridge. The farmer on the other side heard a horse go up the hill. Mr. Smith looked at the tracks. They were old Whitey's, who had a broken shoe on his left hind foot. He followed on. "I never knew him to go away before," he said to himself, as he walked hour after hour, seeing the tracks all the way to Fairview.
"Have you seen a white horse about here?" he asked of one of the villagers.
"Yes, sir; there was one here this morning trying to overtake a bundle of hay," the man replied, laughing. "There he is now!" he added.
Mr. Smith looked up and saw old Whitey, who had turned about, and was reaching forward to get a nibble of the hay. Mr. Smith felt like being angry, but the old horse was walking so soberly and earnestly that he couldn't help laughing.
"That is some of Paul's doings, I know. I'll give him a blessing when I get back."
It was noon before Mr. Smith reached New Hope. Paul and Bruno were sitting beneath the maple.
"Where did you find old Whitey?" Paul asked.
"You was the one who did it, you little rascal!"
"Did what?"
"You know what. You have made me walk clear to Fairview. I have a mind to horsewhip you."
Paul laughed to think that the old horse had tramped so far, though he was sorry that Mr. Smith had been obliged to walk that distance.
"I didn't mean any harm, Mr. Smith; but old Whitey has made our dooryard his stamping-place all summer, and I thought I would see if I could get rid of him."
"Well, sir, if you do it again I'll trounce you!" said Mr. Smith as he rode away, his anger coming up.
"Wouldn't it be better for you to put him in a pasture, Mr. Smith? Then he wouldn't trouble us," said Paul, who knew that Mr. Smith had no right to let old Whitey run at large. Paul was not easily frightened when he had right on his side. The people in the stores and at the tavern had a hearty laugh when they heard how old Whitey went to Fairview.
Mr. Cipher taught the village school. He was tall, slim, thin-faced, with black eyes deeply set in his head, and a long, hooked nose like an eagle's bill. He wore a loose swallow-tailed coat with bright brass buttons, and pants which were several inches too short. The Committee employed him, not because he was a superior teacher, but they could get him for twelve dollars a month, while Mr. Rudiment, who had been through college, and who was known to be an excellent instructor, asked sixteen.
There was a crowd of roistering boys and rosy-cheeked girls, who made the old school-house hum like a beehive. Very pleasant to the passers-by was the music of their voices. At recess and at noon they had leap-frog and tag. Paul was in a class with Philip Funk, Hans Middlekauf, and Michael Murphy. There were other boys and girls of all nationalities. Paul's ancestors were from Connecticut, while Philip's father was a Virginian. Hans was born in Germany, and Michael in Ireland. Philip's father kept a grocery, and sold sugar, molasses, tobacco, and whiskey. He was rich, and Philip wore good clothes and calf-skin boots. Paul could get his lessons very quick whenever he set about them in earnest, but he spent half his time in inventing fly-traps, making whirligigs, or drawing pictures on his slate. He had an accurate eye, and could draw admirably. Philip could get his lessons also if he chose to apply himself, but it was a great deal easier to have some one work out the problems in arithmetic than to do them himself.
"Here, Paul, just help me; that is a good fellow," he said, coaxingly.
It was at recess.
"No; Cipher has forbid it. Each one must do his own work," said Paul.
"If you will do it, I will give you a handful of raisins," said Philip, who usually had his pockets full of raisins, candy, or nuts.
"It wouldn't be right."
"Come, just do this one; Cipher never will know it."
"No!" Paul said it resolutely.
"You are a mean, sneaking fellow," said Philip.
Philip was a year older than Paul. He had sandy hair, white eyelashes, and a freckled face. He carried a watch, and always had money in his pocket. Paul, on the other hand, hardly ever had a cent which he could call his own. His clothes were worn till they were almost past mending.
"Rag-tag has got a hole in his trousers," said Philip to the other boys.
Paul's face flushed. He wanted to knock Phillip's teeth down his throat. He knew that his mother had hard work to clothe him, and felt the insult keenly. He went into the school-house, choked his anger down, and tried to forget all about it by drawing a picture of the master. It was an excellent likeness,--his spindle legs, great feet, short pants, loose coat, sunken eyes, hooked nose, thin face, and long bony fingers.
Philip sat behind Paul. Instead of studying his lesson, he was planning how to get Paul into trouble. He saw the picture. Now was his time. He giggled aloud. Mr. Cipher looked up in astonishment.
"What are you laughing at, Master Funk?"
"At what Paul is doing."
Paul hustled his slate into his desk.
"Let me see what you have here," said Cipher, walking up to Paul, who spat on his fingers, and ran his hand into the desk, to rub out the drawing; but he felt that it would be better to meet his punishment boldly than to have the school think he was a sneak. He laid the slate before the master without a line effaced.
"Giving your attention to drawing, are you, Master Paul?" said Cipher. His eyes flashed. He knit his brows. The blood rushed to his cheeks. There was a popping up of heads all over the school-room to get a sight of the picture.
The boys laughed aloud, and there was a tittering among the girls, which made Cipher very angry. "Silence!" he roared, and stamped upon the floor so savagely that the windows rattled. "Come out here, sir. I'll give you a drawing-lesson of another sort." He seized Paul by the collar, and threw him into the space in front of his own desk. "Hold out your hand."
Paul felt that he was about to receive a tremendous thrashing; but he determined that he would not flinch. He held out his right hand, and received the blow from a heavy ferule. His hand felt as if he had been struck by a piece of hot iron.
"The other, sir."
Whack! it fell, a blow which made the flesh purple. There was an Oh! upon his tongue; but he set his teeth together, and bit his lips till they bled, and so smothered it. Another blow,--another,--another. They were hard to bear; but his teeth were set like a vice. There was a twitching of the muscles round his lips; he was pale. When the blows fell, he held his breath, but did not snivel.
"I'll see if I can't bring you to your feeling, you good-for-nothing scapegrace," said the master, mad with passion, and surprised that Paul made no outcry. He gave another round, bringing the ferule down with great force. Blood began to ooze from the pores. The last blow spattered the drops around the room. Cipher came to his senses. He stopped.
"Are you sorry, sir?"
"I don't know whether I am or not. I didn't mean any harm. I suppose I ought not to have drawn it in school; but I didn't do it to make fun. I drew you just as you are," said Paul,--his voice trembling a little in spite of his efforts to control it.
The master could not deny that it was a perfect likeness. He was surprised at Paul's cleverness at drawing, and for the first time in his life saw that he cut a ridiculous figure wearing that long, loose, swallow-tailed coat, with great, flaming brass buttons, and resolved upon the spot that his next coat should be a frock, and that he would get a longer pair of pants.
"You may take your seat, sir!" he said, puzzled to know whether to punish Paul still more, and compel him to say that he was sorry, or whether to accept the explanations, and apologize for whipping him so severely.
Paul sat down. His hands ached terribly; but what troubled him most was the thought that he had been whipped before the whole school. All the girls had witnessed his humiliation. There was one among them,--Azalia Adams,--who stood at the head of Paul's class, the best reader and speller in school. She had ruby lips, and cheeks like roses; the golden sunlight falling upon her chestnut hair crowned her with glory; deep, thoughtful, and earnest was the liquid light of her hazel eyes; she was as lovely and beautiful as the flower whose name she bore. Paul had drawn her picture many times,--sometimes bending over her task, sometimes as she sat, unmindful of the hum of voices around her, looking far away into a dim and distant dream-land. He never wearied of tracing the features of one so fair and good as she. Her laugh was as musical as a mountain-brook; and in the church on Sunday, when he heard her voice sweetly and melodiously mingling with the choir, he thought of the angels,--of her as in heaven and he on earth.
"Run home, sonny, and tell your marm that you got a licking," said Philip when school was out.
Paul's face became livid. He would have doubled his fist and given Philip a blow in the face, but his palms were like puff-balls. There was an ugly feeling inside, but just then a pair of bright hazel eyes, almost swimming with tears, looked into his own. "Don't mind it, Paul!" said Azalia.
The pain was not half so hard to bear after that. He wanted to say, "I thank you," but did not know how. Till then his lips had hardly quivered, and he had not shed a tear; now his eyes became moist; one great drop rolled down his cheek, but he wiped it off with his coat-sleeve, and turned away, for fear that Azalia would think him a baby.
On his way home the thought uppermost in his mind was, "What will mother say?" Why tell her? Would it not be better to keep the matter to himself? But then he remembered that she had said, "Paul, I shall expect you to tell me truthfully all that happens to you at school." He loved his mother. She was one of the best mothers that ever lived, working for him day and night. How could he abuse such confidence as she had given him? He would not violate it. He would not be a sneak.
His mother and the Pensioner were sitting before the fire as he entered the house. She welcomed him with a smile,--a beautiful smile it was, for she was a noble woman, and Paul was her darling, her pride, the light, joy, and comfort of her life.
"Well, Paul, how do you get on at school?" his grandfather asked.
"I got a whipping to-day." It was spoken boldly and manfully.
"What! My son got a whipping!" his mother exclaimed.
"Yes, mother."
"I am astonished. Come here, and tell me all about it."
Paul stood by her side and told the story,--how Philip Funk tried to bribe him, how he called him names,--how, having got his lessons, he made a picture of the master. "Here it is, mother." He took his slate from his little green bag. The picture had not been effaced. His mother looked at it and laughed, notwithstanding her efforts to keep sober, for it was such a perfect likeness. She had an exquisite sense of the ludicrous, and Paul was like her. She was surprised to find that he could draw so well.
"We will talk about the matter after supper," she said. She had told Paul many times, that, if he was justly punished at school, he must expect a second punishment at home; but she wanted to think awhile before deciding what to do. She was pleased to know that her boy could not be bribed to do what his conscience told him he ought not to do, and that he was manly and truthful. She would rather follow him to the church-yard and lay him in his grave beneath the bending elms, than to have him untruthful or wicked.
The evening passed away. Paul sat before the fire, looking steadily into the coals. He was sober and thoughtful, wondering what his mother would say at last. The clock struck nine. It was his bedtime. He went and stood by her side once more. "You are not angry with me, mother, are you?"
"No, my son. I do not think that you deserved so severe a punishment. I am rejoiced to know that you are truthful, and that you despise a mean act. Be always as you have been to-night in telling the truth, and I never shall be angry with you."
He threw his arms around her neck, and gave way to tears, such as Cipher could not extort by his pounding. She gave him a good-night kiss,--so sweet that it seemed to lie upon his lips all through the night.
"God bless you, Paul," said the Pensioner.
Paul climbed the creaking stairs, and knelt with an overflowing heart to say his evening prayer. He spoke the words earnestly when he asked God to take care of his mother and grandfather. He was very happy. He looked out through the crevices in the walls, and saw the stars and the moon flooding the landscape with silver light. There was sweet music in the air,--the merry melody of the water murmuring by the mill, the cheerful chirping of the crickets, and the lullaby of the winds, near at hand and far away, putting him in mind of the choirs on earth and the choirs in heaven. "Don't mind it, Paul!" were the words they sung, so sweetly and tenderly that for many days they rang in his ears.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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2
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HARD TIMES.
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How lonesome the days when dear friends leave us to return no more, whom we never shall see again on earth, who will send us no message or letter of love from the far distant land whither they have gone! It tries our hearts and brings tears to our eyes to lay them in the ground. But shall we never, never see them again? Yes, when we have taken the same journey, when we have closed our eyes on earth and opened them in heaven.
As the months rolled by, the Pensioner's eyes grew dim. He became weak and feeble. "The Pensioner won't stand it long," the people said.
He did not rise one morning when breakfast was ready.
"Come, grandpa," said Paul, opening the bedroom door and calling him; but there was no reply. He lay as if asleep; but his brow was cold, and his heart had stopped beating. He had died calmly and peacefully, and was forever at rest.
It was a sad day to Paul when he followed the body of his dear old grandfather to the grave; but when he stood by his coffin, and looked for the last time upon his grandfather's face, and saw how peaceful it was and how pleasant the smile which rested upon it, as if he was beholding beautiful scenes,--when Paul remembered how good he was, he could not feel it in his soul to say, "Come back, Grandpa"; he would be content as it was. But the days were long and dreary, and so were the nights. Many the hours which Paul passed lying awake in his bed, looking through the crevices of the poor old house, and watching the stars and the clouds as they went sailing by. So he was sailing on, and the question would come up, Whither? He listened to the water falling over the dam by the mill, and to the chirping of the crickets, and the sighing of the wind, and the church-bell tolling the hours: they were sweet, yet mournful and solemn sounds. Tears stood in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, as he thought that he and his mother were on earth, and his father and grandfather were praising God in the heavenly choirs. But he resolved to be good, to take care of his mother, and be her comfort and joy.
Hard times came on. How to live was the great question; for now that his grandfather was gone, they could have the pension no longer. The neighbors were very kind. Sometimes Mr. Middlekauf, Hans's father, who had a great farm, left a bag of meal for them when he came into the village. There was little work for Paul to do in the village; but he kept their own garden in good trim,--the onion-bed clear of weeds, and the potatoes well hilled. Very pleasant it was to work there, where the honey-bees hummed over the beds of sage, and among his mother's flowers, and where bumble-bees dusted their yellow jackets in the hollyhocks. Swallows also built their nests under the eaves of the house, and made the days pleasant with their merry twittering.
The old Pensioner had been a land surveyor. The compass which he used was a poor thing; but he had run many lines with it through the grand old forest. One day, as Paul was weeding the onions, it occurred to him that he might become a surveyor; so he went into the house, took the compass from its case, and sat down to study it. He found his grandfather's surveying-book, and began to study that. Some parts were hard and dry; but having resolved to master it, he was not the boy to give up a good resolution. It was not long before he found out how to run a line, how to set off angles, and how to ascertain the distance across a river or pond without measuring it. He went into the woods, and stripped great rolls of birch bark from the trees, carried them home, spread them out on the table, and plotted his lines with his dividers and ruler. He could not afford paper. He took great pleasure in making a sketch of the ground around the house, the garden, the orchard, the field, the road, and the river.
The people of New Hope had long been discussing the project of building a new road to Fairview, which would cross the pond above the mill. But there was no surveyor in the region to tell them how long the bridge must be which they would have to build.
"We will send up a kite, and thus get a string across the pond," said one of the citizens.
"I can ascertain the distance easier than that," said Paul.
Mr. Pimpleberry, the carpenter, who was to build the bridge, laughed, and looked with contempt upon him, Paul thought, because he was barefoot and had a patch on each knee.
"Have you ever measured it, Paul?" Judge Adams asked.
"No, sir; but I will do so just to let Mr. Pimpleberry see that I can do it."
He ran into the house, brought out the compass, went down to the edge of the pond, drove a small stake in the ground, set his compass over it, and sighted a small oak-tree upon the other side of the pond. It happened that the tree was exactly south from the stake; then he turned the sights of his compass so that they pointed exactly east and west. Then he took Mr. Pimpleberry's ten-foot pole, and measured out fifty feet toward the west, and drove another stake. Then he set his compass there, and took another sight at the small oak-tree across the pond. It was not south now, but several degrees east of south. Then he turned his compass so that the sights would point just the same number of degrees to the east of north.
"Now, Mr. Pimpleberry," said Paul, "I want you to stand out there, and hold your ten-foot pole just where I tell you, putting yourself in range with the stake I drove first and the tree across the pond."
Mr. Pimpleberry did as he was desired.
"Drive a stake where your pole stands," said Paul.
Mr. Pimpleberry did so.
"Now measure the distance from the one you have just driven to my first stake, and that will be the distance across the pond," said Paul.
"I don't believe it," said Mr. Pimpleberry.
"Paul is right," said Judge Adams. "I understand the principle. He has done it correctly."
The Judge was proud of him. Mr. Pimpleberry and Mr. Funk, and several other citizens, were astonished; for they had no idea that Paul could do anything of the kind. Notwithstanding Paul had given the true distance, he received no thanks from any one; yet he didn't care for that; for he had shown Mr. Pimpleberry that he could do it, and that was glory enough.
Paul loved fun as well as ever. Rare times he had at school. One windy day, a little boy, when he entered the school-room, left the door open. "Go back and shut the door," shouted Mr. Cipher, who was very irritable that morning. Another boy entered, and left it open. Mr. Cipher was angry, and spoke to the whole school: "Any one who comes in to-day and does not shut the door will get a flogging. Now remember!" Being very awkward in his manners, inefficient in government, and shallow-brained and vain, he commanded very little respect from the scholars.
"Boys, there is a chance for us to have a jolly time with Cipher," said Paul at recess.
"What is it?" Hans Middlekauf asked, ready for fun of any sort. The boys gathered round, for they knew that Paul was a capital hand in inventing games.
"You remember what Cipher said about leaving the door open."
"Well, what of it?" Hans Middlekauf asked.
"Let every one of us show him that we can obey him. When he raps for us to go in, I want you all to form in line. I'll lead off, go in and shut the door; you follow next, Hans, and be sure and shut the door; you come next, Philip; then Michael, and so on,--every one shutting the door. If you don't, remember that Cipher has promised to flog you."
The boys saw through the joke, and laughed heartily. "Jingo, that is a good one, Paul. Cipher will be as mad as a March hare. I'll make the old door rattle," said Hans.
Rap--rap--rap--rap! went the master's ruler upon the window.
"Fall into line, boys," said Paul. They obeyed orders as if he were a general. "Now remember, every one of you, to shut the door just as soon as you are in. Do it quick, and take your seats. Don't laugh, but be as sober as deacons." There was giggling in the ranks. "Silence!" said Paul. The boys smoothed their faces. Paul opened the door, stepped in, and shut it in an instant,--slam! Hans opened it,--slam! it went, with a jar which made the windows rattle. Philip followed,--slam! Michael next,--bang! it went, jarring the house.
"Let the door be open," said Cipher; but Michael was in his seat; and--bang! again,--slam! --bang! --slam! --bang! it went.
"Let it be open, I say!" he roared, but the boys outside did not hear him, and it kept going,--slam! --slam! --slam! --bang! --bang! --bang! --till the fiftieth boy was in.
"You started that, sir," Cipher said, addressing Paul, for he had discovered that Paul Parker loved fun, and was a leading spirit among the boys.
"I obeyed your orders, sir," Paul replied ready to burst into a roar at the success of his experiment.
"Did you not tell the boys to slam the door as hard as they could?"
"No, sir. I told them to remember what you had said, and that, if they didn't shut the door, they would get a flogging."
"That is just what he said, Master," said Hans Middlekauf, brimming over with fun. Cipher could not dispute it. He saw that they had literally obeyed his orders, and that he had been outwitted. He did not know what to do; and being weak and inefficient, did nothing.
Paul loved hunting and fishing; on Saturday afternoons he made the woods ring with the crack of his grandfather's gun, bringing squirrels from the tallest trees, and taking quails upon the wing. He was quick to see, and swift to take aim. He was cool of nerve, and so steady of aim that he rarely missed. It was summer, and he wore no shoes. He walked so lightly that he scarcely rustled a leaf. The partridges did not see him till he was close upon them, and then, before they could rise from their cover flash! --bang! --and they went into his bag.
One day as he was on his return from the woods, with the gun upon his shoulder, and the powder-horn at his side, he saw a gathering of people in the street. Men, women, and children were out,--the women without bonnets. He wondered what was going on. Some women were wringing their hands; and all were greatly excited.
"O dear, isn't it dreadful!" "What will become of us?" "The Lord have mercy upon us!" --were the expressions which he heard. Then they wrung their hands again, and moaned.
"What is up?" he asked of Hans Middlekauf.
"Haven't you heard?"
"No, what is it?"
"Why, there is a big black bull-dog, the biggest that ever was, that has run mad. He has bitten ever so many other dogs, and horses, sheep, and cattle. He is as big as a bear, and froths at the mouth. He is the savagest critter that ever was," said Hans in a breath.
"Why don't somebody kill him?"
"They are afraid of him," said Hans.
"I should think they might kill him," Paul replied.
"I reckon you would run as fast as anybody else, if he should show himself round here," said Hans.
"There he is! Run! run! run for your lives!" was the sudden cry.
Paul looked up the street, and saw a very large bull-dog coming upon the trot. Never was there such a scampering. People ran into the nearest houses, pellmell. One man jumped into his wagon, lashed his horse into a run, and went down the street, losing his hat in his flight, while Hans Middlekauf went up a tree.
"Run, Paul! Run! he'll bite you!" cried Mr. Leatherby from the window of his shoe-shop. People looked out from the windows and repeated the cry, a half-dozen at once; but Paul took no notice of them. Those who were nearest him heard the click of his gun-lock. The dog came nearer, growling, and snarling, his mouth wide open, showing his teeth, his eyes glaring, and white froth dripping from his lips. Paul stood alone in the street. There was a sudden silence. It was a scene for a painter,--a barefoot boy in patched clothes, with an old hat on his head, standing calmly before the brute whose bite was death in its most terrible form. One thought had taken possession of Paul's mind, that he ought to kill the dog.
Nearer, nearer, came the dog; he was not a rod off. Paul had read that no animal can withstand the steady gaze of the human eye. He looked the dog steadily in the face. He held his breath. Not a nerve trembled. The dog stopped, looked at Paul a moment, broke into a louder growl, opened his jaws wider, his eyes glaring more wildly, and stepped slowly forward. Now or never, Paul thought, was his time. The breach of the gun touched his shoulder; his eye ran along the barrel,--bang! the dog rolled over with a yelp and a howl, but was up again, growling and trying to get at Paul, who in an instant seized his gun by the barrel, and brought the breech down upon the dog's skull, giving him blow after blow.
"Kill him! kill him!" shouted the people from the windows.
"Give it to him! Mash his head!" cried Hans from the tree.
The dog soon became a mangled and bloody mass of flesh and bones. The people came out from their houses.
"That was well done for a boy," said Mr. Funk.
"Or for a man either," said Mr. Chrome, who came up and patted Paul on his back.
"I should have thrown my lapstone at him, if I could have got my window open," said Mr. Leatherby. Mr. Noggin, the cooper, who had taken refuge in Leatherby's shop, afterwards said that Leatherby was frightened half to death, and kept saying, "Just as like as not he will make a spring and dart right through the window!"
"Nobly, bravely done, Paul," said Judge Adams. "Let me shake hands with you, my boy." He and Mrs. Adams and Azalia had seen it all from their parlor window.
"O Paul, I was afraid he would bite and kill you, or that your gun would miss fire. I trembled all over just like a leaf," said Azalia, still pale and trembling. "O, I am so glad you have killed him!" She looked up into his face earnestly, and there was such a light in her eyes, that Paul was glad he had killed the dog, for her sake.
"Weren't you afraid, Paul?" she asked.
"No. If I had been afraid, I should have missed him, perhaps; I made up my mind to kill him, and what was the use of being afraid?"
Many were the praises bestowed upon Paul. "How noble! how heroic!" the people said. Hans told the story to all the boys in the village. "Paul was just as cool as--cool as--a cucumber," he said, that being the best comparison he could think of. The people came and looked at the dog, to see how large he was, and how savage, and went away saying, "I am glad he is dead, but I don't see how Paul had the courage to face him."
Paul went home and told his mother what had happened. She turned pale while listening to the story, and held her breath, and clasped her hands; but when he had finished, and when she thought that, if Paul had not killed the dog, many might have been bitten, she was glad, and said, "You did right, my son. It is our duty to face danger if we can do good." A tear glistened in her eye as she kissed him. "God bless you, Paul," she said, and smiled upon him through her tears.
All the dogs which had been bitten were killed to prevent them from running mad. A hard time of it the dogs of New Hope had, for some which had not been bitten did not escape the dog-killers, who went through the town knocking them over with clubs.
Although Paul was so cool and courageous in the moment of danger, he trembled and felt weak afterwards when he thought of the risk he had run. That night when he said his evening prayer, he thanked God for having protected him. He dreamed it all over again in the night. He saw the dog coming at him with his mouth wide open, the froth dropping from his lips, and his eyes glaring. He heard his growl,--only it was not a growl, but a branch of the old maple which rubbed against the house when the wind blew. That was what set him a-dreaming. In his dream he had no gun, so he picked up the first thing he could lay his hands on, and let drive at the dog. Smash! there was a great racket, and a jingling of glass. Paul was awake in an instant, and found that he had jumped out of bed, and was standing in the middle of the floor, and that he had knocked over the spinning-wheel, and a lot of old trumpery, and had thrown one of his grandfather's old boots through the window.
"What in the world are you up to, Paul?" his mother asked, calling from the room below, in alarm.
"Killing the dog a second time, mother," Paul replied, laughing and jumping into bed again.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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3
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MERRY TIMES.
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When the long northeast storms set in, and the misty clouds hung over the valley, and went hurrying away to the west, brushing the tops of the trees; when the rain, hour after hour, and day after day, fell aslant upon the roof of the little old house; when the wind swept around the eaves, and dashed in wild gusts against the windows, and moaned and wailed in the forests,--then it was that Paul sometimes felt his spirits droop, for the circumstances of life were all against him. He was poor. His dear, kind mother was sick. She had worked day and night to keep that terrible wolf from the door, which is always prowling around the houses of poor people. But the wolf had come, and was looking in at the windows. There was a debt due Mr. Funk for rice, sugar, biscuit, tea, and other things which Doctor Arnica said his mother must have. There was the doctor's bill. The flour-barrel was getting low, and the meal-bag was almost empty. Paul saw the wolf every night as he lay in his bed, and he wished he could kill it.
When his mother was taken sick, he left school and became her nurse. It was hard for him to lay down his books, for he loved them, but it was pleasant to wait upon her. The neighbors were kind. Azalia Adams often came tripping in with something nice,--a tumbler of jelly, or a plate of toast, which her mother had prepared; and she had such cheerful words, and spoke so pleasantly, and moved round the room so softly, putting everything in order, that the room was lighter, even on the darkest days, for her presence.
When, after weeks of confinement to her bed, Paul's mother was strong enough to sit in her easy-chair, Paul went out to fight the wolf. He worked for Mr. Middlekauf, in his cornfield. He helped Mr. Chrome paint wagons. He surveyed land, and ran lines for the farmers, earning a little here and a little there. As fast as he obtained a dollar, it went to pay the debts. As the seasons passed away,--spring, summer, and autumn,--Paul could see that the wolf howled less fiercely day by day. He denied himself everything, except plain food. He was tall, stout, hearty, and rugged. The winds gave him health; his hands were hard, but his heart was tender. When through with his day's work, though his bones ached and his eyes were drowsy, he seldom went to sleep without first studying awhile, and closing with a chapter from the Bible, for he remembered what his grandfather often said,--that a chapter from the Bible was a good thing to sleep on.
The cool and bracing breezes of November, the nourishing food which Paul obtained, brought the color once more to his mother's cheeks; and when at length she was able to be about the house, they had a jubilee,--a glad day of thanksgiving,--for, in addition to this blessing of health, Paul had killed the wolf, and the debts were all paid.
As the winter came on, the subject of employing Mr. Rhythm to teach a singing-school was discussed. Mr. Quaver, a tall, slim man, with a long, red nose, had led the choir for many years. He had a loud voice, and twisted his words so badly, that his singing was like the blare of a trumpet. On Sundays, after Rev. Mr. Surplice read the hymn, the people were accustomed to hear a loud Hawk! from Mr. Quaver, as he tossed his tobacco-quid into a spittoon, and an Ahem! from Miss Gamut. She was the leading first treble, a small lady with a sharp, shrill voice. Then Mr. Fiddleman sounded the key on the bass-viol, do-mi-sol-do, helping the trebles and tenors climb the stairs of the scale; then he hopped down again, and rounded off with a thundering swell at the bottom, to let them know he was safely down, and ready to go ahead. Mr. Quaver led, and the choir followed like sheep, all in their own way and fashion.
The people had listened to this style of music till they were tired of it. They wanted a change, and decided to engage Mr. Rhythm, a nice young man, to teach a singing-school for the young folks. "We have a hundred boys and girls here in the village, who ought to learn to sing, so that they can sit in the singing-seats, and praise God," said Judge Adams.
But Mr. Quaver opposed the project. "The young folks want a frolic, sir," he said; "yes, sir, a frolic, a high time. Rhythm will be teaching them newfangled notions. You know, Judge, that I hate flummididdles; I go for the good old things, sir. The old tunes which have stood the wear and tear of time, and the good old style of singing, sir."
Mr. Quaver did not say all he thought, for he could see that, if the singing-school was kept, he would be in danger of losing his position as chorister. But, notwithstanding his opposition, Mr. Rhythm was engaged to teach the school. Paul determined to attend. He loved music.
"You haven't any coat fit to wear," said his mother. "I have altered over your grandfather's pants and vest for you, but I cannot alter his coat. You will have to stay at home, I guess."
"I can't do that, mother, for Mr. Rhythm is one of the best teachers that ever was, and I don't want to miss the chance. I'll wear grandpa's coat just as it is."
"The school will laugh at you."
"Well, let them laugh, I sha'n't stay at home for that. I guess I can stand it," said Paul, resolutely.
The evening fixed upon for the school to commence arrived. All the young folks in the town were there. Those who lived out of the village,--the farmers' sons and daughters,--came in red, yellow, and green wagons. The girls wore close-fitting hoods with pink linings, which they called "kiss-me-if-ye-dares." Their cheeks were all aglow with the excitement of the occasion. When they saw Mr. Rhythm, how pleasant and smiling he was,--when they heard his voice, so sweet and melodious,--when they saw how spryly he walked, as if he meant to accomplish what he had undertaken,--they said to one another, "How different he is from Mr. Quaver!"
Paul was late on the first evening; for when he put on his grandfather's coat, his mother planned a long while to see if there was not some way by which she could make it look better. Once she took the shears and was going to cut off the tail, but Paul stopped her. "I don't want it curtailed, mother."
"It makes you look like a little old man, Paul; I wouldn't go."
"If I had better clothes, I should wear them, mother; but as I haven't, I shall wear these. I hope to earn money enough some time to get a better coat; but grandpa wore this, and I am not ashamed to wear what he wore," he replied, more resolute than ever. Perhaps, if he could have seen how he looked, he would not have been quite so determined, for the sleeves hung like bags on his arms, and the tail almost touched the floor.
Mr. Rhythm had just rapped the scholars to their seats when Paul entered. There was a tittering, a giggle, then a roar of laughter. Mr. Rhythm looked round to see what was the matter, and smiled. For a moment Paul's courage failed him. It was not so easy to be laughed at as he had imagined. He was all but ready to turn about and leave the room. "No I won't, I'll face it out," he said to himself, walking deliberately to a seat, and looking bravely round, as if asking, "What are you laughing at?"
There was something in his manner which instantly won Mr. Rhythm's respect, and which made him ashamed of himself for having laughed. "Silence! No more laughing," he said; but, notwithstanding the command, there was a constant tittering among the girls. Mr. Rhythm began by saying, "We will sing Old Hundred. I want you all to sing, whether you can sing right or not." He snapped his tuning-fork, and began. The school followed, each one singing,--putting in sharps, flats, naturals, notes, and rests, just as they pleased. "Very well. Good volume of sound. Only I don't think Old Hundred ever was sung so before, or ever will be again," said the master, smiling.
Michael Murphy was confident that he sang gloriously, though he never varied his tone up or down. He was ciphering in fractions at school, and what most puzzled him were the figures set to the bass. He wondered if 6/4 was a vulgar fraction, and if so, he thought it would be better to express it as a mixed number, 1-1/2.
During the evening, Mr. Rhythm, noticing that Michael sang without any variation of tone, said, "Now, Master Murphy, please sing _la_ with me";--and Michael sang bravely, not frightened in the least.
"Very well. Now please sing it a little higher." " _La_," sang Michael on the same pitch, but louder.
"Not louder, but higher."
"LA!" responded Michael, still louder, but with the pitch unchanged.
There was tittering among the girls.
"Not so, but thus,"--and Mr. Rhythm gave an example, first low, then high. "Now once more."
"LA!" bellowed Michael on the same pitch.
Daphne Dare giggled aloud, and the laughter, like a train of powder, ran through the girls' seats over to the boys' side of the house, where it exploded in a loud haw! haw! Michael laughed with the others, but he did not know what for.
Recess came. "Halloo, Grandpa! How are you, Old Pensioner? Your coat puckers under the arms, and there is a wrinkle in the back," said Philip Funk to Paul. His sister Fanny pointed her finger at him; and Paul heard her whisper to one of the girls, "Did you ever see such a monkey?"
It nettled him, and so, losing his temper, he said to Philip, "Mind your business."
"Just hear Grandaddy Parker, the old gentleman in the bob-tailed coat," said Philip.
"You are a puppy," said Paul. But he was vexed with himself for having said it. If he had held his tongue, and kept his temper, and braved the sneers of Philip in silence, he might have won a victory; for he remembered a Sunday-school lesson upon the text, "He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." As it was, he had suffered a defeat, and went home that night disgusted with himself.
Pleasant were those singing-school evenings. Under Mr. Rhythm's instructions the young people made rapid progress. Then what fine times they had at recess, eating nuts, apples, and confectionery, picking out the love-rhymes from the sugar-cockles!
"I cannot tell the love I feel for you, my dove."
was Philip's gift to Azalia. Paul had no money to purchase sweet things at the store; his presents were nuts which he had gathered in the autumn. In the kindness of his heart he gave a double-handful to Philip's sister, Fanny; but she turned up her nose, and let them drop upon the floor.
Society in New Hope was mixed. Judge Adams, Colonel Dare, and Mr. Funk were rich men. Colonel Dare was said to be worth a hundred thousand dollars. No one knew what Mr. Funk was worth; but he had a store, and a distillery, which kept smoking day and night and Sunday, without cessation, grinding up corn, and distilling it into whiskey. There was always a great black smoke rising from the distillery-chimney. The fires were always roaring, and the great vats steaming. Colonel Dare made his money by buying and selling land, wool, corn, and cattle. Judge Adams was an able lawyer, known far and near as honest, upright, and learned. He had a large practice; but though the Judge and Colonel were so wealthy, and lived in fine houses, they did not feel that they were better than their neighbors, so that there was no aristocracy in the place, but the rich and the poor were alike respected and esteemed.
The New Year was at hand, and Daphne Dare was to give a party. She was Colonel Dare's only child,--a laughing, blue-eyed, sensible girl, who attended the village school, and was in the same class with Paul.
"Whom shall I invite to my party, father?" she asked.
"Just whom you please, my dear," said the Colonel.
"I don't know what to do about inviting Paul Parker. Fanny Funk says she don't want to associate with a fellow who is so poor that he wears his grandfather's old clothes," said Daphne.
"Poverty is not a crime, my daughter. I was poor once,--poor as Paul is. Money is not virtue, my dear. It is a good thing to have; but persons are not necessarily bad because they are poor, neither are they good because they are rich," said the Colonel.
"Should you invite him, father, if you were in my place?"
"I do not wish to say, my child, for I want you to decide the matter yourself."
"Azalia says that she would invite him; but Fanny says that if I invite him, she shall not come."
"Aha!" The Colonel opened his eyes wide. "Well, my dear, you are not to be influenced wholly by what Azalia says, and you are to pay no attention to what Fanny threatens. You make the party. You have a perfect right to invite whom you please; and if Fanny don't choose to come, she has the privilege of staying away. I think, however, that she will not be likely to stay at home even if you give Paul an invitation. Be guided by your own sense of right, my darling. That is the best guide."
"I wish you'd give Paul a coat, father. You can afford to, can't you?"
"Yes; but he can't afford to receive it," Daphne looked at her father in amazement. "He can't afford to receive such a gift from me, because it is better for him to fight the battle of life without any help from me or anybody else at present. A good man offered to help me when I was a poor boy; but I thanked him, and said, 'No, sir.' I had made up my mind to cut my own way, and I guess Paul has made up his mind to do the same thing," said the Colonel.
"I shall invite him. I'll let Fanny know that I have a mind of my own," said Daphne, with determination in her voice.
Her father kissed her, but kept his thoughts to himself. He appeared to be pleased, and Daphne thought that he approved her decision.
The day before New Year Paul received a neatly folded note, addressed to Mr. Paul Parker. How funny it looked! It was the first time in his life that he had seen "Mr." prefixed to his name. He opened it, and read that Miss Daphne Dare would receive her friends on New Year's eve at seven o'clock. A great many thoughts passed through his mind. How could he go and wear his grandfather's coat? At school he was on equal footing with all; but to be one of a party in a richly furnished parlor, where Philip, Fanny, and Azalia, and other boys and girls whose fathers had money, could turn their backs on him and snub him, was very different. It was very kind in Daphne to invite him, and ought he not to accept her invitation? Would she not think it a slight if he did not go? What excuse could he offer if he stayed away? None, except that he had no nice clothes. But she knew that, yet she had invited him. She was a true-hearted girl, and would not have asked him if she had not wanted him. Thus he turned the matter over, and decided to go.
But when the time came, Paul was in no haste to be there. Two or three times his heart failed him, while on his way; but looking across the square, and seeing Colonel Dare's house all aglow,--lights in the parlors and chambers, he pushed on resolutely, determined to be manly, notwithstanding his poverty. He reached the house, rang the bell, and was welcomed by Daphne in the hall.
"Good evening, Paul. You are very late. I was afraid you were not coming. All the others are here," she said, her face beaming with happiness, joy, and excitement. She was elegantly dressed, for she was her father's pet, and he bought everything for her which he thought would make her happy.
"Better late than never, isn't it?" said Paul, not knowing what else to say.
Although the party had been assembled nearly an hour, there had been no games. The girls were huddled in groups on one side of the room, and the boys on the other, all shy, timid, and waiting for somebody to break the ice. Azalia was playing the piano, while Philip stood by her side. He was dressed in a new suit of broadcloth, and wore an eye-glass. Fanny was present, though she had threatened not to attend if Paul was invited. She had changed her mind. She thought it would be better to attend and make the place too hot for Paul; she would get up such a laugh upon him that he would be glad to take his hat and sneak away, and never show himself in respectable society again. Philip was in the secret, and so were a dozen others who looked up to Philip and Fanny. Daphne entered the parlor, followed by Paul. There was a sudden tittering, snickering, and laughing. Paul stopped and bowed, then stood erect.
"I declare, if there isn't old Grandaddy," said Philip, squinting through his eye-glass.
"O my! how funny!" said a girl from Fairview.
"Ridiculous! It is a shame!" said Fanny, turning up her nose.
"Who is he?" the Fairview girl asked.
"A poor fellow who lives on charity,--so poor that he wears his grandfather's old clothes. We don't associate with him," was Fanny's reply.
Paul heard it. His cheek flushed, but he stood there, determined to brave it out. Azalia heard and saw it all. She stopped playing in the middle of a measure, rose from her seat with her cheeks all aflame, and walked towards Paul, extending her hand and welcoming him. "I am glad you have come, Paul. We want you to wake us up. We have been half asleep," she said.
The laughter ceased instantly, for Azalia was queen among them. Beautiful in form and feature, her chestnut hair falling in luxuriant curls upon her shoulders, her dark hazel eyes flashing indignantly, her cheeks like blush-roses, every feature of her countenance lighted up by the excitement of the moment, her bearing subdued the conspiracy at once, hushing the derisive laughter, and compelling respect, not only for herself, but for Paul. It required an effort on his part to keep back the tears from his eyes, so grateful was he for her kindness.
"Yes, Paul, we want you to be our general, and tell us what to do," said Daphne.
"Very well, let us have Copenhagen to begin with," he said.
The ice was broken. Daphne brought in her mother's clothes-line, the chairs were taken from the room, and in five minutes the parlor was humming like a beehive.
"I don't see what you can find to like in that disagreeable creature," said Philip to Azalia.
"He is a good scholar, and kind to his mother, and you know how courageous he was when he killed that terrible dog," was her reply.
"I think he is an impudent puppy. What right has he to thrust himself into good company, wearing his grandfather's old clothes?" Philip responded, dangling his eye-glass and running his soft hand through his hair.
"Paul is poor; but I never have heard anything against his character," said Azalia.
"Poor folks ought to be kept out of good society," said Philip.
"What do you say to that picture?" said Azalia, directing his attention towards a magnificent picture of Franklin crowned with laurel by the ladies of the court of France, which hung on the wall. "Benjamin Franklin was a poor boy, and dipped candles for a living; but he became a great man."
"Dipped candles! Why, I never heard of that before," said Philip, looking at the engraving through his eye-glass.
"I don't think it is any disgrace to Paul to be poor. I am glad that Daphne invited him," said Azalia, so resolutely that Philip remained silent. He was shallow-brained and ignorant, and thought it not best to hazard an exposure of his ignorance by pursuing the conversation.
After Copenhagen they had Fox and Geese, and Blind-man's-buff. They guessed riddles and conundrums, had magic writing, questions and answers, and made the parlor, the sitting-room, the spacious halls, and the wide stairway ring with their merry laughter. How pleasant the hours! Time flew on swiftest wings. They had a nice supper,--sandwiches, tongue, ham, cakes, custards, floating-islands, apples, and nuts. After supper they had stories, serious and laughable, about ghosts and witches, till the clock in the dining-room held up both of its hands and pointed to the figure twelve, as if in amazement at their late staying. "Twelve o'clock! Why, how short the evening has been!" said they, when they found how late it was. They had forgotten all about Paul's coat, for he had been the life of the party, suggesting something new when the games lagged. He was so gentlemanly, and laughed so heartily and pleasantly, and was so wide awake, and managed everything so well, that, notwithstanding the conspiracy to put him down, he had won the good will of all the party.
During the evening Colonel Dare and Mrs. Dare entered the room. The Colonel shook hands with Paul, and said, "I am very happy to see you here to-night, Paul." It was spoken so heartily and pleasantly that Paul knew the Colonel meant it.
The young gentlemen were to wait upon the young ladies home. Their hearts went pit-a-pat. They thought over whom to ask and what to say. They walked nervously about the hall, pulling on their gloves, while the girls were putting on their cloaks and hoods up stairs. They also were in a fever of expectation and excitement, whispering mysteriously, their hearts going like trip-hammers.
Daphne stood by the door to bid her guests good night. "I am very glad that you came to-night, Paul," she said, pressing his hand in gratitude, "I don't know what we should have done without you."
"I have passed a very pleasant evening," he replied.
Azalia came tripping down the stairs. "Shall I see you home, Azalia?" Paul asked.
"Miss Adams, shall I have the delightful pleasure of being permitted to escort you to your residence?" said Philip, with his most gallant air, at the same time pushing by Paul with a contemptuous look.
"Thank you, Philip, but I have an escort," said Azalia, accepting Paul's arm.
The night was frosty and cold, though it was clear and pleasant. The full moon was high in the heavens, the air was still, and there were no sounds to break the peaceful silence, except the water dashing over the dam by the mill, the footsteps of the departing guests upon the frozen ground, and the echoing of their voices. Now that he was with Azalia alone, Paul wanted to tell her how grateful he was for all she had done for him; but he could only say, "I thank you, Azalia, for your kindness to me to-night."
"O, don't mention it, Paul; I am glad if I have helped you. Good night."
How light-hearted he was! He went home, and climbed the creaking stairway, to his chamber. The moon looked in upon him, and smiled. He could not sleep, so happy was he. How sweet those parting words! The water babbled them to the rocks, and beyond the river in the grand old forest, where the breezes were blowing, there was a pleasant murmuring of voices, as if the elms and oaks were having a party, and all were saying, "We are glad if we have helped you."
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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4
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MUSIC AND PAINTING.
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Philip went home alone from the party, out of sorts with himself, angry with Azalia, and boiling over with wrath toward Paul. He set his teeth together, and clenched his fist. He would like to blacken Paul's eyes and flatten his nose. The words of Azalia--"I know nothing against Paul's character"--rang in his ears and vexed him. He thought upon them till his steps, falling upon the frozen ground, seemed to say, "Character! --character! --character!" as if Paul had something which he had not.
"So because he has character, and I haven't, you give me the mitten, do you, Miss Azalia?" he said, as if he was addressing Azalia.
He knew that Paul had a good name. He was the best singer in the singing-school, and Mr. Rhythm often called upon him to sing in a duet with Azalia or Daphne. Sometimes he sang a solo so well, that the spectators whispered to one another, that, if Paul went on as he had begun, he would be ahead of Mr. Rhythm.
Philip had left the singing-school. It was dull music to him to sit through the evening, and say "Down, left, right, up," and be drilled, hour after hour. It was vastly more agreeable to lounge in the bar-room of the tavern, with a half-dozen good fellows, smoking cigars, playing cards, taking a drink of whiskey, and, when it was time for the singing-school to break up, go home with the girls, then return to the tavern and carouse till midnight or later. To be cut out by Paul in his attentions to Azalia was intolerable.
"Character! --character! --character!" said his boots all the while as he walked. He stopped short, and ground his heels into the frozen earth. He was in front of Miss Dobb's house.
Miss Dobb was a middle-aged lady, who wore spectacles, had a sharp nose, a peaked chin, a pinched-up mouth, thin cheeks, and long, bony fingers. She kept the village school when Paul and Philip were small boys, and Paul used to think that she wanted to pick him to pieces, her fingers were so long and bony. She knew pretty much all that was going on in the village, for she visited somewhere every afternoon to find out what had happened. Captain Binnacle called her the Daily Advertiser.
"You are the cause of my being jilted, you tattling old maid; you have told that I was a good-for-nothing scapegrace, and I'll pay you for it," said Philip, shaking his fist at the house; and walked on again, meditating how to do it, his boots at each successive step saying, "Character! character!"
He went home and tossed all night in his bed, not getting a wink of sleep, planning how to pay Miss Dobb, and upset Paul.
The next night Philip went to bed earlier than usual, saying, with a yawn, as he took the light to go up stairs, "How sleepy I am!" But, instead of going to sleep, he never was more wide awake. He lay till all in the house were asleep, till he heard the clock strike twelve, then arose, went down stairs softly, carrying his boots, and, when outside the door, put them on. He looked round to see if there was any one astir; but the village was still,--there was not a light to be seen. He went to Mr. Chrome's shop, stopped, and looked round once more; but, seeing no one, raised a window and entered. The moon streamed through the windows, and fell upon the floor, making the shop so light that he had no difficulty in finding Mr. Chrome's paint buckets and brushes. Then, with a bucket in his hand, he climbed out, closed the window, and went to Miss Dobb's. He approached softly, listening and looking to see if any one was about; but there were no footsteps except his own. He painted great letters on the side of the house, chuckling as he thought of what would happen in the morning.
"There, Miss Vinegar, you old liar, I won't charge anything for that sign," he said, when he had finished. He left the bucket on the step, and went home, chuckling all the way.
In the morning Miss Dobb saw a crowd of people in front of her house, looking towards it and laughing. Mr. Leatherby had come out from his shop; Mr. Noggin, the cooper, was there, smoking his pipe; also, Mrs. Shelbarke, who lived across the street. Philip was there. "That is a 'cute trick, I vow," said he. Everybody was on a broad grin.
"What in the world is going on, I should like to know!" said Miss Dobb, greatly wondering. "There must be something funny. Why, they are looking at my house, as true as I am alive!"
Miss Dobb was not a woman to be kept in the dark about anything a great while. She stepped to the front door, opened it, and with her pleasantest smile and softest tone of voice said: "Good morning, neighbors; you seem to be very much pleased at something. May I ask what you see to laugh at?"
"Te-he-he-he!" snickered a little boy, who pointed to the side of the house, and the by-standers followed his lead, with a loud chorus of guffaws.
Miss Dobb looked upon the wall, and saw, in red letters, as if she had gone into business, opened a store, and put out a sign,--"MISS DOBB, LIES, SCANDAL, GOSSIP, WHOLESALE AND RETAIL."
She threw up her hands in horror. Her eyes flashed; she gasped for breath. There was a paint-bucket and brush on the door-step; on one side of the bucket she saw the word Chrome.
"The villain! I'll make him smart for this," she said, running in, snatching her bonnet, and out again, making all haste towards Squire Capias's office, to have Mr. Chrome arrested.
The Squire heard her story. There was a merry twinkling of his eye, but he kept his countenance till she was through.
"I do not think that Mr. Chrome did it; he is not such a fool as to leave his bucket and brush there as evidence against him; you had better let it rest awhile," said he.
Mr. Chrome laughed when he saw the sign. "I didn't do it; I was abed and asleep, as my wife will testify. Somebody stole my bucket and brush; but it is a good joke on Dobb, I'll be blamed if it isn't," said he.
Who did it? That was the question.
"I will give fifty dollars to know," said Miss Dobb, her lips quivering with anger.
Philip heard her and said, "Isn't there a fellow who sometimes helps Mr. Chrome paint wagons?"
"Yes, I didn't think of him. It is just like him. There he comes now; I'll make him confess it." Miss Dobb's eyes flashed, her lips trembled, she was so angry. She remembered that one of the pigs which Paul painted, when he was a boy, was hers; she also remembered how he sent Mr. Smith's old white horse on a tramp after a bundle of hay.
Paul was on his way to Mr. Chrome's shop, to begin work for the day. He wondered at the crowd. He saw the sign, and laughed with the rest.
"You did that, sir," said Miss Dobb, coming up to him, reaching out her long hand and clutching at him with her bony fingers, as if she would like to tear him to pieces. "You did it, you villain! Now you needn't deny it; you painted my pig once, and now you have done this. You are a mean, good-for-nothing scoundrel," she said, working herself into a terrible passion.
"I did not do it," said Paul, nettled at the charge, and growing red in the face.
"You are a liar! you show your guilt in your countenance," said Miss Dobb.
Paul's face was on fire. Never till then had he been called a liar. He was about to tell her loudly, that she was a meddler, tattler, and hypocrite, but he remembered that he had read somewhere, that "he who loses his temper loses his cause," and did not speak the words. He looked her steadily in the face, and said calmly, "I did not do it," and went on to his work.
Weeks went by. The singing-school was drawing to a close. Paul had made rapid progress. His voice was round, rich, full, and clear. He no longer appeared at school wearing his grandfather's coat, for he had worked for Mr. Chrome, painting wagons, till he had earned enough to purchase a new suit of clothes. Besides, it was discovered that he could survey land, and several of the farmers employed him to run the lines between their farms. Mr. Rhythm took especial pains to help him on in singing, and before winter was through he could master the crookedest anthem in the book. Daphne Dare was the best alto, Hans Middlekauf the best bass, and Azalia the best treble. Sometimes Mr. Rhythm had the four sing a quartette, or Azalia and Paul sang a duet. At times, the school sang, while he listened. "I want you to learn to depend upon yourselves," said he. Then it was that Paul's voice was heard above all others, so clear and distinct, and each note so exact in time that they felt he was their leader.
One evening Mr. Rhythm called Paul into the floor, and gave him the rattan with which he beat time, saying, "I want you to be leader in this tune; I resign the command to you, and you are to do just as if I were not here." The blood rushed to Paul's face, his knees trembled; but he felt that it was better to try and fail, than be a coward. He sounded the key, but his voice was husky and trembling. Fanny Funk, who had turned up her nose at Mr. Rhythm's proposition, giggled aloud, and there was laughing around the room. It nerved him in an instant. He opened his lips to shout, Silence! then he thought that they would not respect his authority, and would only laugh louder, which would make him appear ridiculous. He stood quietly and said, not in a husky voice, but calmly, pleasantly, and deliberately, "When the ladies have finished their laughter we will commence." The laughter ceased. He waited till the room was so still that they could hear the clock tick. "Now we will try it," said he. They did not sing it right, and he made them go over it again and again, drilling them till they sang it so well that Mr. Rhythm and the spectators clapped their hands.
"You will have a competent leader after I leave you," said Mr. Rhythm. Paul had gained this success by practice hour after hour, day after day, week after week, at home, till he was master of what he had undertaken.
The question came up in parish meeting, whether the school should join the choir? Mr. Quaver and the old members opposed it, but they were voted down. Nothing was said about having a new chorister, for no one wished to hurt Mr. Quaver's feelings by appointing Paul in his place; but the school did not relish the idea of being led by Mr. Quaver, while, on the other hand, the old singers did not mean to be overshadowed by the young upstarts.
It was an eventful Sunday in New Hope when the singing-school joined the choir. The church was crowded. Fathers and mothers who seldom attended meeting were present to see their children in the singers' seats. The girls were dressed in white, for it was a grand occasion. Mr. Quaver and the old choir were early in their places. Mr. Quaver's red nose was redder than ever, and he had a stern look. He took no notice of the new singers, who stood in the background, not daring to take their seats, and not knowing what to do till Paul arrived.
"Where shall we sit, sir?" Paul asked, respectfully.
"Anywhere back there," said Mr. Quaver.
"We would like to have you assign us seats," said Paul.
"I have nothing to do about it; you may sit anywhere, and sing when you are a mind to, or hold your tongues," said Mr. Quaver, sharply.
"Very well; we will do so," said Paul, a little touched, telling the school to occupy the back seats. He was their acknowledged leader. He took his place behind Mr. Quaver, with Hans, Azalia, and Daphne near him. Mr. Quaver did not look round, neither did Miss Gamut, nor any of the old choir. They felt that the new-comers were intruders, who had no right there.
The bell ceased its tolling, and Rev. Mr. Surplice ascended the pulpit-stairs. He was a venerable man. He had preached many years, and his long, white hair, falling upon his shoulders, seemed to crown him with a saintly glory. The people, old and young, honored, respected, and loved him; for he had grave counsel for the old, kind words for the young, and pleasant stories for the little ones. Everybody said that he was ripening for heaven. He rejoiced when he looked up into the gallery and saw such a goodly array of youth, beauty, and loveliness. Then, bowing his head in prayer, and looking onward to the eternal years, he seemed to see them members of a heavenly choir, clothed in white, and singing, "Alleluia! salvation and glory and honor and power unto the Lord our God!"
After prayer, he read a hymn:-- "Now shall my head be lifted high Above my foes around; And songs of joy and victory Within thy temple sound."
There was a smile of satisfaction on Mr. Quaver's countenance while selecting the tune, as if he had already won a victory. There was a clearing of throats; then Mr. Fiddleman gave the key on the bass-viol. As Mr. Quaver had told Paul that the school might sing when they pleased, or hold their tongues, he determined to act independently of Mr. Quaver.
"After one measure," whispered Paul. He knew they would watch his hand, and commence in exact time. The old choir was accustomed to sing without regard to time.
Mr. Quaver commenced louder than usual,--twisting, turning, drawling, and flattening the first word as if it was spelled n-e-a-w. Miss Gamut and Mr. Cleff and the others dropped in one by one. Not a sound as yet from the school. All stood eagerly watching Paul. He cast a quick glance right and left. His hand moved,--down--left--right--up. They burst into the tune, fifty voices together. It was like the broadside of a fifty-gun frigate. The old choir was confounded. Miss Gamut stopped short. Captain Binnacle, who once was skipper of a schooner on the Lakes, and who owned a pew in front of the pulpit, said afterwards, that she was thrown on her beam-ends as if struck by a nor'wester and all her main-sail blown into ribbons in a jiffy. Mr. Quaver, though confused for a moment, recovered; Miss Gamut also righted herself. Though confounded, they were not yet defeated. Mr. Quaver stamped upon the floor, which brought Mr. Cleff to his senses. Mr. Quaver looked as if he would say, "Put down the upstarts!" Mr. Fiddleman played with all his might; Miss Gamut screamed at the top of her voice, while Mr. Cleff puffed out his fat cheeks and became red in the face, doing his utmost to drown them.
The people looked and listened in amazement. Mr. Surplice stood reverently in his place. Those who sat nearest the pulpit said that there was a smile on his countenance.
It was a strange fugue, but each held on to the end of the verse, the young folks getting out ahead of Mr. Quaver and his flock, and having a breathing spell before commencing the second stanza. So they went through the hymn. Then Mr. Surplice read from the Bible: "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commanded his blessing forevermore."
Turning to the choir, he said, "My dear friends, I perceive that there is a want of unity in your services, as singers of the sanctuary; therefore, that the peace and harmony of the place may not be broken, I propose that, when the next psalm is given, the old members of the choir sing the first stanza, and the new members the second, and so through the hymn. By thus doing there will be no disagreement."
Each one--old and young--resolved to do his best, for comparisons would be made. It would be the struggle for victory.
"I will give them a tune which will break them down," Mr. Quaver whispered to Miss Gamut, as he selected one with a tenor and treble duet, which he and Miss Gamut had sung together a great many times. Louder and stronger sang Mr. Quaver. Miss Gamut cleared her throat, with the determination to sing as she never sang before, and to show the people what a great difference there was between her voice and Azalia Adams's. But the excitement of the moment set her heart in a flutter when she came to the duet, which ran up out of the scale. She aimed at high G, but instead of striking it in a round full tone, as she intended and expected, she only made a faint squeak on F, which sounded so funny that the people down stairs smiled in spite of their efforts to keep sober. Her breath was gone. She sank upon her seat, covered her face with her hands, mortified and ashamed. Poor Miss Gamut! But there was a sweet girl behind her who pitied her very much, and who felt like crying, so quick was her sympathy for all in trouble and sorrow.
Mr. Quaver was provoked. Never was his nose so red and fiery. Determined not to be broken down, he carried the verse through, ending with a roar, as if to say, "I am not defeated."
The young folks now had their turn. There was a measure of time, the exact movement, the clear chord, swelling into full chorus, then becoming fainter, till it seemed like the murmuring of voices far away. How charming the duet! Where Mr. Quaver blared like a trumpet, Paul sang in clear, melodious notes; and where Miss Gamut broke down, Azalia glided so smoothly and sweetly that every heart was thrilled. Then, when all joined in the closing strain, the music rolled in majesty along the roof, encircled the pulpit, went down the winding stairs, swept along the aisles, entered the pews, and delighted the congregation. Miss Gamut still continued to sit with her hands over her face. Mr. Quaver nudged her to try another verse, but she shook her head. Paul waited for Mr. Quaver, who was very red in the face, and who felt that it was of no use to try again without Miss Gamut. He waved his hand to Paul as a signal to go on. The victory was won. Through the sermon Mr. Quaver thought the matter over. He felt very uncomfortable, but at noon he shook hands with Paul, and said, "I resign my place to you. I have been chorister for thirty years, and have had my day." He made the best of his defeat, and in the afternoon, with all the old singers, sat down stairs.
Judge Adams bowed to Paul very cordially at the close of the service. Colonel Dare shook hands with him, and Rev. Mr. Surplice, with a pleasant smile, said, "May the Lord be with you." It was spoken so kindly and heartily, and was so like a benediction, that the tears came to Paul's eyes; for he felt that he was unworthy of such kindness.
There was one person in the congregation who looked savagely at him,--Miss Dobb. "It is a shame," she said, when the people came out of church, speaking loud enough to be heard by all, "that such a young upstart and hypocrite should be allowed to worm himself into Mr. Quaver's seat." She hated Paul, and determined to put him down if possible.
Paul went home from church pleased that the school had done so well, and grateful for all the kind words he heard; but as he retired for the night, and thought over what had taken place,--when he realized that he was the leader of the choir, and that singing was a part of divine worship,--when he considered that he had fifty young folks to direct--and that it would require a steady hand to keep them straight, he felt very sober. As these thoughts, one by one, came crowding upon him, he felt that he could not bear so great a responsibility. Then he reflected that life is made up of responsibilities, and that it was his duty to meet them manfully. If he cringed before, or shrank from them, and gave them the go-by, he would be a coward, and never would accomplish anything. No one would respect him, and he would not even have any respect for himself. "I won't back out!" he said, resolving to do the best he could.
Very pleasant were the days. Spring had come with its sunshine and flowers. The birds were in their old haunts,--the larks in the meadows, the partridges in the woods, the quails in the fields. Paul was as happy as they, singing from morning till night the tunes he had learned; and when his day's work was over, he was never too wearied to call upon Daphne with Azalia, and sing till the last glimmer of daylight faded from the west,--Azalia playing the piano, and their voices mingling in perfect harmony. How pleasant the still hours with Azalia beneath the old elms, which spread out their arms above them, as if to pronounce a benediction,--the moonlight smiling around them,--the dews perfuming the air with the sweet odors of roses and apple-blooms,--the cricket chirping his love-song to his mate,--the river forever flowing, and sweetly chanting its endless melody!
Sometimes they lingered by the way, and laughed to hear the grand chorus of bull-frogs croaking among the rushes of the river, and the echoes of their own voices dying away in the distant forest. And then, standing in the gravelled walk before the door of Azalia's home, where the flowers bloomed around them, they looked up to the stars, shining so far away, and talked of choirs of angels, and of those who had gone from earth to heaven, and were singing the song of the Redeemed. How bright the days! how blissful the nights!
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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5
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THE NIGHT-HAWKS.
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Mr. Shell was proprietor of the New Hope Oyster Saloon. He got up nice game suppers, and treated his customers to ale, whiskey, and brandy. Philip loved good living, and often ate an oyster-stew and a broiled quail, and washed it down with a glass of ale, late at night in Mr. Shell's rooms, in company with three or four other boys. After supper they had cigars and a game of cards, till midnight, when Mr. Shell put out his lights and closed his doors, often interrupting them in the middle of a game. That was not agreeable, and so the young gentlemen hired a room over the saloon, fitted it up with tables and chairs, and organized a club, calling themselves "Night-Hawks." Philip was the chief hawk. They met nearly every evening. No one could get into their room without giving a signal to those within, and they had a secret sign by which they knew each other in the dark.
At first they enjoyed themselves, playing cards, smoking cigars, drinking ale, sipping hot whiskey punch, and telling stories; but in a short time the stories were not worth laughing at, the games of cards were the same thing over and over, and they wanted something more exciting.
It was the fall of the year. There was rich fruit in the orchards and gardens of New Hope, russet and crimson-cheeked apples, golden-hued pears, luscious grapes purpling in the October sun, and juicy melons. The bee-hives were heavy with honey, and the bees were still at work, gathering new sweets from the late blooming flowers. Many baskets of ripe apples and choicest pears, many a bunch of grapes, with melons, found their way up the narrow stairs to the room of the Night-Hawks. There was a pleasing excitement in gathering the apples and pears under the windows of the unsuspecting people fast asleep, or in plucking the grapes from garden trellises at midnight. But people began to keep watch.
"We must throw them off our track. I'll make them think that Paul does it," said Philip to himself one day. He had not forgotten the night of Daphne's party,--how Paul had won a victory and he had suffered defeat. Paul was respected; he was the leader of the choir, and was getting on in the world. "I'll fix him!" said he.
The next morning, when Mr. Leatherby kindled the fire in his shoe-shop, he found that the stove would not draw. The smoke, instead of going up the funnel, poured into the room, and the fire, instead of roaring and blazing, smouldered a few moments and finally died out. He kindled it again, opened the windows to let in the air, but it would not burn. He got down on his knees and blew till he was out of breath, got his eyes filled with smoke, which made the tears roll down his cheeks. The shop was a mere box of a building, with a low roof; so he climbed up and looked into the chimney and found it stuffed with newspapers. Pulling them out, he saw a crumpled piece of writing-paper. He smoothed it out. "Ah! what is this?" said he; and, putting on his spectacles, he read, "North 69° East, 140 rods to a stake; South 87° West, 50 rods to an oak-tree."
"That is Paul Parker's figuring, I reckon. I always knew that Paul loved fun, but I didn't think he would do this!" said Mr. Leatherby to himself, more in sorrow than in anger.
"Good morning, Mr. Leatherby," said Philip, coming up at that moment. "What is the matter with your chimney?"
"Some of you boys have been playing a trick upon me."
"Who, I should like to know, is there in New Hope mean enough to do that?" Philip asked.
"Whose figuring do you call that?" Mr. Leatherby asked, presenting the paper.
"Paul Parker's, as sure as I am alive! You ought to expose him, Mr. Leatherby."
"I don't like to say anything against him. I always liked him; but I didn't think he would cut up such a shine as this," Mr. Leatherby replied.
"Appearances are deceptive. It won't do for me to say anything against Paul, for people might say I was envious; but if I were you, Mr. Leatherby, I'd put him over the road," said Philip, walking on.
Mr. Leatherby thought the matter over all day, as he sat in his dingy shop, which was only a few rods from Mr. Chrome's, where Paul was painting wagons, singing snatches of songs, and psalms and hymns. Mr. Leatherby loved to hear him. It made the days seem shorter. It rested him when he was tired, cheered him when he was discouraged. It was like sunshine in his soul, for it made him happy. Thinking it over, and hearing Paul's voice so round, clear, full, and sweet, he couldn't make up his mind to tell anybody of the little joke. "After all, he didn't mean anything in particular, only to have a little fun with me. Boys will be boys,"--and so Mr. Leatherby, kind old man that he was, determined to keep it all to himself.
When Paul passed by the shop on his way home at night, he said, "Good evening, Mr. Leatherby," so pleasantly and kindly, that Mr. Leatherby half made up his mind that it wasn't Paul who did it, after all, but some of the other boys,--Bob Swift, perhaps, a sly, cunning, crafty fellow, who was one of Philip's cronies. "It would be just like Bob, but not at all like Paul, and so I won't say anything to anybody," said the mild old man to himself.
Miss Dobb's shaggy little poodle came out, barking furiously at Paul as he passed down the street. Paul gave him a kick which sent him howling towards the house, saying, "Get out, you ugly puppy!" Miss Dobb heard him. She came to the door and clasped the poodle to her bosom, saying, "Poor dear Trippee! Did the bad fellow hurt the dear little Trippee?" Then she looked savagely at Paul, and as she put out her hand to close the door, she seemed to clutch at Paul with her long, bony fingers, as if to get hold of him and give him a shaking.
Trip wasn't hurt much, for he was out again in a few minutes, snapping and snarling at all passers-by. Just at dark he was missing. Miss Dobb went to the door and called, "Trip! Trip! Trip!" but he did not come at her call. She looked up and down the street, but could not see him. The evening passed away. She went to the door many times and called; she went to Mr. Shelbarke's and to Mr. Noggin's, but no one had seen Trip. She went to bed wondering what had become of him, and fearing that somebody had killed or stolen him.
But in the night she heard him whining at the door. She opened it joyfully. "Where have you been, you dear little good-for-nothing darling Trip?" she said, kissing him, finding, as she did so, that all his hair had been sheared off, except a tuft on the end of his tail. She was so angry that she could not refrain from shedding tears. The puppy shivered, trembled, and whined in the cold, and Miss Dobb was obliged to sew him up in flannel. He looked so funny in his coat, with the tuft of hair waving on the end of his tail, that Miss Dobb laughed notwithstanding her anger. In the morning she went out to tell her neighbors what had happened, and met Philip.
"Good morning. I hope you are well, Miss Dobb," he said politely.
"Yes, I am well, only I am so vexed that I don't know what to do."
"Indeed! What has happened?"
"Why, somebody has sheared all of Trip's hair off, except a tuft on the end of his tail, which looks like a swab. It is an outrageous insult, for Trip had a beautiful tail. I would pull every hair out of the villain's head, if I knew who did it."
"Who was it that kicked your dog last night, and called him an ugly puppy?" Philip asked.
Miss Dobb remembered who, and her eyes flashed. Philip walked on, and came across Bob Swift, who had been standing round the corner of Mr. Noggin's shop, listening to all that was said. They laughed at something, then stopped and looked at Mr. Noggin's bees, which were buzzing and humming merrily in the bright October sun.
That night Mr. Noggin heard a noise in his yard. Springing out of bed and going to the window, he saw that a thief was taking the boxes of honey from his patent hives. He opened the door and shouted, "Thief! Thief!" The robber ran. In the morning Mr. Noggin found that the thief had dropped his hat in his haste. He picked it up. "Aha! 'Pears to me I have seen this hat before. Paul Parker's, as sure as I am alive!" he said. It was the hat which Paul wore in Mr. Chrome's paint-shop. Everybody knew it, because it was daubed and spattered with paint.
Mr. Noggin went to his work. He was a well-meaning man, but shallow-brained. He knew how to make good barrels, tubs, and buckets, but had no mind of his own. He put on his leather apron, and commenced driving the hoops upon a barrel, pounding with his adze, singing, and making the barrel ring with "Cooper ding, cooper ding, cooper ding, ding, ding! Cooper ding, cooper ding, cooper ding, ding, ding! Cooper ding, job, job, Cooper ding, bob, bob, Heigh ho,--ding, ding, ding!"
Mr. Noggin was rattling on in that fashion when Miss Dobb, followed by Trip, entered the shop.
"Well, I declare! That is the first time I ever saw a pup with a shirt on," said Mr. Noggin, stopping and looking at the poodle sewed up in flannel. "That is Paul Parker's doings,--I mean the shearing," said Miss Dobb, her eyes flashing indignantly.
"Paul's work! O ho! Then he shears pups besides robbing bee-hives, does he?" said Mr. Noggin. He told Miss Dobb what had happened.
"It is your duty, Mr. Noggin, to have him arrested at once. You are under imperative obligations to the community as a law and order abiding citizen to put the sheriff upon his track. He is a hypocrite. He ought to be pitched out of the singing-seats head first." So Miss Dobb wound Mr. Noggin round her finger, and induced him to enter a complaint against Paul.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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6
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PAUL'S FRIENDS.
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For five months Paul had been leader of the choir, and so faithfully were his duties performed, so excellent his drill, and so good his taste and mature his judgment, so completely were the choir under his control, that the ministers from the surrounding parishes, when they exchanged with Rev. Mr. Surplice, said, "What glorious singing they have at New Hope!" It was so good, that people who never had been in the habit of attending church hired pews,--not that they cared to hear Mr. Surplice preach and pray, but it was worth while to hear Azalia Adams and Daphne Dare sing a quartette with Paul and Hans, and the whole choir joining in perfect time and in sweetest harmony.
Paul believed that a thing worth doing at all was worth doing well. His heart was in his work. It was a pleasure to sing. He loved music because it made him happy, and he felt also that he and Azalia and Daphne and all the choir were a power for good in the community to make men better. Farmer Harrow, who used to work at haying on Sunday, said it was worth a bushel of turnips any time to hear such sweet singing. So his hired man and horses had rest one day in seven, and he became a better man.
In the calm moonlight nights Paul often lay wide awake, hour after hour, listening with rapture to the sweet music which came to him from the distant woods, from the waterfall, from the old maple in front of the house, when the leaves, tinged with gorgeous hues, were breaking one by one from the twigs, and floating to the ground, from the crickets chirping the last lone songs of the dying year, and from the robins and sparrows still hovering around their summer haunts. It was sweet to think of the pleasant hours he had passed with Azalia and Daphne, and with all the choir; and then it was very pleasant to look into the future, and imagine what bliss there might be in store for him;--a better home for his mother in her declining years,--a better life for himself. He would be a good citizen, respected and beloved. He would be kind to all. He wished that all the world might be good and happy. When he became a man, he would try and make people good. If everybody was as good as Azalia, what a glorious world it would be! She was always good, always cheerful. She had a smile for everybody. Her life was as warm and sunny and golden as the October days, and as calm and peaceful as the moonlight streaming across his chamber. Sweet it was to think of her,--sweeter to see her; sweetest of all to stand by her side and unite his voice to hers, and feel in his soul the charm of her presence. In his dreams he sometimes heard her and sat by her side.
Sometimes, while thus lying awake, watching the stars as they went sailing down the western sky, his thoughts went beyond the present into the unseen future, whither his father and grandfather had gone. They sang when on earth, and he thought of them as singing in heaven. Sometimes he gazed so long and steadily toward the heavenly land, that his eyes became dim with tears, so sweet and yet so sad the sounds he seemed to hear,--so near and yet so far away that land.
So the days went by, and the calm and peaceful nights, bringing him to October,--the glorious harvest month.
And now suddenly people looked shyly at him. There were mysterious whisperings and averted faces. He met Squire Capias one morning on the street. "Good morning," said Paul; but the lawyer walked on without reply. He passed Miss Dobb's house. She sat by the front window, and glared at him savagely; and yet she seemed to smile, but her countenance was so thin, wrinkled, and sharp, and her eyes so fierce, her smile so fiendish, that it put him in mind of a picture he once saw in a horrible story-book, which told of a witch that carried off little children and ate them for breakfast. Paul thought that Miss Dobb would like to pick his bones. But he went on to his work, rejoicing that there were not many Miss Dobbs in the world.
While hard at it with his paint-brush, Mr. Ketchum entered. He was a tall, stout man, with black, bushy whiskers, and so strong that he could take a barrel of cider on his knees and drink out of the bunghole. He was a sheriff. The rowdies who fell into his hands said it was no use to try to resist Mr. Ketchum, for he once seized a stubborn fellow by the heels, and swung him round as he would a cat by the tail, till the fellow lost his breath and was frightened half out of his wits.
"I have called in to ask you to walk up to Judge Adams's office on a matter of business," said Mr. Ketchum.
"With pleasure, sir," said Paul, who, now that he had become a surveyor of land, had been called upon repeatedly to give his testimony in court.
They entered Judge Adams's office, which was crowded with people. Mr. Noggin, Miss Dobb, Philip, and Bob Swift were there. A buzz ran round the room. They all looked upon Paul.
"You have been arrested, Paul, and are charged with stealing honey from Mr. Noggin's bee-hives. Are you guilty or not guilty?" said Judge Adams.
"Arrested! --arrested for stealing!" --Paul exclaimed, stupefied and astounded at the words of the judge. It was like a lightning-stroke. His knees became weak. He felt sick at heart. Great drops of cold and clammy sweat stood upon his forehead. Arrested! What would his mother say? Her son accused of stealing! What would everybody say? What would Azalia think? What would Rev. Mr. Surplice say? What would his class of boys in the Sunday-school say, not about him, but about truth and honor and religion, when they heard that their teacher was arrested for stealing?
His throat became dry, his tongue was parched. His voice suddenly grew husky. His brain reeled. His heart one moment stood still, then leaped in angry throbs, as if ready to burst. He trembled as if attacked by sudden ague, then a hot flash went over him, burning up his brain, scorching his heart, and withering his life.
"What say you, are you guilty or not guilty?"
"I am innocent," said Paul, gasping for breath, and sinking into his seat, taking no notice of what was going on around him. He was busy with the future. He saw all his hopes of life dead in an instant,--killed by one flash. He knew that he was innocent, but he was accused of crime, arrested, and a prisoner. The world would have it that he was guilty. His good name was gone forever. His hopes were blighted, his aspirations destroyed, his dreams of future joy,--all had passed away. His mother would die of a broken heart. Henceforth those with whom he had associated would shun him. For him there was no more peace, joy, or comfort,--nothing but impenetrable darkness and agony in the future. So overwhelmed was he, that he took no notice of Mr. Noggin's testimony, or of what was done, till he heard Judge Adams say: "There are some circumstances against the accused, but the testimony is not sufficient to warrant my binding him over for trial. He is discharged."
Paul went out into the fresh air, like one just waking from sleep, numbed and stupefied. The words of the judge rang in his ears,--"Circumstances against the accused." The accused! The prisoner! He had been a prisoner. All the world would know of it, but would not know that he was innocent. How could he bear it? It was a crushing agony. Then there came to him the words of the psalm sung on Sunday,-- "My times are in thy hand, Why should I doubt or fear? My Father's hand will never cause His child a needless tear."
So he was comforted in the thought that it was for his good; but he couldn't see how. He resolved to bear it manfully, conscious of his innocence, and trusting in God that he would vindicate his honor.
He went home and told his mother all that had happened. He was surprised to find that it did not shock her, as he supposed it would.
"I know you are innocent, Paul," she said, kissing him. "I am not surprised at what has happened. You are the victim of a conspiracy. I have been expecting that something would befall you, for you have been highly prospered, and prosperity brings enemies. It will all come out right in the end." Thus his mother soothed him, and tried to lift the great weight from his heart.
He was innocent, but half of the community thought him guilty. "He did it,--he did it,"--said Miss Dobb to all her neighbors. What should he do? How could he establish his innocence? How remove all suspicion? Ought he to resign his position as leader of the choir? or should he retain it? But the committee of the society settled that. "After what has happened, you will see the propriety of giving up your position as leader of the choir," said they. "Also your class in the Sunday-school," said the Superintendent.
O, how crushing it was! He was an outcast,--a vile, miserable wretch,--a hypocrite,--a mean, good-for-nothing fellow,--a scoundrel,--a thief,--a robber,--in the estimation of those who had respected him. They did not speak to him on the street. Colonel Dare, who usually had a pleasant word, did not notice him. He met Daphne Dare, but she crossed the street to avoid him. How terrible the days! How horrible the nights! He tossed and tumbled, and turned upon his bed. There was a fire in his bones. His flesh was hot. His brain was like a smouldering furnace. If he dropped off to sleep, it was but for a moment, and he awoke with a start, to feel the heat burning up his soul with its slow, consuming flame.
At evening twilight he wandered by the river-side to cool his fever, dipping his hand into the stream and bathing his brow. He stood upon the bridge and looked over the railing into the surging waters. A horrible thought came over him. Why not jump in and let the swollen current bear him away? What use was it to live, with his good name gone, and all the future a blank? He banished the thought. He would live on and trust in God.
He heard a step upon the bridge, and, looking up, beheld Azalia. She had been out gathering the faded leaves of autumn, and late-blossoming flowers, in the woods beyond the river. "Will she speak to me?" was the question which rose in his mind. His heart stood still in that moment of suspense. She came towards him, held out her hand, and said, "Good evening, Paul."
"Then you do not turn away from me?"
"No, Paul, I don't believe that you are a thief."
Tears came to his eyes as he took her proffered hand,--tears which welled up from his heart and which saved it from bursting. "O Azalia, if you had turned from me, I should have died! I have suffered terrible agony, but I can live now. I am innocent."
"I believe you, Paul, and I shall still be as I have been, your friend. There is my pledge," she said, setting down her basket, and putting a frost-flower into a button-hole of his threadbare coat. Then, to make him forget that the world was looking coldly upon him, she showed him the flowers she had gathered, and the gorgeous maple leaves,--scarlet, orange, purple, and crimson, and talked of their marvellous beauty. And when, with a smile, she said "Good night," and went tripping homeward, his heart was so full of gratitude that he could not utter his thanks. He could only say in his heart, "God bless her." It was as if he had met an angel in the way, and had been blessed. He stood there while the twilight deepened, and felt his heart grow strong again. He went home. His mother saw by the deep-settled determination on his face, by his calmness, and by his sad smile, that he was not utterly broken down and overwhelmed by the trouble which, like a wave of the sea, had rolled upon him.
"There is one who does not pass me by; Azalia is still a friend," he said.
"There are several whom you may count upon as being still your friends," she replied.
"Who are they, mother?"
"God and the angels, my son."
So she comforted him, telling him that the best way to put down a lie was to live it down, and that the time would surely come when his honor and integrity would be vindicated.
When they kneeled together to offer their evening prayer, and when his mother asked that the affliction might work out for him an eternal weight of glory, he resolved that he would, with God's help, live down the lie, and wait patiently, bearing the ignominy and shame and the cold looks of those who had been his friends, till his character for truth and honesty was re-established. He was calm and peaceful now. Once more he heard sweet music as he lay upon his bed. Through the night the winds, the waterfall, the crickets, seemed to be saying with Azalia, "We are still your friends,--still your friends--your friends--your friends!"
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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7
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IN A TRAP.
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A kind word, a look, a smile, a warm grasp of the hand by a friend in time of trouble,--how they remain in memory! Sometimes they are like ropes thrown to drowning men. The meeting between Paul and Azalia upon the bridge was a turning point in his life. He felt, when he saw her approaching, that, if she passed him by, looking upon him as a vile outcast from society, he might as well give up a contest where everything was against him. He loved truth and honor for their own sake. He remembered the words of his grandfather, that truth and honor are better than anything else in the world. Many a night he had heard the winds repeating those words as they whistled through the cracks and crevices of his chamber, rattling the shingles upon the roof, saying over and over and over again, Truth and honor, truth and honor. He had tried to be true, honest, and manly, not only to make himself better, but to help everybody else who had a hard time in life; but if Rev. Mr. Surplice, Judge Adams, Colonel Dare, and all the good folks looked upon him as a thief, what was the use of trying to rise? There was one who was still his friend. Her sweet, sad smile followed him. He saw it all the time, by day and by night, while awake and while asleep. He felt the warm, soft touch of her hand, and heard her words. He remembered that God is always on the side of truth, and so he resolved to go right on as if nothing had happened, and live down the accusation.
But he couldn't go on. "After what has happened, it is expedient that you should leave the choir till your innocence is established," said Deacon Hardhack, who was chairman of the singing committee,--a good, well-meaning man, who was very zealous for maintaining what he considered to be the faith once delivered to the saints. He carried on an iron foundery, and people sometimes called him a cast-iron man. He believed, that it was the duty of everybody to do exactly right; if they did wrong, or if they were suspected of doing wrong, they must take the consequences. Miss Dobb told him that Paul ought to be pitched out of the choir. "I think so too, Miss Dobb," said the Deacon, and it was done.
It required a great bracing of Paul's nerves, on Sunday morning, to go to church, and take a seat in the pew down stairs, with every eye upon him; but he did it manfully.
The bell ceased tolling. It was time for services to commence, but there was no choir. The singers' seats were empty. Azalia, Daphne, Hans, and all the others, were down stairs. Mr. Surplice waited awhile, then read the hymn; but there was a dead silence,--no turning of leaves, no blending of sweet voices, no soul-thrilling strains, such as had reformed Farmer Harrow, and given rest to his horses one day in seven. People looked at the singers' seats, then at Paul, then at each other. The silence became awkward. Deacon Hardhack was much exercised in mind. He had been very zealous in committee meeting for having Paul sent down stairs, but he had not looked forward to see what effect it would have upon the choir. Mr. Cannel, who owned a coal-mine, sat in front of Paul. He was not on good terms with Deacon Hardhack, for they once had a falling out on business matters, and so whatever the Deacon attempted to do in society affairs was opposed by Mr. Cannel. They were both members of the singing committee, and had a stormy time on Saturday evening. Mr. Cannel did what he could to keep Paul in the choir, but the Deacon had carried the day.
"I'll triumph yet," was the thought which flashed through Mr. Cannel's mind, when he saw how matters stood. He turned and nodded to Paul to strike up a tune, but Paul took no notice of him. Mr. Cannel half rose from his seat, and whispered hoarsely, "Strike up a tune, Paul." All the congregation saw him. Paul made no movement, but sat perfectly still, not even looking towards Mr. Cannel. Deacon Hardhack saw what Mr. Cannel was up to, and resolved to head him off. He rose from his seat, and said aloud, "Brother Quaver, will you pitch a tune?"
Again, as in other days, Mr. Quaver rubbed his great red nose, as trumpeters wipe their instruments before giving a blast. Then, after a loud Ahem! which made the church ring, he began to sing. It was so strange a sound, so queer, so unlike the sweet music which had charmed the congregation through the summer, that there was smiling all over the church. His voice trembled and rattled, and sounded so funny that a little boy laughed aloud, which disconcerted him, and he came near breaking down. Miss Gamut sat in one corner of the church, many pews from Mr. Quaver. She attempted to join, but was so far away that she felt, as she afterwards remarked, like a cat in a strange garret. Paul did not sing. He thought that, if it was an offence for him to sing in the choir, it would be equally offensive to sing in the congregation. Azalia, Daphne, Hans, and all the members of the choir, who were sitting in the pews with their parents, were silent. They had talked the matter over before church.
"Paul is innocent; he has only been accused. It isn't right to condemn him, or turn from him, till we know he is not worthy of our confidence. I met him on the bridge last night, and he looked as if he hadn't a friend in the world. I shall stand by him," said Azalia.
"Deacon Hardhack and Miss Dobb mean to break down the choir. It is a conspiracy," said Hans, who felt that Paul's case was his own.
Daphne began to look at the matter in a new light, and felt ashamed of herself for having passed by Paul without noticing him.
After service there was a great deal of loud talking.
"If that is the kind of singing you are going to have, I'll stay at home," said Farmer Harrow.
"It would be a desecration of the sanctuary, and we should be the aiders and abettors of sin and iniquity, if we allowed a fellow who has been accused of stealing to lead the singing," said Deacon Hardhack to Mr. Cannel.
"Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone," was Mr. Cannel's reply, and he felt that he had given the Deacon a good hit.
"Paul hasn't had his deserts by a long chalk," said Miss Dobb.
"He has been treated shamefully," said Azalia, indignantly.
All took sides, some for Paul, and some against him. Old things, which had no connection with the matter, were raked up. Mr. Cannel twitted Deacon Hardback of cheating him, while on the other hand the Deacon accused Mr. Cannel of giving false weight in selling coal. The peace and harmony of the church and society were disturbed.
Mr. Quaver felt very sore over that laugh which the little boy had started. He knew his voice was cracked, and that his singing days were over. "I am not going to make a fool of myself, to be laughed at," he said, and made up his mind that he wouldn't sing another note to please the Deacon or anybody else.
In the afternoon Mr. Quaver's seat was empty. Mr. Surplice read a hymn and waited for some one to begin. Mr. Cannel once more nodded to Paul, but Paul took no notice of it, and so there was no singing. A very dull service it was. After the benediction, Mr. Cannel, Colonel Dare, and Judge Adams said to Paul, "We hope you will lead the singing next Sunday."
"Gentlemen, I have been requested by the chairman of the committee to leave the choir. When he invites me to return I will take the matter into consideration; till then I shall take no part in the singing,"--he replied, calmly and decidedly.
Through the week Paul went on with his business, working and studying, bringing all his will and energy into action; for he resolved that he would not let what had taken place break him down.
Mr. Noggin believed him guilty. "He will steal your grapes, Mr. Leatherby, if you don't look out," he said to the shoemaker, who had a luxuriant vine in his garden, which was so full of ripe clusters that people's mouths watered when they saw them purpling in the October sun.
Mr. Leatherby concluded to keep his eyes open,--also to set a trap. He waited till evening, that no one might see what he was about. His garden was a warm, sunny spot, upon a hillside. A large butternut-tree, with wide-spreading branches, gave support to the vine. Mr. Leatherby filled a hogshead with stones, headed it up, rolled it to the spot, and tilted it so nicely that a slight jar would send it rolling down the hill. Then fastening one end of a rope to the hogshead, he threw the other end over a branch of the tree, brought it down to the ground, and made a noose. Then, taking a board, he put one end upon the hogshead and rested the other end on the ground, where he had placed the noose. He expected that whoever came after the grapes would walk up the board to reach the great clusters which hung overhead, that the hogshead would begin to roll, the board would drop, the noose draw, and the thief would find himself dangling by the heels. It was admirably contrived. About midnight Mr. Leatherby heard the board drop. "I've got him!" he shouted, springing out of bed, alarming Mrs. Leatherby, who thought he was crazy. He had not told her of the trap.
"Got whom? Got what?" she exclaimed, wondering what he meant.
"Paul Parker, who has come to steal the grapes," he said, as he put on his clothes.
He went out, and found that it was not Paul, but Bob Swift, who was dangling, head downwards. The noose had caught him by one leg. A very laughable appearance he made, as he kicked and swung his arms, and swayed to and fro, vainly struggling to get away.
"So you are the thief, are you? How do you like being hung up by the heels? Are the grapes sweet or sour?" Mr. Leatherby asked, not offering to relieve him.
"Please let me go, sir. I won't do so again," said Bob, whining.
"It won't hurt you to hang awhile, I reckon," Mr. Leatherby replied, going into the house and telling Mrs. Leatherby what had happened, then calling up Mr. Shelbarke, who lived near by, and also Mr. Noggin.
"I reckon that this isn't your first trick, Bob," said Mr. Leatherby, when he returned with his neighbors. He liked Paul, and had been loath to believe that he was guilty of stealing. "It is you who have been playing tricks all along. Come now, own up," he added.
"It ain't me, it is Philip,--he told me to come," said Bob, who was thoroughly cowed by the appearance of Mr. Noggin and the others, and who feared that he would be harshly dealt with.
"O ho! Philip Funk is at the bottom, is he?" Mr. Leatherby exclaimed, remembering how Philip suggested that it was Paul who had stuffed his chimney with old paper.
"If you will let me down, I will tell you all," said Bob, groaning with pain from the cord cutting into his ankle.
"We will hear your confession before we let you down," said Mr. Leatherby.
Bob begged, and whined, but to no purpose, till he told them all about the Night-Hawks,--that Philip set them on, and that Paul did not take Mr. Noggin's honey, nor smoke out Mr. Leatherby. It was Philip who sheared Miss Dobb's puppy, who took Mr. Shelbarke's watermelons, and robbed Deacon Hardhack's hen-roost. When Bob had told all, they let him go. He went off limping, but very glad that he was free.
In the morning Mr. Leatherby and Mr. Noggin reported what had happened; but Philip put on a bold face, and said that Bob was a liar, and that there wasn't a word of truth in what he had said. The fact that he was caught stealing Mr. Leatherby's grapes showed that he was a fellow not to be believed; for if he was mean enough to steal, he would not hesitate to lie.
Deacon Hardhack called upon Paul. "I have been requested by the committee to call and see you. They wish you to take charge of the singing again," he said, with some confusion of manner; and added, "Perhaps we were hasty in the matter when we asked you to sit down stairs, but we are willing to let bygones be bygones."
"Am I to understand that there is no suspicion against me?" Paul asked.
"Yes--sir--I suppose so," said the Deacon, slowly and hesitatingly.
"Then you may say to the committee that I will do what I can to make the singing acceptable as a part of the service," Paul replied.
There was a hearty shaking of hands with Paul, by all the choir, at the rehearsal on Saturday night. They were glad to meet him once more, and when they looked upon his frank, open countenance, those who for a moment had distrusted him felt that they had done him a great wrong. And on Sunday morning how sweet the music! It thrilled the hearts of the people, and they too were ashamed when they reflected that they had condemned Paul without cause. They were glad he was in his place once more. Mr. Surplice in his prayer gave thanks that the peace and harmony of the congregation was restored, and that the wicked one had not been permitted to rule. When he said that, Mr. Cannel wondered if he had reference to Deacon Hardhack. Everybody rejoiced that the matter was settled,--even Miss Dobb, who did not care to have all the old things brought up.
When the service was over, when Paul sat once more by his mother's side in their humble home, before the old fireplace, when he listened to her words, reminding him of all God's goodness,--how He had carried him through the trial,--Paul could not keep back his tears, and he resolved that he would always put his trust in God.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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8
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KEEPING SCHOOL.
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The teacher of the New Hope school, engaged for the winter, proved to be a poor stick. He allowed the scholars to throw spit-balls, snap apple-seeds, eat molasses candy, pull each other's hair, and have fine frolics. Paul wished very much to attend school, to study Latin, and fit himself for College; but when he saw how forceless a fellow Mr. Supple was, he concluded that it would be lost time to attend such a school. He knew that knowledge is power, and he longed to obtain a thorough education. Sometimes, when he thought how much Judge Adams knew, and when he read books written by learned men, he felt that he knew next to nothing. But whenever he felt like giving up the contest with adverse circumstances, a walk in the fresh, cool, bracing air, or a night's sleep, revived his flagging spirit. The thought often came, "What would Daphne or Azalia say if they knew how chicken-hearted I am?" So his pride gave him strength. Though he did not attend school, he made rapid progress studying at home.
Matters came to a crisis in the school, for one day the big boys--Bob Swift among others--carried Mr. Supple out of the school-house, dug a hole in a snow-drift, and stuck him into it with his head down and his heels up. Then they took possession of the school-house and played tag over the benches for the rest of the day. Mr. Supple did not attempt to enter the school-house again, but picked up his hat, went to his boarding-house, packed his trunk, and left town.
After a week's vacation, Mr. Cannel, who was the school-agent, obtained another teacher,--a thin, pale-faced, quick-tempered young man,--Mr. Thrasher. "I'll bring them to their trumps," he said, when Mr. Cannel engaged him.
"I intend to have order in this school. I shall lick the first boy who throws a spit-ball, or who does anything contrary to the rules of the school," said Mr. Thrasher, flourishing a raw hide, on the first morning. He read a long list of rules, numbered from one up to eighteen. Before he finished his rules, a little boy laughed, and caught a whipping. Before noon half a dozen were hauled up. There was a council of war at noon among the big boys, who, having had their own way, were determined to keep it. They agreed to give Mr. Thrasher a pitched battle. They had it in the afternoon; a half-dozen pounced upon the master at once, and after a short struggle put him out doors. They gave a grand hurrah, and pelted him with snowballs, and drove him up the street.
There was great commotion in the town. Those who loved law and order were alarmed for the welfare of their children.
"We must have a master who can rule them, or they will grow up to be lawless citizens," said Judge Adams.
Mr. Cannel could find no one who was willing to teach the school.
"I don't see why anybody who is competent to teach should be afraid to undertake the task," said Paul to Mr. Chrome, one day, as they talked the matter over.
Mr. Chrome met Mr. Cannel that evening on the street. "If there is anybody who is competent to keep the school, it is Paul Parker," said Mr. Chrome, who had exalted ideas of Paul's ability to overcome difficulties.
"I believe you," Mr. Cannel replied, and started at once to see Paul.
"I will think of it, and let you know in the morning whether I will teach or not," was Paul's reply, after hearing what Mr. Cannel had to say.
He talked the matter over with his mother.
"It is a great undertaking, Paul; I cannot advise you," she said.
When he offered his evening prayer, he asked that God would direct him. He thought upon the subject during the night. Could he carry it through? The scholars all knew him,--had been to school with him,--were his old friends and playmates. Bob Swift was a ringleader; and outside, not in the school, was Philip, who would make all the trouble he could. There was Miss Dobb, who would like to have picked him to pieces. There were others who would rejoice to see him fail. But would it not be glorious to succeed,--to triumph over Miss Dobb? But that was an unworthy motive, and he put the thought out of his mind. He resolved to undertake the task, and try to do good,--to guide and mould the minds of the scholars,--those who were to be men and women, who were to act an important part in life, and who were to live not only here, but in another world,--who, he hoped, would be companions of the angels. Would it not be worth while to aid in overcoming evil, in establishing law and order,--to inculcate a love of virtue, truth, and honor?
It would require nerve, energy, patience, and wisdom. "I'll try it," he said to himself, after looking at all sides.
When it was known that Paul was going to try his hand at school-keeping the big boys chuckled. "We'll sweeten him," said Bob, rubbing his hands, and anticipating the glorious fun they would have.
Conscious that he had a task before him which would try him severely, Paul yet went bravely to his work, locking the door as he entered the school-room, and putting the key in his pocket. The big boys looked at each other, somewhat amazed, each anxious to see what the others thought of it. He walked deliberately to his desk. "It is always best to begin an undertaking rightly," said Paul, standing erect and looking calmly round the room. "There is no better way than to ask our Heavenly Father to direct us, and so we will all repeat the Lord's Prayer," he said and waited till the room was so still that the scholars could almost hear the beating of their hearts. The stillness filled them with awe. After prayer he addressed them,--not alluding to anything which had taken place, but simply saying that he had been employed to teach them, and should do what he could to make the school-room a pleasant place to all. He expected that they would obey whatever rules were necessary for the good of the school, but did not threaten them with punishment.
It was so unlike what they had expected that the big boys did not know what to make of it, or how to take it. Bob could not decide whether it was best to begin a war, or wait till something happened, and then have a grand battle. So the forenoon passed without any disturbance.
Philip saw Bob at noon. "You are a coward, Bob, or you would have pitched Paul heels over head out of the door. I would if I were there, and so would you if you had as much gumption as an old setting hen. I thought you were going to 'sweeten him,'" he said, with a sneer.
"So I am," said Bob, nettled at the taunt, and resolving to drive Paul out in the afternoon.
When Paul entered the school-room after dinner, he saw at a glance that there was mischief ahead. The whole school was on tip-toe. He locked the door, and again put the key in his pocket. Bob was standing in the middle of the floor with his hat on.
"Take off your hat, Master Swift, and go to your seat," said Paul.
"I sha'n't do it," said Bob,--who the next instant went spinning round the room, tumbling over a chair, falling upon the floor, finding himself picked up and thrown against a desk, then having his heels tripped up, and then set to whirling so fast that the room seemed all windows. He was cuffed backward and forward, to the right and the left, pitched headlong, and jerked back again so suddenly, that he lost his breath. He was like a little child in the hands of a giant. He was utterly powerless. One of the other boys sprang to help him, but was met by a blow between his eyes which knocked him to the floor. A second started, but when he saw what had happened he sat down. Bob's brain was in a whirl. His ears were tingling. He saw stars, and it seemed as if all his hair had been torn out by the roots. He heard Paul say, once more, calmly, as at first, "Take your seat, Master Swift." He hesitated a moment, but when, through the blinking stars, he saw how cool and decided Paul was, standing there as if nothing had happened,--when he saw the boy who had started to aid him sprawling on the floor, and the others who had promised to help put Paul out of doors sitting in their seats,--he knew that it was of no use to resist. He took his seat and sat all the afternoon wondering at Paul's strength. Paul was surprised to find himself so powerful and athletic; but then he remembered that he had right on his side, which always helps a man.
The victory was won. The school felt that he was their master. Yet he had a pleasant smile. When they were tired of study he said, "I see that you are getting dull and need stirring up." Then he told them a story which set them all laughing, and so made them forget that they were tired and sleepy.
At night he had a talk with Bob all alone, telling him that he ought to be a good boy for his poor old mother's sake. That touched Bob in a tender place, for he loved his mother, and was a good-hearted fellow, but had allowed Philip to twist him round his little finger.
"For her sake, Bob, I want you to be good; I will help you all I can," said Paul. It was spoken so kindly and frankly that Bob knew Paul meant it. "Cut loose from those who advise you to do wrong, and tell them that you are going to do right," said Paul, as they parted for the night.
"I will," said Bob, who, as he thought it all over that night, and recalled the kind words, felt that Paul would be his best friend if he did right.
"I must get Azalia and Daphne to help me make a man of Bob," said Paul to himself,--"they can do what I can't."
He called upon Azalia. There was a bright fire on the hearth in the sitting-room, but the smile on her face, he thought, was more pleasant to see.
"I am glad you have conquered," she said.
"I don't know that I have done so, yet; when I can feel that they all love me, then I may begin to think that it is a victory. I have had a talk with Bob. He is a good fellow, but under bad influences. I want you to help me. If we can make him respect himself, we shall make a man of him."
"I will do what I can," said Azalia.
When Paul went away she sat down by the window and watched him till he was out of sight. "How thoughtful he is for the welfare of others!" was the thought which passed through her mind. Then she gazed upon the red and purple clouds with gold and silver linings, and upon the clear sunset sky beyond, till the twilight faded away, and the stars came out in the heavens. Paul's words were ringing in her ears,--"I want you to help me." Yes, she would help him, for he was trying to make the world better.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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9
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RALLYING ROUND THE FLAG.
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There came a gloomy day to the people of New Hope,--that gloomiest of the year, of all the years,--that on which they received the astounding intelligence that Fort Sumter had been attacked by the people of South Carolina, and that Major Anderson commanding it, with his little company, had been compelled to surrender. News so startling brought all the people into the streets. They assembled around the telegraph office, where Mr. Magnet read the despatch; how the attack had been made at daybreak on Friday, the 12th of April, all the batteries which General Beauregard had erected opening fire upon the half-starved garrison; how shot and shell were rained upon the fort, from Moultrie, from the guns on Morris Island, and from the floating battery which the Rebels had built; how Major Anderson coolly ate his breakfast; how Captain Doubleday fired the first gun in reply; how the cannonade went on all day, the great guns roaring and jumping; how the fight commenced again next morning; how the barracks were set on fire by the shells from the Rebel guns; how manfully the garrison fought against the flames, rolling kegs of powder into the sea to prevent their exploding; how the soldiers were scorched by the heat and almost suffocated by the smoke; how the flag-staff was shot away; how the flag was nailed to the broken mast; how the brave little band held out till their powder was almost exhausted, and till there was nothing to eat but raw salt pork; how at last, after thirty-six hours' fighting, Major Anderson surrendered the fort, saluting his flag as he hauled it down, carrying it away with him, being permitted to sail with his company to New York; and how the President had called for seventy-five thousand men to suppress the rebellion. The people held their breath while Mr. Magnet was reading, and when he had finished looked at one another in mournful silence. The flag of their country was trailed in the dust, and dishonored in the sight of the nations. They could not have felt worse if they had lost a dear friend by death.
"The country is gone, gone, gone," said Judge Adams, wiping the tears from his eyes.
"I reckon not, Judge," said Colonel Dare, "the people will have something to say about this insult to the flag. They will wipe out the disgrace by sweeping those scoundrels into the sea." The Colonel usually looked on the bright side of things. He recalled the trainings of other days, when his regiment paraded on the green and had a sham-fight. He wished that he were once more in command; he would march to Charleston, burn the city, and sow it with salt.
"The question is, whether a sovereign State has not a right to secede if she chooses," said Mr. Funk,--for he and Philip were the only persons in New Hope who were not sorrowful over the intelligence. Mr. Funk was a native of Virginia, and had much to say about the superiority of Southern gentlemen over all other men,--how noble and chivalric they were.
"I am glad that the President has called for seventy-five thousand men to crush the vipers," said the Colonel.
"He can't do it. It won't be constitutional. You can't coerce a sovereign State," said Mr. Funk.
"We will do it. Let me tell you, Mr. Funk, that this is a government of the people,--the whole people,--and that the old flag which has been stricken from the walls of Sumter shall go up there, if it takes a million of men to put it there!"
"You can't do it. One Southerner can whip five Yankees any day," said Philip.
Colonel Dare took no notice of what Philip said. And he was too much depressed by the news to enter into an argument with Mr. Funk upon the right of a State to secede from the Union.
One by one the people went to their homes, meditating upon what they had heard, and wondering what next would happen. They could not work; they could only think of the terrible event.
What a gloomy day it was to Paul Parker! He went home, sat down before the fire, and looked into the glowing coals. The gun which his grandfather carried at Bunker Hill, and which in his hands had brought down many a squirrel from the highest trees, was hanging in its usual place. He felt like shouldering it and marching for Charleston. He recalled the stories which his grandfather had told him there upon the hearth, of Bunker Hill and Saratoga. Many times he had wished that he had lived in those glorious days, to be a patriot, and assist in securing the independence of America. But now the work which his grandfather and the Revolutionary sires had accomplished seemed to be all lost. It made him sick at heart to think of it. Would the people resent the insult which South Carolina had given to the flag? What would the President do? What if he did nothing? What would become of the country? What would become of liberty, justice, truth, and right? O, how hard it was to see them all stricken down,--to think that the world was turning backward! He looked into the coals till he could see great armies meeting in battle,--houses in flames, and the country drenched in blood. He sat motionless, forgetful of everything but the terrible intelligence and the gloomy future. What part should he take in the contest? What could he do? The President had called for men to help raise the flag once more upon the walls of Sumter; could he leave his home, his mother, his friends? These were trying questions; but he felt that he could go wherever duty called him.
Colonel Dare, as he reflected upon what had happened, saw that the people needed stirring up to sustain the President; that the Rebellion must be put down, or there would be an end of all government. He resolved to get up a public meeting. "We will have it this evening, and you must be chairman," he said to Judge Adams.
He called upon Rev. Mr. Surplice. "I want you to open the meeting by prayer," he said, "for these are sober days. We need God's help. If we ask Him, He will help us. And you must make a speech. Come down on the Rebels," he added, with sudden indignation; "curse them, as David cursed the enemies of God. You, who are watchman on the walls of Zion, must lead off, and the people will follow. Their hearts are burning within them; the kindlings are laid; strike the match now, and there will be such a flame of patriotism as the world never saw."
"We shall want singing," he said to Paul. "You must get that up."
He engaged Mr. Tooter to be there with his fife, and Mr. Noggin with his drum. These two were old companions on training days. They had drank many glasses of cider together, and had played "Yankee Doodle," and "The Campbells are coming," and "Saint Patrick's Day in the Morning," on many occasions.
"We shall expect some resolutions and a speech from you," he said to Squire Capias.
Thus he laid out the work, and entered upon it with so much zeal, that all hands caught the spirit of his enthusiasm. Judge Adams, who had been very much depressed, became more cheerful, and thought over what he should say upon the occasion. Rev. Mr. Surplice looked through the Psalms and Isaiah and the New Testament to find the Scripture most appropriate to read. Squire Capias sat down by his round table in his dingy office, ran his fingers through his long black hair, and thought over his speech. Paul and Azalia, with Hans, went to Colonel Dare's, and, with Daphne, rehearsed the "Star-Spangled Banner," and "America," while Mr. Noggin put a new cord into his drum, which had been lying for months in his garret, and was covered with dust.
Evening came. The sexton rang the bell of the church,--not soberly and steadily, but he tugged with all his might at the rope, throwing the bell over and over,--ringing as if the whole town was in a blaze. The farmers out on the hills heard it, and came driving furiously into the village to see what was the matter.
Mr. Tooter and Mr. Noggin, with Mr. Chrome, who had a new flag, walked out upon the parade-ground. The musicians struck up Yankee-Doodle. How it stirred the hearts of everybody,--the sharp, shrill notes of the fife,--the roll, the rattle, and the rat-a-tat-tat of the drum, and the clanging of the bell, and the sight of that flag, its crimson folds and fadeless stars waving in the evening breeze! Never had it looked so beautiful. The little boys swung their caps and cheered, the women waved their handkerchiefs, and the men hurrahed in an outburst of wild enthusiasm. Then they formed in procession with Colonel Dare for marshal,--the music and the flag in advance, Rev. Mr. Surplice, Judge Adams, and Squire Capias next, and then all the citizens, marching round the public square to the church, filling the house, the pews, the aisles, the entry, and hanging like a swarm of bees around the windows.
Judge Adams forgot all his despondency, while Mr. Surplice, who was getting a little prosy as a preacher, was as full of fire as in his younger days. Mr. Capias was so eloquent that the people stamped till the house fairly shook with applause. He ended with resolutions, pledging the support of the people of New Hope to the government,--their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor towards suppressing the Rebellion. But more thrilling than all the eloquence of the evening was the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, by Azalia, Daphne, Paul, and Hans. They stood on the platform in front of the pulpit, Azalia and Daphne with flags in their hands. How sweet their voices! How inspiring the moment when they sang: "And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!"
Men threw up their hats, women waved their handkerchiefs, and all cheered and shouted, while many shed tears, as they looked upon the banner of their country, which had been so insulted and despised. There, in the place where they met on the Sabbath to worship God, they resolved that, let it cost what it might of money, of sacrifice, or of life, the old flag should once more wave in triumph upon the walls of Fort Sumter,--that the Rebellion should be subdued and the traitors punished.
That was an ever memorable night to Paul. Alone in his chamber, lying on his bed, whence he could look out, as in childhood, upon the stars, he thought upon what had happened at Fort Sumter, and of the meeting in the church at New Hope, and how he had pledged himself with the rest to stand by the flag of his country. The water by the mill was repeating the soul-stirring song, which Azalia, Daphne, Hans, and himself had sung. The maples, elms, and all the forest-trees, like a multitudinous chorus of a great and mighty people, were saying, "It shall wave--shall wave--over the home of the brave!"
But men were wanted. The President had called for them. Ought he not to be one of the seventy-five thousand? Would not his grandfather, if alive, point to the old gun, and say, "Go, Paul, your country calls you?" Were not all who have died for liberty, justice, truth, and right calling upon him to do his duty? Were not the oppressed everywhere looking to him? What answer could he give to the millions yet to be, if in his old age they were to question him as to what part he bore in the great struggle? Thus the voices of the ages propounded solemn questions--voices of earth and heaven--of his duty to his country and to God. But how could he leave his home, his mother, his friends, his school, the choir, Azalia, Daphne, Hans, and give up the dear associations of the place? What if he should fall in battle? Could he meet death face to face? But then he remembered that the path of duty, though it may lead through dangers, though it may lead to the death of the body, is the way by which peace comes to the soul. It was the most solemn moment of his life, for God was questioning him. He heard not only the voices of the past, and of the winds, the water, and of his country, calling him to do his duty as a patriot, but there was a still, small voice talking of sins committed and duties neglected; of a lie which he had told in childhood, and which had burned through all the years like a red-hot iron, leaving a crisped and blackened scar upon his soul. How could he be at peace? How ease the pain? Tears of anguish rolled down his cheeks. He turned and tossed in agony, wishing that the scar could be cut away, and that he could be made fit to dwell with the angels. But in his agony he heard another voice saying, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest."
They were no longer tears of sorrow which wet his pillow, but of joy, for he saw that Jesus, having carried the cross up to Calvary, was able and willing also to bear his burden. What a friend,--to take away all his sin, and leave no scar, no pain, no sorrow! He would serve such a friend with his whole soul. He would do his duty, whatever it might be. For such a friend, he could go through all dangers and win his way to victory. For him he would live, and for him he would die, if need be, to save his country.
"Go, my son,--your country calls you, and God will take care of you," said his mother in the morning, when he told her that he thought it his duty to enlist.
"I have decided to be a volunteer, and shall spend a half-hour with the school and then dismiss it, and this will be my last day as a teacher," said Paul to the school committee, as he went for the last time to the school-house. It was hard to part with those who were dear to him. He had been so kind and gentle, and yet so firm and just, that all the scholars loved him.
"You may lay aside your books, I have not time to hear your lessons,"--he said, and then talked of what had happened,--said that the flag had been insulted, that justice, law, religious liberty, truth, and right had been overthrown, and that, unless the Rebellion was put down, they would have no country, no home,--that God and his country called him, and he must go. The issues at stake were not only worth living for, but they were worth dying for, if they could be secured in no other way. It was a duty to fight for them. How hard it was to say "Good by!" They would meet again, but perhaps not in this world. His voice trembled; there was weeping around the room. When he dismissed them, they had no heart to play; they could only think how good and kind he was, and how great their loss; and in imagination, looking into the gloomy future, beheld him in the thickest of the fight upon the battle-field.
The whole country was aflame with patriotism. The drum-beat was heard not only in New Hope, but in every city and village of the land. There was a flag on almost every house. Farmers left their ploughs in the unfinished furrows; the fire of the blacksmith's forge went out; carpenters laid down their planes; lawyers put aside their cases in the courts,--all to become citizen soldiers and aid in saving the country,--assembling in squads, companies, and regiments at the county-seats.
He called upon Rev. Mr. Surplice. "The Lord be with you, to guide, protect, and bless you," said the good man as he bade Paul farewell. It was a blessing and a benediction which followed Paul all the day, which comforted and strengthened him, when he reflected that he might be bidding a last farewell to his friends.
He was surprised to find that everybody was his friend; that all bade him God speed,--all, except Mr. Funk and Philip. It was evening when he called upon Azalia. He had shaken hands with Daphne and Hans, and others of his associates. The train would bear him away in the morning. Azalia came tripping down the path, holding out both hands to meet him at the gate. She greeted him with a sad smile. "You are not going away to the war, are you?" she asked with faltering voice.
"Yes, Azalia, and I have come to bid you good by!"
"Do you think it your duty to go and leave your mother? It will be hard for her to give you up; she will miss you very much, and we shall all miss you."
"I know that the old house will be lonesome,--that the days will be long and the nights dreary to my mother,--that she will listen to every approaching footstep and think perhaps it is mine. I know, Azalia, that possibly I may never return; I feel that perhaps this is the last time I may ever take you by the hand; but I feel that God and my country both are calling me, and that I must go."
"But what if you are killed on the battle-field! O Paul, it is dreadful to think of!"
"I would rather die there while doing what I feel to be my duty, than remain here shirking responsibility. Last night I heard the voices of the past calling me, and I seemed to see the myriads who are to come after us beckoning me. I know it is my duty to go. You would not have me falter, would you, Azalia?"
She could not reply. Her voice choked with emotion; she had not expected such a question. Tears came into her eyes, and she turned away to hide them.
"I could not go without coming to see you, to thank you for all your kindness to me; you have been always a faithful and true friend. God bless you for all you have done for me! I know your goodness of heart, and I hope that, when I am gone, you will sometimes go in and comfort my mother, and shorten the hours for her; for your smile is always like the sunshine, and it will cheer her."
"I will do what I can to make her forget that you are gone."
"And you will not wholly forget me."
"I shall never forget you," she replied; then, looking steadily upon him, with a strong effort to keep down her emotion, said, "Paul, I have heard that there are many dangers in camp; that soldiers sometimes forget home and old friends, and become callous and hardened to good influences; that they lose sight of heaven and things holy and pure amid the new duties and strange excitements. But for the sake of those who respect and honor and love you, you will not give way to vice, will you? I know you will not, for my sake."
"For your sake, Azalia, if for no other reason, I will resist evil, and I will try to serve God and my country faithfully in all things, so that if I come back, or if I fall in battle, you will not be ashamed of having once been my friend."
She touched her sweet lips to his forehead, saying, "I have nothing else to give you for such a promise. Remember that it came from your old friend, Azalia."
His heart was full. He had braved himself to say farewell to all his friends without shedding a tear, but his courage was faltering. How could he go, perhaps never to return! He wanted to say more. He wanted to sit down at her feet and worship such goodness; but he could only dash away the tears, look for a moment into her eyes, drink in the sad smile upon her face, leave a kiss upon her cheek, press her a moment to his heart, and say, "God bless you, Azalia!"
He turned hastily away, and passed through the gate. He cast one glance behind, and beheld her standing in the gravelled walk, her chestnut hair falling upon her shoulders, and the setting sun throwing around her its golden light. She waved him an adieu, and he passed on, thinking of her as his good angel. When far away, pacing his lonely beat at dead of night, he would think of her and behold her as in that parting hour.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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10
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A SOLDIER.
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He was a soldier in camp, wearing a blue uniform, sleeping in a tent, wrapped in a blanket, with a knapsack for a pillow. He had voluntarily given up the freedom of home, and was ready to yield obedience to military rule. He could not pass the guard without a permit. When the drum beat, he must spring to his feet. He was obliged to wear a knapsack, a cartridge-box, a canteen, and a bayonet scabbard, and carry a gun, not always as he would like to carry it, but as ordered by the officer in command. He was obliged to march hour after hour, and if he came to a brook or a muddy place, instead of turning aside and passing over on stepping-stones or upon a fallen tree, he must go through without breaking the ranks. His companions were not altogether such as he liked to associate with. Some were very profane, and used indecent language. There was one great, over-grown Dutchman, Gottlieb von Dunk, who smoked nearly all the time when awake, and who snored terribly when asleep. But he was a good-hearted fellow for all that, and had a great many pleasant stories to tell.
It was inspiring to hear the drum and fife, the blast of the bugle, and the playing of the band. It was glorious to look upon the star-spangled banner, waving in the breeze; but the excitement soon wore away. There were rainy days, comfortless and cheerless. Sometimes the rations were not fit to be eaten, and there was grumbling in the camp. There were days of homesickness, when the soldiers longed to break away from the restraints of camp life, and be free once more.
The regiment in which Paul enlisted was ordered to Cairo, in Illinois, where it joined several others. When the men were enlisted, they expected to march at once upon the Rebels, but week after week passed by, spring became summer, and summer lengthened into autumn, and there was no movement of the troops. The ardor of their patriotism died out. It was a monotonous life, waking early in the morning to answer roll-call, to eat breakfast of salt pork and hard-tack, drilling by squads, by companies, by battalion, marching and countermarching, going through the same manoeuvres every day, shouldering, ordering, and presenting arms, making believe load and fire, standing on guard, putting out their lights at nine o'clock at night,--doing all this, week after week, with the Rebels at Columbus, only twenty miles down the river. It was very irksome. Sometimes Paul's heart went back to New Hope, as the dear old times came crowding upon him; but he had learned to be patient. He knew that it was necessary for soldiers to become disciplined. He had enlisted for the war, he gave his whole attention to doing his duty, and received his reward by being made a sergeant. He kept his gun clean, his equipments in good order, and he was always in his place. So prompt was he, that his commander nicknamed him Sergeant Ready. He was as ready to play a game of football, or to run a race, as he was to appear in the ranks at drill. When off duty, instead of idling away his time, he was studying the tactics, learning not only his duty as a sergeant, but what it would be if he were a lieutenant or a captain.
The camp of his regiment was near the town, on the bank of the Mississippi, where he saw the great steamboats pass down the Mississippi from St. Louis, and down the Ohio from Louisville and Cincinnati, with thousands of troops on board, with the flags and banners streaming, the bands playing, and the soldiers cheering. It was pleasant to stand upon the levee, and behold the stirring scenes,--the gunboats commanded by the brave and good Admiral Foote, the great eleven-inch guns peeping from the portholes,--but Paul longed for active life. He rejoiced when he heard that his regiment was ordered to leave the Ohio River and go down toward Columbus on a reconnoitring expedition. The soldiers were so happy that they threw up their caps and gave a loud hurrah.
With their haversacks full of hard-tack and cold boiled beef, carrying their tin cups and plates, their cartridge-boxes full of cartridges, they embarked on one of the great steamboats, and floated down the river. They were exhilarated with the thought that they were to have new and untried experiences,--that perhaps there would be a battle. They paced the deck of the steamboat nervously, and looked carefully into the woods along the river-bank to see if there were any Rebel scouts lurking behind the trees.
Six miles below Cairo is a place called Old Fort Jefferson, where many years ago the white settlers built a fort, and where they had a battle with the Indians. The Essex gunboat, Captain Porter, was lying there, swinging at her anchors in the stream. A sailor paced the deck in a short blue jacket, who had a spy-glass in his hand, and kept a sharp lookout down the river, for there were two Rebel gunboats below in the bend.
The regiment landed on the Kentucky side, where a narrow creek comes down from the hills through a wild ravine. Suddenly there was a cry of "There they come! the Rebel gunboats." Paul looked down the river, and saw two dark-colored boats.
"Heave anchor! Put on steam. Light up the magazines. Pipe all hand to quarters! Lively!" were the orders on board the Essex.
The boatswain blew his whistle, the drummer beat the long roll, and the sailors, who had been dozing about the decks, were instantly astir, weighing the anchors, running out the great guns, bringing up shot and shell from the hold, and clearing the deck for action. The great wheels turned, and the Essex swung out into the stream, and prepared to meet her antagonists. What an exciting moment! Paul felt the blood rush through his veins as he never felt it before. One of the approaching gunboats was suddenly enveloped in white smoke. He heard a screaming in the air, coming nearer and nearer, and growing louder and louder and more terrifying. He felt a cold chill creep over him. He held his breath. He was in doubt whether it would be better to get behind a tree, or lie down, or take to his heels. He could see nothing in the air, but he knew that a shot was coming. Perhaps it might hit him. He thought of home, his mother, Azalia, and all the old friends. He lived years in a second. "I won't run," he said to himself, as the iron bolt came on. Crash! it went through a great oak-tree, shivering it to splinters, and flying on into the woods, cutting off branches, and falling to the ground at last with a heavy _thug! _ ploughing a deep furrow and burying itself out of sight. There was a roar of thunder rolling along the river-banks, echoing from woodland to woodland. Then the heavy eleven-inch gun of the Essex jumped up from the deck, took a leap backwards, almost jerking the great iron ringbolts from the sides of the ship, coming down with a jar which made her quiver from stem to stern, sending a shell, smoking and hissing, down stream, towards the Rebel gunboat, and striking it amidships, throwing the planks into the water. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" shouted the crew of the Essex. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" answered the soldiers on shore, dancing about and cheering. Another shot came screeching towards them as loud as the first; but it was not half so terrifying. Paul thought it was not worth while to be frightened till he was hurt, and so he stood his ground, and watched the firing till the Rebel gunboats turned towards Columbus and disappeared behind the distant headland, followed by Captain Porter, who kept his great guns booming till he was almost within range of the Rebel batteries at Columbus. He was a brave man, short and stout, with a heavy beard. His father commanded the United States ship Essex in 1812, and had a long, hard fight with two British ships in the harbor of Valparaiso, fighting against great odds, till his decks were slippery with blood, till nearly all of his guns were dismounted, when he was obliged to surrender.
"The son is a chip of the old block," said Admiral Foote the next day to Captain Porter, commending his watchfulness and promptness to meet the enemy. Paul saw how necessary it was in military operations to be always on the watch, and he felt that it was also necessary to be calm and self-possessed when on the battle-field.
The regiment took up its line of march, for a reconnoissance towards Columbus, along a winding path through the woods, passing log farm-houses, crossing creeks on log bridges. Paul noticed all the windings of the road, the hills, houses, and other objects, keeping count of his steps from one place to another, jotting it down on a slip of paper when the regiment came to a halt. They could not kindle a fire, for they were in the enemy's country, and each man ate his supper of hard-tack and cold beef, and washed it down with water from the creek.
Paul was sitting on a log eating his supper, and looking about for a place to spread his blanket for the night, when the Colonel of the regiment came to him and said: "Sergeant Parker, it is very important that a reconnoissance be made to-night towards the enemy's lines. I hear that you are a good, faithful, and trustworthy soldier. Are you willing to take it?"
"I have no desire to shirk any responsibility. If you wish me to go, I am ready," said Paul.
"Very well; gain all the information you can, and report at daybreak," said the Colonel.
He went out alone in the darkness, past the pickets. And now that he was alone, and moving towards the enemy, he felt that he was engaged in a hazardous undertaking. He walked softly, crouching down, listening to every sound;--on through deep and gloomy ravines, through the dense forests, past farm-houses, where dogs were howling,--noticing all the objects, and picturing them in memory.
"Halt! Who comes there?" shouted a voice. He heard the click of a gun-lock. It was a very dark night; stooping close to the ground, he could see an object by the roadside, immediately before him. He held his breath. What should he do? "Keep cool," said a monitor within. His heart had leaped into his throat, but it went back to its proper place. "Who comes there?" said the sentinel again.
Instead of answering, he moved backward so softly and noiselessly that he could not hear his own footsteps.
"What is the row?" he heard a Rebel officer ask of the sentinel.
"There is a Yankee prowling about, I reckon," said the sentinel in a whisper, and added, "There he is."
"Shoot him!" said the officer.
There was a flash which blinded Paul. He heard the Minie bullet sing above him. He could see the dark forms of the two men. He had a revolver in his hand, and could have shot them, but he was there to gain information, and not to bring on a fight.
"It is nothing but a stump, after all," said the officer.
The report of the gun re-echoed far and near. The night was still, and he could hear other pickets talking out in the field on his right hand and on his left. How fortunate! He knew where they were, and now could avoid them. But ought he not to turn back? He resolved not to be frightened from his object. After lying still awhile, he went back along the road, then turned aside, walked softly from tree to tree, careful not to crackle a twig beneath his feet, crept on his hands and knees through the thick underbrush, and gained the road in the rear of the picket. Being inside of the enemy's lines, he knew that he could move more freely, for if any of the sentinels heard him they would think it one of their own number. He walked on, but suddenly found himself standing face to face with a dozen soldiers.
"Well, Jim, are there any Yankees down there?" one asked.
"The sentinel thought he saw a Yankee, but I reckon he fired at a stump," said Paul, passing boldly by them to their rear.
He now saw that he was in a Rebel camp. There were smouldering fires, tents, a cannon, baggage-wagons, and horses which were munching their grain. What should he do? He felt that he was in a critical situation. If taken, he would be hung as a spy. He stood still and reflected a moment, to calm his nerves. He had blundered in, perhaps he might get out. He would try; but as he was there, ought he not to improve the opportunity to find out all about the camp, how large it was, how many men there were? He counted the baggage-wagons and the tents. He almost stumbled over a man who was wrapped in his blanket. It was an officer sound asleep, with his sword by his side. He was sleeping so deeply that Paul ventured to take the sword, for he thought, unless he carried something back as evidence, his report would not be believed. And then he crept back past the grand guard, and past the sentinels, sometimes crawling an inch at a time, then stepping as noiselessly as a cat in search of her prey, till he was past them all. He was surprised to find how cool and self-possessed he was, how clear his brain, and how wide awake were all his faculties. He was as light-hearted as a bird in spring-time, for even in the darkness, while he was dimly discerning what was around him, he saw Azalia, as he last beheld her in the gravelled walk before her home, waving him on! At daybreak he reached the lines once more. The Colonel heard his story, and was in doubt about its truth; but when he saw how accurate a map Paul drew, and that the sword was marked C. S. A., for the Confederate States of America,--when he saw how modest and straightforward Paul was in all that he did,--he said, "Sergeant Parker, I shall inform General Grant that you have done your duty faithfully."
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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11
|
SCOUTING.
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"Sergeant Parker is hereby ordered to report immediately at General Grant's Headquarters," was the order which Paul received the next morning. He wondered what General Grant could want of him. He entered the General's tent, and saw a short, thick-set, middle-aged man with sandy whiskers, sitting at a table, reading letters and smoking a cigar. He was dressed in a plain blue blouse, and as he had no straps on his shoulders, Paul thought he was the General's orderly.
"Is General Grant about?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," said the man, looking up pleasantly.
"I should like to see him," said Paul.
"I am General Grant."
Paul was astonished to find a general so affable and pleasant, for he had seen some lieutenants and captains strut like turkey-cocks, because they wore straps on their shoulders. Paul saluted the General, and said, "I am ordered to report to you, sir."
"O yes; you are Sergeant Parker, who made a reconnoissance last night; sit down, Sergeant, till I finish my letters." It was spoken so pleasantly and kindly, that Paul said to himself, "He is a gentleman."
When the General had finished his letters he lighted another cigar, and questioned Paul about his adventures; how far it was to the Rebel camp, and how the camp was situated.
"I will give you a sketch of the place," said Paul; and, sitting up to the table, he drew a map, putting down the creeks, the roads, the woods, the distances from point to point, the place where he came upon the pickets, the position of the tents, and all the objects he saw. The General sat in silence, smoking, and looking at Paul with a keen eye. It was drawn neatly and quickly, and with an accuracy which surprised the General. Paul had kept count of his steps from one object to another. By looking up to the stars he had kept the points of the compass, and knew whether he travelled south, or southeast, or southwest, and so he was able to draw an excellent map.
"Where did you study topographical engineering?" the General asked.
"By the kitchen fire," Paul replied.
"A good college to graduate from, especially if a fellow has grit," said the General, smiling. "Are you willing to undertake a hazardous enterprise?" he asked.
"I am willing to undertake anything for my country," Paul replied.
The General then told him that he wished to obtain information about Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. He showed him the positions on a map, and said it was an undertaking of great importance, and which might cost him his life. "I will give you a trustworthy companion," said he.
"I would rather attempt it alone, if you please. Two is one too many; it doubles our risk. If discovered by the Rebels, I couldn't help my comrade, neither could he help me. If we keep together, we shall have the same information. I think I shall succeed better alone," said Paul.
"You are right," said the General, who told him that he might prepare for the trip, and that he would be sent up the Tennessee River on a gunboat, and put on shore a few miles from Fort Henry, and that he must return in ten days. "I hear a good report of you, and have confidence in you. I desire accurate information; for if it is not accurate, it may lead to very disastrous results," said the General.
Two nights later, Paul stood alone on the bank of the Tennessee. The gunboat which had brought him was going back. He could hear the plashing of her wheels growing fainter each moment. He was in the enemy's country, on an undertaking which might cost him his life. If discovered, he would be hung. For an instant his heart failed him, and he felt that he must turn back; then he remembered that he had enlisted in the service of his country, to do his duty, whatever it might be. His duty was before him. He was upon the ground. Would not God take care of him? Was not the path of duty, although it might lead to death, the only path of safety? There are times when duty is worth more than life. "Whatever is right before the Eternal God, that I will do," said Paul to himself. His fear was gone. He resolved to be bold, yet cautious, and to keep his thoughts perfectly collected under all circumstances. He had succeeded in one reconnoissance, which made him hopeful; but he reflected that success often makes men careless, so he resolved to be always on his guard. He had changed his uniform for a pair of old butternut-colored pantaloons, a ragged coat, and a slouched hat which had a hole in the crown. He hardly recognized himself he was so altered in appearance. He wondered if Azalia or Daphne would know him. He had no weapon or equipments. There was nothing about him which indicated that he was a soldier of the Union army ready to lay down his life for the old flag.
He walked cautiously along the winding path, noticing all the objects; looking up to the north star at every turn of the road, keeping tally of his steps that he might know the distance travelled. He walked stealthily, expecting every moment to hear the challenge of the Rebel pickets. He was startled by the cry, "Who! Who! Who!" He came to a sudden halt, and then laughed to think that he had been challenged by an owl.
In the morning he came upon a party of men cutting wood, and found that they were Rebel soldiers outside of the picket line. Paul took an axe and went to work, and so became one of them. When they went into camp he accompanied them, carrying the axe on his shoulder, thus passing the picket as a wood-chopper. He found three or four thousand soldiers at Fort Henry, hard at work, throwing up breastworks, digging ditches, hewing timber, mounting guns. He worked with them, but kept his eyes and ears open, noticing the position of the fort on the bank of the river, and how many guns there were. He found out what troops were there, where they came from, and who commanded them. He learned that a wagon-train was going to Fort Donelson after ammunition. He joined it and passed the picket as one of the train guards. As the wagons were empty, he had a chance to ride, and thus saved a weary walk of twelve miles.
The little town of Dover, which is near Fort Donelson, he found alive with troops; regiments were arriving from Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Tennessee. General Pillow was there in command. He was once an officer in the army of the United States and fought in Mexico. General Floyd was there with a brigade of Virginians. He was Secretary of War when Buchanan was President, and did what he could to destroy the Union. He was a thief as well as a Rebel. He was a large, coarse man. Paul despised him, and could hardly restrain himself from knocking the villain from his horse when he saw him ride by wearing the uniform of a traitor. There was not much discipline in the Rebel army, and Paul found little difficulty in going through all the camps, ascertaining what regiments were there. It nettled him to hear the boasts of the soldiers that one Southerner could whip five Yankees, but he said nothing for fear of betraying himself. He obtained food at a sutler's tent. He was very tired and sleepy when the second night came, but he found a place to sleep at a house in the village.
"What regiment do you belong to?" asked a girl with a sallow countenance and grimy hands.
"I am a scout," said Paul.
"Be you a scout? Wal, I hope you will run across Old Abe Linkum. If you do, jest take his _skelp_ for me." (She meant his scalp.)
"Wal, if I _cotch_ him, I reckon I'll _skelp_ him," said Paul, flourishing his knife, as if he was ready for such bloody work.
"The Yanks are a set of vagabonds; they are the meanest critters on airth," said the woman. "They'll hang you if they cotch you."
"I reckon I won't let 'em cotch me," said Paul.
"Where be you gwine next?"
"Down to Cairo, I reckon; though I go wherever the General sends me."
"May be you would do a little chore for me,--get me some pins, needles, and thread?"
"It is mighty skittish business, but I'll see what I can do," said Paul.
Having obtained his information, his next business was to get away. He waited till the lights were put out in the camps at night, then, walking down to the river he found a small boat, jumped in and pushed out into the stream. He could see the sentinels on the parapet of the fort as he floated past, but they did not discover him. Paul congratulated himself that he was beyond the picket line when he heard a hail from both shores at the same time. "Boat ahoy!" He made no reply. "Boat ahoy! come ashore or I'll fire," said both sentinels. He saw that he could not escape by rowing. They would fire if he attempted to go ahead or turn back. If he went ashore, he would be taken to the guard-house, questioned, probably put into prison, perhaps tried as a spy. He resolved that he wouldn't go ashore. There was no time for deliberation. It was mid-winter; the air was keen, and there was floating ice in the river. If he remained in the boat he might be shot, so he lowered himself noiselessly into the water. How cold it was! He felt the chill strike through him, setting his teeth to chattering, and his limbs quivering. There was another hail, and then a flash on both shores. The balls went through the boat. He heard the stroke of oars, and saw a boat pushing out from the shore. He darted ahead, swimming noiselessly down stream, gradually nearing the shore, for his strength was failing. He heard the men in the boat say, "We are fooled, it is only an empty dug-out."
How hard it was to climb the bank! He could not stand, he was so chilled. Once he rose to his feet, but tumbled like a log to the ground. He wanted to go to sleep, but he knew it would be his last sleep if he yielded. He drained the water from his boots, rubbed his legs, thrashed his hands, and then went reeling and blundering in the darkness over fallen trees. What a wearisome, cheerless night it was! How he longed for a fire,--a cup of warm coffee,--a comfortable bed! He thought of his own bed in the little old house at New Hope, and wished that he might lie there once more, and snuggle down beneath the warm comforters. His clothes were frozen, and notwithstanding he beat his hands till the blood dripped from his fingers, he could get up no warmth. "Halt! Who comes there?" was the sharp challenge which startled him from his dreaming. He was close upon a picket. He turned in an instant, and began to run. He heard footsteps following. The thought that he was pursued roused all his energies. The footsteps came nearer. Putting forth all his strength, holding his breath, Paul went on, stumbling, rising again, leaping, hearing the footsteps of his pursuer coming nearer; suddenly he came to a deep, narrow creek. He did not hesitate an instant, but plunged in, swam to the other bank, gained the solid ground, and dropped behind a tree just as his pursuer reached the creek. The Rebel stopped and listened, but Paul remained perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe, till he heard the fellow go back muttering to himself and cursing the creek. The running had warmed Paul, but he was exhausted and drenched once more. Daybreak came, and he did not dare to travel; so, finding some stacks of corn in a field, he tore one of them open, made a bed inside, drew the bundles over him, shivered awhile, and then dropped asleep.
He awoke suddenly to find his house tumbling to pieces,--torn down by Rebel soldiers.
"Hello! What's here? Who be ye? What are ye up to?" said a sergeant, startled to find a man under the bundles. "Deserter, eh? or a spy, I reckon," said the fellow, holding a pistol to Paul's head.
"Better put up your shooting-irons," said Paul coolly.
"Give an account of yourself, how ye came here, _whar_ ye have been, and _whar_ ye gwine."
Paul noticed that he said _whar_ for where, and replied, "I am a scout, and have been down by the river _whar_ the Yankee gunboats is."
"I don't believe it; you look like a scarecrow, but I reckon you are a Yankee spy," said the Sergeant. He searched Paul, but found nothing. He was commanding a cavalry foraging-party, and was a brutal, ignorant fellow, and had been drinking whiskey, and wanted to show that he had power. "Boys, bring a halter; I reckon I'll make this fellow confess that he is a Yankee."
A soldier brought a rope; one end was thrown over the limb of a tree, and the other made into a slip-noose, and put round his neck; but he did not flinch. To confess that he was a spy was sure death. He was calm. For a moment his thoughts went back to his home. He thought of his mother and Azalia; but there was little time for such reflection. He did not feel that his work was done. "Wal, Sergeant, what be you gwine to do?" he asked.
"Hang you as a spy," said the Sergeant.
"What sort of a report will you make to the General? What do ye think he will do to you when he finds that you have hung one of his scouts?" Paul asked.
"See here, Sergeant, I reckon your are a leetle too fast in this matter," said one of the soldiers.
Paul saw that the time had come for a bold course on his part. He had already ascertained what regiment of cavalry they belonged to. He had seen their Colonel at Dover. "What do you suppose Colonel Forrest will say, when he hears of this proceeding of yours?" he asked.
The Sergeant started at the mention of the name of his commander, and began to see the proceeding in a new light. Paul threw the noose from his neck and said, in a tone of authority: "I will report you, sir. I will have you arrested. I'll teach you to do your duty better than this. I am an officer. I know General Pillow, General Floyd, General Buckner, and Colonel Forrest. I am out on important business. You found me asleep, and instead of taking me to your superior officer, as you ought to have done, you proceed to hang me. You are drunk, sir, and I'll have you punished."
The Sergeant was very much frightened. He saw how noble a countenance Paul had, and felt his tone of authority. "I didn't mean any harm, sir; I wanted to do my duty," said the Sergeant, taking off his hat, and holding down his head.
"Because you are a sergeant, you wanted to show your authority," said Paul. "Now go about your business, all of you, and when I get to General Pillow's head-quarters I will see to your case."
The soldiers who had gathered round started off at once to their work, while Paul walked towards Fort Donelson. He had gone but a few steps, when the Sergeant followed him, and, taking off his hat, said, "Please, Colonel, don't be too hard on me, I won't do so again."
"It will be my duty to report you; but if you will promise to be more careful in the future I will tell the General when I make my report not to be too hard," said Paul.
"I'll be more _keerful_ next time, and won't get drunk again, Colonel, never."
"Very well," said Paul, walking on till he reached a piece of woods; then, turning from the path, he made his way towards the river again, wondering at his escape. He had a long walk through the woods, but when he reached the gunboats lying in the stream, how his heart leaped for joy!
He kept all he had seen so well in memory, that when he reached Cairo he was able to draw an accurate plan of the forts and country around them.
General Grant listened to his story with great interest, and when Paul had finished said, "You have performed your work acceptably; you understand topography; I wish to keep you at my head-quarters, and therefore appoint you a Lieutenant of Engineers."
It was so unexpected a promotion, and such an expression of confidence, that Paul was very much confused, and could only say, while blushing very red, "I thank you, sir."
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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12
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MISSED FROM HOME.
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How lonesome it was in New Hope through all these days! Everybody missed Paul. He was missed by the school-children, for the teacher who succeeded him was cross and harsh, while Paul was always kind and pleasant. He was missed by the congregation on Sunday, for although Hans did his best as leader of the choir, he could not fill Paul's place. He was missed by his mother, who, through the long, wearisome days and lonely nights, thought only of him, her pride, her joy, her hope. How good Azalia was to visit the Post-office every morning to get the letters which Paul wrote to his mother, often finding one for herself! How pleasant to read what he wrote of life in camp! How thrilling the narrative of his adventures, his visit to the forts, his narrow escapes! As she read it, her heart stood still while the letter was wet with tears. What if the rebels had hung him! It was terrible to think of. What could she do to comfort him? How help him,--how relieve his sufferings and hardships? She would knit him a pair of gloves and stockings. But his comrades needed them as well as he. Why not ask Daphne to help? Why not ask all the girls to do something? So she thought the matter over through the long winter nights, planning a soldiers' sewing and knitting society.
Pleasant gatherings they had in the vestry of the church on Wednesday afternoons working for the soldiers. Azalia's cheeks were flushed with rare beauty when she read Paul's letters to them with trembling voice. There were many moist eyes, for all felt that, if he and his comrades were undergoing such hardships and dangers for them, that they might have a home and a united country, they ought to do all they could in return; and so, while knitting stockings for the soldiers, their hearts were knit in deeper love and devotion to their country.
But they had something besides Paul's adventures to talk about; for one Monday morning when Mr. Bond, the town treasurer, opened his office, he found that it had been entered by robbers, who had stolen all the money,--several thousand dollars. It was soon discovered that Philip Funk was missing. The sheriffs and constables set themselves to hunt him up. They got upon his track, followed him to the Ohio River, and across into Kentucky; but he was too swift for them, and succeeded in getting into the Rebel lines with the stolen money. Notwithstanding he was a robber, his sister Fanny held her head as high as ever. She did not attend the soldiers' aid society. She hoped that the South would succeed in establishing its independence, and was glad that Philip had gone to help the Southern soldiers. "I hope he will come across Paul," said Fanny to Daphne Dare one day.
"So do I, and I hope that Paul will shoot him," said Daphne, with flashing eyes. She had the spirit of her father, and added, "He is a traitor and a robber, and I hope somebody will shoot him."
Fanny spit at the flag which hung over the street every time she passed it, to show her hatred of it. Daphne was very indignant, and proposed to her associates that they should compel Fanny to wave the stars and stripes; but Azalia said it would be a severer punishment to take no notice of her. "We might make her wave the flag, but that would not make her love it, and such forced loyalty would be of no value."
So, acting upon Azalia's advice, all of the girls passed her by, taking no notice of her on the street, at the Post-office, or in church, not recognizing her by word or look. Fanny bore it awhile with a brazen face, but soon found it hard to have no one to speak to. The great want of the human heart in time of trouble is sympathy. Our wills may bear us up awhile, but sooner or later we must unburden our feelings, or feel the burning of a slow consuming fire, destroying all our peace and happiness. The days were cheerless to Fanny. If she walked out upon the street, she saw only the averted faces of her former friends. They would not speak to her, and if she addressed them they turned away without answering,--avoiding her as if she was infected with the plague. When the cold northeast storms came, when the clouds hung low upon the hills, when the wind howled in the woods, when the rain pattered upon the withered leaves, how lonesome the hours! She was haughty and self-willed, friendless and alone; but instead of becoming loyal and behaving like a good, sensible girl, she nursed her pride; and comforted herself by thinking that her great-grandfather Funk was a fine old Virginian gentleman. If a still, small voice whispered that it was mean and wicked in Philip to take money which did not belong to him, she quieted her conscience by the reflection that it was right for the Rebels to do all the damage they could to their enemies in securing their independence. When the storm was loudest, she rejoiced in the hope that some of the Yankee ships would be wrecked, or that the Mississippi River would overflow its bank and drown the Yankee regiments in their camps.
Not so did Azalia listen to the storm. When the great drops rattled upon the roof and dashed against the windows, she thought of Paul and his comrades as rushing into battle amid volleys of musketry; the mournful sighing of the wind was like the wailing of the wounded. She thought of him as marching wearily and alone through the dismal forest to perform deeds of daring; she thought of him as keeping watch through the stormy nights, cold, wet, hungry, and weary; not for glory, or fame, or hope of reward, but because it was his duty. And these were not sad hours to her.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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13
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THE MARCH.
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On Wednesday, the 12th of February, 1862, Paul found himself once more upon the road leading from Fort Henry to Fort Donelson, not now alone, but guiding an army of fifteen thousand men, with forty pieces of artillery. He was on horseback, and sat so well in the saddle that the cavalry-men said he rode like an old trooper. He was in uniform, and wore straps on his shoulders, and was armed with a sword and a revolver. He rode in advance of all, looking sharply into the thickets and down the ravines, to see if there were any Rebels in ambush.
The sharpshooters followed him. They wore gray jackets and skull-caps, and were armed with rifles and long hunting-knives. They were famous hunters, and could shoot a deer upon the run, or bring down a prairie-chicken upon the wing. They were tough, hearty, jolly, courageous, daring fellows. They were in good spirits, for the rebels had fled in dismay from Fort Henry when the gunboats sent their shells into the fort.
It was a hard march, for the roads were muddy, and they were obliged to wade through creeks although it was mid-winter. Paul noticed one brave fellow among them, whose feet were so sore that his steps were marked with blood, which oozed from a hole in the side of his shoe, and yet the man kept his place in the ranks.
"Let me carry your gun," said Paul, and so, taking it across his saddle, helped the soldier. "You ought to be in the hospital," said Paul.
"I can't stay behind if there is to be any fighting," said the soldier, thanking Paul for his kindness; and then, in a low tone, the soldier said to his comrade, "There a'n't many officers like him who will help a fellow."
At sunset the army halted in the woods beside a brook. Tents had been left behind, and the soldiers had no shelter from the wintry air. They cut down great trees and kindled huge fires. The farmers in that part of the country had large herds of pigs, which roamed the woods and lived on nuts. The soldiers had lived on salt meats for many months, and, notwithstanding orders had been issued against committing depredations, they were determined to have a good supper. Crack! crack! crack! went their rifles. Some, instead of shooting, tried to catch the pigs. There were exciting chases, and laughable scenes,--a dozen men after one pig, trying to seize him by the ears, or by the hind legs, or by the tail.
They had a charming time, sitting around the roaring fires, inhaling the savory odors of the steaks and spareribs broiling and roasting over the glowing coals on forked sticks, and of the coffee bubbling in their tin cups. The foot-sore sharpshooter whom Paul had helped on the march cooked a choice and tender piece, and presented it to Paul on a chip, for they had no plates. It was cooked so nicely that Paul thought he had never tasted a more delicious morsel.
In the morning they had an excellent breakfast, and then resumed the march, moving slowly and cautiously through the woods, but finding no enemy till they came in sight of Fort Donelson.
Paul had guided the army to the fort, but now he had other duties to perform. He was required to make a sketch of the ground around the fort, that General Grant might know where to form his lines,--on what hills to plant his cannon,--where to throw up breastworks for defence, should the rebels see fit to come out and attack him. Leaving his horse behind, Paul began his dangerous but important work on foot, that he might make an accurate map,--examining through his field-glass the breastworks of the rebels, counting their cannon, and beholding them hard at work. When night came he crept almost up to their lines. He was between the two armies,--a dangerous position, for the pickets on both sides were wide awake, and his own comrades might fire upon him before he could give the countersign. Although he stepped lightly, the sticks sometimes crackled beneath his feet.
"Halt! Who goes there?" shouted a Rebel picket directly in front of him. It was so sudden, and he was so near, that Paul's hair stood on end. He darted behind a tree. Click! flash! bang! and a bullet came with a heavy _thug_ into the tree. Bang! went another gun,--another,--and another; and the pickets all along the rebel lines, thinking that the Yankees were coming, blazed away at random. The Yankee pickets, thinking that the rebels were advancing, became uneasy and fired in return. Paul could hear the bullets spin through the air and strike into the trees. His first thought was to get back to his comrades as soon as possible; then he reflected that it would be dangerous to attempt it just then. The firing woke up all the sleepers in the two armies. The drums were beating the long roll, the bugles were sounding, and he could hear the Rebel officers shouting to the men, "Fall in! fall in!" He laughed to think that the crackling of a stick had produced all this uproar. He wanted very much to join in the fun, and give the Rebel picket who had fired at him a return shot, but his orders were not to fire even if fired upon, for General Grant was not ready for a battle, and so, while the Rebels were reloading their guns, he glided noiselessly away. When he heard the bullets singing he expected to be hit; but as he was less than six feet high and only eighteen inches across his shoulders, and as it was dark and the soldiers were firing at random, he calculated that there was not one chance in a million of his being injured, and so through the night he went on with his reconnoissance along the lines, and completed the work assigned him.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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14
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THE BATTLE.
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In the morning he found General Grant in a little old farm-house, where he had established his head-quarters. He appeared to be pleased with the map which Paul made of the ground, and said to Major Cavender, who commanded the regiment of Missouri Artillery, "Place your guns on that hill, and be ready to open upon the fort." He issued orders to General McClernand to go round to the southwest side of the town; to General Wallace, to hold the centre of the line, west of the town; and to General Smith, to be ready to storm the fort on the northwest side.
It was a beautiful morning. The air was mild, and the birds sang in the trees though it was mid-winter. The sharpshooters ate their breakfast before sunrise, and began the battle by exchanging shots with the Rebel pickets. Though Paul had been up all night, there was no time for rest. He was sent with orders to the artillery officers,--to Captain Taylor, Captain Dresser, and Captain Schwartz, telling them where to place their guns. As he rode over the hills and through the ravines, he passed the sharpshooters. Their rifles were cracking merrily. Among them was the soldier whom Paul had helped on the march. The soldier saluted him. Paul saw that he was not only foot-sore, but also sick.
"You are not fit to go into battle; you ought to report to the surgeon," said Paul.
"I wouldn't miss of being in this scrimmage that we are going to have to-day for the best farm in Illinois," said the soldier.
Just then, the rebel cannon opened, and the shells came crashing through the front. Major Cavender had wheeled his guns into position, and was sighting them. One of the shells struck at his feet, and ploughed a deep furrow in the ground. Another struck a poor fellow in the breast, whirled him into the air, spattering his blood upon those who stood around, killing him instantly. As Paul beheld the quivering flesh, the sight filled him with horror, and made him sick at heart. Such might be his fate before the day was done. He thought of home,--of his mother, of Azalia, and of the dear friends far away. He thought also of God, and the hereafter; but remembered that he was in the keeping of his Heavenly Father. He was there to do his duty, and if he was to meet with death, would meet it resolutely; and so, regaining his composure, rode calmly along the lines, acting as aid to General Grant doing the duties assigned him.
The battle lasted through the day, but the fort was not taken. The gunboats which were to sail up the Cumberland River had not arrived, and the provisions which the troops brought from Fort Henry were nearly exhausted. The day which had been so bright and beautiful was succeeded by a dreary night. The wind blew from the northeast. A rainstorm set in, which changed to snow, and became one of the severest storms ever known in that section of the country. It was a terrible night for the wounded. They had no protection from the storm. Hundreds had fallen during the day. Some were lying where they fell, close up under the Rebel breastworks, amid the tangled thickets, the blood oozing from their wounds and staining the drifting snow. It was heart-rending to hear their wailings, and cries of distress, and calls for help. When morning came, many a brave soldier was frozen to the ground. When Paul saw the terrible suffering, he felt that he was willing to make any sacrifice to put a stop to such horrors. But then he remembered that Justice, Truth, and Righteousness are more valuable than human life, and that it is better to fight for them than to yield to injustice and wickedness.
But now the hearts of the soldiers were cheered with the news that the gunboats were coming. Paul looked down the river and saw a cloud of black smoke hanging over the forest, rising from their tall chimneys. Steamboats loaded with provisions came with the fleet. The soldiers swung their caps, and made the air ring with their lusty cheers.
What a magnificent sight it was when the gunboats steamed up the river and opened fire upon the fort, covering themselves with clouds of smoke and flame, and all of the guns in the fort replying! The storm had died away, the air was still, and the roar of the cannonade was like thunder. All along the lines the sharpshooters' rifles were ringing. The soldiers crouched behind trees and logs and hillocks, lying on their faces, picking off the Rebel gunners when they attempted to load their cannon. But the day passed and the fort was not taken. Saturday morning came, and the Rebels, finding themselves short of provisions, instead of waiting to be attacked, came out from the fort at daybreak, fifteen thousand strong, and made a sudden attack upon the Union army.
A great battle followed, which lasted nearly all day. Thousands were killed and wounded. Paul was obliged to ride all over the field, carrying orders to the different generals, while the bullets fell like hailstones around him. Cannon-balls flew past him, shells exploded over his head, men fell near him, but he was unharmed. He saw with grief his comrades overpowered and driven, and could hardly keep back the tears when he saw the Rebels capture some of Captain Schwartz's guns. But when the infantry gave way and fled panic-stricken along the road towards Fort Henry, throwing away their muskets, his indignation was aroused.
"Stop! or I'll shoot you," he said, drawing his revolver.
"A'n't you ashamed of yourselves, you cowards?" shouted one brave soldier.
Paul looked round to see who it was, and discovered his friend the sharpshooter, who thus aided him in rallying the fugitives. Blood was dripping from his fingers. A ball had passed through one arm, but he had tied his handkerchief over the wound, and was on his way back to the lines to take part once more in the battle. Paul thanked the noble fellow for helping him, and then, with the aid of other officers, they rallied the fugitives till reinforcements came.
Onward came the Rebels, flushed with success, and thinking to win a glorious victory; but they were cut down with shells and canister, and by the volleys of musketry which were poured upon them. It was with great satisfaction that Paul saw the shells tear through the Rebel ranks; not that he liked to see men killed, but because he wanted Right to triumph over Wrong. Again and again the Rebels marched up the hill, but were as often swept back by the terrible fire which burst from Captain Wood's, Captain Willard's, Captain Taylor's, and Captain Dresser's batteries. The little brook which trickled through the ravine at the foot of the hill was red with the blood of the slain. It was a fearful sight. But the Rebels at last gave up the attempt to drive the Union troops from the hill, and went back into the fort. Then in the afternoon there was a grand charge upon the Rebel breastworks. With a wild hurrah they carried the old flag across the ravine, and up the hill beyond, over fallen trees and through thick underbrush. Men dropped from the ranks in scores, but on--on--on they went, driving the Rebels, planting the stars and stripes on the works; and though the Rebel regiments in the fort rained solid shot and shell and grape and canister and musket-balls upon them, yet they held the ground through the long, weary, dreary winter night. When the dawn came, the dawn of Sunday, they saw a white flag flung out from the parapet of the fort, and they knew that the enemy had surrendered. What a cheer they gave! They swung their hats, sang songs, and danced for joy. How beautifully the stars and stripes waved in the morning breeze! How proudly they marched into the fort and into the town,--the drums beating, the bugles sounding, and the bands playing!
But how horrible the sight upon the field when the contest was over,--the dead, some cold and ghastly, others still warm with departing life, lying with their faces toward heaven, smiling as if only asleep! The ground was strewn with guns, knapsacks, and blood-stained garments; the snow had changed to crimson. Many wounded were lying where they fell, some whose lives were ebbing away calmly waiting the coming of death. As Paul walked over the field he came upon one lying with clasped hands and closed eyes, whose blood was flowing from a ghastly wound in his breast. As Paul stopped to gaze a moment upon a countenance which seemed familiar, the soldier opened his eyes and smiled; then Paul saw that it was the brave sharpshooter whom he had helped on the march, who, though sick, would not go into the hospital, though wounded, would not leave the field, and had aided him in rallying the fugitives. He had fought gallantly through the battle, and received his death-wound in the last grand charge.
"I am glad you have come, for I know that one who was kind enough to help a poor fellow on the march will be willing to do one thing more," said the soldier, faintly.
"Certainly. What can I do for you?"
"Not much, only I would like to have you overhaul my knapsack for me."
Paul unstrapped the knapsack from the soldier's back, and opened it.
"There is a picture in there which I want to look at once more before I die. You will find it in my Bible."
Paul handed him the Bible.
"My mother gave me this blessed book the day I left home to join the army. It was her last gift. I promised to read it every day, and I would like to have you write to her and tell her that I have kept my promise. Tell her that I have tried to do my duty to my country and to my God. I would like to live, but am not afraid to die, and am not sorry that I enlisted. Write to my sister. She is a sweet girl,--I can see her now,--a bright-eyed, light-hearted, joyous creature. O, how she will miss me! Tell her to plant a rose-bush in the garden and call it my rose, that little Eddie, when he grows up, may remember that his eldest brother died for his country. They live away up in Wisconsin."
He took a photograph from the Bible. It was the picture of a dark-haired, black-eyed, fair-featured girl, and he gazed upon it till the tears rolled down his cheeks. He drew his brawny hand across his face and wiped them away, but the effort started the bright blood flowing in a fresher stream. "It is hard to part from her. She promised to be my wife when I came home from the war," he said, and touched it to his lips, then gazed again till his sight grew dim. He laid it with the Bible on his breast.
Paul wiped the cold sweat from the soldier's brow.
"God bless you," he whispered, and looked up and smiled. His eyes closed, and the slowly heaving heart stood still. He was gone to the land where the Faithful and True receive their just reward.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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15
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SHOWING WHAT HE WAS MADE OF.
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There came a Sabbath morning,--one of the loveliest of all the year. The sun rose upon a cloudless sky, the air was laden with the fragrance of locust and alder blossoms, the oaks of the forest were changing from the gray of winter to the green of summer. Beneath their wide-spread branches were the tents of a great army; for after the capture of Fort Donelson the troops sailed up the Tennessee, and were preparing to attack the Rebels at Corinth.
Paul was lying in his tent, thinking of home, of the calmness and stillness there, broken only by the chirping of the sparrows and robins, the church-bell, the choir, and the low voices of the congregation. How different from what was passing around him, where the drummers were beating the reveille! He was startled from his waking dream by a sudden firing out among the pickets. What could it mean? It grew more furious. There was confusion. He sprang to his feet and looked out to see what was the matter. Soldiers were running through the camp.
"What is the row?" he asked.
"The Rebels are attacking us."
It did not take him long to dress; but, while pulling on his boots, a bullet tore through the tent-cloth over his head.
The camp was astir. Officers shouted, "Fall in!" Soldiers, waking from sound sleep, buckled on their cartridge-boxes, seized their guns, and took their places in the ranks before they were fairly awake. The drummers beat the long-roll, the buglers sounded the signal for saddling horses, the artillery-men got their guns ready, cavalry-men leaped into their saddles, baggage-wagons went thundering towards the river. There was a volley of musketry, and then a deeper roar from the artillery, and the terrible contest of the day began, which became more terrific from morning till noon, from noon till night, with deafening rolls of musketry, with the roaring of a hundred cannon, with the yelling of the Rebels and the cheering of the soldiers of the Union, as the tempest surged through the forest, up and down the ravines, around Shiloh church, in the old cotton-fields, up to the spring where the country people were accustomed to eat their Sunday dinners, down to the Tennessee River, where the gunboats were waiting for the hour when they could open with their great guns.
Paul was in the storm, riding through the leaden hail which fell all around him, pattering upon the dead leaves, cutting down the twigs of the hazel-bushes, and scarring the trees,--riding along the lines carrying messages to General Sherman, who was fighting like a tiger by the church, with the bullets piercing his clothes,--to McClernand, who was near by,--to Wallace, to Prentice, to Hurlburt, to Stuart,--riding where shells were bursting, where solid shot cut off great branches from the trees, splintered the trunks, ploughed the ground, whirled men and horses into the air, tearing them limb from limb, and then passed away with weird howlings. He breathed the thick smoke as it belched from the cannon's mouth, and felt the hot flashes on his face. He stood beside his commander, General Grant, while waiting for orders, and beheld him when tidings of disaster were brought in,--that General Prentice and hundreds of his men were captured,--that the line was broken, and the men were falling back. He could hear the triumphant shouts of the Rebels.
Yet amid it all he saw that General Grant was cool and collected. "We will whip them yet," he said. Paul felt stronger after that, and resolved to die rather than be beaten. But how slowly dragged the hours! The sun seemed to stand still in the western sky. How hard to see the poor wounded men, thousands of them, borne to the rear, their feet crushed, their legs broken, their arms torn and mangled, and to know that there were other thousands lying upon the ground where they had fallen, and the strife still going on around them! Other thousands who were not wounded were leaving the ranks, exhausted and disheartened.
"Lieutenant Parker, you will select a line along this ravine, throw up such defences as you can, bring up those thirty-two pounders from the river, and put them in position. They can't cross this. We will beat them here," said General Grant.
Sometimes in battle minutes are of priceless value; momentous decisions must be made at once. Then men show what they are made of. Those are the trial moments of life. Paul galloped along the ravine. He saw that it was wide and deep, and that, if the Rebels could be kept from crossing it, the battle would be won; for it was their object to reach the steamboat-landing, where General Grant had all his supplies of food. There were five great iron cannon at the landing. There, also, crouching under the river-bank, to avoid the shot and shell, were thousands of fugitives, who had become disheartened, and who had left their comrades to be overpowered and driven back. He saw the situation of affairs in an instant. His brain was clear. He made up his mind instantly what to do.
"Here, you--men!" he shouted. "Each of you shoulder one of those empty pork-barrels, and carry it up the bluff." But not a man stirred. His indignation was aroused; but he knew that it was not a time for argument. He drew his revolver, pointed it at a group, and said, "Start! or I'll shoot you." It was spoken so resolutely that they obeyed. He told them how, if they could hold that position, the Rebels would be defeated,--how a few minutes of resolute work would save the army. He saw their courage revive. They dug a trench, cut down trees, rolled up logs, filled the barrels with dirt, and worked like beavers. Others wheeled up the great guns, and Paul put them into position. Others brought shot and shell, and laid them in piles beside the guns. The storm was coming nearer. The lines were giving way. Regiments with broken ranks came straggling down the road.
"Bring all the batteries into position along the ravine," said General Grant. Away flew half a dozen officers with the orders, and the batteries, one after another, came thundering down the road,--the horses leaping, the artillery-men blackened and begrimed, yet ready for another fight.
"Get anybody you can to work the thirty-twos," said Colonel Webster, the chief of artillery, to Paul.
"I can sight a cannon," said a surgeon, who was dressing wounds in the hospital. He laid down his bandages, went up and patted one of the guns, as if it were an old friend, ran his eye along the sights, and told the gunners what to do.
It was sunset. All day long the battle had raged, and the Union troops had been driven. The Rebels were ready for their last grand charge, which they hoped would give them the victory. Onward they came down the steep bank opposite, into the ravine. The Union batteries were ready for them,--Captain Silversparre with his twenty-pounders, Captain Richardson and Captain Russell with their howitzers, Captain Stone with his ten-pounders, Captain Taylor, Captain Dresser, Captain Willard, and Lieutenant Edwards,--sixty or more cannon in all. A gunner was lacking for one of the great iron thirty-twos. Paul sprang from his horse, and took command of the piece.
The long lines of the Rebels came into view. "Bang! bang! bang! bang!" went the guns. Then half a dozen crashed at once,--the great thirty-twos thundering heavier than all the others. Shells, solid shot, and canister tore through the ravine, rolling back the Rebel lines, drenching the hillsides with blood, turning the brook to crimson, and the fresh young leaves to scarlet. O the wild commotion,--the jarring of the earth, the deep reverberations rolling far away, and the shouts of the cannoneers!
"Give them canister!" shouted Paul to the cannoneers, and the terrible missiles went screaming down the ravine. The bullets were falling around him, singing in his ears, but he heeded them not. But O how painful it was to see a brother officer torn to pieces by his side! Then how glorious to behold, through the rifts in the battle-cloud, that the Rebels were flying in confusion through the woods. Then there came a cheer. General Nelson had arrived with reinforcements, and Buell's whole army was near. The thirty-two-pounders, the howitzers, and the batteries had saved the day, and the victory was won. And now, as night came on, the gunboats joined, throwing eleven-inch shells into the woods among the Rebel troops, which added discomfiture to defeat. And when the uproar, the noise, and the confusion had died away, how good to thank God for the victory, and for the preservation of his life! How gratifying to receive the thanks of his commander on the field,--to be mentioned as one who had done his duty faithfully, and who was deserving of promotion!
After the battle he was made a captain, and had greater responsibilities resting upon him. He was called upon to take long rides, with the cavalry, on expeditions into the enemy's country. Sometimes he found himself alone in the dark woods of Mississippi, threading the narrow paths, swimming rivers, wading creeks, plunging into swamps,--at other times, with his comrades, sweeping like a whirlwind through the Southern towns, in pursuit of the retreating foe, riding day and night, often without food, but occasionally having a nice supper of roast chicken cooked by the bivouac-fire in the forest. Sometimes he spread his blanket beneath the grand old trees, and had a rest for the night; and often, when pursued by the enemy, when there was no time to stop and rest, he slept in his saddle, and dreamed of home. So he spent the months which followed that terrible battle, obtaining information which was of inestimable value. Thus he served his country,--at Corinth, at Memphis, and at Vicksburg, where, through the long, hot, weary, sickly months, the brave soldiers toiled, building roads, cutting trenches, digging ditches, excavating canals, clearing forests, erecting batteries, working in mud and water, fighting on the Yazoo, and at last, under their great leader, sweeping down the west side of the Mississippi, crossing the river, defeating the enemy in all the battles which followed, then closing in upon the town and capturing it, after months of hardship and suffering. How hard this work! how laborious, and wearing, and dangerous!
Paul found little time to rest. It was his duty to lay out the work for the soldiers, to say where the breastworks should be thrown up, where the guns should be placed in position. In the dark nights he went out beyond the picket-lines and examined the hills and ravines, while the bullets of the Rebel sharpshooters were flying about his ears, and in the daytime he was riding along the lines while the great guns were bellowing, to see if they were in the best position, and were doing their proper work. At length there came a morning when the Rebels raised a white flag, and Vicksburg surrendered. It was the glorious reward for all their hardship, toil, suffering, and endurance. How proudly the soldiers marched into the city, with drums beating, bands playing, and all their banners waving! It was the Fourth of July, the most joyful day of all the year. There were glad hearts all over the land,--ringing of bells and firing of cannon, songs of praise and thanksgivings; for not only at Vicksburg, but at Gettysburg, the soldiers of the Union had won a great victory.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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16
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HONOR TO THE BRAVE.
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Paul's mother lived alone, and yet she was not without company; for the bees and the humming-birds buzzing among the flowers, the old clock ticking steadily, the cat purring in the sunshine, were her constant friends through the long summer days. And every morning Azalia came in and read the news. Pleasant the sound of her approaching step! Ever welcome her appearance! Winsome her smile! How beautiful upon her cheek the deepening bloom of a guileless heart!
"Good news!" she exclaimed one morning, as she entered, with glowing countenance and sparkling eyes, tossing aside her hat.
"What is it, dear?" Mrs. Parker asked.
Azalia replied by opening a newspaper, and reading that "Captain Paul Parker, who had been acting as major, was promoted to be a colonel for meritorious and distinguished services at Vicksburg."
"I am glad he has served his country so faithfully," said Mrs Parker, pleased and gratified, and proud of her son.
"Who knows but that he may be a general yet?" said Azalia, triumphantly. "We are going to have a jubilee this afternoon over the victories," she added. She could stop no longer, for she was to take part in the jubilee with Daphne, and hastened away to prepare for the occasion.
All New Hope turned out to rejoice over the glorious news. Farmers came with their wagons loaded with things for the soldiers,--bottles of wine, jars of jellies and preserves, for there were thousands of wounded in the hospitals. Those who could not contribute such things were ready to give money, for their hearts were overflowing with gratitude. Old men came, leaning on their staves or supported by their children, with the fires of youth rekindling in their souls. Mothers were there, for they had sons in the service. Paul was not the only soldier who had gone from New Hope. A score had enlisted. Old folks, young folks, all the people of the place were there, in the old church.
The evening train came thundering along the railroad, stopping long enough to leave Paul, who had unexpectedly been ordered to duty in Tennessee with General Rosecrans. He was granted a week's leave of absence. There was no one at the depot. He wondered at the silence in the streets. Houses and stores and shops were all closed. He passed up the hill to his old home; but his mother was not there, and the door was fast. The cat was lying upon the step, and purred him a welcome. The bees were humming over the flower-beds, and the swallows twittered merrily upon the roof of the house. The remembrance of his boyhood came back, and he was a child again amid the flowers.
He noticed that the people were around the church, and passed on to see what had called them together.
"Why, that is Paul Parker, as true as I am alive!" said Mr. Chrome, as he approached the church.
The little boys caught it up, and cried, "Paul has come! Paul has come!" and looked wonderingly at his blue uniform, and the eagle on his shoulders. It was buzzed through the church that he had come. Judge Adams, who was on the platform, and who was chairman of the meeting, said: "It gives me great pleasure to announce the arrival of our esteemed fellow-citizen, Colonel Parker, who has so nobly distinguished himself in the service of our country."
"Three cheers for Colonel Parker!" shouted Mr. Chrome, and the people, glad to see him, and brimming over with joy for the victories, sprang to their feet and hurrahed and stamped till the windows rattled. Judge Adams welcomed him to the platform, and Father Surplice, Colonel Dare, and Esquire Capias rose and shook hands with him. Esquire Capias was making a speech when Paul entered; but he left off suddenly, saying: "I know that you want to hear from Colonel Parker, and it will give me greater pleasure to listen to him than to talk myself."
Then there were cries for Paul.
"It is not necessary for me to introduce Colonel Parker on this occasion," said Judge Adams. "He is our fellow-citizen; this is his home. He has honored himself and us. We have been trying to be eloquent over the great victories; but the eloquence of speech is very poor when compared with the eloquence of action." Then turning to Paul, he said: "What you and your comrades have done, Sir, will be remembered through all coming time."
"We tried to do our duty, and God gave us the victory," said Paul. He stood before them taller and stouter than when he went away. He was sunburnt; but his countenance was noble and manly, and marked with self-reliance. He never had made a speech. He did not know what to say. To stand there facing the audience, with his mother, Azalia, Daphne, and all his old friends before him, was very embarrassing. It was worse than meeting the Rebels in battle. But why should he be afraid? They were all his friends, and would respect him if he did the best he could. He would not try to be eloquent. He would simply tell them the story of the battles; how the soldiers had marched, and toiled, and fought,--not for glory, honor, or fame, but because they were true patriots; how he had seen them resign themselves to death as calmly as to a night's repose, thinking and talking of friends far away, of father, mother, brothers and sisters, their pleasant homes, and the dear old scenes, yet never uttering a regret that they had enlisted to save their country.
There were moist eyes when he said that; but when he told them of the charge at Fort Donelson,--how the troops marched through the snow in long, unbroken lines, and with a hurrah went up the hill, over fallen trees, and drove the Rebels from their breastworks,--the men swung their hats, and shouted, and the women waved their handkerchiefs, and cheered as if crazy with enthusiasm.
Then Azalia and Daphne sung the Star-spangled Banner, the congregation joining in the chorus. Under the excitement of the moment, Judge Adams called for contributions for the soldiers, and the old farmers took out their pocket-books. Those who had made up their minds to give five dollars gave ten, while Mr. Middlekauf, Hans's father, who thought he would give twenty-five, put fifty into the hat.
When the meeting was over, Paul stepped down from the platform, threw his arms around his mother's neck and kissed her, and heard her whisper, "God bless you, Paul." Then the people came to shake hands with him. Even Miss Dobb came up, all smiles, shaking her curls, holding out her bony hand, and saying, "I am glad to see you, Colonel Parker. You know that I was your old teacher. I really feel proud to know that you have acquitted yourself so well. I shall claim part of the honor. You must come and take tea with me, and tell me all about the battles," she said.
"My leave of absence is short. I shall not have time to make many visits; but it will give me great pleasure to call upon those who have _always_ been my friends," said Paul, with a look so searching that it brought the blood into her faded cheeks.
Hearty the welcome from Azalia and Daphne, and from those who had been his scholars, who listened with eager interest to the words which fell from his lips. Golden the days and blissful those few hours spent with his mother, sitting by her side in the old kitchen; with Daphne and Azalia, singing the old songs; with Azalia alone, stealing down the shaded walk in the calm moonlight, talking of the changeful past, and looking into the dreamy future, the whippoorwills and plovers piping to them from the cloverfields, the crickets chirping them a cheerful welcome, and the river saluting them with its ceaseless serenade!
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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17
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CHICKAMAUGA.
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Quick the changes. Paul was once more with the army, amid the mountains of Tennessee, marching upon Chattanooga with General Rosecrans, tramping over Lookout Mountain, and along the Chickamauga.
Then came a day of disaster in September. A great battle began on Saturday morning, lasted through Sunday, and closed on Monday. Paul rode courageously where duty called him, through the dark woods, along the winding river, where the bullets sang, where the shells burst, where hundreds of brave men fell. Terrible the contest. It was like a thunder-storm among the mountains,--like the growling of the angry surf upon the shore of the ocean. How trying, after hours of hard fighting, to see the lines waver and behold the Rebels move victoriously over the field! with disaster setting in, and to know that all that is worth living for is trembling in the scale!
There are such moments in battle. General Rosecrans's army was outnumbered. Paul saw the Rebels driving in the centre and turning the left flank to cut off all retreat to Chattanooga. The moment for great, heroic action had come. He felt the blood leap through his veins as it never had leaped before. The Rebel line was advancing up the hill. The Union batteries were making ready to leave.
"Stay where you are!" he shouted. "Give them canister! Double shot the guns! Quick! One minute now is worth a thousand hours."
"Rally! rally! Don't let them have the guns!" he shouted to the flying troops. They were magic words. Men who had started to run came back. Those who were about to leave stood in their places, ready to die where they were. Five minutes passed; they seemed ages. On--nearer--up to the muzzles of the guns came the Rebels; then, losing heart, fled down the hill, where hundreds of their comrades lay dying and dead. Their efforts to break the line had failed. But once more they advanced in stronger force, rushing up the hill. Fearful the din and strife, the shouts and yells, the clashing of sabres and bayonets, the roar of the cannon, the explosion of shells. Paul found himself suddenly falling, then all was dark.
When he came to himself the scene had changed. He was lying upon the ground. A soldier, wearing a dirty gray jacket, and with long hair, was pulling off his boots, saying, "This Yankee has got a pair of boots worth having."
"Hold on! what are you up to?" said Paul.
"Hullo! blue bellie, ye are alive, are ye? Tho't yer was dead. Reckon I'll take yer boots, and yer coat tew."
Paul saw how it was: he was wounded, and left on the field. He was in the hands of the Rebels; but hardest to bear was the thought that the army had been defeated. He was stiff and sore. The blood was oozing from a wound in his side. He was burning up with fever. He asked the Rebels who were around him for a drink of water; but, instead of moistening his parched lips, one pointed his gun at him and threatened to blow out his brains. They stripped off his coat and picked his pockets. Around him were hundreds of dead men. The day wore away and the night came on. He opened his lips to drink the falling dew, and lay with his face towards the stars. He thought of his mother, of home, of Azalia, of the angels and God. Many times he had thought how sad it must be to die alone upon the battle-field, far from friends; but now he remembered the words of Jesus Christ: "I will not leave you comfortless. My peace I give unto you." Heaven seemed near, and he felt that the angels were not far away. He had tried to do his duty. He believed that, whether living or dying, God would take care of him, and of his mother. In his soul there was sweet peace and composure; but what was the meaning of the strange feeling creeping over him, the numbness of his hands, the fluttering of his heart? Was it not the coming on of death? He remembered the prayer of his childhood, lisped many a time while kneeling by his mother's side, and repeated it once more.
"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."
The stars were fading. His senses reeled. His eyelids closed, and he lay pale, cold, and motionless, among the dead.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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18
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HOW HE LIVED IN THE MEMORY OF HIS FRIENDS.
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"Colonel Parker, mortally wounded and left on the field." So read the account of the battle in the newspapers,--which told of the disaster to the army,--how the lines were broken, how the cannon were lost, how Paul was shot through the breast, how, had it not been for General Thomas, it would have been a day of utter ruin. Father Surplice went up to the little old house to break the sad tidings to Paul's mother, for he could best give comfort and consolation in time of affliction.
"I have sad news," he said. She saw it in his face, even before he spoke, and knew that something terrible had happened. "A great battle has been fought, and God has seen fit that your son should die for his country."
She made no outcry, but the tears glistened in her eyes. She wiped them away, and calmly replied: "I gave him freely to the country and to God. I know that he was a dutiful, affectionate son. I am not sorry that I let him go." Then with clasped hands she looked upward, through her blinding tears, and thanked God that Paul had been faithful, honest, true, and good.
The neighbors came in to comfort her, but were surprised to find her so calm, and to hear her say, "It is well."
It was a gloomy day in New Hope,--in the stores and shops, and in the school-house, for the children affectionately remembered their old teacher. When the sexton tolled the bell, they bowed their heads and wept bitter tears. Mr. Chrome laid down his paint-brush and sat with folded hands, saying, "I can't work." Colonel Dare dashed a tear from his eye, and said, "So slavery takes our noblest and best." He walked down to the little old house and said to Mrs. Parker, "You never shall want while I have a cent left." Judge Adams came, and with much emotion asked, "What can I do for you?"
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters," she replied, so calmly that the Judge felt that she was the strong one and he the weak.
When Azalia heard the news the rose-bloom faded from her cheeks and her heart stood still. In imagination she saw Paul lying on the ground, with blood flowing from his side, enduring dreadful agony, while waiting the coming of death. She could hardly think of him as gone, never to return, yet the church-bell was tolling mournfully, gone, gone, gone! She clasped her hands upon her heart to keep it from bursting.
"Be comforted, my child. He has gone to a better world than this," said her mother, sympathizing in her sorrow.
Daphne came in, and bathed Azalia's burning brow, kissed her tenderly, and said, "Don't cry, dear."
Azalia was not weeping,--there were no tears in her eyes. God had not wiped them all away, but the great and sudden affliction was like the heat of a fiery furnace. It had dried the fountains. Though her mother and Daphne were so kind and tender, they could not take away her heart-ache. It was a weary day. She sat by the window and gazed upon the wheat-fields, brown and bare, for it was almost October, and the reapers had gathered the grain. Beyond the fields was the river, shrunk to a narrow bed by the heats of summer. Dead leaves were floating down the stream. Like the _Miserere_ which the choir chanted at the funeral of a sweet young girl before Paul went to the army, was the murmuring of the water. Beyond the river were green meadows and gardens and orchards, where dahlias were blooming, and grapes and apples ripening in the mellow sunshine. She thought of Paul as having passed over the river, and as walking in the vineyard of the Lord. The summer flowers which she had planted in her own garden were faded, the stalks were dry, and the leaves withered. They never would bloom again. Like them, the brightness of her life had passed away.
Night brought no relief. It seemed as if her heart would break, but she remembered what Jesus said: "Come unto me and I will give you rest." She told Him all her grief, asked Him to help her, inasmuch as He was able to bear the sorrows of all the world. So confiding in Him, she experienced indescribable peace of mind.
Then in the evening they who walked along the street stopped and listened by the gate to hear the music which floated out through the open window, bowing their heads, and in silence wiping away their tears. It was the music of the "Messiah," which Handel composed. She sung it in church one Sunday before Paul went to the army, and Father Surplice said it set him to thinking about the music of heaven; but now to the passers in the street it was as if Jesus called them, so sweet and tender was the song.
It was consoling to take from her bureau the letters which Paul had written, and read again what she had read many times,--to look upon the laurel-leaf which he plucked in the woods at Donelson, the locust-blossoms which he gathered at Shiloh, the moss-rose which grew in a garden at Vicksburg,--to read his noble and manly words of his determination to do his duty in all things.
"Life is worth nothing," read one of the letters, "unless devoted to noble ends. I thank God that I live in this age, for there never has been so great an opportunity to do good. The heroes of all ages, those who have toiled and suffered to make the world better, are looking down from the past to see if I am worthy to be of their number. I can see the millions yet to come beckoning me to do my duty for their sake. They will judge me. What answer can I give them if I falter?"
Thus in her sorrow Azalia found some comfort in looking at the faded flowers, and in reflecting that he had not faltered in the hour of trial, but had proved himself worthy to be numbered with the heroic dead.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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19
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WHAT BECAME OF A TRAITOR.
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But Paul was not dead. He was in the hands of the enemy. He had been taken up from the battle-field while unconscious, put into an ambulance, and carried with other wounded to a Rebel hospital.
"We can't do anything for this Yankee," said one of the surgeons who looked at his wound.
"No, he will pop off right soon, I reckon," said another; and Paul was left to live or die, as it might be.
When he awoke from his stupor he found himself in an old barn, lying on a pile of straw. He was weak and faint, and suffered excruciating pain. The Rebel soldier had stolen his coat, and he had no blanket to protect him from the cold night-winds. He was helpless. His flesh was hot, his lips were parched. A fever set in, his flesh wasted away, and his eyes became wild, glassy, and sunken. Week after week he lay powerless to help himself, often out of his head and talking of home, or imagining he was in battle. How long the days! how lonesome the nights! But he had a strong constitution, and instead of "popping off," as the surgeon predicted, began to get well. Months passed, of pain and agony and weary longing. It was sweet relief when he was able to creep out and sit in the warm sunshine.
One day a Rebel lieutenant, wearing a gay uniform trimmed with gold lace, came past him. Paul saw that he had been drinking liquor, for he could not walk straight.
"Why don't you salute me, you Yankee villain?" said the fellow, stopping.
Paul was startled at the voice, looked the lieutenant in the face, and saw that it was Philip Funk. His face was bloated, and his eyes bloodshot. When he fled from New Hope after robbing Mr. Bond, he made his way south, joined the Rebels, and was now a lieutenant. Paul was so changed by sickness that Philip did not recognize him.
"Why don't you salute me, you dirty Yankee puppy?" said Philip, with an oath.
"I don't salute a traitor and a robber," said Paul.
Philip turned pale with anger. "Say that again, and I will cut your heart out!" he said, with a horrible oath, raising his sword and advancing upon Paul, who stood still and looked him calmly in the eye.
"Cowards only attack unarmed men," said Paul.
"What do you mean, sir, by calling me a robber, traitor, and coward?" Philip asked, white with rage, not recognizing Paul.
"I mean that you, Philip Funk, committed robbery at New Hope, ran away from home, became a traitor, and now you show yourself to be a coward by threatening to cut out the heart of a weak defenceless prisoner."
"Who are you?" stammered Philip.
"My name is Paul Parker. I am a colonel in the service of the United States," Paul replied, not recognizing by any familiar act his old playmate and school-fellow.
Philip dropped his sword, and stood irresolute and undecided what to do. A group of Rebel officers who had been wounded, and were strolling about the grounds, saw and heard it all. One was a colonel.
"What do you know about Lieutenant Funk?" he asked.
"He was my schoolmate. He committed robbery and came south to join your army," Paul replied.
The Colonel turned to the officers who were with him, and said, "This is the fellow who is suspected of stealing from the soldiers, and it is said that he skulked at Chickamauga."
"The cuss ought to be reduced to the ranks," said another.
Philip did not stop to hear any more, but walked rapidly away.
The next day he was arrested and brought before a court-martial, tried, and found guilty of hiding behind a stump when ordered to make a charge in battle, and of stealing money from the soldiers. The court ordered that he be stripped of his uniform and reduced to the ranks, and wear the "rogue's coat" through the camp. The coat was a flour-barrel, without heads, but with holes cut in the sides for his arms.
Philip was brought out upon the parade-ground, deprived of his sword and uniform, and compelled to put on the barrel, on which were written the words, COWARD, ROBBER.
Thus, with two soldiers to guard him, with a drummer and fifer playing the Rogues' March, he was paraded through the camp. The soldiers hooted at him, and asked him all sorts of questions.
"How are you, Bummer?" asked one.
"Did you pay your tailors with the money you stole?" asked another.
"Your coat puckers under the arms and wrinkles in the back," said another.
"He felt so big they had to hoop him to keep him from bursting," remarked one, who remembered how pompous Philip had been.
After being marched through the camp, he was set to work with a shovel, cleaning up the grounds. It was a sorry day to Philip. He wished he had never been born. He was despised alike by officers and soldiers. The officers made him do their dirty work, while the soldiers, knowing that he had not courage enough to resent an insult, made him the general scavenger of the camp. This treatment was so hard to bear that Philip thought of deserting; but he knew that if he was caught he would be shot, and did not dare to make the attempt. The slaves in the camp looked down upon him, and spoke of him as the "meanest sort of Yankee white trash." The soldiers turned him out of their tents. "We won't have a Yankee thief and coward in our mess," said they, and he was obliged to sleep under the trees, or wherever he could find shelter. He became dirty and ragged. His clothes dropped from him piece by piece, till he had nothing left but rags. He had little to eat. He had no friends. When he was sick, no one cared for him. Those were bitter days; but instead of being made better at heart by his punishment, he cursed and swore, and wished only that he could get whiskey to drink.
Winter set in. There came a cold, stormy night. Philip wandered about the camp to keep himself warm. He was weak and faint, and at last, tired, exhausted, and his teeth chattering with ague, crawled into a wagon, drew his old tattered blanket over his head, and after shivering awhile went to sleep. The teamsters found him there in the morning, stiff and cold. He had died during the night, with no friend near him, a vagabond, an outcast, despised by everybody.
The officer who had charge of the camp, when he heard that Philip was dead, called up a couple of soldiers who were in the guard-house for getting drunk, and said to them, "You were drunk yesterday, and for a punishment I sentence you to bury the camp-scullion who froze to death last night."
The teamster harnessed his horses, drove outside of the camp into a field, where the two soldiers dug a shallow grave, tumbled the body into it, threw back the earth, trampled it down with their feet, shouldered their shovels, and went back to camp as unconcerned as if they had buried a dog.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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20
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DARK DAYS.
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When Paul's wound had healed sufficiently to enable him to travel, he was put into a freight car with his comrades and sent to the Rebel prison at Andersonville. The ride was long and hard, but the prisoners bore the jolting without a murmur, for they supposed they would soon be exchanged and sent North. They were doomed to bitter disappointment.
The prison was a yard enclosed by a high fence. There was a platform on the outside where the sentinels stood on guard, and ready to shoot any one who approached nearer than what they called "the dead line." The prisoners had no shelter from the scorching rays of the sun through the long summer days, nor from the sleety rains and freezing nights of winter. They dug holes in the ground with their hands, and made the cold, damp earth their bed. A slimy brook ran through the grounds, foul with filth from the camps of the Rebels. There was a marsh in the centre of the yard, full of rottenness, where the water stood in green and stagnant pools, breeding flies, mosquitos, and vermin, where all the ooze and scum and slops of the camp came to the surface, and filled the air with horrible smells. They had very little food,--nothing but a half-pint of coarse corn-meal, a little molasses, and a mouthful of tainted bacon and salt, during each twenty-four hours. They were herded like sheep. The yard was packed with them. There were more than twenty thousand in a place designed for half that number.
When Paul and his comrades reached the prison, they were examined by the officer in command, a brutal fellow named Wirz, who robbed them of what money they had. The gate opened, and they passed in. When Paul beheld the scene, his heart sank within him. He had suffered many hardships, but this was an experience beyond everything else. He was still weak. He needed nourishing food, but he must eat the corn-meal or starve. Everywhere he saw only sickening sights,--pale, woe-begone wretches, clothed in filthy rags, covered with vermin. Some were picking up crumbs of bread which had been swept out from the bakery. Others were sucking the bones which had been thrown out from the cook-house. Some sat gazing into vacancy, taking no notice of what was going on around them,--dreaming of homes which they never were again to behold. Many were stretched upon the ground, too weak to sit up, from whose hearts hope had died out, and who were waiting calmly for death to come and relieve them from their sufferings. Thousands had died. One hundred died on the day Paul entered, and another hundred during the night. All day long the bodies lay among the living in the sun. When the dead-cart came in, they were thrown into it like logs of wood. It was a horrible sight,--the stony eyes, the sunken cheeks, the matted hair, the ghastly countenances, the swaying limbs, as the cart jolted along the uneven ground! More than thirteen thousand soldiers starved and murdered by the Rebels were thus carried out in the dead-carts.
The keepers of the prison were cruel. Paul saw a poor cripple crawl towards the fence and reach his hand over the dead line to get a bone. Crack went the rifle of the sentinel, which sent a bullet through the prisoner's brain, who tossed up his hands, gave one heart-rending outcry, and rolled over--dead. On a dark and stormy night some of the prisoners escaped, but ferocious dogs were put upon their track, and they were recaptured. The hounds mangled them, and the Rebel officers had them tied up and whipped, till death put an end to their sufferings.
It was terrible to hear the coughing of those who were dying of consumption,--to see them crawling from place to place, searching in vain to find a shelter from the driving storms,--to hear the piteous cries of those who were racked with pains, or the moans of those who gave themselves up to despair. For want of proper food the prisoners suffered from scurvy;--their gums rotted, their teeth fell out, and their flesh turned to corruption; they wasted away, and died in horrible agony. It was so terrible to hear their dying cries, that Paul put his fingers in his ears; but soon he became accustomed to the sights and sounds, and looked upon the scenes with indifference. He pitied the sufferers, but was powerless to aid them. Soon he found that his own spirits began to droop. He roused himself, determined to brave out all the horrors of the place. He sang songs and told stories, and got up games to keep his fellow-prisoners in good heart. But notwithstanding all his efforts to maintain his cheerfulness and composure, he felt that he was growing weaker. Instead of being robust, he became thin and spare. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes sunken. There was a fever in his bones. Day by day he found himself taking shorter walks. At night, when he curled down in his burrow, he felt tired, although he had done no work through the day. In the morning he was stiff, and sore, and lame, and although the ground was cold and damp, it was easier to lie there than to get up. His hair became matted,--his fingers were long and bony. Each day his clothes became more ragged. When he first entered the prison, he tried to keep himself clean and free from vermin, but in vain. One day he went out to wash his tattered clothes, but the stream was so dirty he sat down and waited for it to become clear. He sat hour after hour, but it was always the same slimy, sickening stream.
The Rebels took delight in deluding the prisoners with false hopes,--telling them that they were soon to be exchanged and sent home; but instead of release, the dead-cart went its daily rounds, bearing its ghastly burden. That was their exchange, and they looked upon the shallow trenches as the only home which they would ever reach. Hope died out and despair set in. Some prisoners lost their reason, and became raving maniacs, while others became only gibbering idiots. Some who still retained their reason, who all their lives had believed that the Almighty is a God of justice and truth, began to doubt if there be a God. Although they had cried and begged for deliverance, there was no answer to their prayers. Paul felt that his own faith was wavering; but he could not let go of the instructions he had received from his mother. In the darkest hour, when he was most sorely tempted to break out into cursing, he was comforted and reassured by Uncle Peter, an old gray-headed negro, who had been a slave all his life. Peter had been whipped, kicked, and cuffed many times by his hard-hearted, wicked master, not because he was unfaithful, but because he loved to pray, and shout, and sing. Through the long night, sitting by his pitch-knot fire in his cabin, Uncle Peter had sung the songs which lifted him in spirit almost up to heaven, whither his wife and children had gone, after cruel whippings and scourgings by their master. It was so sweet to think of her as having passed over the river of Jordan into the blessed land, that he could not refrain from shouting: "O my Mary is sitting on the tree of life, To see the Jordan roll; O, roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll! I will march the angel march,-- I will march the angel march. O my soul is rising heavenward, To see where the Jordan rolls."
He had given food and shelter to some of the prisoners who escaped from the horrible place, and had piloted them through the woods, and for this was arrested and thrown into the prison.
Uncle Peter took a great liking to Paul, and, when Paul was down-hearted, cheered him by saying: "Never you give up. Don't let go of de hand of de good Lord. It is mighty hard to bear such treatment, but we colored people have borne it all our lives. But 'pears like my heart would break when I think of my children sold down Souf." Uncle Peter wiped his eyes with his tattered coat-sleeve, and added: "But de Lord is coming to judge de earth with righteousness, and den I reckon de Rebs will catch it."
Uncle Peter dug roots and cooked Paul's food for him, for the Rebels would not allow them any wood, although there was a forest near the prison. Paul could not keep back the tears when he saw how kind Uncle Peter was. He thought that he never should weep again, for he felt that the fountains of his heart were drying up. Uncle Peter sat by him through the long days, fanning him with his old tattered straw hat, brushing the flies from his face, moistening his lips with water, and bathing his brow. He was as black as charcoal, and had a great nose and thick lips,--but notwithstanding all that Paul loved him.
Thus the days and weeks and months went by, Uncle Peter keeping the breath of life in Paul's body, while thousands of his comrades died. There was no change in prison affairs for the better. There was no hope of release, no prospect of deliverance,--no words from home, no cheering news, no intelligence, except from other prisoners captured from time to time, and sent to the horrible slaughter-pen to become maniacs and idiots,--to be murdered,--to die of starvation and rottenness,--to be borne out in the dead-cart to the trenches.
Though Paul sometimes was sorely tempted to yield to despondency, there were hours when, with clear vision, he looked beyond the horrors of the prison to the time when God would balance the scales of justice, and permit judgment to be executed, not only upon the fiend Wirz, who had charge of the prison, but also upon Jeff Davis and the leaders of the rebellion. And though his sufferings were terrible to bear, there was not a moment when he was sorry that he had enlisted to save his country. So through all the gloom and darkness his patriotism and devotion shone like a star which never sets.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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21
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CONSECRATION.
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As the weeks passed by, bringing no intelligence to New Hope that Paul was living,--when there was no longer a doubt of his death,--Father Surplice held a memorial service. It was on Sunday, and all the people were at church. Appropriate for the occasion were the words which he read from the New Testament of the widow of Nain,--how, "as Jesus came nigh to the city, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said, 'Weep not!'"
Consoling and comforting were his own words, which sank deep into the hearts of the stricken people; and though the good man said, "Weep not!" tears dropped from his own eyes, and fell upon the great Bible which lay open before him. It was a sad and solemn service. Though the heart of the mother was yearning for her son, yet she could say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."
Mrs. Parker still lived in the little old cottage. The neighbors were very kind, and she wanted for nothing, for Colonel Dare remembered his promise. Peaceful was her life. The birds sang cheerful songs; sweet was the humming of the bees, fragrant the flowers in the garden, and steady the flowing of the river; and as she listened to the waterfall, she thought of Paul as standing by the River of Life. How, then, could she mourn for him? Yet she missed him. Sometimes she listened as if to hear his footsteps coming up the garden walk. Sometimes her eyes filled with tears, as her heart went out to the lonely battle-field where she thought him lying. O, if she could but behold him again,--clasp him in her arms,--and once more lay her hand upon his brow, and bless him with a mother's tenderest love!
But he was gone, and for him she could work no more. His comrades were bearing on the flag, upholding it on bloody fields, fighting as he fought, suffering as he suffered, needing help and comfort and cheer from those at home. There was work to be done for them; so through the days she sat in the old kitchen, knitting and sewing for the soldiers, wishing that she had half a dozen hands instead of two, that she might help them more.
There was one who came to aid her every day,--Azalia, who, in the silence and seclusion of her chamber, had looked out upon the yellow harvest-fields where the farmers were gathering the first ripe ears of seed-corn, and had tried to still the wild commotion in her heart by remembering that it was just and right for the Lord of the harvest to gather his "choicest grains." Down on the lowlands by the river the nurserymen were selecting their fairest trees, and transplanting them in their orchards on the pleasant hills beyond the stream. Why, then, should she complain if the kind Father had seen fit to do the same?
It was consoling to take from her bureau drawer, where her keepsakes were stored, the letters which Paul had written, undo the black ribbon which she had tied around the package, and read again and again that which she almost knew by heart. What manly words were there: "Life is worth nothing unless devoted to noble ends. I can see the millions yet to come beckoning me to do my duty for their sake. What answer can I give them if I falter?"
So read one of the letters. They were words which she could not forget. They were written from the trenches before Vicksburg, when the prospects of the country were dark and gloomy,--when craven men at home were crying, "Peace! Peace! Let us have peace at any price!" forgetting that there can be no reconcilement between right and wrong. Paul had sacrificed everything--life itself--for the sake of those who were to come after him,--for Truth and Justice. She thought of him as asleep beneath the sod of the battle-field where he fell,--of all that was mortal lying there, but of his soul as having passed up into heaven, perhaps even then beholding her from the celestial sphere. "What answer can I give to those who come after me?" The question haunted her through the waning days and the lonely nights. What could she do? How listless her life! of how little account! How feeble, forceless, and narrow all her efforts! What sacrifices had she made? None. She had lived for herself alone. Was this all of life? In the silent hours, when all around were hushed in slumber, her longing soul, with far-reaching sight, looked out upon the coming years, and beheld the opening prospect,--a country saved, a nation redeemed, justice and truth triumphant, and Peace, with her white wings, brooding over the land! This through sacrifice of blood, of strength, of ease and comfort. To withhold the sacrifice was to lose all. To her the coming millions were beckoning as they had beckoned to him. With prayers of consecration she gave herself to the country,--to go wherever duty called, to labor, to endure hardship, and brave scenes which would wring out her heart's blood,--to face disease and death itself, if need be, to hand down a priceless inheritance to the coming ages.
"You will get sick, my child. You have not strength to be a nurse in the hospital," said her mother, when Azalia told her that she must go and take care of the soldiers.
"I cannot spare you, my daughter," said her father, tenderly taking her in his arms, and kissing her ruby lips. She was his only child, and he loved her dearly. "I don't think it is your duty to go; and how lonesome the house would be without my darling!"
And so, knowing that it was her duty to do whatever her parents wished, she tried to be content. But the days dragged wearily. She was ever thinking of the soldiers,--thinking through the days and through the nights, till the bright bloom faded from her cheek. Her heart was far away. Her life was incomplete,--she felt that it was running to waste.
Her father saw that his flower was fading. At last he said, "Go, my darling, and God be with you."
"I don't think that Judge Adams ought to let Azalia go into the hospital. It isn't a fit place for girls," said Miss Dobb, when she heard that Azalia was to be a nurse. But, giving no heed to Miss Dobb, with the blessing of her parents following her, she left her pleasant home, gave up all its ease and comfort, to minister to the sick and wounded, who had fought to save the country.
She went to Washington, and thence to the hospitals at Annapolis. It was hard work to stand all day by the side of the sick, bathing their fevered brows, moistening their parched lips, binding up their bleeding wounds. It was painful to look upon the quivering flesh, torn and mangled by cannon-shot. But she learned to bear it all,--to stand calmly by, waiting upon the surgeon while he ran his sharp knife into the live flesh. It was a pleasure to aid him in his work.
Her step was light upon the floor; soothing and tender the touch of her hand. There was no light so sweet and pure as that which beamed from her earnest eyes. The sick waited impatiently for her appearance in the morning, watched her footsteps through the day, thanked her for all she did, and said, "God bless you!" when she bade them good night. Men who were in the habit of uttering fearful oaths wept when she talked with them about their mothers; she wrote their letters, and read to them the words of affection which came from home. She sang the songs they loved to hear. It was like wine to the weak. The down-hearted took new courage, and those who were well enough to be hobbling about on crutches, who were telling stories of the battles, forgot what they were saying while listening to her voice. Her presence was noonday, her absence night. Once, when through long watching and patient waiting her strength gave way, and the fever raged in her own veins, it was touching to see their sorrow. The loud-talking spoke in whispers, and walked noiselessly along the wards, for fear of increasing the pain which racked her aching head; the sick ones, who missed the touch of her magic hand, and the sweet music of her voice, and the sunlight of her presence, whose fevers were raging because she was absent, when the physician went his rounds in the morning, at noon, and at night, inquired not about themselves, but her. When the fever passed,--when she was well enough to walk through the wards, and hold for a moment the hands which were stretched out on every side,--it was as if her very presence had power to heal.
How blessed her work! --to give life and strength; to soothe pain, change sorrow to joy; to sit beside the dying, and talk of the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; to wipe the dampness of death from their brows, listen to their last words, and, when the spirit had flown, to close the sightless eyes, and cut from the pale brow a lock of hair for a fond mother far away, thinking ever of her dying boy.
So the months went by,--autumn to winter, winter to spring, and spring to summer.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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22
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UNDER THE OLD FLAG.
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There was no change at Andersonville, but in the loathsome prison it was ever the same terrible scene of starvation, corruption, disease, despair, and death. Every morning those who had died during the night were collected by the prisoners and laid in rows by the prison gate, where, during the day, they were piled upon the dead-cart and borne out to the trenches. There was no hope of relief for the living, and each prisoner looked forward with indifference to his inevitable fate. Above them floated the Rebel flag. They were kept there beneath its folds by Jefferson Davis and General Lee, till thirteen thousand had been starved and murdered.
Paul knew that, notwithstanding Uncle Peter's constant care and nursing, he was growing weaker; but he had learned to look death calmly in the face, and so was undisturbed by the prospect. He knew that God, who takes care of the sparrows, would not forget his mother, and he felt that Azalia would sometimes shed a tear when she thought of him.
But one morning there was an unusual stir among the prisoners. "You are to be exchanged and sent home," said the Rebel officers. They had been told the same thing so many times, and had been always so cruelly deceived, that they did not believe the statement till orders were issued for a portion of them to be ready to march to the cars at an appointed hour. Paul was among those who were ordered away. All were ready in an instant, for they had no baggage to pack up, no knapsacks, no equipments, no overcoats,--nothing but the rags upon their bodies.
Those who were so weak that they could scarcely creep from place to place rose and stood upon their feet when told that they were to go home. Paul felt a fresh wave of life sweep over him, thrilling every fibre of his wasted frame. Hope revived. Home! O the blissful thought! He rose weak and trembling from his bed on the cold, damp ground, wrapped his rags about him, and, leaning on a cane, supported by Uncle Peter, hobbled out and took his place in the long line of skeletons, and waited with eager eyes to see the gate turn upon its rusty hinges.
It was hard to part with Uncle Peter, who had been so kind to him. "God bless you and reward you for all your kindness to me," said Paul, bidding him good by, and shaking hands for the last time.
"I'se sorry to part with ye, Kurnel, but I bless de Lord you is gwine. We'll meet again one of dese days, whar de Rebs won't trouble us, and whar we will be free foreber," said the old negro, looking up into heaven. He could not go. He was a slave. There was no freedom for him till the rebellion was crushed, or till the grave opened.
The gates turned on their hinges, and the regiment of skeletons in rags took up its march. Such a procession never before was seen on earth. A thousand emaciated forms, tottering, reeling, hobbling on canes and crutches, wending their way to the cars,--not to luxurious cushioned seats, but to hard, jolting cattle-cars,--for a long ride of hundreds of miles before reaching the sea-coast. But hope inspired them. They were breathing fresh air, and were gazing on smiling fields, waving with grain. They were on their way home. The birds cheered them, singing of home. "Going home, going home!" said the car-wheels, as they passed from rail to rail. In joy and gladness they sang: "I'm going home, I'm going home, To die no more, to die no more."
It was as if they had left behind them forever all sorrow and suffering, and that for them there could be no more distress, or pain, or anguish. It was a long, weary, dusty ride. Some died on the way, but hope kept most of them alive.
They reached the city of Charleston, passed from the cars to a steamboat, which was to take them down the harbor to the place of exchange. The waters danced joyfully around them, as if greeting them with gladness. The breezes came in from the dark blue ocean and fanned their wasted cheeks. The waves, like a loving mother, gently rocked them and sung a soothing lullaby. But O what joy to behold once more the dear old flag! How serenely and lovingly it floated in the breeze! They saluted it with cheers,--shed tears of gratitude,--clasped each other by the hand,--rushed into each other's arms. Those who were able to stand danced in a delirium of joy! Paul was too weak to sit up. He could only lie upon the deck, and gaze upon the flag till his eyes filled with tears, and say: "Thank God, I have seen it once more!" Beneath that flag there was joy, peace, comfort, food, clothing, and freedom. Hospital nurses were there with blankets, and great kettles filled with soup and coffee. For the wounded there were bandages; for the sick there were cordials, wines, and medicines. There were tender-hearted men, ready to relieve all their sufferings. It was like passing from the prison of despair into a paradise of peace and rest, and in joy and gladness they began to sing, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
The strong men on board of the ship, the nurses, and the stout-hearted sailors wept like children, and spoke hard words against the Rebels when they looked upon the haggard countenances, the hollow cheeks, the sunken eyes, of the skeleton forms around them.
Although Paul was so weak that he could hardly lift his hands to his head, although his comrades were passing away, although every day he saw their bodies, wrapped in hammocks and weighted with shot, cast into the sea, yet he never experienced such bliss, such contentment, as while lying on the deck through the long summer day, looking up to the old flag, and the clear sky, and out upon the calm and peaceful sea, thinking of the sea of glass and the great white throne, and the calmness, sereneness, and rest of heaven. And at night, when lulled to sleep by the rippling waves, how enchanting his dreams of home, of his mother, of the scenes of other days,--the old house, the swallows twittering around its eaves, the roses blooming beneath the window, the night-wind sweeping down the valley, the church-bell ringing the evening hour, its deep tolling when the funeral train passed on to the cemetery in the shady grove,--his friends welcoming him home once more, Azalia among them, queen of the hour, peerless in beauty, with rose bloom on her cheek,--of Mr. Chrome, Judge Adams, and Colonel Dare, all saying, "We are glad to see you,"--dreaming, and waking, to find it only a dream.
But the ship was bearing him on. The distance was lessening. One more day, and the voyage would be at an end, the ship in port. O, if he could but see his mother once more,--feel her hand upon his brow, her kiss upon his lip,--then he could die content! A desire for life set in. Hope revived. He would fight death as he had fought the Rebels, and, God willing, he would win the victory.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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23
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THE JAWS OF DEATH.
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The hospital steamer, with its freight of living skeletons, had accomplished its voyage in safety, and lay moored at the wharf in Annapolis. Nurses and sailors were carrying the emaciated forms from the ship to the shore, to the clean and tidy wards of the hospital.
It was a sight which wrung tears from the eyes of those who did not often weep. The ship was a charnel-house. Death in its most horrible forms was there,--from starvation, from corruption, scurvy, lock-jaw, gangrene, consumption, and fever. How ghastly the scene! Men, once robust and strong, weak and helpless as babes, with hollow cheeks, toothless gums, thin pale lips, colorless flesh, sunken eyes, long, tangled hair, uncombed for many months, skeleton fingers with nails like eagles' claws, lying in rags upon the deck,--some, with strained eyes, looking up for the last time to the dear old flag which waved above them, for which they had fought, for which they had starved, for which they were dying, gazing in rapture on its blessed folds, till their eyes were fixed in death, and the slowly-heaving heart stood still forever! They, and all their comrades, sleeping on a hundred battle-fields, and mouldering in the trenches at Andersonville, were the victims of Jefferson Davis and General Lee, whose names shall rot through all coming time.
There was work for the gentle-hearted nurses who stood waiting in the hospital wards,--work which required tenderest care;--removing the rags, washing the fevered skeletons, bathing the bleeding wounds where the sharp bones had pierced the skin; feeding them,--a crumb at a time; administering cordials drop by drop, to bring back with delicate nursing the receding tides of life.
With a bleeding heart, but yet with steady nerves, Azalia passed among them, doing her appointed work. There was one who was lying as if asleep, with his hands clasped upon his breast. His beard had been long uncut. His cheeks were wasted, his eyes sunken, but he had a manly brow. A strange fear and trembling crept over her,--a shuddering of the heart. Alarmed and frightened at she knew not what, she brushed back the matted hair from his temples, and laid her hand upon his brow, cold and damp with the dews of death. The soldier opened his eyes, looked into her face, stared wildly around him, and tried to speak. It was but one word, and that a whisper,--her own name, "Azalia!"
A cry rang through the ward, startling the physicians and the nurses, and waking those who were asleep. She clasped him in her arms, fell upon his face, and kissed his wasted lips. "O Paul! Can it be that you are here?" she said.
The throbbing of her heart was like the fluttering of a frightened bird. Sweet, calm, and beautiful as the setting sun was the smile upon his face, and in his eyes the celestial light of Peace! They closed, and he lay again as if in slumber.
"They told me that you were dead," she said.
There was no reply; she laid her hand upon his heart, but could feel no beating there; touched her fingers to his fleshless wrist, but could find no throbbing of the pulse. The thin blood was receding from his colorless lips,--the tide was going out. "Doctor! Doctor! O come quick! Save him!" she cried.
The doctor came and gazed upon the face of Paul. "He is not quite gone," he said, then moistened his lips with brandy. There was a quickening of the pulse. "If he rallies from this, we may save him," he said.
They wrapped him in warm flannels, rubbed his fleshless limbs, and gave him cordials, drop by drop. How long the hours,--the weary hours of hope and fear,--of expectation and distress,--while the faltering spirit, as if tired of earth, was but fluttering awhile along the shore of Time before taking its returnless flight over the dark and silent river to another land! Through the night Azalia sat by his side, watching him with sleepless eyes, fanning his pale brow. The morning sun beamed upon her still sitting there. Those who were accustomed to watch for her appearance in the early morning, restless with fever, beheld her as clothed with celestial brightness, and said one to another, "There sits our Angel of Light!"
Through the day she was there, watching the slow heavings of his heart, holding her breath while listening to assure herself that he was still breathing; hoping and fearing, holding her hands at times upon her own heart to still its wild, tumultuous beating,--giving him atom by atom the needful nourishment,--bending over him to smooth his pillow,--opening the casement for the winds to blow upon his bloodless cheek,--thus snatching him from the very jaws of death and winning him back to life!
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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24
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HOME.
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A despatch came clicking into the telegraph office in New Hope that Paul Parker was alive,--that he had been a prisoner at Andersonville, was very feeble, but in a fair way to get well, and would soon be at home. It was from Azalia. Mr. Magnet read it in amazement, then ran as fast as he could to carry it to the little old cottage. "Good news!" he shouted, rushing into the house out of breath, without knocking. "Paul is alive! Paul is alive!"
"My son alive!" exclaimed Mrs. Parker, her heart leaping wildly.
"Yes; there is the despatch."
She read it in fear and trembling, her brain in a whirl. She must fly to him! O if she only had wings! Paul alive! The old clock took up the word, "Alive,--alive,--alive," it said. A robin perched in the great maple sang all day, "He is coming home,--is coming home," while the swallows from their nests under the eaves looked into the old kitchen through the open door, twittering together, as if saying, "How glad we are!" Never so bright the sunshine as on that morning, nor so fragrant the flowers! All nature was glad, and rejoiced in her joy.
Mr. Magnet told the news through the village, the people listening in wonder. Mr. Chrome threw down his paint-brush, took off his old hat, swung it over his head, and gave three cheers. Through the day he kept saying to himself, "That beats the Dutch!" The children ran through the streets shouting, "Paul is alive! Paul is alive!" Father Surplice, Judge Adams, Colonel Dare, and the neighbors--a dozen at a time--went down to shake hands with Paul's mother, making it such a day of gladness as never was known before in New Hope.
Impatiently they waited for the day when Paul would be with them again.
"We will let him know that we have not forgotten him," said Colonel Dare; "but it is little that we can do for one who has suffered so much."
So also said Judge Adams, and Mr. Capias, and all the people.
The day came at last. He was on board the train, feeble and weak, but Azalia was by his side, supporting his weary head,--sustaining him when his strength was gone. All New Hope was at the depot to receive him, looking with eager eyes down the level track to see the approaching train when it rounded the distant curve.
"It is coming! There it is!" shouted the boys. They loved him, their dear old teacher. The train stopped, and the conductor came out with Paul leaning on his arm, Azalia following. The people were going to hurrah, but when they saw how poor, pale, and emaciated he was, how thin his cheeks, how hollow and sunken his eyes, how languid and weary, how little there was left of one who once was so manly, they held their breaths, and felt a strange choking in their throats.
Blessed the meeting of mother and son! He had come back from the grave. He was even then almost a corpse, but he was alive! She had no words to utter; her joy was silent and deep. She could only clasp him in her arms, fold him to her heart, and, looking up to heaven, with streaming eyes, give silent thanks to God.
The people bowed their heads and stood in silent reverence. Colonel Dare came with his carriage. Mr. Chrome took Paul in his arms, and lifted him into it as if he was but a child. The people came one after another and touched his hands. The children brought flowers and laid them in his arms. They all had words of welcome for Azalia. She had saved him. "God bless you, darling!" said her father, kissing her cheeks, still round and fair, though watching, anxiety, care, and sorrow had robbed them of the bright bloom of other days.
"The Lord sent you in the way, as he sent Joseph into Egypt," said Father Surplice.
Deep, tender, and hearty the love of friends! Daphne came with choicest delicacies. How pleasant to hear her voice! How cheery her laugh! Mr. Noggin brought a box of his best honey. Mr. Chrome, who loved to hunt and fish, brought quails and pigeons. Even Miss Dobb sent up to know if there was not something that she could get for him. The birds came, the robins and swallows, singing and twittering and brimming over with joy.
How enchanting the music which came swelling up the valley from the water by the mill, from the woods beyond the river, from the crickets in the fields, from the church-bell, blending with the night airs, and filling his soul with peace! But more blessed than everything else on earth was the holy light which beamed upon him from Azalia's eyes, which went down deep into his soul.
"You have always been my angel of light and goodness, and nothing but death shall part us," he said, as she sat by his side.
"I am glad if I have helped you, Paul," she said, laying her soft hand upon his brow, and kissing his lips. Pure and true the love which had deepened through many years, which had beamed from each other's eyes, but which till then had never been spoken. Like a brook gushing from springs in distant mountains, so, far back in childhood, had been the beginning of their affection, and now it was a river.
Day by day his strength returned, the flesh came again upon his wasted limbs, and health bloomed upon his cheeks. Then they walked together in the garden, talking of the dear old times, and looking onward to a future more golden than the sunniest day of all the past.
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{
"id": "22913"
}
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1
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ON THE ROAD.
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Some winters ago I passed several weeks at Tallahassee, Florida, and while there made the acquaintance of Colonel J----, a South Carolina planter. Accident, some little time later, threw us together again at Charleston, when I was gratified to learn that he would be my _compagnon du voyage_ as far north as New York.
He was accompanied by his body-servant, "Jim," a fine specimen of the genus darky, about thirty years of age, and born and reared in his master's family. As far as possible we made the journey by day, stopping at some convenient resting-place by night; on which occasions the Colonel, Jim, and myself would occupy the same or adjoining apartments, "we white folks" sleeping on four posts, while the more democratic negro spread his blanket on the floor. Thrown together thus intimately, it was but natural that we should learn much of each other.
The "Colonel" was a highly cultivated and intelligent gentleman, and during this journey a friendship sprung up between us--afterward kept alive by a regular correspondence--which led him, with his wife and daughter, and the man Jim, to my house on his next visit at the North, one year later. I then promised--if I should ever again travel in South Carolina--to visit him on his plantation in the extreme north-eastern part of the state.
In December last, about the time of the passage of the ordinance of secession, I had occasion to visit Charleston, and, previous to setting out, dispatched a letter to the Colonel with the information that I was ready to be led of him "into the wilderness." On arriving at the head-quarters of secession, I found a missive awaiting me, in which my friend cordially renewed his previous tender of hospitality, gave me particular directions how to proceed, and stated that his "man Jim" would meet me with a carriage at Georgetown, and convey me thence, seventy miles, to "the plantation."
Having performed the business which led me to Charleston, I set out for the rendezvous five days before the date fixed for the meeting, intending to occupy the intervening time in an exploration of the ancient town and its surroundings.
The little steamer Nina (a cross between a full-grown nautilus and a half-grown tub), which a few weeks later was enrolled as the first man-of-war of the Confederate navy, then performed the carrying trade between the two principal cities of South Carolina. On her, together with sundry boxes and bales, and certain human merchandise, I embarked at Charleston, and on a delicious morning, late in December, landed at Georgetown.
As the embryo war-steamer rounded up to the long, low, rickety dock, lumbered breast-high with cotton, turpentine, and rosin, not a white face was to be seen. A few half-clad, shiftless-looking negroes, lounging idly about, were the only portion of the population in waiting to witness our landing.
"Are all the people dead?" I inquired of one of them, thinking it strange that an event so important as the arrival of the Charleston packet should excite no greater interest in so quiet a town. "Not dead, massa," replied the black, with a knowing chuckle, "but dey'm gettin' ready for a fun'ral." "What funeral?" I asked. "Why, dey'm gwine to shoot all de boblition darkies at de Norf, and hab a brack burying; he! he!" and the sable gentleman expanded the opening in his countenance to an enormous extent, doubtless at the brilliancy of his wit.
I asked him to take my portmanteau, and conduct me to the best hotel. He readily assented, "Yas, yas, massa, I show you whar de _big-bugs_ stop;" but at once turning to another darky standing near, he accosted him with, "Here, Jim, you lazy nigga, tote de gemman's tings."
"Why don't you take them yourself?" I asked; "you will then get all the pay." "No, no, massa; dat nigga and me in partenship; he do de work, and I keeps de change," was the grinning reply, and it admirably illustrates a peculiarity I have observed to be universal with the negro. When left to his own direction, he invariably "goes into partenship" with some one poorer than himself, and no matter how trivial the task, shirks all the labor he can.
The silent darky and my portmanteau in the van, and the garrulous old negro guarding my flank, I wended my way through the principal street to the hotel. On the route I resumed the conversation: "So, uncle, you say the people here are getting ready for a black burying?"
"Yas, massa, gwine to bury all dem mis'able free niggas at de Norf."
"Why? What will you do that for?"
"Why for, massa! you ax why for!" he exclaimed in surprise.
"I don't know," I rejoined; "I'm a stranger here."
"Well, you see, massa, dem boblition niggas up dar hab gone and 'lected a ole darky, dey call Uncle Abe; and Old Abe he'se gwine to come down Souf, and cut de decent niggas' troats. He'll hab a good time--_he will_! My young massa's captin ob de sogers, and he'll cotch de ole coon, and string him up so high de crows won't scent him; yas, he will;" and again the old darky's face opened till it looked like the entrance to the Mammoth Cave. He, evidently, had read the Southern papers.
Depositing my luggage at the hotel, which I found on a side street--a dilapidated, unpainted wooden building, with a female landlord--I started out to explore the town, till the hour for dinner. Retracing my steps in the direction of the steamboat landing, I found the streets nearly deserted, although it was the hour when the business of the day is usually transacted. Soon I discovered the cause. The militia of the place were out on parade. Preceded by a colored band, playing national airs--in doleful keeping with the occasion--and followed by a motley collection of negroes of all sexes and ages, the company was entering the principal thoroughfare. As it passed me, I could judge of the prowess of the redoubtable captain, who, according to Pompey, will hang the President "so high de crows won't scent him." He was a harmless-looking young man, with long, spindle legs, admirably adapted to running. Though not formidable in other respects, there _was_ a certain martial air about an enormous sabre which hung at his side, and occasionally got entangled in his nether integuments, and a fiery, warlike look to the heavy tuft of reddish hair which sprouted in bristling defiance from his upper lip.
The company numbered about seventy, some with uniforms and some without, and bearing all sorts of arms, from the old flint-lock musket to the modern revolving rifle. They were, however, sturdy fellows, and looked as if they might do service at "the imminent deadly breach." Their full ranks taken from a population of less than five hundred whites, told unmistakably the intense war feeling of the community.
Georgetown is one of the oldest towns in South Carolina, and it has a decidedly _finished_ appearance. Not a single building, I was informed, had been erected there in five years. Turpentine is one of the chief productions of the district; yet the cost of white lead and chrome yellow has made paint a scarce commodity, and the houses, consequently, all wear a dingy, decayed look. Though situated on a magnificent bay, a little below the confluence of three noble rivers, which drain a country of surpassing richness, and though the centre of the finest rice-growing district in the world, the town is dead. Every thing about it wears an air of dilapidation. The few white men you meet in its streets, or see lounging lazily around its stores and warehouses, appear to lack all purpose and energy. Long contact with the negro seems to have given them his shiftless, aimless character.
The ordinance of secession passed the legislature shortly prior to my arrival, and, as might be expected, the political situation was the all-engrossing topic of thought and conversation. In the estimation of the whites a glorious future was about to open on the little state. Whether she stood alone, or supported by the other slave states, she would assume a high rank among the nations of the earth; her cotton and rice would draw trade and wealth from every land, and when she spoke, creation would tremble. Such overweening state pride in _such_ a people--shiftless, indolent, and enervated as they are--strikes a stranger as in the last degree ludicrous; but when they tell you, in the presence of the black, whose strong brawny arm and sinewy frame show that in him lies the real strength of the state, that this great empire is to be built on the shoulders of the slave, your smile of incredulity gives way to an expression of pity, and you are tempted to ask if those sinewy machines may not THINK, and some day rise, and topple down the mighty fabric which is to be reared on their backs!
Among the "peculiar institutions" of the South are its inns. I do not refer to the pinchbeck, imitation St. Nicholas establishments, which flourish in the larger cities, but to those home-made affairs, noted for hog and hominy, corn-cake and waffles, which crop out here and there in the smaller towns, the natural growth of Southern life and institutions. A model of this class is the one at Georgetown. Hog, hominy, and corn-cake for breakfast; waffles, hog, and hominy for dinner; and hog, hominy, and corn-cake for supper--and such corn-cake, baked in the ashes of the hearth, a plentiful supply of the grayish condiment still clinging to it! --is its never-varying bill of fare. I endured this fare for a day, _how_, has ever since been a mystery to me, but when night came my experiences were indescribable. Retiring early, to get the rest needed to fit me for a long ride on the morrow, I soon realized that "there is no rest for the wicked," none, at least, for sinners at the South. Scarcely had my head touched the pillow when I was besieged by an army of red-coated secessionists, who set upon me without mercy. I withstood the assault manfully, till "bleeding at every pore," and then slowly and sorrowfully beat a retreat. Ten thousand to one is greater odds than the gallant Anderson encountered at Sumter. Yet I determined not to fully abandon the field. Placing three chairs in a row, I mounted upon them, and in that seemingly impregnable position hurled defiance at the enemy, in the words of Scott (slightly altered to suit the occasion): "Come one, come all, these chairs shall fly From their firm base as soon as I." My exultation, however, was of short duration. The persistent foe, scaling my intrenchments, soon returned to the assault with redoubled vigor, and in utter despair I finally fled. Groping my way through the hall, and out of the street-door, I departed. The Sable Brother--alias the Son of Ham--alias the Image of GOD carved in Ebony--alias the Oppressed Type--alias the Contraband--alias the Irrepressible Nigger--alias the Chattel--alias the Darky--alias the Cullud Pusson--had informed me that I should find the Big Bugs at that hotel. I had found them.
Staying longer in such a place was out of the question, and I determined to make my way to the up-country without longer waiting for Jim. With the first streak of day I sallied out to find the means of locomotion.
The ancient town boasts no public conveyance, except a one-horse gig that carries the mail in tri-weekly trips to Charleston. That vehicle, originally used by some New England doctor, in the early part of the past century, had but one seat, and besides, was not going the way I intended to take, so I was forced to seek a conveyance at a livery-stable. At the only livery establishment in the place, kept by a "cullud pusson," who, though a slave, owns a stud of horses that might, among a people more _movingly_ inclined, yield a respectable income, I found what I wanted--a light Newark buggy, and a spanking gray. Provided with these, and a darky driver, who was to accompany me to my destination, and return alone, I started. A trip of seventy miles is something of an undertaking in that region, and quite a crowd gathered around to witness our departure, not a soul of whom, I will wager, will ever hear the rumble of a stage-coach, or the whistle of a steam-car, in those sandy, deserted streets.
We soon left the village, and struck a broad avenue, lined on either side by fine old trees, and extending in an air-line for several miles. The road is skirted by broad rice-fields, and these are dotted here and there by large antiquated houses, and little collections of negro huts. It was Christmas week; no hands were busy in the fields, and every thing wore the aspect of Sunday. We had ridden a few miles when suddenly the road sunk into a deep, broad stream, called, as the driver told me, the Black River. No appliance for crossing being at hand, or in sight, I was about concluding that some modern Moses accommodated travellers by passing them over its bed dry-shod, when a flat-boat shot out from the jungle on the opposite bank, and pulled toward us. It was built of two-inch plank, and manned by two infirm darkies, with frosted wool, who seemed to need all their strength to sit upright. In that leaky craft, kept afloat by incessant baling, we succeeded, at the end of an hour, in crossing the river. And this, be it understood, is travelling in one of the richest districts of South Carolina!
We soon left the region of the rice-fields, and plunged into dense forests of the long-leafed pine, where for miles not a house, or any other evidence of human occupation, is to be seen. Nothing could well be more dreary than a ride through such a region, and to while away the tedium of the journey I opened a conversation with the driver, who up to that time had maintained a respectful silence.
He was a genuine native African, and a most original and interesting specimen of his race. His thin, close-cut lips, straight nose and European features contrasted strangely with a skin of ebon blackness, and the quiet, simple dignity of his manner betokened superior intelligence. His story was a strange one. When a boy, he was with his mother, kidnapped by a hostile tribe, and sold to the traders at Cape Lopez, on the western coast of Africa. There, in the slave-pen, the mother died, and he, a child of seven years, was sent in the slave-ship to Cuba. At Havana, when sixteen, he attracted the notice of a gentleman residing in Charleston, who bought him and took him to "the States." He lived as house-servant in the family of this gentleman till 1855, when his master died, leaving him a legacy to a daughter. This lady, a kind, indulgent mistress, had since allowed him to "hire his time," and he then carried on an "independent business," as porter, and doer of all work around the wharves and streets of Georgetown. He thus gained a comfortable living, besides paying to his mistress one hundred and fifty dollars yearly for the privilege of earning his own support. In every way he was a remarkable negro, and my three days' acquaintance with him banished from my mind all doubt as to the capacity of the black for freedom, and all question as to the disposition of the slave to strike off his chains when the favorable moment arrives. From him I learned that the blacks, though pretending ignorance, are fully acquainted with the questions at issue in the pending contest. He expressed the opinion, that war would come in consequence of the stand South Carolina had taken; and when I said to him: "But if it comes you will be no better off. It will end in a compromise, and leave you where you are." He answered: "No, massa, 't wont do dat. De Souf will fight hard, and de Norf will get de blood up, and come down har, and do 'way wid de _cause_ ob all de trubble--and dat am de nigga."
"But," I said, "perhaps the South will drive the North back; as you say, they will fight hard."
"Dat dey will, massa, dey'm de fightin' sort, but dey can't whip de Norf, 'cause you see dey'll fight wid only one hand. When dey fight de Norf wid de right hand, dey'll hev to hold de nigga wid de leff."
"But," I replied, "the blacks wont rise; most of you have kind masters and fare well."
"Dat's true, massa, but dat an't freedom, and de black lub freedom as much as de white. De same blessed LORD made dem both, and HE made dem all 'like, 'cep de skin. De blacks hab strong hands, and when de day come you'll see dey hab heads, too!"
Much other conversation, showing him possessed of a high degree of intelligence, passed between us. In answer to my question if he had a family, he said: "No, sar. My blood shall neber be slaves! Ole massa flog me and threaten to kill me 'cause I wouldn't take to de wimmin; but I tole him to kill, dat 't would be more his loss dan mine."
I asked if the negroes generally felt as he did, and he told me that many did; that nearly all would fight for their freedom if they had the opportunity, though some preferred slavery because they were sure of being cared for when old and infirm, not considering that if their labor, while they were strong, made their masters rich, the same labor would afford _them_ provision against old age. He told me that there are in the _district_ of Georgetown twenty thousand blacks, and not more than two thousand whites, and "Suppose," he added, "dat one-quarter ob dese niggas rise--de rest keep still--whar den would de white folks be?"
"Of course," I replied, "they would be taken at a disadvantage; but it would not be long before aid came from Charleston, and you would be overpowered."
"No, massa, de chivarly, as you call dem, would be 'way in Virginny, and 'fore dey hard of it Massa Seward would hab troops 'nough in Georgetown to chaw up de hull state in less dan no time."
"But you have no leaders," I said, "no one to direct the movement. Your race is not a match for the white in generalship, and without generals, whatever your numbers, you would fare hardly."
To this he replied, an elevated enthusiasm lighting up his face, "De LORD, massa, made generals ob Gideon and David, and de brack man know as much 'bout war as dey did; p'raps," he added, with a quiet humor, "de brack aint equal to de white. I knows most ob de great men, like Washington and John and James and Paul, and dem ole fellers war white, but dar war Two Sand (Tousaint L'Overture), de Brack Douglass, and de Nigga Demus (Nicodemus), dey war brack."
The argument was unanswerable, and I said nothing. If the day which sees the rising of the Southern blacks comes to this generation, that negro will be among the leaders. He sang to me several of the songs current among the negroes of the district, and though of little poetic value, they interested me, as indicating the feelings of the slaves. The blacks are a musical race, and the readiness with which many of them improvise words and melody is wonderful; but I had met none who possessed the readiness of my new acquaintance. Several of the tunes he repeated several times, and each time with a new accompaniment of words. I will try to render the sentiment of a few of these songs into as good negro dialect as I am master of, but I cannot hope to repeat the precise words, or to convey the indescribable humor and pathos which my darky friend threw into them, and which made our long, solitary ride through those dreary pine-barrens pass rapidly and pleasantly away. The first referred to an old darky who was transplanted from the cotton-fields of "ole Virginny" to the rice-swamps of Carolina, and who did not like the change, but found consolation in the fact that rice is not grown on "the other side of Jordan."
"Come listen, all you darkies, come listen to my song, It am about ole Massa, who use me bery wrong. In de cole, frosty mornin', it an't so bery nice, Wid de water to de middle to hoe among de rice; When I neber hab forgotten How I used to hoe de cotton, How I used to hoe de cotton, On de ole Virginny shore; But I'll neber hoe de cotton, Oh! neber hoe de cotton Any more.
"If I feel de drefful hunger, he tink it am a vice, And he gib me for my dinner a little broken rice, A little broken rice and a bery little fat-- And he grumble like de debil if I eat too much of dat; When I neber hab forgotten, etc.
"He tore me from my DINAH; I tought my heart would burst-- He made me lub anoder when my lub was wid de first, He sole my picaninnies becase he got dar price, And shut me in de marsh-field to hoe among de rice; When I neber had forgotten, etc.
"And all de day I hoe dar, in all de heat and rain, And as I hoe away dar, my heart go back again, Back to de little cabin dat stood among de corn, And to de ole plantation where she and I war born! Oh! I wish I had forgotten, etc.
"Den DINAH am beside me, de chil'ren on my knee, And dough I am a slave dar, it 'pears to me I'm free, Till I wake up from my dreaming, and wife and chil'ren gone, I hoe away and weep dar, and weep dar all alone! Oh! I wish I had forgotten, etc.
"But soon a day am comin, a day I long to see, When dis darky in de cole ground, foreber will be free, When wife and chil'ren wid me, I'll sing in Paradise, How HE, de blessed JESUS, hab bought me wid a price. How de LORD hab not forgotten How well I hoed de cotton, How well I hoed de cotton On de ole Virginny shore; Dar I'll neber hoe de cotton, Oh! neber hoe de cotton Any more."
The politics of the following are not exactly those of the rulers at Washington, but we all may come to this complexion at last: "Hark! darkies, hark! it am de drum Dat calls ole Massa 'way from hum, Wid powder-pouch and loaded gun, To drive ole ABE from Washington; Oh! Massa's gwine to Washington, So clar de way to Washington-- Oh! wont dis darky hab sum fun When Massa's gwine to Washington!
"Dis darky know what Massa do; He take him long to brack him shoe, To brack him shoe and tote him gun, When he am 'way to Washington. Oh! Massa's gwine to Washington, So clar de way to Washington, Oh! long afore de mornin' sun Ole Massa's gwine to Washington!
"Ole Massa say ole ABE will eat De niggas all excep' de feet-- De feet, may be, will cut and run, When Massa gets to Washington, When Massa gets to Washington; So clar de way to Washington-- Oh! wont dis darky cut and run When Massa gets to Washington!
"Dis nigga know ole ABE will save His brudder man, de darky slave, And dat he'll let him cut and run When Massa gets to Washington, When Massa gets to Washington; So clar de way to Washington, Ole ABE will let the darkies run When Massa gets to Washington."
The next is in a similar vein: "A storm am brewin' in de Souf, A storm am brewin' now, Oh! hearken den and shut your mouf, And I will tell you how: And I will tell you how, ole boy, De storm of fire will pour, And make de darkies dance for joy, As dey neber danced afore: So shut your mouf as close as deafh, And all you niggas hole your breafh, And I will tell you how.
"De darkies at de Norf am ris, And dey am comin' down-- Am comin' down, I know dey is, To do de white folks brown! Dey'll turn ole Massa out to grass, And set de niggas free, And when dat day am come to pass We'll all be dar to see! So shut your mouf as close as deafh, And all you niggas hole your breafh, And do de white folks brown!
"Den all de week will be as gay As am de Chris'mas time; We'll dance all night and all de day, And make de banjo chime-- And make de banjo chime, I tink, And pass de time away, Wid 'nuf to eat and 'nuf to drink, And not a bit to pay! So shut your mouf as dose as deafh. And all you niggas hole your breaf, And make de banjo chime.
"Oh! make de banjo chime, you nigs, And sound de tamborin, And shuffle now de merry jigs, For Massa's 'gwine in'-- For Massa's 'gwine in,' I know, And won't he hab de shakes, When Yankee darkies show him how Dey cotch de rattle-snakes! [A] So shut your mouf as close as deafh, And all you niggas hole your breaf, For Massa's 'gwine in'-- For Massa's 'gwine in,' I know, And won't he hab de shakes When Yankee darkies show him how Dey cotch de rattle-snakes!"
The reader must not conclude that my darky acquaintance is an average specimen of his class. Far from it. Such instances of intelligence are very rare, and are never found except in the cities. There, constant intercourse with the white renders the black shrewd and intelligent, but on the plantations, the case is different. And besides, my musical friend, as I have said, is a native African. Fifteen years of observation have convinced me that the imported negro, after being brought in contact with the white, is far more intelligent than the ordinary Southern-born black. Slavery cramps the intellect and dwarfs the nature of a man, and where the dwarfing process has gone on, in father and son, for two centuries, it must surely be the case--as surely as that the qualities of the parent are transmitted to the child--that the later generations are below the first. This deterioration in the better nature of the slave is the saddest result of slavery. His moral and intellectual degradation, which is essential to its very existence, constitutes the true argument against it. It feeds the body but starves the soul. It blinds the reason, and shuts the mind to truth. It degrades and brutalizes the whole being, and does it purposely. In that lies its strength, and in that, too, lurks the weakness which will one day topple it down with a crash that will shake the Continent. Let us hope the direful upheaving, which is now felt throughout the Union, is the earthquake that will bury it forever.
The sun was wheeling below the trees which skirted the western horizon, when we halted in the main road, abreast of one of those by-paths, which every traveller at the South recognizes as leading to a planter's house. Turning our horse's head, we pursued this path for a short distance, when emerging from the pine-forest, over whose sandy barrens we had ridden all the day, a broad plantation lay spread out before us. On one side was a row of perhaps forty small but neat cabins; and on the other, at the distance of about a third of a mile, a huge building, which, from the piles of timber near it, I saw was a lumber-mill. Before us was a smooth causeway, extending on for a quarter of a mile, and shaded by large live-oaks and pines, whose moss fell in graceful drapery from the gnarled branches. This led to the mansion of the proprietor, a large, antique structure, exhibiting the dingy appearance which all houses near the lowlands of the South derive from the climate, but with a generous, hospitable air about its wide doors and bulky windows, that seemed to invite the traveller to the rest and shelter within. I had stopped my horse, and was absorbed in contemplation of a scene as beautiful as it was new to me, when an old negro approached, and touching his hat, said: "Massa send his complimens to de gemman, and happy to hab him pass de night at Bucksville."
"Bucks_ville_!" I exclaimed, "and where is the village?"
"Dis am it, massa; and it am eight mile and a hard road to de 'Boro" (meaning Conwayboro, a one-horse village at which I had designed to spend the night). "Will de gemman please ride up to de piazza?" continued the old negro.
"Yes, uncle, and thank you," and in a moment I had received the cordial welcome of the host, an elderly gentleman, whose easy and polished manners reminded me of the times of our grandfathers in glorious New England. A few minutes put me on a footing of friendly familiarity with him and his family, and I soon found myself in a circle of daughters and grandchildren, and as much at home as if I had been a long-expected guest.
[Footnote A: The emblem of South Carolina.]
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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2
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WAYSIDE HOSPITALITY.
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Years ago--how many it would not interest the reader to know, and might embarrass me to mention--accompanied by a young woman--a blue-eyed, golden-haired daughter of New-England--I set out on a long journey; a journey so long that it will not end till one or the other of us has laid off forever the habiliments of travel.
One of the first stations on our route was--Paris. While there, strolling out one morning alone, accident directed my steps to the _Arc d'Etoile_, that magnificent memorial of the greatness of a great man. Ascending its gloomy staircase to the roof, I seated myself, to enjoy the fine view it affords of the city and its environs.
I was shortly joined by a lady and gentleman, whose appearance indicated that they were Americans. Some casual remark led us into a conversation, and soon, to our mutual surprise and gratification, we learned that the lady was a dear and long-time friend of my travelling-companion. The acquaintance thus begun, has since grown into a close and abiding friendship.
The reader, with this preamble, can readily imagine my pleasure on learning, as we were seated after our evening meal, around that pleasant fireside in far-off Carolina, that my Paris acquaintance was a favorite niece, or, as he warmly expressed it, "almost a daughter" of my host. This discovery dispelled any lingering feeling of "strangeness" that had not vanished with the first cordial greeting of my new-found friends, and made me perfectly "at home."
The evening wore rapidly away in a free interchange of "news," opinions, and "small-talk," and I soon gathered somewhat of the history of my host. He was born at the North, and his career affords a striking illustration of the marvellous enterprise of our Northern character. A native of the State of Maine, he emigrated thence when a young man, and settled down, amid the pine-forest in that sequestered part of Cottondom. Erecting a small saw-mill, and a log shanty to shelter himself and a few "hired" negroes, he attacked, with his own hands, the mighty pines, whose brothers still tower in gloomy magnificence around his dwelling.
From such beginnings he had risen to be one of the wealthiest land and slave owners of his district, with vessels trading to nearly every quarter of the globe, to the Northern and Eastern ports, Cadiz, the West Indies, South America, and if I remember aright, California. It seemed to me a marvel that this man, alone, and unaided by the usual appliances of commerce, had created a business, rivalling in extent the transactions of many a princely merchant of New York and Boston.
His "family" of slaves numbered about three hundred, and a more healthy, and to all appearance, happy set of laboring people, I had never seen. Well fed, comfortably and almost neatly clad, with tidy and well-ordered homes, exempt from labor in childhood and advanced age, and cared for in sickness by a kind and considerate mistress, who is the physician and good Samaritan of the village, they seemed to share as much physical enjoyment as ordinarily falls to the lot of the "hewer of wood and drawer of water." Looking at them, I began to question if Slavery is, in reality, the damnable thing that some untravelled philanthropists have pictured it. If--and in that "_if_" my good Abolition friend, is the only unanswerable argument against the institution--if they were taught, if they knew their nature and their destiny, the slaves of such an owner might unprofitably exchange situations with many a white man, who, with nothing in the present or the future, is desperately struggling for a miserable hand-to-mouth existence in our Northern cities. I say "of such an owner," for in the Southern Arcadia such masters are "few and far between"--rather fewer and farther between than "spots upon the sun."
But they are _not_ taught. Public sentiment, as well as State law, prevents the enlightened master, who would fit the slave by knowledge for greater usefulness, from letting a ray of light in upon his darkened mind. The black knows his task, his name, and his dinner-hour. He knows there is a something within him--he does not understand precisely what--that the white man calls his soul, which he is told will not rest in the ground when his body is laid away in the grave, but will--if he is a "good nigger," obeys his master, and does the task allotted him--travel off to some unknown region, and sing hallelujahs to the LORD, forever. He rather sensibly imagines that such everlasting singing may in time produce hoarseness, so he prepares his vocal organs for the long concert by a vigorous discipline while here, and at the same time cultivates instrumental music, having a dim idea that the LORD has an ear for melody, and will let him, when he is tired of singing, vary the exercise "wid de banjo and de bones." This is all he knows; and his owner, however well-disposed he may be, cannot teach him more. Noble, Christian masters whom I have met--have told me that they did not _dare_ instruct their slaves. Some of their negroes were born in their houses, nursed in their families, and have grown up the playmates of their children, and yet they are forced to see them live and die like the brutes. One need not be accused of fanatical abolitionism if he deems such a system a _little_ in conflict with the spirit of the nineteenth century!
The sun had scarcely turned his back upon the world, when a few drops of rain, sounding on the piazza-roof over our heads, announced a coming storm. Soon it burst upon us in magnificent fury--a real, old-fashioned thunderstorm, such as I used to lie awake and listen to when a boy, wondering all the while if the angels were keeping a Fourth of July in heaven. In the midst of it, when the earth and the sky appeared to have met in true Waterloo fashion, and the dark branches of the pines seemed writhing and tossing in a sea of flame, a loud knock came at the hall-door (bells are not the fashion in Dixie), and a servant soon ushered into the room a middle-aged, unassuming gentleman, whom my host received with a respect and cordiality which indicated that he was no ordinary guest. There was in his appearance and manner that indefinable something which denotes the man of mark; but my curiosity was soon gratified by an introduction. It was "Colonel" A----. This title, I afterward learned, was merely honorary: and I may as well remark here, that nearly every one at the South who has risen to the ownership of a negro, is either a captain, a major, or a colonel, or, as my ebony driver expressed it: "Dey'm all captins and mates, wid none to row de boat but de darkies." On hearing the name, I recognized it as that of one of the oldest and most aristocratic South Carolina families, and the new guest as a near relative to the gentleman who married the beautiful and ill-fated Theodosia Burr.
In answer to an inquiry of my host, the new-comer explained that he had left Colonel J----'s (the plantation toward which I was journeying), shortly before noon, and being overtaken by the storm after leaving Conwayboro, had, at the solicitation of his "boys" (a familiar term for slaves), who were afraid to proceed, called to ask shelter for the night.
Shortly after his entrance, the lady members of the family retired; and then the "Colonel," the "Captain," and myself, drawing our chairs near the fire, and each lighting a fragrant Havana, placed on the table by our host, fell into a long conversation, of which the following was a part: "It must have been urgent business, Colonel, that took you so far into the woods at this season," remarked our host.
"These are urgent times, Captain B----," replied the guest. "All who have any thing at stake, should be _doing_."
"These _are_ unhappy times, truly," said my friend; "has any thing new occurred?"
"Nothing of moment, sir; but we are satisfied Buchanan is playing us false, and are preparing for the worst."
"I should be sorry to know that a President of the United States had resorted to underhand measures! Has he really given you pledges?"
"He promised to preserve the _statu quo_ in Charleston harbor, and we have direct information that he intends to send out reinforcements," rejoined Colonel A----.
"Can that be true? You know, Colonel, I never admired your friend, Mr. Buchanan, but I cannot see how, if he does his duty, he can avoid enforcing the laws in Charleston, as well as in the other cities of the Union."
"The 'Union,' sir, does not exist. Buchanan has now no more right to quarter a soldier in South Carolina than I have to march an armed force on to Boston Common. If he persists in keeping troops near Charleston, we shall dislodge them."
"But that would make war! and war, Colonel," replied our host, "would be a terrible thing. Do you realize what it would bring upon us? And what could our little State do in a conflict with nearly thirty millions?"
"We should not fight with thirty millions. The other Cotton States are with us, and the leaders in the Border States are pledged to Secession. They will wheel into line when we give the word. But the North will not fight. The Democratic party sympathizes with us, and some of its influential leaders are pledged to our side. They will sow division there, and paralyze the Free States; besides, the trading and manufacturing classes will never consent to a war that will work their ruin. With the Yankees, sir, the dollar is almighty."
"That may be true," replied our host; "but I think if we go too far, they will fight. What think you, Mr. K----?" he continued, appealing to me, and adding: "This gentleman, Colonel, is very recently from the North."
Up to that moment, I had avoided taking part in the conversation. Enough had been said to satisfy me that while my host was a staunch Unionist,[B] his visitor was not only a rank Secessionist, but one of the leaders of the movement, and even then preparing for desperate measures. Discretion, therefore, counselled silence. To this direct appeal, however, I was forced to reply, and answered: "I think, sir, the North does not yet realize that the South is in earnest. When it wakes up to that fact, its course will be decisive."
"Will the Yankees _fight_, sir?" rather impatiently and imperiously asked the Colonel, who evidently thought I intended to avoid a direct answer to the question.
Rather nettled by his manner, I quickly responded: "Undoubtedly they will, sir. They have fought before, and it would not be wise to count them cowards."
A true gentleman, he at once saw that his manner had given offence, and instantly moderating his tone, rather apologetically replied: "Not cowards, sir, but too much absorbed in the 'occupations of peace,' to go to war for an idea."
"But what you call an 'idea,'" said our host, "_they_ may think a great fact on which their existence depends. _I_ can see that we will lose vastly by even a peaceful separation. Tell me, Colonel, what we will gain?"
"Gain!" warmly responded the guest. "Everything! Security, freedom, room for the development of our institutions, and each progress in wealth as the world has never seen."
"All that is very fine," rejoined the "Captain," "but where there is wealth, there must be work; and who will do the work in your new Empire--I do not mean the agricultural labor; you will depend for that, of coarse, on the blacks--but who will run your manufactories and do your mechanical labor? The Southern gentleman would feel degraded by such occupation; and if you put the black to any work requiring intelligence, you must let him _think_, and when he THINKS, _he is free_!"
"All that is easily provided for," replied the Secessionist. "We shall form intimate relations with England. She must have our cotton, and we in return will take her manufactures."
"That would be all very well at present, and so long as you should keep on good terms with her; but suppose, some fine morning, Exeter Hall got control of the English Government, and hinted to you, in John Bull fashion, that cotton produced by free labor would be more acceptable, what could three, or even eight millions, cut off from the sympathy and support of the North, do in opposition to the power of the British empire?"
"Nothing, perhaps, if we _were_ three or even eight millions, but we shall be neither one nor the other. Mexico and Cuba are ready, now, to fall into our hands, and before two years have passed, with or without the Border States, we shall count twenty millions. Long before England is abolitionized, our population will outnumber hers, and our territory extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and as far south as the Isthmus. We are founding, sir, an empire that will be able to defy all Europe--one grander than the world has seen since the age of Pericles!"
"You say, with or without the Border States," remarked our host. "I thought you counted on their support."
"We do if the North makes war upon us, but if allowed to go in peace, we can do better without them. They will be a wall between us and the abolitionized North."
"You mistake," I said, "in thinking the North is abolitionized. The Abolitionists are but a handful there. The great mass of our people are willing the South should have undisturbed control of its domestic concerns."
"Why, then, do you send such men as Seward, Sumner, Wilson, and Grow to Congress? Why have you elected a President who approves of nigger-stealing? and why do you tolerate such incendiaries as Greeley, Garrison, and Phillips?"
"Seward, and the others you name," I replied, "are not Abolitionists; neither does Lincoln approve of nigger-stealing. He is an honest man, and I doubt not, when inaugurated, will do exact justice by the South. As to incendiaries, you find them in both sections. Phillips and Garrison are only the opposite poles of Yancey and Wise."
"Not so, sir; they are more. Phillips, Greeley, and Garrison create and control your public opinion. They are mighty powers, while Yancey and Wise have no influence whatever. Yancey is a mere bag-pipe; we play upon him, and like the music, but smile when he attempts to lead us. Wise is a harlequin; we let him dance because he is good at it, and it amuses us. Lincoln may be honest, but if made President he will be controlled by Seward, who hates the South. Seward will whine, and wheedle, and attempt to cajole us back, but mark what I say, sir, I _know_ him; he is physically, morally, and constitutionally a COWARD, and will never strike a blow for the UNION. If hard pressed by public sentiment, he may, to save appearances, bluster a little, and make a show of getting ready for a fight; but he will find some excuse at the last moment, and avoid coming to blows. For our purposes, we had rather have the North under his control than under that of the old renegade, Buchanan!"
"All this may he very true," I replied, "but perhaps you attach too much weight to what Mr. Seward or Mr. Lincoln may or may not do. You seem to forget that there are twenty intelligent millions at the North, who will have something to say on this subject, and who may not consent to be driven into disunion by the South, or wheedled into it by Mr. Seward."
"I do not forget," replied the Secessionist, "that you have four millions of brave, able-bodied men, while we have not, perhaps, more than two millions; but bear in mind that you are divided, and therefore weak; we united, and therefore strong!"
"But," I inquired, "_have_ you two millions without counting your blacks; and are _they_ not as likely to fight on the wrong as on the right side?"
"They will fight on the right side, sir. We can trust them. You have travelled somewhat here. Have you not been struck with the contentment and cheerful subjection of the slaves?"
"No, sir, I have not been! On the contrary, their discontent is evident. You are smoking a cigar on a powder-barrel."
An explosion of derisive laughter from the Colonel followed this remark, and turning to the Captain, he good-humoredly exclaimed: "Hasn't the gentleman used his eyes and ears industriously!"
"I am afraid he is more than half right," was the reply. "If this thing should go on, I would not trust my own slaves, and I think they are truly attached to me. If the fire once breaks out, the negroes will rush into it, like horses into a burning barn."
"Think you so!" exclaimed the Colonel in an excited manner. "By Heaven, if I believed it, I would cut the throat of every slave in Christendom! What," addressing me, "have you seen or heard, sir, that gives you that opinion?"
"Nothing but a sullen discontent and an eagerness for news, which show they feel intense interest in what is going on, and know it concerns _them_."
"I haven't remarked that," he said rather musingly, "but it _may_ be so. Does the North believe it? If we came to blows, would they try to excite servile insurrection among us?"
"The North, beyond a doubt, believes it," I replied, "yet I think even the Abolitionists would aid you in putting down an insurrection; but war, in my opinion, would not leave you a slave between the Rio Grande and the Potomac."
The Colonel at this rose, remarking: "You are mistaken. You are mistaken, sir!" then turning to our host, said: "Captain, it is late: had we not better retire?" Bidding me "good-night," he was gone.
Our host soon returned from showing the guest to his apartment, and with a quiet but deliberate manner, said to me: "You touched him, Mr. K----, on a point where he knows we are weakest; but allow me to caution you about expressing your opinions so freely. The Colonel is a gentleman, and what you have said will do no harm, but, long as I have lived here, _I_ dare not say to many what you have said to him to-night."
Thanking the worthy gentleman for the caution, I followed him up stairs, and soon lost, in a sweet oblivion, all thoughts of Abolitionists, niggers, and the "grand empire."
I was awakened in the morning by music under my window, and looking out discovered about a dozen darkies gathered around my ebony driver, who was clawing away with all his might at a dilapidated banjo, while his auditory kept time to his singing, by striking the hand on the knee, and by other gesticulations too numerous to mention. The songs were not much to boast of, but the music was the genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, darky article. The following was the refrain of one of the songs, which the reader will perceive was an exhortation to early rising: "So up, good massa, let's be gwoin', Let's be scratchin' ob de grabble; For soon de wind may be a blowin', An' we'se a sorry road to trabble."
The storm of the previous night had ceased, but the sky was overcast, and looked as if "soon de wind might be a-blowin'." Prudence counselled an early start, for, doubtless, the runs, or small creeks, had become swollen by the heavy rain, and would be unsafe to cross after dark. Besides, beyond Conwayboro, our route lay for thirty miles through a country without a solitary house where we could get decent shelter, were we overtaken by a storm.
Hurriedly performing my toilet, I descended to the drawing-room, where I found the family assembled. After the usual morning salutations were exchanged, a signal from the mistress caused the sounding of a bell in the hall, and some ten or twelve men and women house-servants, of remarkably neat and tidy appearance, among whom was my darky driver, entered the apartment. They took a stand at the remote end of the room, and our host, opening a large, well-worn family BIBLE, read the fifty-fourth chapter of Isaiah. Then, all kneeling, he made a short extemporaneous petition, closing with the LORD'S Prayer; all present, black as well as white, joining in it. Then Heber's beautiful hymn, "From Greenland's icy mountains," was sung; the negroes, to my ear, making much better music than the whites.
The services over, we adjourned to the dining-room, and after we were seated, the "Colonel" remarked to me: "Did you notice how finely that negro 'boy' (he was fully forty years old) sung?"
"Yes," I replied, "I did. Do you know him, sir?"
"Oh! yes, very well. His mistress wishes to sell him, but finds difficulty in doing so. Though a likely negro, people will not buy him. He's too smart."
"That strikes me as a singular objection," I remarked.
"Oh! no, not at all! These _knowing_ niggers frequently make a world of trouble on a plantation."
It was after ten o'clock before we were ready to start. The mills, the negro-quarters, and various other parts of the plantation, and then several vessels moored at the wharf, had to be seen before I could get away. Finally, I bade my excellent host and his family farewell, and with nearly as much regret as I ever felt at leaving my own home. I had experienced the much-heard-of Southern hospitality, and had found the report far below the reality.
The other guest had taken his leave some time before, but not till he had given me a cordial invitation to return by the way I came, and spend a day or two with him, at his plantation on the river, some twenty miles below.
The sky was lowery, and the sandy road heavy with the recent rain, when we started. The gloomy weather seemed to have infected the driver as well as myself. He had lost the mirthfulness and loquacity of the previous day, and we rode on for a full hour in silence. Tiring at last of my own thoughts, I said to him: "Scip, what is the matter with you? what makes you so gloomy?"
"Nuffin, massa; I war only tinkin'," he abstractedly replied.
"And what are you thinking about?"
"I's wond'rin', massa, if de LORD mean de darkies in dose words of HIS dat Massa B---- read dis mornin'."
"What words do you mean?
"Dese, massa: 'O dou 'fflicted! tossed wid de tempest, and habin no comfort, behold, I will make you hous'n ob de fair colors, and lay dar foundations wid safomires. All dy chil'ren shill be taught ob de LORD, and great shill be dar peace. In de right shill dey be 'stablished; dey shill hab no fear, no terror; it shan't come nigh 'em, and who come against dem shill fall. Behold! I hab make de blacksmif dat blow de coals, and make de weapons; and I hab make de waster dat shill destroy de oppressors.'"
If he had repeated one of Webster's orations I could not have been more astonished. I did not remember the exact words of the passage, but I knew he had caught its spirit. Was this his recollection of the reading heard in the morning? or had he previously committed it to memory? These questions I asked myself; but, restraining my curiosity, I answered: "Undoubtedly they are meant for both the black and the white."
"Do dey mean, massa, dat we shall be like de wite folks--wid our own hous'n, our chil'ren taught in de schools, and wid weapons to strike back when dey strike us?"
"No, Scipio, they don't mean that. They refer principally to spiritual matters. They were a promise to _all the world_ that when the SAVIOUR came, all, even the greatly oppressed and afflicted, should hear the great truths of the BIBLE about GOD, REDEMPTION, and the FUTURE."
"But de SAVIOUR hab come, massa; and dose tings an't taught to de black chil'ren. We hab no peace, no rights; nuffin but fear, 'pression, and terror."
"That is true, Scipio. The LORD takes HIS own time, but HIS time will _surely_ come."
"De LORD bless you, massa, for saying dat; and de LORD bless you for telling dat big Cunnel, dat if dey gwo to war de brack man will be FREE!"
"Did you hear what we said?" I inquired, greatly surprised, for I remembered remarking, during the interview of the previous evening, that our host carefully kept the doors closed.
"Ebery word, massa."
"But how _could_ you hear? The doors and windows were shut. Where were you?"
"On de piazzer; and when I seed fru de winder dat de ladies war gwine, I know'd you'd talk 'bout politics and de darkies--gemmen allers do. So I opened de winder bery softly--you didn't har 'cause it rained and blowed bery hard, and made a mighty noise. Den I stuffed my coat in de crack, so de wind could'nt blow in and lef you know I was dar, but I lef a hole big 'nough to har. My ear froze to dat hole, massa, bery tight, I 'shore you."
"But you must have got very wet and very cold."
"Wet, massa! wetter dan a 'gator dat's been in de riber all de week, but I didn't keer for de rain or de cold. What I hard made me warm all de way fru."
To my mind there was a rough picture of true heroism in that poor darky standing for hours in his shirt-sleeves, in the cold, stormy night, the lightning playing about him, and the rain drenching him to the skin--that he might hear something he thought would benefit his down-trodden race.
I noticed his clothing though bearing evident marks of a drenching, was then dry, and I inquired: "How did you dry your clothes?"
"I staid wid some ob de cullud folks, and arter you gwoes up stars, I went to dar cabin, and dey gabe me some dry cloes. We made up a big fire, and hung mine up to dry, and de ole man and woman and me sot up all night and talked ober what you and de oder gemmen said."
"Will not those folks tell what you did, and thus get you into trouble?"
"Tell! LORD bless you, massa, _de bracks am all freemasons_; dat ar ole man and woman wud die 'fore dey'd tell."
"But are not Captain B---'s negroes contented?" I asked; "they seem to be well treated."
"Oh! yas, dey am. All de brack folks 'bout har want de Captin to buy 'em. He bery nice man--one ob de LORD'S own people. He better man dan David, 'cause David did wrong, and I don't b'lieve de Captin eber did."
"I should think he was a very good man," I replied.
"Bery good man, massa, but de white folks don't like him, 'cause dey say he treats him darkies so well, all dairn am uncontented."
"Tell me, Scipio," I resumed after a while, "how it is you can repeat that passage from Isaiah so well?"
"Why, bless you, massa, I know Aziar and Job and de Psalms 'most all by heart. Good many years ago, when I lib'd in Charles'on, the gub'ness learned me to read, and I hab read dat BOOK fru good many times."
"Have you read any others?" I asked.
"None but dat and Doctor Watts. I hab _dem_, but wite folks wont sell books to de bracks, and I wont steal 'em. I read de papers sometimes."
I opened my portmanteau, that lay on the floor of the wagon, and handed him a copy of Whittier's poems. It happened to be the only book, excepting the BIBLE, that I had with me.
"Read that, Scipio," I said. "It is a book of poetry, but written by a good man at the North, who greatly pities the slave."
He took the book, and the big tears rolled down his cheeks, as he said: "Tank you, massa, tank you. Nobody war neber so good to me afore."
During our conversation, the sky, which had looked threatening all the morning, began to let fall the big drops of rain; and before we reached Conwayboro, it poured down much after the fashion of the previous night. It being cruelty to both man and beast to remain out in such a deluge, we pulled up at the village hotel (kept, like the one at Georgetown, by a lady), and determined to remain overnight, unless the rain should abate in time to allow us to reach our destination before dark.
Dinner being ready soon after our arrival (the people of Conwayboro, like the "common folks" that Davy Crockett told about, dine at twelve), I sat down to it, first hanging my outer garments, which were somewhat wet, before the fire in the sitting-room. The house seemed to be a sort of public boarding-house, as well as hotel, for quite a number of persons, evidently town's-people were at the dinner-table. My appearance attracted some attention, though not more, I thought, than would be naturally excited in so quiet a place by the arrival of a stranger; but "as nobody said nothing to me, I said nothing to nobody."
Dinner over, I adjourned to the "sitting-room," and seating myself by the fire, watched the drying of my "outer habiliments." While thus engaged, the door opened, and three men--whom I should have taken for South Carolina gentlemen, had not a further acquaintance convinced me to the contrary--entered the room. Walking directly up to where I was sitting, the foremost one accosted me something after this manner: "I see you are from the North, sir."
Taken a little aback by the abruptness of the "salute," but guessing his object, I answered: "No, sir; I am from the South."
"From what part of the South?"
"I left Georgetown yesterday, and Charleston two days before that," I replied, endeavoring to seem entirely oblivious to his meaning.
"We don't want to know whar you war yesterday; we want to know whar you _belong_," he said, with a little impatience.
"Oh! that's it. Well, sir, I belong _here_ just at present, or rather I shall, when I have paid the landlady for my dinner."
Annoyed by my coolness, and getting somewhat excited, he replied quickly: "You mustn't trifle with us, sir. We know you. You're from the North. We've seen it on your valise, and we can't allow a man who carries the New York _Independent_ to travel in South Carolina."
The scoundrels had either broken into my portmanteau, or else a copy of that paper had dropped from it on to the floor of the wagon when I gave the book to Scipio. At any rate, they had seen it, and it was evident "Brother Beecher" was getting me into a scrape. I felt indignant at the impudence of the fellow, but determined to keep cool, and, a little sarcastically, replied to the latter part of his remark: "That's a pity, sir. South Carolina will lose by it."
"This game wont work, sir. We don't want such people as you har, and the sooner you make tracks the better."
"I intend to leave, sir, as soon as the rain is over, and shall travel thirty miles on your sandy roads to-day, if you don't coax me to stay here by your hospitality," I quietly replied.
The last remark was just the one drop needed to make his wrath "bile over," and he savagely exclaimed: "I tell you, sir, we will not be trifled with. You must be off to Georgetown at once. You can have just half an hour to leave the Boro', not a second more."
His tone and manner aroused what little combativeness there is in me. Rising from my chair, and taking up my outside-coat, in which was one of Colt's six-shooters, I said to him: "Sir, I am here, a peaceable man, on peaceable, private business. I have started to go up the country, and go there I shall; and I shall leave this place at my convenience--not before. I have endured your impertinence long enough, and shall have no more of it. If you attempt to interfere with my movements, you will do so at your peril."
My blood was up, and I was fast losing that better part of valor called discretion; and _he_ evidently understood my movement, and did not dislike the turn affairs were taking. There is no telling what might have followed had not Scip just at that instant inserted his woolly head between us, excitedly exclaiming: "Lord bless you, Massa B----ll; what _am_ you 'bout? Why, dis gemman am a 'ticlar friend of Cunnel A----. He'm a reg'lar sesherner. He hates de ablisherners worser dan de debble. I hard him swar a clar, blue streak 'bout dem only yesterday."
"Massa B----ll" was evidently taken aback by the announcement of the negro, but did not seem inclined to "give it up so" at once, for he asked: "How do you know he's the Colonel's friend, Scip? Who told you so?"
"Who told me so?" exclaimed the excited negro, "why, didn't he stay at Captin B----'s, wid de Cunnel, all night last night; and didn't dey set up dar doin' politic business togedder till arter midnight? Didn't de Cunnel come dar in all de storm 'pressly to see dis gemman?"
The ready wit and rude eloquence of the darky amused me, and the idea of the "Cunnel" travelling twenty miles through the terrible storm of the previous night to meet a man who had the New York _Independent_ about him, was so perfectly ludicrous, that I could not restrain my laughter. That laugh did the business for "Massa B----ll." What the negro had said staggered, but did not convince him; but my returning good-humor brought him completely round. Extending his hand to me, he said: "I see, sir, I've woke up the wrong passenger. Hope you'll take no offence. In these times we need to know who come among us."
"No offence whatever, sir," I replied. "It is easy to be mistaken; but," I added smilingly, "I hope, for the sake of the next traveller, you'll be less precipitate another time."
"I _am_ rather hasty; that's a fact," he said. "But no harm is done. So let's take a drink, and say no more about it. The old lady har keeps nary a thing, but we can get the _raal stuff_ close by."
Though not a member of a "Total Abstinence Society," I have always avoided indulging in the quality of fluid that is the staple beverage at the South. I therefore hesitated a moment before accepting the gentleman's invitation; but the alternative seemed to be squarely presented, pistols or drinks; cold lead or poor whiskey, and--I am ashamed to confess it--I took the whiskey.
Returning to the hotel, I found Scip awaiting me. "Massa," he said, "we better be gwine. Dat dar sesherner am ugly as de bery ole debble; and soon as he knows I cum de possum ober him 'bout de Cunnel, he'll be down on you _shore_."
The rain had dwindled to a drizzle, which the sun was vigorously struggling to get through with a tolerable prospect of success, and I concluded to take the African's advice. Wrapping myself in an India-rubber overcoat, and giving the darky a blanket of the same material, I started.
[Footnote B: I very much regret to learn, that since my meeting with this most excellent gentleman, being obnoxious to the Secession leaders for his well-known Union sentiments, he has been very onerously assessed by them for contributions for carrying on the war. The sum he has been forced to pay, is stated as high as forty thousand dollars, but that may be, and I trust is, an exaggeration. In addition--and this fact is within my own knowledge--five of his vessels have been seized in the Northern ports by our Government. This exposure of true Union men to a double fire, is one of the most unhappy circumstances attendant upon this most unhappy war.]
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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3
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CROSSING THE "RUNS."
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The long, tumble-down bridge which spans the Waccamaw at Conwayboro, trembled beneath our horse's tread, as with lengthened stride he shook the secession mud from his feet, and whirled us along into the dark, deep forest. It may have been the exhilaration of a hearty dinner of oats, or it may have been sympathy with the impatience of his fellow-travellers that spurred him on; whichever it was, away he went as if Lucifer--that first Secessionist--were following close at his heels.
The sun, which for a time had been industriously wedging his way into the dark masses of cloud, finally slunk out of sight and left us enveloped in a thick fog, which shut from view all of Cottondom, except a narrow belting of rough pines, and a few rods of sandy road that stretched out in dim perspective before us. There being nothing in the outside creation to attract my attention, I drew the apron of the carriage about me, and settling myself well back on the seat to avoid the thick-falling mist, fell into a train of dreamy reflection.
Niggers, slave-auctions, cotton-fields, rice-swamps, and King Cotton himself, that blustering old despot, with his swarthy arms and "under-pinning," his face of brass, and body of "raw material," passed through my mind, like Georgia trains through the Oconee Swamp, till finally my darky friend came into view. He seemed at first a little child, amid the blazing ruins of his wilderness home, gazing in stupid horror on the burning bodies of his father and his kindred. Then he was kneeling at the side of his dying mother in the slave-pen at Cape Lopez, and--still a child--cooped in the "Black-hole" of the accursed slave-ship, his little frame burning with the fever-fire, and his child-heart longing for death. Then he seemed mounting the Cuban slave-block, and as the "going! going! gone!" rung in my ear, he was hurried away, and driven to the cruel task--still a child--on the hot, unhealthy sugar-field. Again he appeared, stealing away at night to a lonely hut, and by the light of a pine-knot, wearily poring over the BOOK of BOOKS, slowly putting letters into words, and words into sentences, that he might know _"What God says to the black man." _ Then he seemed a man--splendid of frame, noble of soul--suspended in the whipping-rack, his arms bound above his head, his body resting on the tips of his toes, and the merciless lash falling on his bare back, till the red stream ran from it like a river--scourged because he would not aid in creating beings as wretched as himself, and make merchandise of his own blood to gorge the pocket of an incarnate white devil.
As these things passed before me, and I thought of his rare intelligence, of his fine traits of character, and of the true heroism he had shown in risking, perhaps, his own life to get me--a stranger--out of an ugly hobble, I felt a certain spot in my left side warming toward him, very much as it might have done had his blood been as pure as my own. It seemed to me a pity--anti-Abolitionist and Southern-sympathizer though I was--that a man of such rare natural talent, such character and energy, should have his large nature dwarfed, be tethered for life to a cotton-stalk, and made to wear his soul out in a tread-mill, merely because his skin had a darker tinge and his shoe a longer heel than mine.
As I mused over his "strange, eventful history," and thought of the handy way nature has of putting the _right_ man in the _wrong_ place, it occurred to me how "Brother Beecher" one evening, not a long time before, had charmed the last dollar from my waistcoat pocket by exhibiting, _à la_ Barnum, a remarkably ugly "cullud pusson" on his pulpit stairs, and by picturing the awful doom which awaited her--that of being reduced from baby-tending to some less useful employment--if his audience did not at once "do the needful." Then it occurred to me how much finer a spectacle my ebony friend would make; how well his six feet of manly sinew would grace those pulpit stairs; how eloquently the reverend gentleman might expatiate on the burning sin of shrouding the light of such an intellect in the mists of niggerdom, only to see it snuffed out in darkness; how he might enlarge on what the black could do in elevating his race, either as "cullud" assistant to "Brother Pease" at the Five-Points, or as co-laborer with Fred Douglass at abolition conventions, or, if that didn't _pay_, how, put into the minstrel business, he might run the white "troupes" off the track, and yield a liberal revenue to the "Cause of Freedom." As I thought of the probable effect of this last appeal, it seemed to me that the thing was already done, and that SCIP was FREE.
I got back from dreamland by the simple act of opening my eyes, and found myself still riding along in that Jersey wagon, over that heavy, sandy road, and drenched with the mists of that dreary December day. The reverie made, however, a deep impression on me, and I gave vent to it somewhat as follows: "Colonel A---- tells me, Scip, that your mistress wants to sell you. Do you know what she asks?"
"She ax fifteen hundred dollar, massa, but I an't worth dat now. Nigger property's mighty low."
"What is your value now?"
"P'raps eight hundred, p'raps a thousand dollar, massa."
"Would your mistress take a thousand for you?"
"Don't know, sar, but reckon she would. She'd be glad to get shut of me. She don't like me on de plantation, 'cause she say de oder darkies tink too much ob me; and she don't like me in de city, 'cause she 'fraid I run away."
"Why afraid you'll runaway? Did you ever try to?"
"Try to! LOR, massa, I neber taught ob such a ting--wouldn't gwo ef I could."
"But wouldn't you?" I asked, thinking he had conscientious scruples about running away; "wouldn't you if you could buy yourself, and go honestly, as a _free_ man?"
"Buy myself, sar!" he exclaimed in surprise; "buy _my own_ flesh and blood dat de LORD hissef gabe me! No, no! massa; I'd likes to be free, but I'd neber do _dat_!"
"Why not do that?" I asked. " 'Cause 't would be owning dat de white folks hab a right to de brack; and 'cause, sar, if I war free I couldn't stay har."
"Why should you stay here? You have no wife nor child; why not go where the black man is respected and useful?"
"I'se 'spected and useful har, massa. I hab no wife nor child, and dat make me feel, I s'pose, like as ef all de brack people war my chil'ren."
"But they are not your children; and you can be of no service to them. At the North you might learn, and put your talents to some use."
"Sar," he replied, a singular enthusiasm lighting up his face, "de LORD, dat make me what I ar, put me har, and I must stay. Sometimes when tings look bery brack, and I feel a'most 'scouraged, I goes to HIM, and I say, 'LORD, I's ob no use, take me 'way; let me get fru wid dis; let me no more see de suffrin' and 'pression ob de pore cullud race;' den HE say to me, just so plain as I say it to you, 'Keep up good courage, Scipio, de time will come;'[C] and now, bless de LORD, de time am coming!" " _What_ time is coming, Scipio?"
He gave me a quick, suspicious glance, but his face in a moment resumed its usual expression, as he replied: "I'se sure, massa, dat I could trust you. I feel you am my friend, but I can't say no more."
"You need not, Scip--I can guess. What you have said is safe with me. But let me counsel you--wait for the white man. Do not let your freedom come in blood!"
"It will come, massa, as de LORD will. When HE war freed _de earth shook, and de vail ob de temple war rent in twain_!"
We said no more, but rode on in silence; the darky absorbed in his own reflections, I musing over the black volcano, whose muffled echoes I then heard "away down South in Dixie."
We had ridden on for about an hour, when an opening in the trees disclosed a by-path, leading to a plantation. Following it for a short distance, we came upon a small clearing, in the midst of which, flanked by a ragged corn and potato patch, squatted a dilapidated, unpainted wooden building, a sort of "half-way house" between a hut and a shanty. In its door-way, seated on a chair which wanted one leg and a back, was a suit of linsey-woolsey, adorned by enormous metal buttons, and surmounted by a queer-looking headpiece that might have passed for either a hat or an umbrella. I was at a loss to determine whether the object were a human being or a scarecrow, when, at the sound of our approach, the umbrella-like article lifted, and a pair of sunken eyes, a nose, and an enormous beard, disclosed themselves. Addressing myself to the singular figure, I inquired how far we were from our destination, and the most direct route to it.
"Wal, stranger," was the reply, "it's a right smart twenty mile to the Cunnel's, but I reckon ye'll get thar, if ye follow yer critter's nose, and ar good at swimming."
"Why good at swimming?" I inquired. " 'Cause the 'runs' have ris, and ar considerable deep by this time."
"That's comforting news."
"Yas, to a man as seems in a hurry," he replied, looking at my horse, which was covered with foam.
"How far is it to the nearest run?" I asked.
"Wal, it mought be six mile; it mought be seven, but you've one or two all-fired ones to cross arter that."
Here was a pleasant predicament. It was nearly five o'clock, and our horse, though a noble animal, could not make the distance on an unobstructed route, in the then heavy state of the roads, in less than three hours. Long before that time it would be dark, and no doubt stormy, for the sky, which had lowered all the afternoon, every now and then uttered an ominous growl, and seemed ready to fall down upon us. But turning back was out of the question, so, thanking the "native," I was about to proceed, when he hailed me as follows: "I say, stranger, what's the talk in the city?"
"Nothing, sir," I replied, "but fight and Secession."
"D--n Secession!" was the decidedly energetic answer.
"Why so, my friend? That doctrine seems to be popular hereabouts."
"Yas, pop'lar with them South Car'lina chaps. They'd be oneasy in heaven if Gabriel was cook, and the LORD head-waiter."
"They must be hard to suit," I said; "I 'kalkerlate' _you're_ not a South Carolinian."
"No, sir-ee! not by several mile. My mother moved over the line to born me a decent individual."
"But why are you for the Union, when your neighbors go the other way?" " 'Cause it's allers carried us 'long as slick as a cart with new-greased wheels; and 'cause, stranger, my grand'ther was one of Marion's boys, and spilt a lettle claret at Yewtaw for the old consarn, and I reckon he'd be oneasy in his grave if I turned my back on it now."
"But, my friend," I said, "they say Lincoln is an Abolitionist, and if inaugurated, he will free every darky you've got."
"He can't do that, stranger, 'cordin' to the Constetution, and grand'ther used to say that ar dokermunt would hold the d--l himself; but, for my part, I'd like to see the niggers free."
"See the niggers free!" I replied in undisguised astonishment; "why, my good sir, that is rank treason and abolition."
"Call it what yer a mind to, them's my sentiments; but I say, stranger, if thar's ony thing on airth that I uttarly dispise it ar a Northern dough-face, and it's clar yer one on 'em."
"There, my friend, you're mistaken. I'm neither an Abolitionist nor a dough-face. But _why_ do you go for freeing the niggers?" " 'Cause the white folks would be better off. You see, I have to feed and clothe my niggers, and pay a hundred and twenty and a hundred and fifty a year for 'em, and if the niggers war free, they'd work for 'bout half that."
Continuing the conversation, I learned that the umbrella-hatted gentleman worked twenty hired negroes in the gathering of turpentine; and that the district we were entering was occupied by persons in the same pursuit, who nearly all employed "hired hands," and entertained similar sentiments; Colonel J----, whom I was about to visit, and who was a large slave-_owner_, being about the only exception. This, the reader will please remember, was the state of things at the date of which I am writing, in the _very heart_ of Secessiondom.
Bidding the turpentine-getter a rather reluctant "good-by," I rode on into the rain.
It was nearly dark when we reached the first "run," but, fortunately, it was less swollen than our way-side acquaintance had represented, and we succeeded in crossing without difficulty. Hoping that the others might be equally as fordable, we pushed rapidly on, the darkness meanwhile gathering thickly about us, and the rain continuing to fall. Our way lay through an unbroken forest, and as the wind swept fiercely through it, the tall dark pines which towered on either side, moaned and sighed like a legion of unhappy spirits let loose from the dark abodes below. Occasionally we came upon a patch of woods where the turpentine-gatherer had been at work, and the white faces of the "tapped" trees, gleaming through the darkness, seemed an army of "sheeted ghosts" closing steadily around us. The darkness, the rain, and the hideous noises in the forest, called up unpleasant associations, and I inwardly determined to ask hospitality from the first human being, black or white, whom we should meet.
We had ridden on for about an hour after dark, when suddenly our horse's feet plashed in the water, and he sank to his middle in a stream. My first thought was that we were in the second "run," but as he pushed slowly on, the water momentarily growing deeper, and spreading on either side as far as we could see, it flashed upon me that we had missed the road in the darkness, and were fairly launched into the Waccamaw river! Turning to the darky, who was then driving, I said quickly: "Scip, stop the horse. Where are we?"
"Don't know, massa; reckon we'se in de riber."
"A comfortable situation this. We can't turn round. The horse can't swim such a stream in harness. What shall we do?"
"Can you swim, massa?" he quietly asked.
"Yes, like an eel."
"Wal, den, we'd better gwo on. De hoss'll swim. But, massa, you might take off your boots and overcoat, and be ready for a spring ef he gwo down."
I did as he directed, while he let down the apron and top of the wagon, and fastened the reins loosely to the dash-board, saying as he did so, "You must allers gib a hoss his head when he swim, massa; if you rein him, he gwo down, shore." Then, undoing a portion of the harness, to give the horse the free use of his legs, he shouted, "Gee up, ole Gray," and we started.
The noble animal stepped off slowly and cautiously, as if fully aware of the danger of the passage, but had proceeded only about fifty yards when he lost his footing, and plunged us into an entirely new and decidedly cold hip-bath. "Now's de time, ole Gray," "show your broughten up, ole boy," "let de gemman see you swim, ole feller," and similar remarks proceeded rapidly from the darky, who all the time avoided touching the reins.
It may have been one minute, it may have been five minutes--I took "no note of _time_"--before the horse again struck bottom, and halted from sheer exhaustion, the water still almost level with his back, and the opposite bank too far-off to be seen through the darkness. After a short rest, he again "breasted the waters," and in a few moments landed us on the shore; not, unfortunately, in the road, but in the midst of the pine-trees, there so entangled with under-growth, that not even a man, much less a horse, could make his way through them. Wet to the skin, and shivering with the cold, we had no time to lose "in gittin' out of dat," if we would avoid greater dangers than those we had escaped. So, springing from the wagon, the darky waded up the stream, near its bank, to reconnoitre. Returning in a few minutes, he reported that we were about a hundred yards below the road. We had been carried that far down stream by the strength of the current. Our only course was to follow the "run" up along its bank; this we did, and in a short time had the satisfaction of striking the high road. Arranging the harness, we were soon under way again, the horse bounding along as if he felt the necessity of vigorous exercise to restore his chilled circulation. We afterward learned that it was not the Waccamaw we had crossed, but the second "run" our native friend had told us of, and that the water in the middle of its stream was fifteen feet deep!
Half-dead with cold and wet, we hurried on, but still no welcome light beckoned us to a human habitation. The darkness grew denser till we could not even distinguish the road, much less our horse's nose, which we had been directed to follow. Inwardly cursing the folly which brought me into such a wilderness, I said to the darky: "Scip, I'm sorry I took you on such a trip as this."
"Oh! neber mind me, massa; I ruther like de dark night and de storm."
"Like the night and the storm! why so?" " 'Cause den de wild spirits come out, and talk in de trees. Dey make me feel bery strong _har_," he replied, striking his hand on his breast.
"The night and the storm, Scip, make _me_ feel like cultivating another sort of _spirits_. There are some in the wagon-box; suppose we stop and see what they are."
We stopped, and I took out a small willow-flask, which held the "spirits of Otard," and offered it to the darky.
"No, massa," he said, laughing, "I neber touch dem sort ob spirits; dey raise de bery ole deble."
Not heeding the darky's example, I took "a long and a strong pull," and--felt the better for it.
Again we rode on, and again and again I "communed with the spirits," till a sudden exclamation from Scip aroused me from the half-stupor into which I was falling. "What's the matter?" I asked.
"A light, massa, a light!"
"Where?"
"Dar, way off in de trees--" "Sure enough, glory, hallelujah, there it is! We're all right now, Scip."
We rode on till we came to the inevitable opening in the trees, and were soon at the door of what I saw, by the light which came through the crevices in the logs, was a one-story shanty, about twenty feet square. "Will you let us come in out of de rain?" asked Scip of a wretched-looking, half-clad, dirt-bedraggled woman, who thrust her head from the doorway.
"Who ar ye?" was the reply.
"Only massa and me, and de hoss, and we'm half dead wid de cold," replied Scip; "can we cum in out ob de rain?"
"Wal, strangers," replied the woman, eyeing us as closely as the darkness would permit, "you'll find mighty poor fixins har, but I reckon ye can come in."
[Footnote C: The Southern blacks, like all ignorant people, are intensely fanatical on religious subjects. The most trifling occurrences have to their minds a hidden significance, and they believe the LORD speaks to them in signs and dreams, and in almost every event of nature. This superstition, which has been handed down from their savage ancestry, has absolute sway over them, and one readily sees what immense power it would give to some leading, adroit mind, that knew how to use it. By means of it they might be led to the most desperate deeds, fully believing all the while that they were "led ob de LORD."]
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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4
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POOR WHITES.
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Entering the house, we saw, by the light of a blazing pile of pine-knots, which roared and crackled on the hearth, that it contained only a single apartment. In front of the fire-place, which occupied the better half of one side of this room, the floor was of the bare earth, littered over with pine chips, dead cinders, live coals, broken pots, and a lazy spaniel dog. Opposite to this, at the other end of the room, were two low beds, which looked as if they had been "slept in forever, and never made up." Against the wall, between the beds and the fire-place, stood a small pine table, and on it was a large wooden bowl, from whose mouth protruded the handles of several unwashed pewter spoons. On the right of the fire was a razeed rocking-chair, evidently the peculiar property of the mistress of the mansion, and three blocks of pine log, sawn off smoothly, and made to serve for seats. Over against these towered a high-backed settle, something like that on which "sot Huldy all alone, When Zeke peeked thru the winder;" and on it, her head resting partly on her arm, partly on the end of the settle, one small, bare foot pressing the ground, the other, with the part of the person which is supposed to require stockings, extended in a horizontal direction--reclined, not Huldy, but her Southern cousin, who, I will wager, was decidedly the prettier and dirtier of the two. Our entrance did not seem to disconcert her in the least, for she lay there as unmoved as a marble statue, her large black eyes riveted on my face, as if seeing some nondescript animal for the first time. I stood for a moment transfixed with admiration. In a somewhat extensive observation of her sex in both hemispheres, I had never witnessed such a form, such eyes, such faultless features, and such wavy, black, luxuriant hair. A glance at her dress--a soiled, greasy, grayish linsey-woolsey gown, apparently her only garment--and a second look at her face, which, on closer inspection, had precisely the hue of a tallow candle, recalled me to myself, and allowed me to complete the survey of the premises.
The house was built of unhewn logs, separated by wide interstices, through which the cold air came, in decidedly fresh if not health-giving currents, while a large rent in the roof, that let in the rain, gave the inmates an excellent opportunity for indulging in a shower-bath, of which they seemed greatly in need. The chimney, which had intruded a couple of feet into the room, as if to keep out of the cold, and threatened momentarily to tumble down, was of sticks, built up in clay, while the windows were of thick, unplaned boards.
Two pretty girls, one of perhaps ten and the other of fourteen years, evidently sisters of the unadorned beauty, the middle-aged woman who had admitted us, and the dog--the only male member of the household--composed the family. I had seen negro cabins, but these people were whites, and these whites were _South Carolinians_. When such counterparts of the feudal serfs still exist, who will say that the days of chivalry are over!
After I had seated myself by the fire, and the driver had gone out to stow the horse away under the tumble-down shed at the back of the house, the elder woman said to me-- "Reckon yer wet. Ben in the rain!"
"Yes, madam, we've been out most of the day, and got in the river below here."
"Did ye? Ye mean the 'run.' I reckon it's right deep now."
"Yes, our horse had to swim," I replied.
"Ye orter strip and put on dry cloes to onst."
"Thank you, madam, I will."
Going to my portmanteau, which the darky had placed near the door, I found it dripping with wet, and opening it I discovered that every article had undergone the rite of immersion.
"Every thing is thoroughly soaked, madam. I shall have to dry myself by your fire. Can you get me a cup of tea?"
"Right sorry, stranger, but I can't. Haint a morsel to eat or drink in the house."
Remembering that our excellent hostess of the night before had insisted on filling the wagon-box with a quantity of "chicken fixins," to serve us in an emergency, and that my brandy flask was in my India-rubber coat, I sent Scip out for them.
The stores disclosed boiled chicken, bacon, sandwiches, sweet potatoes, short cake, corn-bread, buttered waffles, and 'common doin's' too numerous to mention, enough to last a family of one for a fortnight, but all completely saturated with water. Wet or dry, however, the provisions were a godsend to the half-starved family, and their hearts seemed to open to me with amazing rapidity. The dog got up and wagged his tail, and even the marble-like beauty rose from her reclining posture and invited me to a seat with her on the bench.
The kettle was soon steaming over the fire, and the boiling water, mixed with a little brandy, served as a capital substitute for tea. After the chicken was recooked, and the other edibles "warmed up," the little pine table was brought out, and I learned--what I had before suspected--that the big wooden bowl and the half dozen pewter spoons were the only "crockery" the family possessed.
I declined the proffered seat at the table, the cooking utensils being any thing but inviting, and contented myself with the brandy and water; but, forgetting for a moment his color, I motioned to the darky--who was as wet and jaded, and much more hungry than I was--to take the place offered to me. The negro did not seem inclined to do so, but the woman, observing my gesture, yelled out, her eyes flashing with anger: "No, sar! No darkies eats with us. Hope you don't reckon _yerself_ no better than a good-for-nothin', no account nigger!"
"I beg your pardon, madam; I intended no offence. Scipio has served me very faithfully for two days, and is very tired and hungry. I forgot myself."
This mollified the lady, and she replied: "Niggers is good enuff in thar place, but warn't meant to 'sociate with white folks."
There may have been some ground for a distinction in that case; there certainly was a difference between the specimens of the two races then before me; but, not being one of the chivalry, it struck me that the odds were on the side of the black man. The whites were shiftless, ragged, and starving; the black well clad, cleanly, energetic, and as much above the others in intellect as Jupiter is above a church steeple. To be sure, color was against him, and he was, after all, a servant in the land of chivalry and of servant-owners. Of course the woman was right.
She soon resumed the conversation with this remark: "Reckon yer a stranger in these parts; whar d'ye come from?"
"From New York, madam."
"New York! whar's that?"
"It's a city at the North."
"Oh! yas; I've heern tell on it: that's whar the Cunnel sells his turpentime. Quite a place, arnt it?"
"Yes, quite a place. Something larger than all South Carolina."
"What d'ye say? Larger nor South Carolina. Kinder reckon tain't, is't?"
"Yes, madam, it is."
"Du tell! 'Taint so large as Charles'n, is't?"
"Yes, twenty times larger than Charleston."
"Lord o'massy! How does all the folks live thar?"
"Live quite as well as they do here."
"Ye don't have no niggers thar, does ye?"
"Yes, but none that are slaves."
"Have Ablisherners thar, don't ye? them people that go agin the South?"
"Yes, some of them."
"What do they go agin the South for?"
"They go for freeing the slaves. Some of them think a black man as good as a white one."
"Quar, that; yer an Ablisherner, arnt ye?"
"No, I'm an old-fashioned Whig."
"What's that? Never heerd on them afore."
"An old-fashioned Whig, madam, is a man whose political principles are perfect, and who is as perfect as his principles."
That was a "stumper" for the poor woman, who evidently did not understand one-half of the sentence.
"Right sort of folks, them," she said, in a half inquiring tone.
"Yes, but they're all dead now."
"Dead?"
"Yes, dead, beyond the hope of resurrection."
"Iv'e heern all the dead war to be resurrected. Didn't ye say ye war one on 'em? _Ye_ aint dead yet," said the woman, chuckling at having cornered me.
"But I'm more than _half_ dead just now."
"Ah," replied the woman, still laughing, "yer a chicken."
"A chicken! what's that?"
"A thing that goes on tu legs, and karkles," was the ready reply.
"Ah, my dear madam, you can out-talk me."
"Yas, I reckon I kin outrun ye, tu. Ye arnt over rugged." Then, after a pause, she added--"What d'ye 'lect that darky, Linkum, President for?"
"I didn't elect him. _I_ voted for Douglas. But Lincoln is not a darky."
"He's a mullater, then; I've heern he war," she replied.
"No, he's not a mulatto; he's a rail-splitter."
"Rail-splitter? _Then he's a nigger, shore. _" "No, madam; white men at the North split rails."
"An' white wimmin tu, p'raps," said the woman, with a contemptuous toss of the head.
"No, they don't," I replied, "but white women _work_ there."
"White wimmin work thar!" chimed in the hitherto speechless beauty, showing a set of teeth of the exact color of her skin--_yaller_. "What du the' du?"
"Some of them attend in stores, some set type, some teach school, and some work in factories."
"Du tell! Dress nice, and make money?"
"Yes," I replied, "they make money, and dress like fine ladies; in fact, _are_ fine ladies. I know one young woman, of about your age, that had to get her own education, who earns a thousand dollars a year by teaching, and I've heard of many factory-girls who support their parents, and lay by a great deal of money, by working in the mills."
"Wal!" replied the young woman, with a contemptuous curl of her matchless upper lip; "schule-marms arn't fine ladies; fine ladies don't work; only niggers works _har_. I reckon I'd rather be 'spectable than work for a livin'."
I could but think how magnificently the lips of some of our glorious Yankee girls would have curled had they have heard that remark, and have seen the poor girl that made it, with her torn, worn, greasy dress; her bare, dirty legs and feet, and her arms, neck, and face so thickly encrusted with a layer of clayey mud that there was danger of hydrophobia if she went near a wash-tub. Restraining my involuntary disgust, I replied: "We at the North think work is respectable. We do not look down on a man or a woman for earning their daily bread. We all work."
"Yas, and that's the why ye'r all sech cowards," said the old woman.
"Cowards!" I said; "who tells you that?"
"My old man; he says one on our _boys_ can lick five of your Yankee _men_."
"Perhaps so. Is your husband away from home?"
"Yas, him and our Cal. ar down to Charles'n." "Cal. is your son, is he?"
"Yas, he's my oldest, and a likely lad he ar tu--he's twenty-one, and his name are JOHN CAL'OUN MILLS. He's gone a troopin' it with his fader."
"What, both gone and left you ladies here alone?"
"Yas, the Cunnel sed every man orter go, and they warn't to be ahind the rest. The Cunnel--Cunnel J.--looks arter us while they is away."
"But I should think the Colonel looked after you poorly--giving you nothing to eat."
"Oh! it's ben sech a storm to-day, the gals couldn't go for the vittles, though 'tain't a great way. We'r on his plantation; this house is his'n." This last was agreeable news, and it occurred to me that if we were so near the Colonel's we might push on, in spite of the storm, and get there that night; so I said: "Indeed; I'm going to the Colonel's. How far is his house from here?"
"A right smart six mile; it's at the Cross roads. Ye know the Cunnel, du ye?"
"Oh, yes, I know him well. If his home is not more than six miles off, I think we had better go on to-night. What do you say, Scip?"
"I reckon we'd better gwo, massa," replied the darky, who had spread my travelling-shawl in the chimney-corner, and was seated on it, drying his clothes.
"Ye'd better not," said the woman; "ye'd better stay har; thar's a right smart run twixt har and the Cunnel's, and 'tain't safe to cross arter dark."
"If that is so we'd better stay, Scip; don't you think so?" I said to the darky.
"Jess as you say, massa. We got fru wid de oder one, and I reckon taint no wuss nor dat."
"The bridge ar carried away, and ye'll hev to swim _shore_," said the woman. "Ye'd better stay."
"Thank you, madam, I think we will," I replied, after a moment's thought; "our horse has swum one of your creeks to-night, and I dare not try another."
Having taken off my coat, I had been standing, during the greater part of this conversation, in my shirt-sleeves before the fire, turning round occasionally to facilitate the drying process, and taking every now and then a sip from the gourd containing our brandy and water; aided in the latter exercise by the old woman and the eldest girl, who indulged quite as freely as I did.
"Mighty good brandy that," at last said the woman. "Ye like brandy, don't ye?"
"Not very much, madam. I take it to-night because I've been exposed to the storm, and it stimulates the circulation. But Scip, here, don't like spirits. He'll get the rheumatism because he don't."
"Don't like dem sort of sperits, massa; but rumatics neber trubble me."
"But I've got it mighty bad," said the woman, "_and I take 'em whenever I kin get 'em_."
I rather thought she did, but I "reckoned" her principal beverage was whiskey.
"You have the rheumatism, madam, because your house is so open; a draught of air is always unhealthy."
"I allers reckoned 'twar _healthy_," she replied. "Ye Yankee folks have quar notions."
I looked at my watch, and found it was nearly ten o'clock, and, feeling very tired, said to the hostess: "Where do you mean we shall sleep?"
"Ye can take that ar bed," pointing to the one nearer the wall, "the darky can sleep har;" motioning to the settle on which she was seated.
"But where will you and your daughters sleep? I don't wish to turn you out of your beds."
"Oh! don't ye keer for us; we kin all bunk together; dun it afore. Like to turn in now?"
"Yes, thank you, I would;" and without more ceremony I adjourned to the further part of the room, and commenced disrobing. Doffing my boots, waistcoat, and cravat, and placing my watch and purse under the pillow, I gave a moment's thought to what a certain not very old lady, whom I had left at home, might say when she heard of my lodging with a grass-widow and three young girls, and sprang into bed. There I removed my under-mentionables, which were still too damp to sleep in, and in about two minutes and thirty seconds sunk into oblivion.
A few streaks of grayish light were beginning to creep through the crevices in the logs, when a movement at the foot of the bed awakened me, and glancing downward I beheld the youngest girl emerging from under the clothes at my feet. She had slept there, "cross-wise," all night. A stir in the adjoining bed soon warned me that the other feminines were preparing to follow her example; so, turning my face to the wall, I feigned to be sleeping. Their toilet was soon made, when they quietly left Scip and myself in possession of the premises.
The darky rose as soon as they were gone, and, coming to me, said: "Massa, we'd better be gwine. I'se got your cloes all dry, and you can rig up and breakfust at de Cunnel's."
The storm had cleared away, and the sun was struggling to get through the distant pines, when Scip brought the horse to the door, and we prepared to start. Turning to the old woman, I said: "I feel greatly obliged to you, madam, for the shelter you have given us, and would like to make you some recompense for your trouble. Please to tell me what I shall pay you."
"Wal, stranger, we don't gin'rally take in lodgers, but seein' as how as thar ar tu on ye, and ye've had a good night on it, I don't keer if ye pay me tu dollars."
That struck me as "rather steep" for "common doin's," particularly as we had furnished the food and "the drinks;" yet, saying nothing, I handed her a two-dollar bank-note. She took it, and held it up curiously to the sun for a moment, then handed it back, saying, "I don't know nuthin' 'bout that ar sort o' money; haint you got no silver?"
I fumbled in my pocket a moment, and found a quarter-eagle, which I gave her.
"Haint got nary a fip o' change," she said, as she took it.
"Oh! never mind the change, madam; I shall want to stop and _look_ at you when I return," I replied, good-humoredly.
"Ha! ha! yer a chicken," said the woman, at the same time giving me a gentle poke in the ribs. Fearing she might, in the exuberance of her joy at the sight of the money, proceed to some more decided demonstration of affection, I hastily stepped into the wagon, bade her good-by, and was off.
We were still among the pines, which towered gigantically all around us, but were no longer alone. Every tree was scarified for turpentine, and the forest was alive with negro men and women gathering the "last dipping," or clearing away the stumps and underbrush preparatory to the spring work. It was Christmas week; but, as I afterward learned, the Colonel's negroes were accustomed to doing "half tasks" at that season, being paid for their labor as if they were free. They stopped their work as we rode by, and stared at us with a stupid, half-frightened curiosity, very much like the look of a cow when a railway train is passing. It needed but little observation to convince me that their _status_ was but one step above the level of the brutes.
As we rode along I said to the driver, "Scip, what did you think of our lodgings?"
"Mighty pore, massa. Niggas lib better'n dat."
"Yes," I replied, "but these folks despise you blacks; they seem to be both poor and proud."
"Yas, massa, dey'm pore 'cause dey wont work, and dey'm proud 'cause dey'r white. Dey wont work 'cause dey see de darky slaves doin' it, and tink it am beneaf white folks to do as de darkies do. Dis habin' slaves keeps dis hull country pore."
"Who told you that?" I asked, astonished at hearing a remark showing so much reflection from a negro.
"Nobody, massa; I see it myseff."
"Are there many of these poor whites around Georgetown?"
"Not many 'round Georgetown, sar, but great many in de up-country har, and dey'm all 'like--pore and no account; none ob 'em kin read, and dey all eat clay."
"Eat clay!" I said; "what do you mean by that?"
"Didn't you see, massa, how yaller all dem wimmin war? Dat's 'cause dey eat clay. De little children begin 'fore dey kin walk, and dey eat it till dey die; dey chaw it like 'backer. It makes all dar stumacs big, like as you seed 'em, and spiles dar 'gestion. It'm mighty onhealfy."
"Can it be possible that human beings do such things! The brutes wouldn't do that."
"No, massa, but _dey_ do it; dey'm pore trash. Dat's what de big folks call 'em, and it am true; dey'm long way lower down dan de darkies."
By this time we had arrived at the "run." We found the bridge carried away, as the woman had told us; but its abutments were still standing, and over these planks had been laid, which afforded a safe crossing for foot-passengers. To reach these planks, however, it was necessary to wade into the stream for full fifty yards, the "run" having overflowed its banks for that distance on either side of the bridge. The water was evidently receding, but, as we could not well wait, like the man in the fable, for it all to run by, we alighted, and counselled as to the best mode of making the passage.
Scip proposed that he should wade in to the first abutment, ascertain the depth of the stream, and then, if it was not too deep for the horse to ford to that point, drive that far, get out, and walk to the end of the planking, leading the horse, and then again mount the wagon at the further end of the bridge. We were sure the horse would have to swim in the middle of the current, and perhaps for a considerable distance beyond; but, having witnessed his proficiency in aquatic performances, we had no doubt he would get safely across.
The darky's plan was decided on, and divesting himself of his trowsers, he waded into the "run" to take the soundings.
While he was in the water my attention was attracted to a printed paper, posted on one of the pines near the roadside. Going up to it, I read as follows: "$250 REWARD.
"Ran away from the subscriber, on Monday, November 12th, his mulatto man, SAM. Said boy is stout-built, five feet nine inches high, 31 years old, weighs 170 lbs., and walks very erect, and with a quick, rapid gait. The American flag is tattooed on his right arm above the elbow. There is a knife-cut over the bridge of his nose, a fresh bullet-wound in his left thigh, and his back bears marks of a recent whipping. He is supposed to have made his way back to Dinwiddie County, Va., where he was raised, or to be lurking in the swamps in this vicinity.
"The above reward will be paid for his confinement in any jail in North or South Carolina, or Virginia, or for his delivery to the subscriber on his plantation at ----. " ----, December 2, 1860."
The name signed to this hand-bill was that of the planter I was about to visit.
Scip having returned, and reported the stream fordable to the bridge, I said to him, pointing to the "notice:" "Read that, Scip."
He read it, but made no remark.
"What does it mean--that fresh bullet wound, and the marks of a recent whipping?" I asked.
"It mean, massa, dat de darky hab run away, and ben took; and dat when dey took him dey shot him, and flogged him arter dat. Now, he hab run away agin. De Cunnel's mighty hard on his niggas!"
"Is he? I can scarcely believe that."
"He am, massa; but he arnt so much to blame, nuther; dey'm awful bad, most ob 'em--so dey say."
Our conversation was here interrupted by our reaching the bridge. After safely "walking the plank," and making our way to the opposite bank, I resumed it by asking: "Why are the Colonel's negroes so particularly bad?" " 'Cause, you see, massa, de turpentime business hab made great profits for sum yars now, and de Cunnel hab been gettin' rich bery fass. He put all his money, jes so fass as he make it, into darkies, so to make more; for he's got bery big plantation, and need nuffin' but darkies to work it to make money jess like a gold mine. He goes up to Virginny to buy niggas; and up dar _now_ dey don't sell none less dey'm bad uns, 'cep when sum massa die or git pore. Virginny darkies dat cum down har aint gin'rally ob much account. Dey'm either kinder good-for-nuffin, or dey'm ugly; and de Cunnel'd ruther hab de ugly dan de no-account niggas."
"How many negroes has he?" " 'Bout two hundred, men and wimmin, I b'lieve, massa."
"It can't be pleasant for his family to remain in such an out-of-the-way place, with so bad a gang of negroes about them, and no white people near."
"No, massa, not in dese times; but de missus and de young lady arnt dar now."
"Not there now? The Colonel said nothing to me about that. Are you sure?"
"Oh yas, massa; I seed 'em gwo off on de boat to Charles'n most two weeks ago. Dey don't mean to cum back till tings am more settled; dey'm 'fraid to stay dar."
"Would it be safe for the Colonel there, if a disturbance broke out among the slaves." "' T wouldn't be safe den anywhar, sar; but de Cunnel am a bery brave man. He'm better dan twenty of _his_ niggas."
"Why better than twenty of _his_ niggers?" " 'Cause dem ugly niggas am gin'rally cowards. De darky dat is quiet, 'spectful, and does his duty, am de brave sort; _dey'll_ fight, massa, till dey'm cut down."
We had here reached a turn in the road, and passing it, came suddenly upon a coach, attached to which were a pair of magnificent grays, driven by a darky in livery.
"Hallo, dar!" said Scip to the driver, as we came nearly abreast of the carriage. "Am you Cunnel J----'s man?"
"Yas, I is dat," replied the darky.
At this moment a woolly head, which I recognized at once as that of the Colonel's man "Jim," was thrust from the window of the vehicle.
"Hallo, Jim," I said. "How do you do? I'm glad to see you."
"Lor bress me, Massa K----, am dat you?" exclaimed the astonished negro, hastily opening the door, and coming to me. "Whar _did_ you cum from? I'se mighty glad to see you;" at the same time giving my hand a hearty shaking. I must here say, in justice to the reputation of South Carolina, that no respectable Carolinian refuses to shake hands with a black man, unless--the black happens to be free.
"I thought I wouldn't wait for you," I replied. "But how did you expect to get on? the 'runs' have swollen into rivers."
"We got a 'flat' made for dis one--it's down by dis time--de oders we tought we'd get ober sumhow."
"Jim, this is Scip," I said, seeing the darkies took no notice of each other.
"How d'ye do, Scip_io? _" said Jim, extending his hand to him. A look of singular intelligence passed over the faces of the two negroes as their hands met; it vanished in an instant, and was so slight that none but a close observer would have detected it, but some words that Scip had previously let drop had put me on the alert, and I felt sure it had a hidden significance.
"Wont you get into de carriage, massa?" inquired Jim.
"No, thank you, Jim. I'll ride on with Scip. Our horse is jaded, and you had better go ahead."
Jim mounted the driver's seat, turned the carriage, and drove off at a brisk pace to announce our coming at the plantation, while Scip and I rode on at a slower gait.
"Scip, did you know Jim before?" I asked.
"Hab seed him afore, massa, but neber know'd him."
"How is it that you have lived in Georgetown five years, and have not known him?"
"I cud hab know'd him, massa, good many time, ef I'd liked, but darkies hab to be careful."
"Careful of what?"
"Careful ob who dey knows; good many bad niggas 'bout."
"Pshaw, Scip, you're 'coming de possum'; there isn't a better nigger than Jim in all South Carolina. I know him well."
"P'raps he am; reckon he _am_ a good 'nuff nigga."
"Good enough nigga, Scip! Why, I tell you he's a splendid fellow; just as true as steel. He's been North with the Colonel, often, and the Abolitionists have tried to get him away; he knew he could go, but wouldn't budge an inch."
"I knew he wouldn't," said the darky, a pleasurable gleam passing through his eyes; "dat sort don't run; dey face de music!"
"Why don't they run? What do you mean by facing the music?"
"Nuffin' massa--only dey'd rather stay har."
"Come, Scip, you've played this game long enough. Tell me, now, what that look you gave each other when you shook hands meant."
"What look, massa? Oh! I s'pose 'twar 'cause we'd both _heerd_ ob each oder afore." " 'Twas more than that, Scip. Be frank; you know you can trust _me_."
"Wal, den, massa," he replied hesitatingly, adding, after a short pause, "de ole woman called you a Yankee, sar--you can guess."
"If I should guess, 't would be that it meant _mischief_."
"It don't mean mischief, sar," said the darky, with a tone and air that would not have disgraced a Cabinet officer; "it mean only RIGHT and JUSTICE."
"It means that there is some secret understanding between you."
"I toled you, massa," he replied, relapsing into his usual manner, "dat de blacks am all Freemasons. I gabe Jim de grip, and he knowd me. He'd ha knowd my name ef you hadn't toled him."
"Why would he have known your name?" " 'Cause I gabe de grip, dat tole him."
"Why did he call you Scip_io_? I called you _Scip_."
"Oh! de darkies all do dat. Nobody but de white folks call me _Scip_. I can't say no more, massa; I SHUD BREAK DE OATH EF I DID!"
"You have said enough to satisfy me that there is a secret league among the blacks, and that you are a leader in it. Now, I tell you, you'll get yourself into a scrape. I've taken a liking to you, Scip, and I should be _very sorry_ to see you run yourself into danger."
"I tank you, massa, from de bottom ob my soul I tank you," he said, as the tears moistened his eyes. "You bery kind, massa; it do me good to talk wid you. But what am my life wuth? What am any _slave's_ life wuth? _Ef you war me you'd do like me! _" I could not deny it, and I made no reply.
The writer is aware that he is here making an important statement, and one that may be called in question by those persons who are accustomed to regard the Southern blacks as only reasoning brutes. The great mass of them _are_ but a little above the brutes in their habits and instincts, but a large body are fully on a par, except in mere book-education, with their white masters.
The conversation above recorded is, _verbatim et literatim_, TRUE. It took place at the time indicated, and was taken down, as were other conversations recorded in this book, within twenty-four hours after its occurrence. The name and the locality, only, I have, for very evident reasons, disguised.
From this conversation, together with others, held with the same negro, and from after developments made to me at various places, and at different times, extending over a period of six weeks, I became acquainted with the fact that there exists among the blacks a secret and wide-spread organization of a Masonic character, having its grip, pass-word, and oath. It has various grades of leaders, who are competent and _earnest_ men, and its ultimate object is FREEDOM. It is quite as secret and wide-spread as the order of the "Knights of the Golden Circle," the kindred league among the whites.
This latter organization, which was instituted by John C. Calhoun, William L. Porcher, and others, as far back as 1835, has for its sole object the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a Southern Empire--Empire is the word, not Confederacy, or Republic; and it was solely by means of its secret but powerful machinery that the Southern States were plunged into revolution, in defiance of the will of a majority of their voting population.
Nearly every man of influence at the South (and many a pretended Union man at the North) is a member of this organization, and sworn, under the penalty of assassination, to labor "in season and out of season, by fair means and by foul, at all times, and all occasions," for the accomplishment of its object. The blacks are bound together by a similar oath, and only _bide their time_.
The knowledge of the real state of political affairs which the negroes have acquired through this organization is astonishingly accurate; their leaders possess every essential of leadership--except, it may be, military skill--and they are fully able to cope with the whites.
The negro whom I call Scipio, on the day when Major Anderson evacuated Fort Moultrie, and before he or I knew of that event, which set all South Carolina in a blaze, foretold to me the breaking out of this war in Charleston harbor, and as confidently predicted that it would result in the freedom of the slaves!
The fact of this organization existing is not positively known (for the black is more subtle and crafty than any thing human), but it is suspected by many of the whites, the more moderate of whom are disposed to ward off the impending blow by some system of gradual emancipation--declaring all black children born after a certain date free--or by some other action that will pacify and keep down the slaves. These persons, however, are but a small minority, and possess no political power, and the South is rushing blindly on to a catastrophe, which, if not averted by the action of our government, will make the horrors of San Domingo and the French Revolution grow pale in history.
I say the action of our government, for with it rests the responsibility. What the black wants is freedom. Give him that, and he will have no incentive to insurrection. If emancipation is proclaimed at the head of our armies--emancipation for _all_--confiscation for the slaves of rebels, compensation for the slaves of loyal citizens--the blacks will rush to the aid of our troops, the avenging angel will pass over the homes of the many true and loyal men who are still left at the South, and the thunderbolts of this war will fall only--where they should fall--on the heads of its blood-stained authors. If this is not done, after we have put down the whites we shall have to meet the blacks, and after we have waded knee-deep in the blood of both, we shall end the war where it began, but with the South desolated by fire and sword, the North impoverished and loaded down with an everlasting debt, and our once proud, happy, and glorious country the by-word and scorn of the civilized world.
Slavery is the very bones, marrow, and life-blood of this rebellion, and it cannot be crushed till we have destroyed that accursed institution. If a miserable peace is patched up before a death-stroke is given to slavery, it will gather new strength, and drive freedom from this country forever. In the nature of things it cannot exist in the same hemisphere with liberty. Then let every man who loves his country determine that if this war must needs last for twenty years, it shall not end until this root of all our political evils is weeded out forever.
A short half-hour took us to the plantation, where I found the Colonel on the piazza awaiting me. After our greeting was over, noticing my soiled and rather dilapidated condition, he inquired where I had passed the night. I told him, when he burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and for several days good-naturedly bantered me about "putting up" at the most aristocratic hotel in South Carolina--the "Mills House."
We soon entered the mansion, and the reader will, I trust, pardon me, if I leave him standing in its door-way till another chapter.
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{
"id": "22960"
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5
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ON THE PLANTATION.
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The last chapter left the reader in the door-way of the Colonel's mansion. Before entering, we will linger there awhile and survey the outside of the premises.
The house stands where two roads meet, and, unlike most planters' dwellings, is located in full view of the highway. It is a rambling, disjointed structure, thrown together with no regard to architectural rules, and yet there is a rude harmony in its very irregularities that has a pleasing effect. The main edifice, with a frontage of nearly eighty feet, is only one and a half stories high, and is overshadowed by a broad projecting roof, which somehow, though in a very natural way, drops down at the eaves, and forms the covering of a piazza, twenty feet wide, and extending across the entire front of the house. At its south-easterly angle, the roof is truncated, and made again to form a covering for the piazza, which there extends along a line of irregular buildings for sixty yards. A portion of the verandah on this side being enclosed, forms a bowling-alley and smoking-room, two essential appendages to a planter's residence. The whole structure is covered with yellow-pine weather boarding, which in some former age was covered with paint of a grayish brown color. This, in many places, has peeled off and allowed the sap to ooze from the pine, leaving every here and there large blotches on the surface, somewhat resembling the "warts" I have seen on the trunks of old trees.
The house is encircled by grand old pines, whose tall, upright stems, soaring eighty and ninety feet in the air, make the low hamlet seem lower by the contrast. They have stood there for centuries, their rough, shaggy coats buttoned close to their chins, and their long green locks waving in the wind; but the long knife has been thrust into their veins, and their life-blood is now fast oozing away.
With the exception of the negro huts, which are scattered at irregular intervals through the woods in the rear of the mansion, there is not a human habitation within an hour's ride; but such a cosy, inviting, hospitable atmosphere surrounds the whole place, that a stranger does not realize he has happened upon it in a wilderness.
The interior of the dwelling is in keeping with the exterior, though in the drawing-rooms, where rich furniture and fine paintings actually lumber the apartments, there is evident the lack of a nice perception of the "fitness of things," and over the whole hangs a "dusty air," which reminds one that the Milesian Bridget does not "flourish" in South Carolina.
I was met in the entrance-way by a tall, fine-looking woman, to whom the Colonel introduced me as follows: "Mr. K----, this is Madam P----, my housekeeper; she will try to make you forget that Mrs. J---- is absent."
After a few customary courtesies were exchanged, I was shown to a dressing-room, and with the aid of Jim, a razor, and one of the Colonel's shirts--all of mine having undergone a drenching--soon made a tolerably presentable appearance. The negro then conducted me to the breakfast-room, where I found the family assembled.
It consisted, besides the housekeeper, of a tall, raw-boned, sandy-haired personage, with a low brow, a blear eye, and a sneaking look--the overseer of the plantation; and of a well-mannered, intelligent lad--with the peculiarly erect carriage and uncommon blending of good-natured ease and dignity which distinguished my host--who was introduced to me as the housekeeper's son.
Madam P----, who presided over the "tea-things," was a person of perhaps thirty-five, but a rich olive complexion, enlivened by a delicate red tint, and relieved by thick masses of black hair, made her appear to a casual observer several years younger. Her face bore vestiges of great beauty, which time, and, perhaps, care, had mellowed but not obliterated, and her conversation indicated high cultivation. She had evidently mingled in refined society in this country and in Europe, and it was a strange freak of fortune that had reduced her to a menial condition in the family of a backwoods planter.
After some general conversation, the Colonel remarked that his wife and daughter would pass the winter in Charleston.
"And do _you_ remain on the plantation?" I inquired.
"Oh yes, I am needed here," he replied; "but Madam's son is with my family."
"Madam's son!" I exclaimed in astonishment, forgetting in my surprise that the lady was present.
"Yes, sir," she remarked, "my oldest boy is twenty."
"Excuse me, Madam; I forgot that in your climate one never grows old."
"There you are wrong, sir; I'm sure I _feel_ old when I think how soon my boys will be men."
"Not old yet, Alice," said the Colonel, in a singularly familiar tone; "you seem to me no older than when you were fifteen."
"You have been long acquainted," I remarked, not knowing exactly what to say.
"Oh, yes," replied my host, "we were children together."
"Your Southern country, Madam, affords a fine field for young men of enterprise."
"My eldest son resides in Germany," replied the lady. "He expects to make that country his home. He would have passed his examination at Heidelberg this autumn had not circumstances called him here."
"You are widely separated," I replied.
"Yes, sir; his father thinks it best, and I suppose it is. Thomas, here, is to return with his brother, and I may live to see neither of them again."
My curiosity was naturally much excited to learn more, but nothing further being volunteered, and the conversation soon turning to other topics, I left the table with it unsatisfied.
After enjoying a quiet hour with the Colonel in the smoking-room, he invited me to join him in a ride over the plantation. I gladly assented, and Jim shortly announced the horses were in waiting. That darky, who invariably attended his master when the latter proceeded from home, accompanied us. As we were mounting I bethought me of Scip, and asked where he was.
"He'm gwine to gwo, massa, and want to say good-by to you."
It seemed madness for Scip to start on a journey of seventy miles without rest, so I requested the Colonel to let him remain till the next day. He cheerfully assented, and sent Jim to find him. While waiting for the darky, I spoke of how faithfully he had served me during my journey.
"He's a splendid nigger," replied the Colonel; "worth his weight in gold. If affairs were more settled I would buy him."
"But Colonel A---- tells me he is too intelligent. He objects to 'knowing' niggers." " _I_ do not," replied my host, "if they are honest, and I would trust Scip with uncounted gold. Look at him," he continued, as the negro approached; "were flesh and bones ever better put together?"
The darky _was_ a fine specimen of sable humanity, and I readily understood why the practiced eye of the Colonel appreciated his physical developments.
"Scip," I said, "you must not think of going to-day; the Colonel will be glad to let you remain until you are fully rested."
"Tank you, massa, tank you bery much, but de ole man will spec' me, and I orter gwo."
"Oh, never mind old----," said the Colonel, "I'll take care of him."
"Tank you, Cunnel, den I'll stay har till de mornin'."
Taking a by-path which led through the forest in the rear of the mansion, we soon reached a small stream, and, following its course for a short distance, came upon a turpentine distillery, which the Colonel explained to me was one of three that prepared the product of his plantation for market, and provided for his family of nearly three hundred souls.
It was enclosed, or rather roofed, by a rude structure of rough boards, which was open at the sides, and sustained on a number of pine poles about thirty feet in height, and bore a strong resemblance to the usual covering of a New England haystack.
Three stout negro men, divested of all clothing excepting a pair of coarse gray trowsers and a red shirt--it was a raw, cold, wintry day--and with cotton bandannas bound about their heads, were "tending the still." The foreman stood on a raised platform level with its top, but as we approached very quietly seated himself on a turpentine barrel which a moment before he had rolled over the mouth of the boiler. Another negro was below, feeding the fire with "light wood," and a third was tending the trough by which the liquid rosin found its way into the semicircle of rough barrels intended for its reception.
"Hello, Junius, what in creation are you doing there?" asked the Colonel, as we approached, of the negro on the turpentine barrel.
"Holein' her down, Cunnel; de ole ting got a mine to blow up dis mornin'; I'se got dis barrl up har to hole her down."
"Why, you everlasting nigger, if the top leaks you'll be blown to eternity in half a second."
"Reckon not, massa; be barrl and me kin hole her. We'll take de risk."
"Perhaps _you_ will," said the Colonel, laughing, "but I wont. Nigger property isn't of much account, but you're too good a darky, June, to be sent to the devil for a charge of turpentine."
"Tank you, massa, but you dun kno' dis ole ting like I do. You cudn't blow her up nohow; I'se tried her afore dis way."
"Don't you do it again; now mind; if you do I'll make a white man of you." (This I suppose referred to a process of flaying with a whip; though the whip is generally thought to _redden_, not _whiten_, the negro.)
The black did not seem at all alarmed, for he showed his ivories in a broad grin as he replied, "Jess as you say, massa; you'se de boss in dis shanty."
Directing the fire to be raked out, and the still to stand unused until it was repaired, the Colonel turned his horse to go, when he observed that the third negro was shoeless, and his feet chapped and swollen with the cold. "Jake," he said, "where are your shoes?"
"Wored out, massa."
"Worn out! Why haven't you been to me?" " 'Cause, massa, I know'd you'd jaw; you tole me I wears 'em out mighty fass."
"Well, you do, that's a fact; but go to Madam and get a pair; and you, June, you've been a decent nigger, you can ask for a dress for Rosy. How is little June?"
"Mighty pore, massa; de ma'am war dar lass night and dis mornin', and she reckun he'm gwine to gwo, sartain."
"Sorry to hear that," said the Colonel. "I'll go and see him. Don't feel badly, June," he continued, for the tears welled up to the eyes of the black man as he spoke of his child; "we all must die."
"I knows dat, massa, but it am hard to hab 'em gwo."
"Yes, it is, June, but we may save him."
"Ef you cud, massa! Oh, ef you cud!" and the poor darky covered his face with his great hands and sobbed like a child.
We rode on to another "still," and there dismounting, the Colonel explained to me the process of gathering and manufacturing turpentine. The trees are "boxed" and "tapped" early in the year, while the frost is still in the ground. "Boxing" is the process of scooping a cavity in the trunk of the tree by means of a peculiarly shaped axe, made for the purpose; "tapping" is scarifying the rind of the wood above the boxes. This is never done until the trees have been worked one season, but it is then repeated year after year, till on many plantations they present the marks of twenty and frequently thirty annual "tappings," and are often denuded of bark for a distance of thirty feet from the ground. The necessity for this annual tapping arises from the fact that the scar on the trunk heals at the end of a season, and the sap will no longer run from it; a fresh wound is therefore made each spring. The sap flows down the scarified surface and collects in the boxes, which are emptied six or eight times in a year, according to the length of the season. This is the process of "dipping," and it is done with a tin or iron vessel constructed to fit the cavity in the tree.
The turpentine gathered from the newly boxed or virgin tree is very valuable, on account of its producing a peculiarly clear and white rosin, which is used in the manufacture of the finer kinds of soap, and by "Rosin the Bow." It commands, ordinarily, nearly five times the price of the common article. When barrelled, the turpentine is frequently sent to market in its crude state, but more often is distilled on the plantation, the gatherers generally possessing means sufficient to own a still.
In the process of distilling, the crude turpentine is "dumped" into the boiler through an opening in the top--the same as that on which we saw Junius composedly seated--water is then poured upon it, the aperture made tight by screwing down the cover and packing it with clay, a fire built underneath, and when the heat reaches several hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the process of manufacture begins. The volatile and more valuable part of the turpentine, by the action of the heat, rises as vapor, then condensing flows off through a pipe in the top of the still, and comes out spirits of turpentine, while the heavier portion finds vent at a lower aperture, and comes out rosin.
No article of commerce is so liable to waste and leakage as turpentine. The spirits can only be preserved in tin cans, or in thoroughly seasoned oak barrels, made tight by a coating of glue on the inner side. Though the material for these barrels exists at the South in luxuriant abundance, they are all procured from the North, and the closing of the Southern ports has now entirely cut off the supply; for while the turpentine farmer may improvise coopers, he can by no process give the oak timber the seasoning which is needed to render the barrel spirit-tight. Hence it is certain that a large portion of the last crop of turpentine must have gone to waste. When it is remembered that the one State of North Carolina exports annually nearly twenty millions in value of this product, and employs fully two-thirds of its negroes in its production, it will be seen how dearly the South is paying for the mad freak of secession. Putting out of view his actual loss of produce, how does the turpentine farmer feed and employ his negroes? and pressed as these blacks inevitably are by both hunger and idleness, those prolific breeders of sedition, what will keep them quiet?
"What effect will secession have on your business?" I asked the Colonel, after a while.
"A favorable one. I shall ship my crop direct to Liverpool and London, instead of selling it to New York middle-men."
"But is not the larger portion of the turpentine crop consumed at the North?"
"Oh, yes. We shall have to deal with the Yankees anyhow, but we shall do as little with them as possible."
"Suppose the Yankees object to your setting up by yourselves, and put your ports under lock and key?"
"They wont do that, and if they do, England will break the blockade."
"We may rap John Bull over the knuckles in that event," I replied.
"Well, suppose you do; what then?"
"Merely, England would not have a ship in six months to carry your cotton. A war with her would ruin the shipping trade of the North. Our marine would seek employment at privateering, and soon sweep every British merchant ship from the ocean. We could afford to give up ten years' trade with you, and to put secession down by force, for the sake of a year's brush with John Bull."
"But, my good friend, where would the British navy be all this while?"
"Asleep. The English haven't a steamer that can catch a Brookhaven schooner. The last war proved that government vessels are no match for privateers."
"Well, well! but the Yankees wont fight."
"Suppose they do. Suppose they shut up your ports, and leave you with your cotton and turpentine unsold? You raise scarcely any thing else--what would you eat?"
"We would turn our cotton fields into corn and wheat. Turpentine-makers, of course, would suffer."
"Then why are not _you_ a Union man?"
"My friend, I have nearly three hundred mouths to feed. I depend on the sale of my crop to give them food. If our ports are closed, I cannot do it--they will starve, and I be ruined. But sooner than submit to the domination of the cursed Yankees, I will see my negroes starving, and my child a beggar!"
At this point in the conversation we arrived at the negro shanty where the sick child was. Dismounting, the Colonel and I entered.
The cabin was almost a counterpart of the "Mills House," described in the previous chapter, but it had a plank flooring, and was scrupulously neat and clean. The logs were stripped of bark, and whitewashed. A bright, cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, and an air of rude comfort pervaded the whole interior. On a low bed in the farther corner of the room lay the sick child. He was a boy of about twelve years, and evidently in the last stages of consumption. By his side, bending over him as if to catch his almost inaudible words, sat a tidy, youthful-looking colored woman, his mother, and the wife of the negro we had met at the "still." Playing on the floor, was a younger child, perhaps five years old, but while the faces of the mother and the sick lad were of the hue of charcoal, _his_ skin by a process well understood at the South, had been bleached to a bright yellow.
The woman took no notice of our entrance, but the little fellow ran to the Colonel and caught hold of the skirts of his coat in a free-and-easy way, saying, "Ole massa, you got suffin' for Dicky?"
"No, you little nig," replied the Colonel, patting his woolly head as I might have done a white child's, "Dicky isn't a good boy."
"Yas, I is," said the little darky; "you'se ugly ole massa to gib nuffin' to Dick."
Aroused by the Colonel's voice, the woman turned toward us. Her eyes were swollen, and her face bore traces of deep emotion.
"Oh massa!" she said, "de chile am dyin'! It'm all along ob his workin' in de swamp--no _man_ orter work dar, let alone a chile like dis."
"Do you think he is dying, Rosy?" asked the Colonel, approaching the bed-side.
"Shore, massa, he'm gwine fass. Look at 'im."
The boy had dwindled to a skeleton, and the skin lay on his face in crimpled folds, like a mask of black crape. His eyes were fixed, and he was evidently going.
"Don't you know massa, my boy?" said the Colonel, taking his hand tenderly in his.
The child's lips slightly moved, but I could hear no sound. The Colonel put his ear down to him for a moment, then, turning to me, said: "He _is_ dying. Will you be so good as to step to the house and ask Madam P---- here, and please tell Jim to go for Junius and the old man."
I returned in a short while with the lady, but found the boy's father and "the old man"--the darky preacher of the plantation--there before us. The preacher was a venerable old negro, much bowed by years, and with thin wool as white as snow. When we entered, he was bending over the dying boy, but shortly turning to my host, said: "Massa, de blessed Lord am callin' for de chile--shall we pray?"
The Colonel nodded assent, and we all, blacks and whites, knelt down on the floor, while the old preacher made a short, heart-touching prayer. It was a simple, humble acknowledgment of the dependence of the creature on the Creator--of His right to give and to take away, and was uttered in a free, conversational tone, as if long communion with his Maker had placed the old negro on a footing of friendly familiarity with Him, and given the black slave the right to talk with the Deity as one man talks with another.
As we rose from our knees my host said to me, "It is _my_ duty to stay here, but I will not detain _you_. Jim will show you over the plantation. I will join you at the house when this is over." The scene was a painful one, and I gladly availed myself of the Colonel's suggestion.
Mounting our horses, Jim and I rode off to the negro house where Scip was staying.
Scip was not at the cabin, and the old negro woman told us he had been away for several hours.
"Reckon he'll be 'way all day, sar," said Jim, as we turned our horses to go.
"He ought to be resting against the ride of to-morrow. Where has he gone?"
"Dunno, sar, but reckon he'm gwine to fine Sam."
"Sam? Oh, he's the runaway the Colonel has advertised."
"Yas, sar, he'm 'way now more'n a monfh."
"How can Scip find him?"
"Dunno, sar. Scipio know most ebery ting--reckon he'll track him. He know him well, and Sam'll cum back ef he say he orter."
"Where do you think Sam is?"
"P'raps in de swamp."
"Where is the swamp?" " 'Bout ten mile from har."
"Oh, yes! the shingles are cut there. I should think a runaway would be discovered where so many men are at work."
"No, massa, dar'm places dar whar de ole debble cudn't fine him, nor de dogs nudder."
"I thought the bloodhounds would track a man anywhere."
"Not fru de water, massa; dey lose de scent in de swamp."
"But how can a man live there--how get food?"
"De darkies dat work dar take 'em nuff."
"Then the other negroes know where the runaways are; don't they sometimes betray them?"
"Neber, massa; a darky neber tells on anoder. De Cunnel had a boy in dat swamp once good many years."
"Is it possible! Did he come back?"
"No, he died dar. Sum ob de hands found him dead one mornin' in de hut whar he lib'd, and buried him dar."
"Why did Sam run away?" " 'Cause de oberseer flog him. He use him bery hard, massa."
"What had Sam done?"
"Nuffin, massa."
"Then why was he flogged? Did the Colonel know it?"
"Oh, yas; Moye cum de possum ober de Cunnel, and make him b'lieve Sam war bad. De Cunnel dunno de hull ob dat story."
"Why didn't _you_, tell him? The Colonel trusts _you_." "' T wudn't hab dun no good; de Cunnel wud hab flogged me for tellin' on a wite man. Nigga's word aint ob no account."
"What is the story about, Sam?"
"You wont tell dat _I_ tole you, massa?"
"No, but I'll tell the Colonel the truth."
"Wal den, sar, you see Sam's wife am bery good-lookin', her skin's most wite--her mudder war a mulatter, her fader a wite man--she lub'd Sam 'bout as well as de wimmin ginrally lub dar husbands" (Jim was a bachelor, and his observation of plantation morals had given him but little faith in the sex), "but most ob 'em, ef dey'm married or no, tink dey must smile on de wite men, so Jule she smiled on de oberseer--so Sam tought--and it made him bery jealous. He war sort o' sassy, and de oberseer strung him up, and flog him bery hard. Den Sam took to de swamp, but he didn't know whar to gwo, and de dogs tracked him; he'd ha' got 'way dough ef ole Moye hadn't a shot him; den he cudn't run. Den Moye flogged him till he war 'most dead, and arter dat chained him down in de ole cabin, and gave him 'most nuffin' to eat. De Cunnel war gwine to take Sam to Charles'on and sell him, but somehow he got a file and sawed fru de chain and got 'way in de night to de 'still.' Den when de oberseer come dar in de mornin', Sam jump on him and 'most kill him. He'd hab sent him whar dar aint no niggas, ef Junius hadn't a holed him. _I'd_ a let de ole debble gwo."
"Junius, then, is a friend of the overseer."
"No, sar; _he_ haint no friends, 'cep de debble; but June am a good nigga, and he said 'twarn't right to kill ole Moye so sudden, for den dar'd be no chance for de Lord to forgib him."
"Then Sam got away again?"
"Oh yas; nary one but darkies war round, and dey wouldn't hole him. Ef dey'd cotched him den, dey'd hung him, shore."
"Why hung him?" " 'Cause he'd struck a wite man; it'm shore death to do dat."
"Do you think Scip will bring him back?"
"Yas; 'cause he'm gwine to tell massa de hull story. De Cunnel will b'lieve Scipio ef he _am_ brack. Sam'll know dat, so he'll come back. De Cunnel'll make de State too hot to hole ole Moye, when he fine him out."
"Does Sam's wife 'smile' on the overseer now?"
"No; she see de trubble she bring on Sam, and she bery sorry. She wont look at a wite man now."
During the foregoing conversation, we had ridden for several miles over the western half of the plantation, and were again near the house. My limbs being decidedly stiff and sore from the effect of the previous day's journey, I decided to alight and rest until the hour for dinner.
I mentioned my jaded condition to Jim, who said: "Dat's right, massa; come in de house. I'll cure de rumatics; I knows how to fix dem."
Fastening the horses at the door, Jim accompanied me to my sleeping-room, where he lighted a fire of pine knots, which in a moment blazed up on the hearth and sent a cheerful glow through the apartment; then, saying he would return after stabling the horses, the darky left me.
I took off my boots, drew the sofa near the fire, and stretched myself at full length upon it. If ever mortal was tired, "I reckon" I was. It seemed as though every joint and bone in my body had lost the power of motion, and sharp, acute pains danced along my nerves, as I have seen the lightning play along the telegraph wires. My entire system had the toothache.
Jim soon returned, bearing in one hand a decanter of "Otard," and in the other a mug of hot water and a crash towel.
"I'se got de stuff dat'll fix de rumatics, massa."
"Thank you, Jim; a glass will do me good. Where did you get it?" I asked, thinking it strange the Colonel should leave his brandy-bottle within reach of the negroes, who have an universal weakness for spirits.
"Oh, I keeps de keys; de Cunnel hissef hab to come to me when he want suffin' to warm hissef."
It was the fact; Jim had exclusive charge of the wine-cellar; in short, was butler, barber, porter, footman, and body-servant, all combined.
"Now, massa, you lay right whar you is, and I'll make you ober new in less dan no time."
And he did; but I emptied the brandy-bottle. Lest my temperance friends should be horror-stricken, I will mention, however, that I took the fluid by external absorption. For all rheumatic sufferers, I would prescribe hot brandy, in plentiful doses, a coarse towel, and an active Southern darky, and if on the first application the patient is not cured, the fault will not be the negro's. Out of mercy to the chivalry, I hope our government, in saving the Union, will not annihilate the order of body-servants. They are the only perfect institution in the Southern country, and, so far as I have seen, about the only one worth saving.
The dinner-bell sounded a short while after Jim had finished the scrubbing operation, and I went to the table with an appetite I had not felt for a week. My whole system was rejuvenated, and I am not sure that I should, at that moment, have declined a wrestling match with Heenan himself.
I found at dinner only the overseer and the young son of Madam P----, the Colonel and the lady being still at the cabin of the dying boy. The dinner, though a queer mixture of viands, would not have disgraced, except, perhaps, in the cooking, the best of our Northern hotels. Venison, bacon, wild fowl, hominy, poultry, corn bread, French "made-dishes," and Southern "common doin's," with wines and brandies of the choicest brands, were placed on the table together.
"Dis, massa," said Jim, "am de raal juice; it hab been in de cellar eber since de house war built. Massa tole me to gib you some, wid him complimen's."
Passing it to my companions, I drank the Colonel's health in as fine wine as I ever tasted.
I had taken an instinctive dislike to the overseer at the breakfast-table, and my aversion was not lessened by learning his treatment of Sam; curiosity to know what manner of man he was, however, led me, toward the close of our meal, to "draw him out," as follows: "What is the political sentiment, sir, of this section of the State?"
"Wal, I reckon most of the folks 'bout har' is Union; they'm from the 'old North,' and gin'rally pore trash."
"I have heard that the majority of the turpentine-farmers are enterprising men and good citizens--more enterprising, even, than the cotton and rice planters."
"Wal, they is enterprisin', 'cause they don't keer for nuthin' 'cep' money."
"The man who is absorbed in money-getting is generally a quiet citizen."
"P'raps that's so. But I think a man sh'u'd hev a soul suthin' 'bove dollars. Them folks will take any sort o' sarce from the Yankees, ef they'll only buy thar truck."
"What do you suffer from the Yankees?"
"Suffer from the Yankees? Don't they steal our niggers, and haint they 'lected an ab'lishener for President?"
"I've been at the North lately, but I am not aware that is so."
"So! it's damnably so, sir. I knows it. We don't mean to stand it eny longer."
"What will you do?"
"We'll give 'em h--l, ef they want it!"
"Will it not be necessary to agree among yourselves before you do that? I met a turpentine farmer below here who openly declared that he is friendly to abolishing slavery. He thinks the masters can make more money by hiring than by owning the negroes."
"Yes, that's the talk of them North County[D] fellers, who've squatted round har. We'll hang every mother's son on 'em, by ----."
"I wouldn't do that: in a free country every man has a right to his opinions."
"Not to sech opinions as them. A man may think, but he mustn't think onraasonable."
"I don't know, but it seems to me reasonable, that if the negroes cost these farmers now one hundred and fifty dollars a year, and they could hire them, if free, for seventy-five or a hundred, that they would make by abolition."
"Ab'lish'n! By--, sir, ye aint an ab'lishener, is ye?" exclaimed the fellow, in an excited manner, bringing his hand down on the table in a way that set the crockery a-dancing.
"Come, come, my friend," I replied, in a mild tone, and as unruffled as a pool of water that has been out of a December night; "you'll knock off the dinner things, and I'm not quite through."
"Wal, sir, I've heerd yer from the North, and I'd like to know if yer an ab'lishener."
"My dear sir, you surprise me. You certainly can't expect a modest man like me to speak of himself."
"Ye can speak of what ye d-- please, but ye can't talk ab'lish'n har, by--," he said, again applying his hand to the table, till the plates and saucers jumped up, performed several jigs, then several reels, and then rolled over in graceful somersaults to the floor.
At this juncture, the Colonel and Madam P---- entered.
Observing the fall in his crockery, and the general confusion of things, my host quietly asked, "What's to pay?"
I said nothing, but burst into a fit of laughter at the awkward predicament of the overseer. That gentleman also said nothing, but looked as if he would like to find vent through a rat-hole or a window-pane. Jim, however, who stood at the back of my chair, gave _his_ eloquent thoughts utterance, very much as follows: "Moye hab 'sulted Massa K----, Cunnel, awful bad. He hab swore a blue streak at him, and called him a d-- ab'lishener, jess 'cause Massa K---- wudn't get mad and sass him back. He hab disgrace your hosspital, Cunnel, wuss dan a nigga."
The Colonel turned white with rage, and striding up to Moye, seized him by the throat, yelling, rather than speaking, these words: "You d---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----, have you dared to insult a guest in my house?"
"I did'nt mean to 'sult him," faltered out the overseer, his voice running through an entire octave, and changing with the varying pressure of the Colonel's fingers on his throat; "but he said he war an ab'lishener."
"No matter what he said, he is my guest, and in my house he shall say what he pleases, by--. Apologize to him, or I'll send you to h--in a second."
The fellow turned cringingly to me, and ground out something like this, every word seeming to give him the face-ache: "I meant no offence, sar; I hope ye'll excuse me."
This satisfied me, but, before I could reply, the Colonel again seized him by the throat and yelled: "None of your sulkiness; you d-- white-livered hound, ask the gentleman's pardon like a man."
The fellow then got out, with less effort than before: "I 'umbly ax yer pardon, sar, very 'umbly, indeed."
"I am satisfied, sir," I replied. "I bear you no ill-will."
"Now go," said the Colonel; "and in future take your meals in your cabin. I have none but gentlemen at my table."
The fellow went. As soon as he closed the door, the Colonel said to me: "Now, my dear friend, I hope you will pardon _me_ for this occurrence. I sincerely regret you have been insulted in my house."
"Don't speak of it, my dear sir; the fellow is ignorant, and really thinks I am an abolitionist. His zeal in politics led to his warmth. I blame him very little," I replied.
"But he lied, Massa K----," chimed in Jim, very warmly; "you neber said you war an ab'lishener."
"You know what _they_ are, Jim, don't you?" said the Colonel, laughing, and taking no notice of his breach of decorum in wedging black ideas into a white conversation.
"Yas, I does dat," said the darky, grinning.
"Jim," said his master, "you're a prince of a nigger, but you talk too much; ask me for something to-day, and I reckon you'll get it; but go now, and tell Chloe (the cook) to get us some dinner."
The negro left, and, excusing myself, I soon followed suit.
I went to my room, laid down on the lounge, and soon fell asleep. It was nearly five o'clock when a slight noise in the apartment awoke me, and, looking up, I saw the Colonel quietly seated by the fire, smoking a cigar. His feet were elevated above his head, and he appeared absorbed in no very pleasant reflections.
"How is the sick boy, Colonel?" I asked.
"It's all over with him, my friend. He died easy; but 'twas very painful to me; I feel I have done him wrong."
"How so?"
"I was away all summer, and that cursed Moye sent him to the swamp to tote for the shinglers. It killed him."
"Then you are not to blame," I replied.
"I wish I could feel so."
The Colonel remained with me till supper-time, evidently much depressed by the events of the morning, which had affected him more than I should have thought possible. I endeavored, by directing his mind to other topics, to cheer him, and in a measure succeeded.
While we were seated at the supper table, the black cook entered from the kitchen--a one-story shanty, detached from, and in the rear of the house--and, with a face expressive of every conceivable emotion a negro can feel--joy, sorrow, wonder, and fear all combined--exclaimed, "O massa, massa! dear massa! Sam, O Sam!"
"Sam!" said the Colonel; "what about Sam?"
"Why, he hab--dear, dear massa, don't yer, don't yer hurt him--he hab come back!"
If a bombshell had fallen in the room, a greater sensation could not have been produced. Every individual arose from the table, and the Colonel, striding up and down the apartment, exclaimed: "Is he mad? The everlasting fool! Why in h--has he come back?"
"Oh, don't ye hurt him massa," said the black cook, wringing her hands. "Sam hab been bad, bery bad, but he won't be so no more."
"Stop your noise, aunty," said the Colonel, but with no harshness in his tone. "I shall do what I think right."
"Send for him, David," said Madame P----; "let us hear what he has to say. He would not come back if he meant to be ugly." " _Send_ for him, Alice!" replied my host. "He's prouder than Lucifer, and would send me word to come to _him_. I will go. Will you accompany me, Mr. K----? You'll hear what a runaway nigger thinks of slavery: Sam has the gift of speech, and uses it regardless of persons."
"Yes, sir, I'll go with pleasure."
It was about an hour after nightfall when we emerged from the door of the mansion and took our way to the negro quarters. The full moon had risen half way above the horizon, and the dark pines cast their shadows around the little collection of negro huts, which straggled about through the woods for the distance of a third of a mile. It was dark, but I could distinguish the figure of a man striding along at a rapid pace a few hundred yards in advance of us.
"Is'nt that Moye?" I asked the Colonel, directing his attention to the receding figure.
"I reckon so; that's his gait. He's had a lesson to-day that'll do him good."
"I don't like that man's looks," I replied, carelessly; "but I've heard of singed cats."
"He _is_ a sneaking d--l," said the Colonel; "but he's very valuable to me. I never had an overseer who got so much work out of the hands."
"Is he severe with them?"
"Well, I reckon he is; but a nigger is like a dog--you must flog him to make him like you."
"I judge your niggers haven't been flogged into liking Moye."
"Why, have you heard any of them speak of him?"
"Yes; though, of course, I've made no effort to draw gossip from them. I had to hear."
"O yes; I know; there's no end to their gabble; niggers will talk. But what have you heard?"
"That Moye is to blame in this affair of Sam, and that you don't know the whole story."
"What _is_ the whole story?" he asked, stopping short in the road; "tell me before I see Sam."
I then told him what Jim had recounted to me. He heard me through attentively, then laughingly exclaimed: "Is that all! Lord bless you, he didn't seduce her. There's no seducing these women; with them it's a thing of course. It was Sam's d-- high blood that made the trouble. His father was the proudest man in Virginia, and Sam is as like him as a nigger can be like a white man."
"No matter what the blood is, it seems to me such an injury justifies revenge."
"Pshaw, my good fellow, you don't know these people. I'll stake my plantation against a glass of whiskey there's not a virtuous woman with a drop of black blood in her veins in all South Carolina. They prefer the white men; their husbands know it, and take it as a matter of course."
We had here reached the negro cabin. It was one of the more remote of the collection, and stood deep in the woods, an enormous pine growing up directly beside the doorway. In all respects it was like the other huts on the plantation. A bright fire lit up its interior, and through the crevices in the logs we saw, as we approached, a scene that made us pause involuntarily, when within a few rods of the house. The mulatto man, whose clothes were torn and smeared with swamp mud, stood near the fire. On a small pine table near him lay a large carving-knife, which glittered in the blaze, as if recently sharpened. His wife was seated on the side of the low bed at his back, weeping. She was two or three shades lighter than the man, and had the peculiar brown, kinky hair, straight, flat nose, and speckled, gray eyes which mark the metif. Tottling on the floor at the feet of the man, and caressing his knees, was a child of perhaps two years.
As we neared the house, we heard the voice of the overseer issuing from the doorway on the other side of the pine-tree.
"Come out, ye black rascal."
"Come in, you wite hound, ef you dar," responded the negro, laying his hand on the carving-knife.
"Come out, I till ye; I sha'n't ax ye agin."
"I'll hab nuffin' to do wid you. G'way and send your massa har," replied the mulatto man, turning his face away with a lordly, contemptuous gesture, that spoke him a true descendant of Pocahontas. This movement exposed his left side to the doorway, outside of which, hidden from us by the tree, stood the overseer.
"Come away, Moye," said the Colonel, advancing with me toward the door; "_I'll_ speak to him."
Before all of the words had escaped the Colonel's lips, a streak of fire flashed from where the overseer stood, and took the direction of the negro. One long, wild shriek--one quick, convulsive bound in the air--and Sam fell lifeless to the floor, the dark life-stream pouring from his side. The little child also fell with him, and its greasy, grayish shirt was dyed with its father's blood. Moye, at the distance of ten feet, had discharged the two barrels of a heavily-loaded shot-gun directly through the negro's heart.
"You incarnate son of h--," yelled the Colonel, as he sprang on the overseer, bore him to the ground, and wrenched the shot-gun from his hand. Clubbing the weapon, he raised it to brain him. The movement occupied but a second; the gun was descending, and in another instant Moye would have met Sam in eternity, had not a brawny arm caught the Colonel's, and, winding itself around his body, pinned his limbs to his side so that motion was impossible. The woman, half frantic with excitement, thrust open the door when her husband fell, and the light which came through it revealed the face of the new-comer. But his voice, which rang out on the night air as clear as a bugle, had there been no light, would have betrayed him. It was Scip. Spurning the prostrate overseer with his foot, he shouted: "Run, you wite debble, run for your life!"
"Let me go, you black scoundrel," shrieked the Colonel, wild with rage.
"When he'm out ob reach, you'd kill him," replied the negro, as cool as if he was doing an ordinary thing.
"I'll kill you, you black--hound, if you don't let me go," again screamed the Colonel, struggling violently in the negro's grasp, and literally foaming at the mouth.
"I shan't lef you gwo, Cunnel, till you 'gree not to do dat."
The Colonel was a stout, athletic man, in the very prime of life, and his rage gave him more than his ordinary strength, but Scip held him as I might have held a child.
"Here, Jim," shouted the Colonel to his body-servant, who just then emerged from among the trees, "'rouse the plantation--shoot this d-- nigger."
"Dar aint one on 'em wud touch him, massa. He'd send _me_ to de debble wid one fist."
"You ungrateful dog," groaned his master. "Mr. K----, will you stand by and see me handcuffed by a miserable slave?"
"The black means well, my friend; he has saved you from murder. Say he is safe, and I'll answer for his being away in an hour."
The Colonel made one more ineffectual attempt to free himself from the vice-like grip of the negro, then relaxing his efforts, and, gathering his broken breath, he said, "You're safe _now_, but if you're found within ten miles of my plantation by sunrise, by--you're a dead man."
The negro relinquished his hold, and, without saying a word, walked slowly away.
"Jim, you--rascal," said the Colonel to that courageous darky, who was skulking off, "raise every nigger on the plantation, catch Moye, or I'll flog you within an inch of your life."
"I'll do dat, Cunnel; I'll kotch de ole debble, ef he's dis side de hot place."
His words were echoed by about twenty other darkies, who, attracted by the noise of the fracas, had gathered within a safe distance of the cabin. They went off with Jim, to raise the other plantation hands, and inaugurate the hunt.
"If that -- nigger hadn't held me, I'd had Moye in -- by this time," said the Colonel to me, still livid with excitement.
"The law will deal with him, my friend. The negro has saved you from murder."
"The law be d--; it's too good for such a--hound; and that the d-- nigger should have dared to hold me--by--he'll rue it."
He then turned, exhausted with the recent struggle, and, with a weak, uncertain step, entered the cabin. Kneeling down by the dead body of the negro, he attempted to raise it; but his strength was gone. He motioned to me to aid him, and we placed the corpse on the bed. Tearing open the clothing, we wiped away the still flowing blood, and saw the terrible wound which had sent the negro to his account. It was sickening to look on, and I turned to go.
The negro woman, who was weeping and wringing her hands, now approached, and, in a voice nearly choked with sobs, said: "Massa, oh massa, I done it! it's me dat killed him!"
"I know you did, you d----. Get out of my sight."
"Oh, massa," sobbed the woman, falling on her knees, "I'se so sorry; oh, forgib me!"
"Go to ----, you ----, that's the place for you," said the Colonel, striking the kneeling woman with his foot, and felling her to the floor.
Unwilling to see or hear more, I left the master with the slave.
[Footnote D: The "North Counties" are the north-eastern portion of North Carolina, and include the towns of Washington and Newbern. They are an old turpentine region, and the trees are nearly exhausted. The finer virgin forests of South Carolina, and other cotton States, have tempted many of the North County farmers to emigrate thither, within the past ten years, and they now own nearly all the trees that are worked in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. They generally have few slaves of their own, their hands being hired of wealthier men in their native districts. The "hiring" is an annual operation, and is done at Christmas time, when the negroes are frequently allowed to go home. They treat the slaves well, give them an allowance of meat (salt pork or beef), as much corn as they can eat, and a gill of whiskey daily. No class of men at the South are so industrious, energetic, and enterprising. Though not so well informed, they have many of the traits of our New England farmers; in fact, are frequently called "North Carolina Yankees." It was these people the overseer proposed to hang. The reader will doubtless think that "hanging was not good enough for them."]
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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6
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THE PLANTER'S "FAMILY."
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A quarter of a mile through the woods brought me to the cabin of the old negress where Scip lodged. I rapped at the door, and was admitted by the old woman. Scip, nearly asleep, was lying on a pile of blankets in the corner.
"Are you mad?" I said to him. "The Colonel is frantic with rage, and swears he will kill you. You must be off at once."
"No, no, massa; neber fear; I knows him. He'd keep his word, ef he loss his life by it. I'm gwine afore sunrise; till den I'm safe."
"Der ye tink Massa Davy wud broke his word, sar?" said the old negress, bridling up her bent form, and speaking in a tone in which indignation mingled with wounded dignity; "p'raps gemmen do dat at de Norf--dey neber does it har."
"Excuse me, Aunty; I know your master is a man of honor; but he's very much excited, and very angry with Scip."
"No matter for dat, sar; Massa Davy neber done a mean ting sense he war born."
"Massa K---- tinks a heap ob de Cunnel, Aunty; but he reckon he'm sort o' crazy now; dat make him afeard," said Scip, in an apologetic tone.
"What ef he am crazy? You'se safe _har_," rejoined the old woman, dropping her aged limbs into a chair, and rocking away with much the air which ancient white ladies occasionally assume.
"Wont you ax Massa K---- to a cheer?" said Scip; "he hab ben bery kine to me."
The negress then offered me a seat; but it was some minutes before I rendered myself sufficiently agreeable to thaw out the icy dignity of her manner. Meanwhile I glanced around the apartment.
Though the exterior of the cabin was like the others on the plantation, the interior had a rude, grotesque elegance about it far in advance of any negro hut I had ever seen. The logs were chinked with clay, and the one window, though destitute of glass, and ornamented with the inevitable board-shutter, had a green moreen curtain, which kept out the wind and the rain. A worn but neat and well swept carpet partly covered the floor, and on the low bed was spread a patch-work counter-pane. Against the side of the room opposite the door stood an antique, brass-handled bureau, and an old-fashioned table, covered with a faded woollen cloth, occupied the centre of the apartment. In the corner near the fire was a curiously-contrived sideboard, made of narrow strips of yellow pine, tongued and grooved together, and oiled so as to bring out the beautiful grain of the wood. On it were several broken and cracked glasses, and an array of irregular crockery. The rocking chair, in which the old negress passed the most of her time, was of mahogany, wadded and covered with chintz, and the arm-seat I occupied, though old and patched in many places, had evidently moved in good society.
The mistress of this second-hand furniture establishment was arrayed in a mass of cast-off finery, whose gay colors were in striking contrast with her jet-black skin and bent, decrepit form. Her gown, which was very short, was of flaming red and yellow worsted stuff, and the enormous turban that graced her head and hid all but a few tufts of her frizzled, "pepper-and-salt" locks, was evidently a contribution from the family stock of worn-out pillow-cases. She was very aged--upward of seventy--and so thin that, had she not been endowed with speech and motion, she might have passed for a bundle of whalebone thrown into human shape, and covered with a coating of gutta-percha. It was evident she had been a valued house-servant, whose few remaining years were being soothed and solaced by the kind and indulgent care of a grateful master.
Scip, I soon saw, was a favorite with the old negress, and the marked respect he showed me quickly dispelled the angry feeling my doubts of "Massa Davy" had excited, and opened her heart and her mouth at the same moment. She was terribly garrulous; her tongue, as soon as it got under way, ran on as if propelled by machinery and acquainted with the secret of perpetual motion; but she was an interesting study. The single-hearted attachment she showed for her master and his family gave me a new insight into the practical working of "the peculiar institution," and convinced me that even slavery, in some of its aspects, is not so black as it is painted.
When we were seated, I said to Scip, "What induced you to lay hands on the Colonel? It is death, you know, if he enforces the law."
"I knows dat, massa; I knows dat; but I had to do it. Dat Moye am de ole debble, but de folks round har wud hab turned on de Cunnel, shore, ef he'd killed him. Dey don't like de Cunnel; dey say he'm a stuck-up seshener."
"The Colonel, then, has befriended you at some time?"
"No, no, sar; 'twarn't dat; dough I'se know'd him a long w'ile--eber sense my ole massa fotched me from Habana--but 'twarn't dat."
"Then _why_ did you do it?"
The black hesitated a moment, and glanced at the old negress, then said: "You see, massa, w'en I fuss come to Charles'n, a pore little ting, wid no friend in all de worle, dis ole aunty war a mudder to me. She nussed de Cunnel; he am jess like her own chile, and I know'd 'twud kill her ef he got hissef enter trubble."
I noticed certain convulsive twitchings about the corners of the old woman's mouth as she rose from her seat, threw her arms around Scip, and, in words broken by sobs, faltered out: "_You_ am my chile; I loves you better dan Massa Davy--better dan all de worle."
The scene, had they not been black, would have been one for a painter.
"You were the Colonel's nurse, Aunty," I said, when she had regained her composure. "Have you always lived with him?"
"Yas, sar, allers; I nussed him, and den de chil'ren--all ob 'em." " _All_ the children? I thought the Colonel had but one--Miss Clara."
"Wal, he habn't, massa, only de boys."
"What boys? I never heard he had sons."
"Neber heerd of young Massa Davy, nor Massa Tommy! Haint you _seed_ Massa Tommy, sar?"
"Tommy! I was told he was Madam P----'s son."
"So he am; Massa Davy had _her_ long afore he had missus."
The truth flashed upon me; but could it be possible? Was I in South Carolina or in Utah?
"Who _is_ Madam P----?" I asked.
The old woman hesitated a moment as if in doubt whether she had not said too much; but Scip quietly replied: "She'm jess what aunty am--_de Cunnel's slave! _" "His _slave! _ it can't be possible; she is white!"
"No, massa; she am brack, and de Cunnel's slave!"
Not to weary the reader with a long repetition of negro-English, I will tell in brief what I gleaned from an hour's conversation with the two blacks.
Madam P---- was the daughter of Ex-Gov. ----, of Virginia, by a quarteron woman. She was born a slave, but was acknowledged as her father's child, and reared in his family with his legitimate children. When she was ten years old her father died, and his estate proving insolvent, the land and negroes were brought under the hammer. His daughter, never having been manumitted, was inventoried and sold with the other property. The Colonel, then just of age, and a young man of fortune, bought her and took her to the residence of his mother in Charleston. A governess was provided for her, and a year or two afterward she was taken to the North to be educated. There she was frequently visited by the Colonel; and when fifteen her condition became such that she was obliged to return home. He conveyed her to the plantation, where her elder son, David, was soon after born, "Aunt Lucy" officiating on the occasion. When the child was two years old, leaving it in charge of the aged negress, she accompanied the Colonel to Europe, where they remained for a year. Subsequently she passed another year at a Northern seminary; and then, returning to the homestead, was duly installed as its mistress, and had ever since presided over its domestic affairs. She was kind and good to the negroes, who were greatly attached to her, and much of the Colonel's wealth was due to her excellent management of the plantation.
Six years after the birth of "young Massa Davy," the Colonel married his present wife, that lady having full knowledge of his left-handed connection with Madam P----, and consenting that the "bond-woman" should remain on the plantation, as its mistress. The legitimate wife resided, during most of the year, in Charleston, and when at the homestead took little interest in domestic matters. On one of her visits to the plantation, twelve years before, her daughter, Miss Clara, was born, and within a week, under the same roof, Madam P---- presented the Colonel with a son--the lad Thomas, of whom I have spoken. As the mother was slave, the children were so also at birth, but _they_ had been manumitted by their father. One of them was being educated in Germany; and it was intended that both should spend their lives in that country, the taint in their blood being an insuperable bar to their ever acquiring social position at the South.
As she finished the story, the old woman said, "Massa Davy am bery kind to the missus, sar, but he _love_ de ma'am; an' he can't help it, 'cause she'm jess so good as de angels." [E] In conversation with a well-known Southern gentleman, not long since, I mentioned these two cases, and commented on them as a man educated with New England ideas might be supposed to do. The gentleman admitted that he knew of twenty such instances, and gravely defended the practice as being infinitely more moral and respectable than the _more common relation_ existing between masters and slaves.
I looked at my watch--it was nearly ten o'clock, and I rose to go. As I did so the old negress said: "Don't yer gwo, massa, 'fore you hab sum ob aunty's wine; you'm good friends wid Scip, and I knows _you'se_ not too proud to drink wid brack folks, ef you am from de Norf."
Being curious to know what quality of wine a plantation slave indulged in, I accepted the invitation. She went to the side-board, and brought out a cut-glass decanter, and three cracked tumblers, which she placed on the table. Filling the glasses to the brim, she passed one to Scip, and one to me, and, with the other in her hand, resumed her seat. Wishing her a good many happy years, and Scip a pleasant journey home, I emptied my glass. It was Scuppernong, and the pure juice of the grape!
"Aunty," I said, "this wine is as fine as I ever tasted."
"Oh, yas, massa, it am de raal stuff. I growed de grapes myseff."
"You grew them?"
"Yas, sar, an' Massa Davy make de wine. He do it ebery yar for de ole nuss."
"The Colonel is very good. Do you raise any thing else?"
"Yas, I hab collards and taters, a little corn, and most ebery ting."
"But who does your work? _You_ certainly can't do it?"
"Oh, de ma'am looks arter dat, sar; she'm bery good to de ole aunty."
Shaking hands with both the negroes, I left the cabin, fully convinced that all the happiness in this world is not found within plastered apartments.
The door of the mansion was bolted and barred; but, rapping for admission, I soon heard the Colonel's voice asking, "Who is there?" Giving a satisfactory answer, I was admitted. Explaining that he supposed I had retired to my room, he led the way to the library.
That apartment was much more elegantly furnished than the drawing-rooms. Three of its sides were lined with books, and on the centre-table, papers, pamphlets, and manuscripts were scattered in promiscuous confusion. In an arm-chair near the fire, Madame P---- was seated, reading. The Colonel's manner was as composed as if nothing had disturbed the usual routine of the plantation; no trace of the recent terrible excitement was visible; in fact, had I not been a witness to the late tragedy, I should have thought it incredible that he, within two hours, had been an actor in a scene which had cost a human being his life.
"Where in creation have you been, my dear fellow?" he asked, as we took our seats.
"At old Lucy's cabin, with Scip," I replied.
"Indeed. I supposed the darky had gone."
"No, he doesn't go till the morning."
"I told you he wouldn't, David," said Madame P----; "now, send for him--make friends with him before he goes."
"No, Alice, it wont do. I bear him no ill-will, but it wont do. It would be all over the plantation in an hour."
"No matter for that; our people would like you the better for it."
"No, no. I can't do it. I mean him no harm, but I can't do that."
"He told me _why_ he interfered between you and Moye," I remarked.
"Why did he?"
"He says old Lucy, years ago, was a mother to him; that she is greatly attached to you, and it would kill her if any harm happened to you; and that your neighbors bear you no good-will, and would have enforced the law had you killed Moye."
"It is true, David; you would have had to answer for it."
"Nonsense! what influence could this North County scum have against _me_?"
"Perhaps none. But that makes no difference; Scipio did right, and you should tell him you forgive him."
The Colonel then rang a small bell, and a negro woman soon appeared. "Sue," he said, "go to Aunt Lucy's, and ask Scip to come here. Bring him in at the front door, and, mind, let no one know he comes."
The woman in a short time returned with Scip. There was not a trace of fear or embarrassment in the negro's manner as he entered the room. Making a respectful bow, he bade us "good evening."
"Good evening, Scip," said the Colonel, rising and giving the black his hand; "let us be friends. Madam tells me I should forgive you, and I do."
"Aunt Lucy say ma'am am an angel, sar, and it am tru--_it am tru_, sar," replied the negro with considerable feeling.
The lady rose, also, and took Scip's hand, saying, "_I_ not only forgive you, but I _thank_ you for what you have done. I shall never forget it."
"You'se too good, ma'am; you'se too good to say dat," replied the darky, the moisture coming to his eyes; "but I meant nuffin' wrong--I meant nuffin' dis'specful to de Cunnel."
"I know you didn't, Scip; but we'll say no more about it;--good-by," said the Colonel.
Shaking hands with each one of us, the darky left the apartment.
One who does not know that the high-bred Southern gentleman considers the black as far below him as the horse he drives, or the dog he kicks, cannot realize the amazing sacrifice of pride which the Colonel made in seeking a reconciliation with Scip. It was the cutting off of his right hand. The circumstance showed the powerful influence held over him by the octoroon woman. Strange that she, his slave, cast out from society by her blood and her life, despised, no doubt, by all the world, save by him and a few ignorant blacks, should thus control a proud, self-willed, passionate man, and control him, too, only for good.
After the black had gone, I said to the Colonel, "I was much interested in old Lucy. A few more such instances of cheerful and contented old age, might lead me to think better of slavery."
"Such cases are not rare, sir. They show the paternal character of our 'institution.' We are _forced_ to care for our servants in their old age."
"But have your other aged slaves the same comforts that Aunt Lucy has?"
"No; they don't need them. She has been accustomed to live in my house, and to fare better than the plantation hands; she therefore requires better treatment."
"Is not the support of that class a heavy tax upon you?"
"Yes, it _is_ heavy. We have, of course, to deduct it from the labor of the able-bodied hands."
"What is the usual proportion of sick and infirm on your plantation?"
"Counting in the child-bearing women, I reckon about twenty per cent."
"And what does it cost you to support each hand?"
"Well, it costs _me_, for children and all, about seventy-five dollars a year. In some places it costs less. _I_ have to buy all my provisions."
"What proportion of your slaves are able-bodied hands?"
"Somewhere about sixty per cent. I have, all told, old and young--men, women, and children--two hundred and seventy. Out of that number I have now equal to a hundred and fifty-four _full_ hands. You understand that we classify them: some do only half tasks, some three-quarters. I have _more_ than a hundred and fifty-four working-men and women, but they do only that number of full tasks."
"What does the labor of a _full_ hand yield?"
"At the present price of turpentine, my calculation is about two hundred dollars a year."
"Then your crop brings you about thirty-one thousand dollars, and the support of your negroes costs you twenty thousand."
"Yes."
"If that's the case, my friend, let me advise you to sell your plantation, free your niggers, and go North."
"Why so, my dear fellow?" asked the Colonel laughing.
"Because you'd make money by the operation."
"I never was good at arithmetic; go into the figures," he replied, still laughing, while Madam P----, who had laid aside her book, listened very attentively.
"Well, you have two hundred and seventy negroes, whom you value, we'll say, with your mules, 'stills,' and movable property, at two hundred thousand dollars; and twenty thousand acres of land, worth about three dollars and a half an acre; all told, two hundred and seventy thousand dollars. A hundred and fifty-four able-bodied hands produce you a yearly profit of eleven thousand dollars, which, saying nothing about the cost of keeping your live stock, the wear and tear of your mules and machinery, and the yearly loss of your slaves by death, is only four per cent. on your capital. Now, with only the price of your land, say seventy thousand dollars, invested in safe stocks at the North, you could realize eight per cent. --five thousand six hundred dollars--and live at ease; and that, I judge, if you have many runaways, or many die on your hands, is as much as you really _clear_ now. Besides, if you should invest seventy thousand dollars in almost any legitimate business at the North, and should add to it, _as you now do_, your _time_ and _labor_, you would realize far more than you do at present from your entire capital."
"I never looked at the matter in that light. But I have given you my profits as they _now_ are; some years I make more; six years ago I made twenty-five thousand dollars."
"Yes; and six years hence you may make nothing."
"That's true. But it would cost me more to live at the North."
"There you are mistaken. What do you pay for your corn, your pork, and your hay, for instance?"
"Well, my corn I have to bring round by vessel from Washington (North Carolina), and it costs me high when it gets here--about ten bits (a dollar and twenty-five cents), I think."
"And in New York you could buy it now at sixty to seventy cents. What does your hay cost?"
"Thirty-five dollars. I pay twenty for it in New York--the balance is freight and hauling."
"Your pork costs you two or three dollars, I suppose, for freight and hauling."
"Yes; about that."
"Then in those items you might save nearly a hundred per cent.; and they are the principal articles you consume."
"Yes; there's no denying that. But another thing is just as certain: it costs less to support one of my niggers than one of your laboring men."
"That may be true. But it only shows that our laborers fare better than your slaves."
"I am not sure of that. I _am_ sure, however, that our slaves are more contented than the run of laboring men at the North."
"That proves nothing. Your blacks have no hope, no chance to rise; and they submit--though I judge not cheerfully--to an iron necessity. The Northern laborer, if very poor, may be discontented; but discontent urges him to effort, and leads to the bettering of his condition. I tell you, my friend, slavery is an expensive luxury. You Southern nabobs _will_ have it; and you have to _pay for it_."
"Well, we don't complain. But, seriously, my good fellow, I feel that I am carrying out the design of the Almighty in holding my niggers. I think he made the black to serve the white." " _I_ think," I replied, "that whatever He designs works perfectly. Your institution certainly does not. It keeps the producer, who, in every society, is the really valuable citizen, in the lowest poverty, while it allows those who do nothing to be 'clad in fine linen, and to fare sumptuously every day.'"
"It does more than that, sir," said Madam P----, with animation; "it brutalizes and degrades the _master_ and the _slave_; it separates husband and wife, parent and child; it sacrifices virtuous women to the lust of brutal men; and it shuts millions out from the knowledge of their duty and their destiny. A good and just God could not have designed it; and it _must_ come to an end."
If lightning had struck in the room I could not have been more startled than I was by the abrupt utterance of such language in a planter's house, in his very presence, and _by his slave_. The Colonel, however, expressed no surprise and no disapprobation. It was evidently no new thing to him.
"It is rare, madam," I said, "to hear such sentiments from a Southern lady--one reared among slaves."
Before she could reply, the Colonel laughingly said: "Bless you, Mr. K----, madam is an out-and-out abolitionist, worse by fifty per cent. than Garrison or Wendell Phillips. If she were at the North she would take to pantaloons, and 'stump' the entire free States; wouldn't you, Alice?"
"I have no doubt of it," rejoined the lady, smiling. "But I fear I should have poor success. I've tried for ten years to convert _you_, and Mr. K---- can see the result."
It had grown late; and with my head full of working niggers and white slave-women, I went to my apartment.
The next day was Sunday. It was near the close of December, yet the air was as mild and the sun as warm as in our Northern October. It was arranged at the breakfast-table that we all should attend service at "the meeting-house," a church of the Methodist persuasion, located some eight miles away; but as it wanted some hours of the time for religious exercises to commence, I strolled out after breakfast, with the Colonel, to inspect the stables of the plantation. "Massa Tommy" accompanied us, without invitation; and in the Colonel's intercourse with him I observed as much freedom and familiarity as he would have shown to an acknowledged son. The youth's manners and conversation showed that great attention had been given to his education and training, and made it evident that the mother whose influence was forming his character, whatever a false system of society had made her life, possessed some of the best traits of her sex.
The stables, a collection of one-story framed buildings, about a hundred rods from the house, were well lighted and ventilated, and contained all "the modern improvements." They were better built, warmer, more commodious, and in every way more comfortable than the shanties occupied by the human cattle of the plantation. I remarked as much to the Colonel, adding that one who did not know would infer that he valued his horses more than his slaves.
"That may be true," he replied, laughing. "Two of my horses are worth more than any eight of my slaves;" at the same time calling my attention to two magnificent thorough-breds, one of which had made "2.32" on the Charleston course. The establishment of a Southern gentleman is not complete until it includes one or two of these useless appendages. I had an argument with my host as to their value compared with that of the steam-engine, in which I forced him to admit that the iron horse is the better of the two, because it performs more work, eats less, has greater speed, and is not liable to the spavin or the heaves; but he wound up by saying, "After all, I go for the thorough-breds. You Yankees have but one test of value--use."
A ramble through the negro-quarters, which followed our visit to the stables, gave me some further glimpses of plantation life. Many of the hands were still away in pursuit of Moye, but enough remained to make it evident that Sunday is the happiest day in the darky calendar. Groups of all ages and colors were gathered in front of several of the cabins, some singing, some dancing, and others chatting quietly together, but all enjoying themselves as heartily as so many young animals let loose in a pasture. They saluted the Colonel and me respectfully, but each one had a free, good-natured word for "Massa Tommy," who seemed an especial favorite with them. The lad took their greetings in good part, but preserved an easy, unconscious dignity of manner that plainly showed he did not know that _he_ too was of their despised, degraded race.
The Colonel, in a rapid way, gave me the character and peculiarities of nearly every one we met. The titles of some of them amused me greatly. At every step we encountered individuals whose names have become household words in every civilized country. [F] Julius Cæsar, slightly stouter than when he swam the Tiber, and somewhat tanned from long exposure to a Southern sun, was seated on a wood-pile, quietly smoking a pipe; while near him, Washington, divested of regimentals, and clad in a modest suit of reddish-gray, his thin locks frosted by time, and his fleshless visage showing great age, was gazing, in rapt admiration, at a group of dancers in front of old Lucy's cabin.
In this group about thirty men and women were making the ground quake and the woods ring with their unrestrained jollity. Marc Antony was rattling away at the bones, Nero fiddling as if Rome were burning, and Hannibal clawing at a banjo as if the fate of Carthage hung on its strings. Napoleon, as young and as lean as when he mounted the bridge of Lodi, with the battle-smoke still on his face, was moving his legs even faster than in the Russian retreat; and Wesley was using his heels in a way that showed _they_ didn't belong to the Methodist church. But the central figures of the group were Cato and Victoria. The lady had a face like a thunder-cloud, and a form that, if whitewashed, would have outsold the "Greek Slave." She was built on springs, and "floated in the dance" like a feather in a high wind. Cato's mouth was like an alligator's, but when it opened, it issued notes that would draw the specie even in this time of general suspension. As we approached he was singing a song, but he paused on perceiving us, when the Colonel, tossing a handful of coin among them, called out, "Go on, boys; let the gentleman have some music; and you, Vic, show your heels like a beauty."
A general scramble followed, in which "Vic's" sense of decorum forbade her to join, and she consequently got nothing. Seeing that, I tossed her a silver piece, which she caught. Grinning her thanks, she shouted, "Now, clar de track, you nigs; start de music. I'se gwine to gib de gemman de breakdown."
And she did; and such a breakdown! "We w'ite folks," though it was no new thing to the Colonel or Tommy, almost burst with laughter.
In a few minutes nearly every negro on the plantation, attracted by the presence of the Colonel and myself, gathered around the performers; and a shrill voice at my elbow called out, "Look har, ye lazy, good-for-nuffin' niggers, carn't ye fotch a cheer for Massa Davy and de strange gemman?"
"Is that you, Aunty?" said the Colonel. "How d'ye do?"
"Sort o' smart, Massa Davy; sort o' smart; how is ye?"
"Pretty well, Aunty; pretty well. Have a seat." And the Colonel helped her to one of the chairs that were brought for us, with as much tenderness as he would have shown to an aged white lady.
The "exercises," which had been suspended for a moment, recommenced, and the old negress entered into them as heartily as the youngest present. A song from Cato followed the dance, and then about twenty "gentleman and lady" darkies joined, two at a time, in a half "walk-round" half breakdown, which the Colonel told me was the original of the well-known dance and song of Lucy Long. Other performances succeeded, and the whole formed a scene impossible to describe. Such uproarious jollity, such full and perfect enjoyment, I had never seen in humanity, black or white. The little nigs, only four or five years old, would rush into the ring and shuffle away at the breakdowns till I feared their short legs would come off; while all the darkies joined in the songs, till the branches of the old pines above shook as if they too had caught the spirit of the music. In the midst of it, the Colonel said to me, in an exultant tone: "Well, my friend, what do you think of slavery _now_?"
"About the same that I thought yesterday. I see nothing to change my views."
"Why, are not these people happy? Is not this perfect enjoyment?"
"Yes; just the same enjoyment that aunty's pigs are having; don't you hear _them_ singing to the music? I'll wager they are the happier of the two."
"No; you are wrong. The higher faculties of the darkies are being brought out here."
"I don't know that," I replied. "Within the sound of their voices, two of their fellows--victims to the inhumanity of slavery--are lying dead, and yet they make _Sunday_ "hideous" with wild jollity, while Sam's fate may be theirs to-morrow."
Spite of his genuine courtesy and high breeding, a shade of displeasure passed over the Colonel's face as I made this remark. Rising to go, he said, a little impatiently, "Ah, I see how it is; that d---- Garrison's sentiments have impregnated even you. How can the North and the South hold together when moderate men like you and me are so far apart?"
"But you," I rejoined, good-humoredly, "are not a moderate man. You and Garrison are of the same stripe, both extremists. _You_ have mounted one hobby, _he_ another; that is all the difference."
"I should be sorry," he replied, recovering his good nature, "to think myself like Garrison. I consider him the ---- scoundrel unhung."
"No; I think he means well. But you are both fanatics, both 'bricks' of the same material; we conservatives, like mortar, will hold you together and yet keep you apart."
"I, for one, _won't_ be held. If I can't get out of this cursed Union in any other way, I'll emigrate to Cuba."
I laughed, and just then, looking up, caught a glimpse of Jim, who stood, hat in hand, waiting to speak to the Colonel, but not daring to interrupt a white conversation.
"Hallo, Jim," I said; "have you got back?"
"Yas, sar," replied Jim, grinning all over as if he had some agreeable thing to communicate.
"Where is Moye?" asked the Colonel.
"Kotched, massa; I'se got de padlocks on him."
"Kotched," echoed half a dozen darkies, who stood near enough to hear; "Ole Moye is kotched," ran through the crowd, till the music ceased, and a shout went up from two hundred black throats that made the old trees tremble.
"Now gib him de lashes, Massa Davy," cried the old nurse. "Gib him what he gabe pore Sam; but mine dat you keeps widin de law."
"Never fear, Aunty," said the Colonel; "I'll give him ----."
How the Colonel kept his word will be told in another chapter.
[Footnote E: Instances are frequent where Southern gentlemen form these left-handed connections, and rear two sets of differently colored children; but it is not often that the two families occupy the same domicil. The only other case within my _personal_ knowledge was that of the well-known President of the Bank of St. M----, at Columbus, Ga. That gentleman, whose note ranked in Wall Street, when the writer was acquainted with that locality, as "A No. 1," lived for fifteen years with two "wives" under one roof. One, an accomplished white woman, and the mother of several children--did the honors of his table, and moved with him in "the best society;" the other--a beautiful quadroon, also the mother of several children--filled the humbler office of nurse to her own and the other's offspring.]
[Footnote F: Among the things of which slavery has deprived the black is a _name_. A slave has no family designation. It may be for that reason that a high-sounding appellation is usually selected for the single one he is allowed to appropriate.]
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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7
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PLANTATION DISCIPLINE.
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The "Ole Cabin" to which Jim had alluded as the scene of Sam's punishment by the overseer, was a one-story shanty in the vicinity of the stables. Though fast falling to decay, it had more the appearance of a human habitation than the other huts on the plantation. Its thick plank door was ornamented with a mouldy brass knocker, and its four windows contained sashes, to which here and there clung a broken pane, the surviving relic of its better days. It was built of large unhewn logs, notched at the ends and laid one upon the other, with the bark still on. The thick, rough coat which yet adhered in patches to the timber had opened in the sun, and let the rain and the worm burrow in its sides, till some parts had crumbled entirely away. At one corner the process of decay had gone on till roof, superstructure, and foundation had rotted down and left an opening large enough to admit a coach and four horses. The huge chimneys which had graced the gable ends of the building were fallen in, leaving only a mass of sticks and clay to tell of their existence, and two wide openings to show how great a figure they had once made in the world. A small space in front of the cabin would have been a lawn, had the grass been willing to grow upon it; and a few acres of cleared land in its rear might have passed for a garden, had it not been entirely overgrown with young pines and stubble. This primitive structure was once the "mansion" of that broad plantation, and, before the production of turpentine came into fashion in that region, its rude owner drew his support from its few surrounding acres, more truly independent than the present aristocratic proprietor, who, raising only one article, and buying all his provisions, was forced to draw his support from the Yankee or the Englishman.
Only one room, about forty feet square, occupied the interior of the cabin. It once contained several apartments, vestiges of which still remained, but the partitions had been torn away to fit it for its present uses. What those uses were, a moment's observation showed me.
In the middle of the floor, a space about fifteen feet square was covered with thick pine planking, strongly nailed to the beams. In the centre of this planking, an oaken block was firmly bolted, and to it was fastened a strong iron staple that held a log-chain, to which was attached a pair of shackles. Above this, was a queer frame-work of oak, somewhat resembling the contrivance for drying fruit I have seen in Yankee farmhouses. Attached to the rafters by stout pieces of timber, were two hickory poles, placed horizontally, and about four feet apart, the lower one rather more than eight feet from the floor. This was the whipping-rack, and hanging to it were several stout whips with short hickory handles, and long triple lashes. I took one down for closer inspection, and found burned into the wood, in large letters, the words "Moral Suasion." I questioned the appropriateness of the label, but the Colonel insisted with great gravity, that the whip is the only "moral suasion" a darky is capable of understanding.
When punishment is inflicted on one of the Colonel's negroes, his feet are confined in the shackles, his arms tied above his head, and drawn by a stout cord up to one of the horizontal poles; then, his back bared to the waist, and standing on tip-toe, with every muscle stretched to its utmost tension, he takes "de lashes."
A more severe but more unusual punishment is the "thumb-screw." In this a noose is passed around the negro's thumb and fore-finger, while the cord is thrown over the upper cross-pole, and the culprit is drawn up till his toes barely touch the ground. In this position the whole weight of the body rests on the thumb and fore-finger. The torture is excruciating, and strong, able-bodied men can endure it but a few moments. The Colonel naively told me that he had discontinued its practice, as several of his _women_ had nearly lost the use of their hands, and been incapacitated for field labor, by its too frequent repetition. "My ---- drivers,"[G] he added, "have no discretion, and no humanity; if they have a pique against a nigger, they show him no mercy."
The old shanty I have described was now the place of the overseer's confinement. Open as it was at top, bottom, and sides, it seemed an unsafe prison-house; but Jim had secured its present occupant by placing "de padlocks on him."
"Where did you catch him?" asked the Colonel, as, followed by every darky on the plantation, we took our way to the old building.
"In de swamp, massa. We got Sandy and de dogs arter him--dey treed him, but he fit like de debble."
"Any one hurt?"
"Yas, Cunnel; he knifed Yaller Jake, and ef I hadn't a gibin him a wiper, you'd a had anudder nigger short dis mornin'--shore."
"How was it? tell me," said his master, while we paused, and the darkies gathered around.
"Wal, yer see, massa, we got de ole debble's hat dat he drapped wen you had him down; den we went to Sandy's fur de dogs--dey scented him to onst, and off dey put for de swamp. 'Bout twenty on us follored 'em. He'd a right smart start on us, and run like a deer, but de hounds kotched up wid him 'bout whar he shot pore Sam. He fit 'em and cut up de Lady awful, but ole Cæsar got a hole ob him, and sliced a breakfuss out ob his legs. Somehow, dough, he got 'way from de ole dog, and clum a tree. 'Twar more'n an hour afore we kotched up; but dar he war, and de houns baying 'way as ef dey know'd what an ole debble he am. I'd tuk one ob de guns--you warn't in de house, massa, so I cudn't ax you."
"Never mind that; go on," said the Colonel.
"Wal, I up wid de gun, and tole him ef he didn't cum down I'd gib him suffin' dat 'ud sot hard on de stummuk. It tuk him a long w'ile, but--he _cum down_." Here the darky showed a row of ivory that would have been a fair capital for a metropolitan dentist.
"When he war down," he resumed, "Jake war gwine to tie him, but de ole 'gator, quicker dan a flash, put a knife enter him."
"Is Jake much hurt?" interrupted the Colonel.
"Not bad, massa; de knife went fru his arm, and enter his ribs, but de ma'am hab fix him, and she say he'll be 'round bery sudden."
"Well, what then?" inquired the Colonel.
"Wen de ole debble seed he hadn't finished Jake, he war gwine to gib him anudder dig, but jus den I drap de gun on his cocoanut, and he neber trubble us no more. 'Twar mons'rous hard work to git him out ob de swamp, 'cause he war jess like a dead man, and had to be toted de hull way; but he'm dar now, massa (pointing to the old cabin), and de bracelets am on him."
"Where is Jake?" asked the Colonel.
"Dunno, massa, but reckon he'm to hum."
"One of you boys go and bring him to the cabin," said the Colonel.
A negro man went off on the errand, while we and the darkies resumed our way to the overseer's quarters. Arrived there, I witnessed a scene that words cannot picture.
Stretched at full length on the floor, his clothes torn to shreds, his coarse carroty hair matted with blood, and his thin, ugly visage pale as death, lay the overseer. Bending over him, wiping away the blood from his face, and swathing a ghastly wound on his forehead, was the negress Sue; while at his shackled feet, binding up his still bleeding legs, knelt the octoroon woman!
"Is _she_ here?" I said, involuntarily, as I caught sight of the group.
"It's her nature," said the Colonel, with a pleasant smile; "if Moye were the devil himself, she'd do him good if she could; another such woman never lived."
And yet this woman, with all the instincts that make her sex angel-ministers to man, lived in daily violation of the most sacred of all laws--because she was a slave. Can Mr. Caleb Cushing or Charles O'Conor tell us why the Almighty invented a system which forces his creatures to break laws of His own making?
"Don't waste your time on him, Alice," said the Colonel, kindly; "he isn't worth the rope that'll hang him."
"He was bleeding to death; unless he has care he'll die," said the octoroon woman.
"Then let him die, d---- him," replied the Colonel, advancing to where the overseer lay, and bending down to satisfy himself of his condition.
Meanwhile more than two hundred dusky forms crowded around and filled every opening of the old building. Every conceivable emotion, except pity, was depicted on their dark faces. The same individuals whose cloudy visages a half hour before I had seen distended with a wild mirth and careless jollity, that made me think them really the docile, good-natured animals they are said to be, now glared on the prostrate overseer with the infuriated rage of aroused beasts when springing on their prey.
"You can't come the possum here. Get up, you ---- hound," said the Colonel, rising and striking the bleeding man with his foot.
The fellow raised himself on one elbow and gazed around with a stupid, vacant look. His eye wandered unsteadily for a moment from the Colonel to the throng of cloudy faces in the doorway; then, his recent experience flashing upon him, he shrieked out, clinging wildly to the skirts of the octoroon woman, who was standing near, "Keep off them cursed hounds--keep them off, I say--they'll kill me! they'll kill me!"
One glance satisfied me that his mind was wandering. The blow on the head had shattered his reason, and made the strong man less than a child.
"You wont be killed yet," said the Colonel. "You've a small account to settle with me before you reckon with the devil."
At this moment the dark crowd in the doorway parted, and Jake entered, his arm bound up and in a sling.
"Jake, come here," said the Colonel; "this man would have killed you. What shall we do with him?" " 'Taint for a darky to say dat, massa," said the negro, evidently unaccustomed to the rude administration of justice which the Colonel was about to inaugurate; "he did wuss dan dat to Sam, massa--he orter swing for shootin' him."
"That's _my_ affair; we'll settle your account first," replied the Colonel.
The darky looked undecidedly at his master, and then at the overseer, who, overcome by weakness, had sunk again to the floor. The little humanity in him was evidently struggling with his hatred of Moye and his desire for revenge, when the old nurse yelled out from among the crowd, "Gib him fifty lashes, Massa Davy, and den you wash him down. [H] Be a man, Jake, and say dat."
Jake still hesitated, and when at last he was about to speak, the eye of the octoroon caught his, and chained the words to his tongue, as if by magnetic power.
"Do you say that, boys;" said the Colonel, turning to the other negroes; "shall he have fifty lashes?"
"Yas, massa, fifty lashes--gib de ole debble fifty lashes," shouted about fifty voices.
"He shall have them," quietly said the master.
The mad shout that followed, which was more like the yell of demons than the cry of men, seemed to arouse Moye to a sense of his real position. Springing to his feet, he gazed wildly around; then, sinking on his knees before the octoroon, and clutching the folds of her dress, he shrieked, "Save me, good lady, save me! as you hope for mercy, save me!"
Not a muscle of her face moved, but, turning to the excited crowd, she mildly said, "Fifty lashes would kill him. _Jake_ does not say that--your master leaves it to him, and _he_ will not whip a dying man--will you, Jake?"
"No, ma'am--not--not ef you gwo agin it," replied the negro, with very evident reluctance.
"But he whipped Sam, ma'am, when Sam war nearer dead than _he_ am," said Jim, whose station as house-servant allowed him a certain freedom of speech.
"Because he was brutal to Sam, should you be brutal to him? Can you expect me to tend you when you are sick, if you beat a dying man? Does Pompey say you should do such things?"
"No, good ma'am," said the old preacher, stepping out, with the freedom of an old servant, from the black mass, and taking his stand beside me in the open space left for the "w'ite folks;" "de ole man dusn't say dat, ma'am; he tell 'em dat de Lord want 'em to forgib dar en'mies--to lub dem dat pursyskute 'em;" and, turning to the Colonel, he added, as he passed his hand meekly over his thin crop of white wool and threw his long heel back, "ef massa'll 'low me I'll talk to 'em."
"Fire away," said the Colonel, with evident chagrin. "This is a nigger trial; if you want to screen the d---- hound you can do it."
"I dusn't want to screed him, massa, but I'se bery ole and got soon to gwo, and I dusn't want de blessed Lord to ax me wen I gets dar why I 'lowed dese pore ig'nant brack folks to mudder a man 'fore my bery face. I toted you, massa, 'fore you cud gwo, I'se worked for you till I can't work no more; and I dusn't want to tell de Lord dat _my_ massa let a brudder man be killed in cole blood."
"He is no brother of mine, you old fool; preach to the nigs, don't preach to me," said the Colonel, stifling his displeasure, and striding off through the black crowd, without saying another word.
Here and there in the dark mass a face showed signs of relenting; but much the larger number of that strange jury, had the question been put, would have voted--DEATH.
The old preacher turned to them as the Colonel passed out, and said, "My chil'ren, would you hab dis man whipped, so weak, so dyin' as he am, ef he war brack?"
"No, not ef he war a darky--fer den he wouldn't be such an ole debble," replied Jim, and about a dozen of the other negroes.
"De w'ite aint no wuss dan de brack--we'm all 'like--pore sinners all on us. De Lord wudn't whip a w'ite man no sooner dan a brack one--He tinks de w'ite juss so good as de brack (good Southern doctrine, I thought). De porest w'ite trash wudn't strike a man wen he war down."
"We'se had 'nough of dis, ole man," said a large, powerful negro (one of the drivers), stepping forward, and, regardless of the presence of Madam P---- and myself, pressing close to where the overseer lay, now totally unconscious of what was passing around him. "You needn't preach no more; de Cunnel hab say we'm to whip ole Moye, and we'se gwine to do it, by ----."
I felt my fingers closing on the palm of my hand, and in a second more they might have cut the darky's profile, had not Madam P---- cried out, "Stand back, you impudent fellow: say another word, and I'll have you whipped on the spot."
"De Cunnel am my massa, ma'am--_he_ say ole Moye am to be whipped, and I'se gwine to do it--shore."
I have seen a storm at sea--I have seen the tempest tear up great trees--I have seen the lightning strike in a dark night--but I never saw any thing half so grand, half so terrible, as the glance and tone of that woman as she cried out, "Jim, take this man--give him fifty lashes this instant."
Quicker than thought, a dozen darkies were on him. His hands and feet were tied and he was under the whipping-rack in a second. Turning then to the other negroes, the brave woman said, "Some of you carry Moye to the house, and you, Jim, see to this man--if fifty lashes don't make him sorry, give him fifty more."
This summary change of programme was silently acquiesced in by the assembled negroes, but many a cloudy face scowled sulkily on the octoroon, as, leaning on my arm, she followed Junius and the other negroes, who bore Moye to the mansion. It was plain that under those dark faces a fire was burning that a breath would have fanned into a flame.
We entered the house by its rear door, and placed Moye in a small room on the ground floor. He was laid on a bed, and stimulants being given him, his senses and reason shortly returned. His eyes opened, and his real position seemed suddenly to flash upon him, for he turned to Madam P----, and in a weak voice, half choked with emotion, faltered out: "May God in heaven bless ye, ma'am; God _will_ bless ye for bein' so good to a wicked man like me. I doesn't desarve it, but ye woant leave me--ye woant leave me--they'll kill me ef ye do!"
"Don't fear," said the Madam; "you shall have a fair trial. No harm shall come to you here."
"Thank ye, thank ye," gasped the overseer, raising himself on one arm, and clutching at the lady's hand, which he tried to lift to his lips.
"Don't say any more now," said Madam P----, quietly; "you must rest and be quiet, or you wont get well."
"Shan't I get well? Oh, I can't die--I can't die _now_!"
The lady made a soothing reply, and giving him an opiate, and arranging the bedding so that he might rest more easily, she left the room with me.
As we stepped into the hall, I saw through the front door, which was open, the horses harnessed in readiness for "meeting," and the Colonel pacing to and fro on the piazza, smoking a cigar. He perceived us, and halted in the doorway.
"So you've brought that d---- bloodthirsty villain into my house!" he said to Madam P---- in a tone of strong displeasure.
"How could I help it? The negroes are mad, and would kill him anywhere else," replied the lady, with a certain self-confidence that showed she knew her power over the Colonel.
"Why should _you_ interfere between them and him? Has he not insulted you enough to make you let him alone? Can you so easily forgive his taunting you with"--He did not finish the sentence, but what I had learned on the previous evening from the old nurse gave me a clue to its meaning. A red flame flushed the face and neck of the octoroon woman--her eyes literally flashed fire, and her very breath seemed to come with pain; in a moment, however, this emotion passed away, and she quietly said, "Let me settle that in my own way. He has served _you_ well--_you_ have nothing against him that the law will not punish."
"By ----, you are the most unaccountable woman I ever knew," exclaimed the Colonel, striding up and down the piazza, the angry feeling passing from his face, and giving way to a mingled expression of wonder and admiration. The conversation was here interrupted by Jim, who just then made his appearance, hat in hand.
"Well, Jim, what is it?" asked his master.
"We'se gib'n Sam twenty lashes, ma'am, but he beg so hard, and say he so sorry, dat I tole him I'd ax you 'fore we gabe him any more."
"Well, if he's sorry, that's enough; but tell him he'll get fifty another time," said the lady.
"What Sam is it?" asked the Colonel.
"Big Sam, the driver," said Jim.
"Why was he whipped?"
"He told me _you_ were his master, and insisted on whipping Moye," replied the lady.
"Did he dare to do that? Give him a hundred, Jim, not one less," roared the Colonel.
"Yas, massa," said Jim, turning to go.
The lady looked significantly at the negro and shook her head, but said nothing, and he left.
"Come, Alice, it is nearly time for meeting, and I want to stop and see Sandy on the way."
"I reckon I wont go," said Madam P----.
"You stay to take care of Moye, I suppose," said the Colonel, with a slight sneer.
"Yes," replied the lady, "he is badly hurt, and in danger of inflammation."
"Well, suit yourself. Mr. K----, come, _we'll_ go--you'll meet some of the _natives_."
The lady retired to the house, and the Colonel and I were soon ready. The driver brought the horses to the door, and as we were about to enter the carriage, I noticed Jim taking his accustomed seat on the box.
"Who's looking after Sam?" asked the Colonel.
"Nobody, Cunnel; de ma'am leff him gwo."
"How dare you disobey me? Didn't I tell you to give him a hundred?"
"Yas, massa, but de ma'am tole me notter."
"Well, another time you mind what _I_ say--do you hear?" said his master.
"Yas, massa," said the negro, with a broad grin, "I allers do dat."
"You _never_ do it, you d---- nigger; I ought to have flogged you long ago."
Jim said nothing, but gave a quiet laugh, showing no sort of fear, and we entered the carriage. I afterward learned from him that he had never been whipped, and that all the negroes on the plantation obeyed the lady when, which was seldom, her orders came in conflict with their master's. They knew if they did not, the Colonel would whip them.
As we rode slowly along the Colonel said to me, "Well, you see that the best people have to flog niggers sometimes."
"Yes, _I_ should have given that fellow a hundred lashes, at least. I think the effect on the others would have been bad if Madam P---- had not had him flogged."
"But she generally goes against it. I don't remember of her having it done in ten years before. And yet, though I've the worst gang of niggers in the district, they obey her like so many children."
"Why is that?"
"Well, there's a kind of magnetism about her that makes everybody love her; and then she tends them in sickness, and is constantly doing little things for their comfort; _that_ attaches them to her. She is an extraordinary woman."
"Whose negroes are those, Colonel?" I asked, as, after a while, we passed a gang of about a dozen, at work near the roadside. Some were tending a tar-kiln, and some engaged in cutting into fire-wood the pines which a recent tornado had thrown to the ground.
"They are mine, but they are working now for themselves. I let such as will, work on Sunday. I furnish the "raw material," and pay them for what they do, as I would a white man."
"Wouldn't it be better to make them go to hear the old preacher; couldn't they learn something from him?"
"Not much; Old Pomp never read any thing but the Bible, and he doesn't understand that; besides, they can't be taught. You can't make 'a whistle out of a pig's tail;' you can't make a nigger into a white man."
Just here the carriage stopped suddenly, and we looked out to see the cause. The road by which we had come was a mere opening through the pines; no fences separated it from the wooded land, and being seldom travelled, the track was scarcely visible. In many places it widened to a hundred feet, but in others tall trees had grown up on its opposite sides, leaving scarcely width enough for a single carriage to pass along. In one of these narrow passages, just before us, a queer-looking vehicle had upset, and scattered its contents in the road. We had no alternative but to wait till it got out of the way; and we all alighted to reconnoitre.
The vehicle was a little larger than an ordinary handcart, and was mounted on wheels that had probably served their time on a Boston dray before commencing their travels in Secessiondom. Its box of pine boarding and its shafts of rough oak poles were evidently of Southern home manufacture. Attached to it by a rope harness, with a primitive bridle of decidedly original construction, was--not a horse, nor a mule, nor even an alligator, but a "three-year-old heifer."
The wooden linch-pin of the cart had given way, and the weight of a half-dozen barrels of turpentine had thrown the box off its balance, and rolled the contents about in all directions.
The appearance of the proprietor of this nondescript vehicle was in keeping with his establishment. His coat, which was much too short in the waist and much too long in the skirts, was of the common reddish gray linsey, and his nether garments, which stopped just below the knees, were of the same material. From there downwards, he wore only the covering that is said to have been the fashion in Paradise before Adam took to fig-leaves. His hat had a rim broader than a political platform, and his skin a color half way between tobacco-juice and a tallow candle.
"Wal, Cunnul, how dy'ge?" said the stranger, as we stepped from the carriage.
"Very well, Ned; how are you?"
"Purty wal, Cunnul; had the nagur lately, right smart, but'm gittin' 'roun'."
"You're in a bad fix here, I see. Can Jim help you?"
"Wal, p'raps he moight. Jim, how dy'ge?"
"Sort o' smart, ole feller. But come, stir yerseff; we want ter gwo 'long," replied Jim, with a lack of courtesy that showed he regarded the white man as altogether too "trashy" to be treated with much ceremony.
With the aid of Jim, a new linch-pin was soon whittled out, the turpentine rolled on to the cart, and the vehicle put in a moving condition.
"Where are you hauling your turpentine?" asked the Colonel.
"To Sam Bell's, at the 'Boro'."
"What will he pay you?"
"Wal, I've four barr'ls of 'dip,' and tu of 'hard.' For the hull, I reckon he'll give three dollar a barr'l." "By tale?"
"No, for tu hun'red and eighty pound."
"Well, _I'll_ give you two dollars and a half, by weight."
"Can't take it, Cunnel; must get three dollar."
"What, will you go sixty miles with this team, and waste five or six days, for fifty cents on six barrels--three dollars!"
"Can't 'ford the time, Cunnel, but must git three dollar a barr'l." "That fellow is a specimen of our 'natives,'" said the Colonel, as we resumed our seats in the carriage. "You'll see more of them before we get back to the plantation."
"He puts a young cow to a decidedly original use," I remarked.
"Oh no, not original here; the ox and the cow with us are both used for labor."
"You don't mean to say that cows are generally worked here?"
"Of course I do. Our breeds are good for nothing as milkers, and we put them to the next best use. I never have cow's milk on my plantation."
"You don't! I could have sworn it was in my coffee this morning."
"I wouldn't trust you to buy brandy for me, if your organs of taste are not keener than that. It was goat's milk."
"Then how do you get your butter?"
"From the North. I've had mine from my New York factors for over ten years."
We soon arrived at Sandy, the negro-hunter's, and halted to allow the Colonel to inquire as to the health of his family of children and dogs--the latter the less numerous, but, if I might judge by appearances, the more valued of the two.
[Footnote G: The negro-whippers and field overseers.]
[Footnote H: Referring to the common practice of bathing the raw and bleeding backs of the punished slaves with a strong solution of salt and water.]
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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8
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THE NEGRO HUNTER.
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Alighting from the carriage, I entered, with my host, the cabin of the negro-hunter. So far as external appearance went, the shanty was a slight improvement on the "Mills House," described in a previous chapter; but internally, it was hard to say whether it resembled more a pig-sty or a dog-kennel. The floor was of the bare earth, covered in patches with loose plank of various descriptions, and littered over with billets of "lightwood," unwashed cooking utensils, two or three cheap stools, a pine settee--made from the rough log and hewn smooth on the upper side--a full-grown bloodhound, two younger canines, and nine half-clad juveniles of the flax-head species. Over against the fire-place three low beds afforded sleeping accommodation to nearly a dozen human beings (of assorted sizes, and dove-tailed together with heads and feet alternating), and in the opposite corner a lower couch, whose finer furnishings told plainly it was the peculiar property of the "wee ones" of the family--a mother's tenderness for her youngest thus cropping out even in the midst of filth and degradation--furnished quarters for an unwashed, uncombed, unclothed, saffron-hued little fellow about fifteen months old, and--the dog "Lady." She was of a dark hazel color--a cross between a pointer and a bloodhound--and one of the most beautiful creatures I ever saw. Her neck and breast were bound about with a coarse cotton cloth, saturated with blood, and emitting a strong odor of bad whiskey; and her whole appearance showed the desperate nature of the encounter with the overseer.
The nine young democrats who were lolling about the room in various attitudes, rose as we entered, and with a familiar but rather deferential "How-dy'ge," to the Colonel, huddled around and stared at me with open mouths and distended eyes, as if I were some strange being, dropped from another sphere. The two eldest were of the male gender, as was shown by their clothes--cast-off suits of the inevitable reddish-gray, much too large, and out at the elbows and the knees--but the sex of the others I was at a loss to determine, for they wore only a single robe, reaching, like their mother's, from the neck to the knees. Not one of the occupants of the cabin boasted a pair of stockings, but the father and mother did enjoy the luxury of shoes--coarse, stout brogans, untanned, and of the color of the legs which they encased.
"Well, Sandy, how is 'Lady?'" asked the Colonel, as he stepped to the bed of the wounded dog.
"Reckon she's a goner, Cunnel; the d---- Yankee orter swing fur it."
This intimation that the overseer was a countryman of mine, took me by surprise, nothing I had observed in his speech or manners having indicated it, but I consoled myself with the reflection that Connecticut had reared him--as she makes wooden hams and nutmegs--expressly for the Southern market.
"He _shall_ swing for it, by ----. But are you sure the slut will die?"
"Not shore, Cunnel, but she can't stand, and the blood _will_ run. I reckon a hun'red and fifty ar done for thar, sartin."
"D---- the money--I'll make that right. Go to the house and get some ointment from Madam--she can save her--go at once," said my host.
"I will, Cunnel," replied the dirt-eater, taking his broad-brim from a wooden peg, and leisurely leaving the cabin. Making our way then over the piles of rubbish and crowds of children that cumbered the apartment, the Colonel and I returned to the carriage.
"Dogs must be rare in this region," I remarked, as we resumed our seats.
"Yes, well-trained bloodhounds are scarce everywhere. That dog is well worth a hundred and fifty dollars."
"The business of nigger-catching, then, is brisk, just now?"
"No, not more brisk than usual. We always have more or less runaways."
"Do most of them take to the swamps?"
"Yes, nine out of ten do, though now and then one gets off on a trading vessel. It is almost impossible for a strange nigger to make his way by land from here to the free states."
"Then why do you Carolinians make such an outcry about the violation of the Fugitive Slave Law?"
"For the same reason that dogs quarrel over a naked bone. We should be unhappy if we couldn't growl at the Yankees," replied the Colonel, laughing. " _We_, you say; you mean by that, the hundred and eighty thousand nabobs who own five-sixths of your slaves?" [I] "Yes, I mean them, and the three millions of poor whites--the ignorant, half-starved, lazy vermin you have just seen. _They_ are the real basis of our Southern oligarchy, as you call it," continued my host, still laughing.
"I thought the negroes were the serfs in your feudal system?"
"Both the negroes and the poor whites are the serfs, but the white trash are its real support. Their votes give the small minority of slave-owners all their power. You say we control the Union. We do, and we do it by the votes of these people, who are as far below our niggers as the niggers are below decent white men. Who that reflects that this country has been governed for fifty years by such scum, would give a d---- for republican institutions?"
"It does speak badly for _your_ institutions. A system that reduces nearly half of a white population to the level of slaves cannot stand in this country. The late election shows that the power of your 'white trash' is broken."
"Well, it does, that's a fact. If the states should remain together, the West would in future control the Union. We see that, and are therefore determined on dissolution. It is our only way to keep our niggers."
"The West will have to consent to that project. My opinion is, your present policy will, if carried out, free every one of your slaves."
"I don't see how. Even if we are put down--which we cannot be--and are held in the Union against our will, government cannot, by the constitution, interfere with slavery in the states."
"I admit that, but it can confiscate the property of traitors. Every large slave-holder is to-day, at heart, a traitor. If this movement goes on, you will commit overt acts against the government, and in self-defence it will punish treason by taking from you the means of future mischief."
"The Republicans and Abolitionists might do that if they had the power, but nearly one-half of the North is on our side, and will not fight us."
"Perhaps so; but if _I_ had this thing to manage, I would put you down without fighting."
"How would you do it--by preaching abolition where even the niggers would mob you? There's not a slave in all South Carolina but would shoot Garrison or Greeley on sight."
"That may be, but if so, it is because you keep them in ignorance. Build a free-school at every cross-road, and teach the poor whites, and what would become of slavery? If these people were on a par with the farmers of New England, would it last for an hour? Would they not see that it stands in the way of their advancement, and vote it out of existence as a nuisance?"
"Yes, perhaps they would; but the school-houses are not at the cross-roads, and, thank God, they will not be there in this generation."
"The greater the pity; but that which will not flourish alongside of a school-house, cannot, in the nature of things, outlast this century. Its time must soon come."
"Enough for the day is the evil thereof. I'll risk the future of slavery, if the South, in a body, goes out of the Union."
"In other words, you'll shut out schools and knowledge, in order to keep slavery in existence. The Abolitionists claim it to be a relic of barbarism, and you admit it could not exist with general education among the people."
"Of course it could not. If Sandy, for instance, knew he were as good a man as I am--and he would be if he were educated--do you suppose he would vote as I tell him, go and come at my bidding, and live on my charity? No, sir! give a man knowledge, and, however poor he may be, he'll act for himself."
"Then free-schools and general education would destroy slavery?"
"Of course they would. The few cannot rule when the many know their rights. If the poor whites realized that slavery kept them poor, would they not vote it down? But the South and the world are a long way off from general education. When it comes to that, we shall need no laws, and no slavery, for the millennium will have arrived."
"I'm glad you think slavery will not exist during the millennium," I replied, good-humoredly; "but how is it that you insist the negro is naturally inferior to the white, and still admit that the 'white trash,' are far below the black slaves?"
"Education makes the difference. We educate the negro enough to make him useful to us; but the poor white man knows nothing. He can neither read nor write, and not only that, he is not trained to any useful employment. Sandy, here, who is a fair specimen of the tribe, obtains his living just like an Indian, by hunting, fishing, and stealing, interspersed with nigger-catching. His whole wealth consists of two hounds and pups; his house--even the wooden trough his miserable children eat from--belongs to me. If he didn't catch a runaway-nigger once in a while, he wouldn't see a dime from one year to another."
"Then you have to support this man and his family?"
"Yes, what I don't give him he steals. Half a dozen others poach on me in the same way."
"Why don't you set them at work?"
"They can't be made to work. I have hired them time and again, hoping to make something of them, but I never got one to work more than half a day at a time. It's their nature to lounge and to steal."
"Then why do you keep them about you?"
"Well, to be candid, their presence is of use in keeping the blacks in subordination, and they are worth all they cost me, because I control their votes."
"I thought the blacks were said to be entirely contented?"
"No, not contented. I do not claim that. I only say that they are unfit for freedom. I might cite a hundred instances in which it has been their ruin."
"I have not heard of one. It seems strange to me that a man who can support another cannot support himself."
"Oh! no, it's not at all strange. The slave has hands, and when the master gives him brains, he works well enough; but to support himself he needs both hands and brains, and he has only hands. I'll give you a case in point: At Wilmington, N. C., some years ago, there lived a negro by the name of Jack Campbell. He was a slave, and was employed, before the river was deepened so as to admit of the passage of large vessels up to the town, in lightering cargoes to the wharves. He hired his time of his master, and carried on business on his own account. Every one knew him, and his character for honesty, sobriety, and punctuality stood so high that his word was considered among merchants as good as that of the first business-men of the place. Well, Jack's wife and children were free, and he finally took it into his head to be free himself. He arranged with his master to purchase himself within a specified time, at eight hundred dollars, and he was to deposit his earnings in the hands of a certain merchant till they reached the required sum. He went on, and in three years had accumulated nearly seven hundred dollars, when his owner failed in business. As the slave has no right of property, Jack's earnings belonged by law to his master, and they were attached by the Northern creditors (mark that, _by Northern creditors_), and taken to pay the master's debts. Jack, too, was sold. His new owner also consented to his buying himself, at about the price previously agreed on. Nothing discouraged, he went to work again. Night and day he toiled, and it surprised every one to see so much energy and firmness of purpose in a negro. At last, after four more years of labor, he accomplished his purpose, and received his free-papers. He had worked seven years--as long as Jacob toiled for Rachel--for his freedom, and like the old patriarch he found himself cheated at last. I was present when he received his papers from his owner--a Mr. William H. Lippitt, who still resides at Wilmington--and I shall never forget the ecstasy of joy which he showed on the occasion. He sung and danced, and laughed, and wept, till my conscience smote me for holding my own niggers, when freedom might give them so much happiness. Well, he went off that day and treated some friends, and for three days afterward lay in the gutter, the entreaties of his wife and children having no effect on him. He swore he was free, and would do as he 'd---- pleased.' He had previously been a class-leader in the church, but after getting his freedom he forsook his previous associates, and spent his Sundays and evenings in a bar-room. He neglected his business; people lost confidence in him, and step by step he went down, till in five years he sunk into a wretched grave. That was the effect of freedom on _him_, and it would be the same on all of his race."
"It is clear," I replied, "_he_ could not bear freedom, but that does not prove he might not have 'endured' it if he had never been a slave. His overjoy at obtaining liberty, after so long a struggle for it, led to his excesses and his ruin. According to your view, neither the black nor the poor white is competent to take care of himself. The Almighty, therefore, has laid upon _you_ a triple burden; you not only have to provide for yourself and your children, but for two races beneath you, the black and the clay-eater. The poor nigger has a hard time, but it seems to me you have a harder one."
"Well, it's a fact, we do. I often think that if it wasn't for the color and the odor, I'd willingly exchange places with my man Jim."
The Colonel made this last remark in a half-serious, half-comic way, that excited my risibilities, but before I could reply, the carriage stopped, and Jim, opening the door, announced: "We's har, massa, and de prayin' am gwine on."
[Footnote I: The foregoing statistics are correct. That small number of slave-holders sustains the system of slavery, and has caused this terrible rebellion. They are, almost to a man, rebels and secessionists, and we may cover the South with armies, and keep a file of soldiers upon every plantation, and not smother this insurrection, unless we break down the power of that class. Their wealth gives them their power, and their wealth is in their slaves. Free their negroes by an act of emancipation, or confiscation, and the rebellion will crumble to pieces in a day. Omit to do it, and it will last till doomsday.
The power of this dominant class once broken, with landed property at the South more equally divided, a new order of things will arise there. Where now, with their large plantations, not one acre in ten is tilled, a system of small farms will spring into existence, and the whole country be covered with cultivation. The six hundred thousand men who have gone there to fight our battles, will see the amazing fertility of the Southern soil--into which the seed is thrown and springs up without labor into a bountiful harvest--and many of them, if slavery is crushed out, will remain there. Thus a new element will be introduced into the South, an element that will speedily make it a loyal, prosperous, and _intelligent_ section of the Union.
I would interfere with no one's rights, but a rebel in arms against his country has no rights; all that he has "is confiscate." Will the loyal people of the North submit to be ground to the earth with taxes to pay the expenditures of a war, brought upon them by these Southern oligarchists, while the traitors are left in undisturbed possession of every thing, and even their slaves are exempted from taxation? It were well that our legislators should ask this question now, and not wait till it's asked of them by THE PEOPLE.]
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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9
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THE COUNTRY CHURCH.
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Had we not been absorbed in conversation, we might have discovered, some time previous to our arrival at the church door, that the services had commenced, for the preacher was shouting at the top of his lungs. He evidently thought the Lord either a long way off, or very hard of hearing. Not wishing to disturb the congregation while at their devotions, we loitered near the doorway until the prayer was over, and in the mean time I glanced around the vicinity.
The "meeting-house," of large unhewn logs, was a story and a half in height, and about large enough to seat comfortably a congregation of two hundred persons. It was covered with shingles, with a roof projecting some four feet over the walls, and was surmounted at the front gable by a tower, about twelve feet square. This also was built of logs, and contained a bell "to call the erring to the house of prayer," though, unfortunately, all of that character thereabouts dwelt beyond the sound of its voice. The building was located at a cross-roads, about equally distant from two little hamlets (the nearer nine miles off), neither of which was populous enough to singly support a church and a preacher. The trees in the vicinity had been thinned out, so that carriages could drive into the woods, and find under the branches shelter from the rain and the sun; and at the time of my visit, about twenty vehicles of all sorts and descriptions, from the Colonel's magnificent barouche to the rude cart drawn by a single two-horned quadruped, filled the openings. There was a rustic simplicity about the whole scene that charmed me. The low, rude church, the grand old pines that towered in leafy magnificence around it, and the soft, low wind, that sung a morning hymn in the green, wavy woods, seemed to lift the soul up to Him who inhabiteth eternity, but who deigns to visit the erring children of men.
The preacher was about to "line out" one of Watts' psalms when we entered the church, but he stopped short on perceiving us, and, bowing low, waited till we had taken our seats. This action, and the sycophantic air which accompanied it, disgusted me, and turning to the Colonel, I asked, jocosely: "Do the chivalry exact so much obsequiousness from the country clergy? Do you require to be bowed up to heaven?"
In a low voice, but high enough, I thought, for the preacher to hear, for we sat very near, the Colonel replied: "He's a renegade Yankee--the meanest thing on earth."
I said no more, but entered into the services as seriously as the strange gymnastic performances of the preacher would allow of my doing; for he was quite as amusing as a circus clown.
With the exception of the Colonel's, and a few other pews in the vicinity of the pulpit, all of the seats were mere rough benches, without backs, and placed so closely together as to interfere uncomfortably with the knees of the sitters. The house was full, and the congregation as attentive as any I ever saw. All classes were there; the black serving-man away off by the doorway, the poor white a little higher up, the small turpentine-farmer a little higher still, and the wealthy planter, of the class to which the Colonel belonged, on "the highest seats of the synagogue," and in close proximity to the preacher.
The "man of prayer" was a tall, lean, raw-boned, angular-built individual, with a thin, sharp, hatchet-face, a small sunken eye, and long, loose hair, brushed back and falling over the collar of a seedy black coat. He looked like a dilapidated scare-crow, and his pale, sallow face, and cracked, wheezy voice, were in odd and comic keeping with his discourse. His text was: "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward." And addressing the motley gathering of poor whites and small planters before him as the "chosen people of God," he urged them to press on in the mad course their state had taken. It was a political harangue, a genuine stump-speech, but its frequent allusions to the auditory as the legitimate children of the old patriarch, and the rightful heirs of all the promises, struck me as out of place in a rural district of South Carolina, however appropriate it might have been in one of the large towns, before an audience of merchants and traders, who are, almost to a man, Jews.
The services over, the congregation slowly left the church. Gathered in groups in front of the "meeting-house," they were engaged in a general discussion of the affairs of the day, when the Colonel and I emerged from the doorway. The better class greeted my host with considerable cordiality, but I noticed that the well-to-do small planters, who composed the greater part of the assemblage, received him with decided coolness. These people were the "North County folks," on whom the overseer had invoked a hanging. Except that their clothing was more uncouth and ill-fashioned, and their faces generally less "cute" of expression, they did not materially differ in appearance from the rustic citizens who may be seen on any pleasant Sunday gathered around the doorways of the rural meeting-houses of New England.
One of them, who was leaning against a tree, quietly lighting a pipe, was a fair type of the whole, and as he took a part in the scene which followed, I will describe him. He was tall and spare, with a swinging, awkward gait, and a wiry, athletic frame. His hair, which he wore almost as long as a woman's, was coarse and black, and his face strongly marked, and of the precise color of two small rivulets of tobacco-juice that escaped from the corners of his mouth. He had an easy, self-possessed manner, and a careless, devil-may-care way about him, that showed he had measured his powers, and was accustomed to "rough it" with the world. He wore a broadcloth coat of the fashion of some years ago, but his waistcoat and nether garments of the common, reddish homespun, were loose and ill-shaped, as if their owner did not waste thought on such trifles. His hat, as shockingly bad as Horace Greeley's, had the inevitable broad brim, and fell over his face like a calash-awning over a shop-window. As I approached him he extended his hand with a pleasant "How are ye, stranger?"
"Very well," I replied, returning his grasp with equal warmth, "how are you?"
"Right smart, right smart, thank ye. You're----" the rest of the sentence was cut short by a gleeful exclamation from Jim, who, mounted on the box of the carriage, which was drawn up on the cleared plot in front of the meeting-house, waved an open newspaper over his head, and called out, as he caught sight of the Colonel: "Great news, massa--great news from Charls'on!"
(The darky, while we were in church, had gone to the post-office, some four miles away, and got the Colonel's mail, which consisted of letters from his New York and Charleston factors, the Charleston _Courier_ and _Mercury_ and the New York _Journal of Commerce_. The latter sheet, at the date of which I am writing, was in wide circulation at the South, its piety (!) and its politics being then calculated with mathematical precision for secession latitudes.)
"What is it, Jim?" shouted his master. "Give it to us."
The darky had somehow learned to read, but holding the paper at arm's length, and throwing himself into a theatrical attitude, he cried out, with any amount of gesticulation: "De news am, massa, and gemmen and ladies, dat de ole fort fore Charls'on hab ben devacuated by Major Andersin and de sogers, and dey hab stole 'way in de dark night and gone to Sumter, whar dey can't be took; and dat de ole Gubner hab got out a procdemation dat all dat don't lub de Aberlishen Yankees shill cum up dar and clar 'em out; and de paper say dat lots ob sogers hab cum from Georgi and Al'bama, and 'way down Souf, to help 'em. Dis am w'at de _Currer_ say," he continued, holding the paper up to his eyes and reading: "Major Andersin, ob de United States army hab 'chieved de 'stinction ob op'ning cibil war 'tween American citizens; he hab desarted Moulfrie, and by false fretexts hab took dat ole Garrison and all his millinery stores to Fort Sumter."
"Get down, you d----d nigger," said the Colonel, laughing, and mounting the carriage-box beside him. "You can't read. Old Garrison isn't there--he's the d----d Northern Abolitionist."
"I knows dat, Cunnel, but see dar," replied Jim, holding the paper out to his master, "don't dat say he'm dar? It'm him dat make all de trubble. P'raps dis nig can't read, but ef dat aint readin' I'd like to know it!"
"Clear out," said the Colonel, now actually roaring with laughter; "it's the garrison of soldiers that the _Courier_ speaks of, not the Abolitionist."
"Read it yoursef, den, massa, I don't seed it dat way."
Jim was altogether wiser than he appeared, but while equally as well pleased with the news as his master, he was so for an entirely different reason. In the crisis which these tidings announced, he saw hope for his race.
The Colonel then read the paper to the assemblage. The news was received with a variety of manifestations by the auditory, the larger portion, I thought, hearing it, as I did, with sincere regret.
"Now is the time to stand by the state, my friends," said my host, as he finished the reading. "I hope every man here is ready to do his duty by old South Carolina."
"Yes, _sar_! if she does _har_ duty by the Union. We'll go to the death for har just so long as she's in the right, but not a d----d step if she arn't," said the long-legged native I have introduced to the reader.
"And what have _you_ to say about South Carolina? What does she owe to _you_?" asked the Colonel, turning on the speaker with a proud and angry look.
"More, a darned sight, than she'll pay, if ye cursed 'ristocrats run her to h---- as ye'r doin'. She owes me, and 'bout ten as likely niggers as ye ever seed, a living, and we've d----d hard work to get it out on her _now_, let alone what's comin'."
"Don't talk to me, you ill-mannered cur," said my host, turning his back on his neighbor, and directing his attention to the remainder of the assemblage.
"Look har, Cunnel," replied the native, "if ye'll jest come down from thar, and throw 'way yer shootin'-irons, I'll give ye the all-firedest thrashing ye ever did get."
The Colonel gave no further heed to him, but the speaker mounted the steps of the meeting-house and harangued the natives in a strain of rude and passionate declamation, in which my host, the aristocrats, and the secessionists came in for about equal shares of abuse. Seeing that the native (who, it appeared, was quite popular as a stump-speaker) was drawing away his audience, the Colonel descended from the driver's seat, and motioning for me to follow, entered the carriage. Turning the horses homeward, we rode off at a brisk pace.
"Not much secession about that fellow, Colonel," I remarked, after a while.
"No," he replied, "he's a North Carolina 'corn-cracker,' one of the ugliest specimens of humanity extant. They're as thick as fleas in this part of the state, and about all of them are traitors."
"Traitors to the state, but true to the Union. As far as I've seen, that is the case with the middling class throughout the South." "Well, it may be, but they generally go with us, and I reckon they will now, when it comes to the rub. Those in the towns--the traders and mechanics--will, certain; its only these half-way independent planters that ever kick the traces. By the way," continued my host, in a jocose way, "what did you think of the preaching?"
"I thought it very poor. I'd rather have heard the stump-speech, had it not been a little too personal on you."
"Well, it was the better of the two," he replied, laughing, "but the old devil can't afford any thing good, he don't get enough pay."
"Why, how much does he get?"
"Only a hundred dollars."
"That _is_ small. How does the man live?"
"Well, he teaches the daughter of my neighbor, Captain Randall, who believes in praying, and gives him his board. Randall thinks that enough. The rest of the parish can't afford to pay him, and I _wont_."
"Why wont you?"
"Because he's a d----d old hypocrite. He believes in the Union with all his heart--at least so Randall, who's a sincere Union man, says--and yet, he never sees me at meeting but he preaches a red-hot secession sermon."
"He wants to keep you in the faith," I replied.
A few more miles of sandy road took us to the mansion, where we found dinner in waiting. Meeting "Massa Tommy"--who had staid at home with his mother--as we entered the doorway, the Colonel asked after the overseer.
"He seems well enough, sir; I believe he's coming the possum over mother."
"I'll bet on it, Tommy; but he wont fool you and me, will he, my boy?" said his father, slapping him affectionately on the back.
After dinner I went, with my host to the room of the wounded man. His head was still bound up, and he was groaning piteously, as if in great pain; but I thought there was too fresh a color in his face to be entirely natural in one who had lost so much blood, and been so severely wounded as he affected to have been.
The Colonel mentioned our suspicions to Madam P----, and suggested that the shackles should be put on him.
"Oh! no, don't do that; it would be inhuman," said the lady; "the color is the effect of fever. If you fear he is plotting to get away, let him be watched."
The Colonel consented, but with evident reluctance, to the arrangement, and retired to his room to take a _siesta_, while I lit a segar, and strolled out to the negro quarters.
Making my way through the woods to the scene of the morning's jollification, I found about a hundred darkies gathered around Jim, on the little plot in front of old Lucy's cabin. He had evidently been giving them the news. Pausing when I came near, he exclaimed: "Har's Massa K----, he'll say dat I tells you de trufh;" and turning to me, he said: "Massa K----, dese darkies say dat Massa Andersin am an ab'lisherner, and dat none but de ab'lisherners will fight for de Union; am dat so, sar?"
"No, I reckon not, Jim; I think the whole North would fight for it if it were necessary."
"Am dat so, massa? am dat so?" eagerly inquired a dozen of the darkies; "and am dar great many folks at de Norf--more dan dar am down har?"
"Yas, you fools, didn't I tell you dat?" said Jim, as I, not exactly relishing the idea of preaching treason, in the Colonel's absence, to his slaves, hesitated to reply. "Haint I tole you," he continued, "dat in de big city ob New York dar'm more folks dan in all Car'lina? I'se been dar, and I knows; and Massa K----'ll tell you dat dey--most on 'em--feel mighty sorry for de brack man."
"No he wont," I replied, "and besides, Jim, you should not talk in this way before me; I might tell your master."
"No! you wont do dat; I knows you wont, massa. Scipio tole us he'd trust his bery life wid _you_."
"Well, perhaps he might; it's true I would not injure you;" saying that, I turned away, though my curiosity was greatly excited to hear more.
I wandered farther into the woods, and a half-hour found me near one of the turpentine distilleries. Seating myself on a rosin barrel, I quietly finished my segar, and was about lighting another, when Jim made his appearance.
"Beg pardon, Massa K----," said the negro, bowing very low, "but I wants to ax you one or two tings, ef you please, sar."
"Well," I replied, "I'll tell you any thing that I ought to."
"Der yer tink, den, massa, dat dey'll git to fightin' at Charl'son?"
"Yes, judging by the tone of the Charleston papers you've read to-day, I think they will."
"And der yer tink dat de rest ob de Souf will jine wid Souf Car'lina, if she go at it fust?"
"Yes, Jim, I'm inclined to think so."
"I hard you say to massa, dat ef dey goes to war, 'twill free all de niggers--der you raily b'lieve dat, sar?" " _You_ heard me say that; how did you hear it?" I exclaimed, in surprise.
"Why, sar, de front winder ob de carriage war down jess a crack, so I hard all you said."
"Did you let it down on purpose?"
"P'r'aps so, massa. Whot's de use ob habin' ears, ef you don't har?"
"Well, I suppose not much; and you tell all you hear to the other negroes?"
"I reckon so, massa," said the darky, looking very demure.
"That's the use of having a tongue, eh?" I replied, laughing.
"Dat's it 'zactly, massa."
"Well, Jim, I do think the slaves will be finally freed; but it will cost more white blood to do it than all the niggers in creation are worth. Do you think the darkies would fight for their freedom?"
"Fight, sar!" exclaimed the negro, straightening up his fine form, while his usual good-natured look passed from his face, and gave way to an expression that made him seem more like an incarnate devil than a human being; "FIGHT, sar; gib dem de chance, and den see."
"Why are you discontented? You have been at the North, and you know the blacks are as well off as the majority of the poor laboring men there."
"You says dat to _me_, Massa K----; you don't say it to de _Cunnel_. We am _not_ so well off as de pore man at de Norf! You knows dat, sar. He hab his wife and chil'ren, and his own home. What hab we, sar? No wife, no chil'ren, no home; all am de white man's. Der yer tink we wouldn't fight to be free?" and he pressed his teeth together, and there passed again over his face the same look it wore the moment before.
"Come, come, Jim, this may be true of your race; but it don't apply to yourself. Your master is kind and indulgent to _you_."
"He am kine to me, sar; he orter be," said the negro, the savage expression coming again into his eyes. For a moment he hesitated; then, taking a step toward me, he placed his face down to mine, and hissed out these words, every syllable seeming to come from the very bottom of his being. "I tell you he orter be, sar, FUR I AM HIS OWN FATHER'S SON!"
"His brother!" I exclaimed, springing to my feet, and looking at him in blank amazement. "It can't be true!"
"It am true, sar--as true as there's a hell! His father had my mother--when he got tired of her, he sold her Souf. _I war too young den eben to know her! _" "This is horrible--too horrible!" I said.
"It am slavery, sar! Shouldn't we be contented?" replied the negro with a grim smile. Drawing, then, a large spring-knife from his pocket, he waved it above his head, and added: "Ef I had de hull white race dar--right dar under dat knife, don't yer tink I'd take all dar lives--all at one blow--to be FREE!"
"And yet you refused to run away when the Abolitionists tempted you, at the North. Why didn't you go then?" " 'Cause I had promised, massa."
"Promised the Colonel before you went?"
"No, sar; he neber axed me; but _I_ can't tell you no more. P'raps Scipio will, ef you ax him."
"Oh! I see; you're in that league of which Scip is a leader. You'll get into trouble, _sure_," I replied, in a quick, decided tone, which startled him.
"You tole Scipio dat, sar, and what did _he_ tell you?"
"That he didn't care for his life."
"No more do I, sar," said the negro, turning on his heel with a proud, almost defiant gesture, and starting to go.
"A moment, Jim. You are very imprudent; never say these things to any other mortal; promise me that."
"You'se bery good, massa, bery good. Scipio say you's true, and he'm allers right. I ortent to hab said what I hab; but sumhow, sar, dat news brought it all up _har_" (laying his hand on his breast), "and it wud come out."
The tears filled his eyes as he said this, and turning away without another word, he disappeared among the trees.
I was almost stunned by this strange revelation, but the more I reflected on it, the more probable it appeared. Now too, that my thoughts were turned in that direction, I called to mind a certain resemblance between the colonel and the negro that I had not heeded before. Though one was a high-bred Southern gentleman, claiming an old and proud descent, and the other a poor African slave, they had some striking peculiarities which might indicate a common origin. The likeness was not in their features, for Jim's face was of the unmistakable negro type, and his skin of a hue so dark that it seemed impossible he could be the son of a white man (I afterward learned that his mother was a black of the deepest dye), but it was in their form and general bearing. They had the same closely-knit and sinewy frame, the same erect, elastic step, the same rare blending of good-natured ease and dignity--to which I have already alluded as characteristic of the Colonel--and in the wild burst of passion that accompanied the negro's disclosure of their relationship, I saw the same fierce, unbridled temper, whose outbreaks I had witnessed in my host.
What a strange fate was theirs! Two brothers--the one the owner of three hundred slaves, and the first man of his district--the other, a bonded menial, and so poor that the very bread he ate, and the clothes he wore, were another's!
I passed the remainder of the afternoon in my room, and did not again meet my host until the family assembled at the tea-table. Jim then occupied his accustomed seat behind the Colonel's chair, and that gentleman was in more than his usual spirits, though Madam P----, I thought, wore a sad and absent look.
The conversation rambled over a wide range of subjects, and was carried on mainly by the Colonel and myself; but toward the close of the meal the lady said to me: "Mr. K----, Sam and young Junius are to be buried this evening; if you have never seen a negro funeral, perhaps you'd like to attend."
"I will be happy to accompany you, Madam, if you go," I replied, "Thank you," said the lady.
"Pshaw! Alice, you'll not go into the woods on so cold a night as this!" said the Colonel.
"Yes, I think I ought to. Our people will expect me."
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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10
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THE NEGRO FUNERAL.
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It was about an hour after nightfall when we took our way to the burial-ground. The moon had risen, but the clouds which gathered when the sun went down, covered its face, and were fast spreading their thick, black shadows over the little collection of negro-houses. Near two new-made graves were gathered some two hundred men and women, as dark as the night that was setting around them. As we entered the circle the old preacher pointed to seats reserved for us, and the sable crowd fell back a few paces, as if, even in the presence of death, they did not forget the difference between their race and ours.
Scattered here and there among the trees, torches of lightwood threw a wild and fitful light over the little cluster of graves, revealing the long, straight boxes of rough pine that held the remains of the two negroes, and lighting up the score or two of russet mounds where slept the dusky kinsmen who had gone before them.
The simple head-boards that marked these humble graves chronicled no bad biography or senseless rhyme, and told no false tales of lives that might better not have been, but "SAM, AGE 22;" "JAKE'S ELIZA;" "AUNT SUE;" "AUNT LUCY'S TOM;" "JOE;" and other like inscriptions, scratched in rough characters on the unplaned boards, were all the records there. The rude tenants had passed away and "left no sign;" their birth, their age, their deeds, were alike unknown--unknown, but not forgotten! for are they not written in the book of His remembrance--and when he counteth up his jewels, may not some of them be there?
The queer, grotesque dress, and sad, earnest looks of the black group; the red, fitful glare of the blazing pine, and the white faces of the tapped trees, gleaming through the gloom like so many sheeted ghosts gathered to some death-carnival, made up a strange, wild scene--the strangest and the wildest I had ever witnessed.
The covers of the rude coffins were not yet nailed down, and when we arrived, the blacks were, one by one, taking a last look at the faces of the dead. Soon, Junius, holding his weeping wife by the hand, approached the smaller of the two boxes, which held all that was left of their first-born. The mother, kneeling by its side, kissed again and again the cold, shrunken lips, and sobbed as if her heart would break; and the strong frame of the father shook convulsively, as he choked down the great sorrow which welled up in his throat, and turned away from his boy forever. As he did so, old Pompey said: "Don't grebe, June, he'm whar de wicked cease from trubling, whar de weary am at rest."
"I knows it; I knows it, Uncle. I knows de Lord am bery good to take 'im 'way; but why did he take de young chile, and leab de ole man har?"
"De little sapling dat grow in de shade may die while it'm young; de great tree dat grow in de sun must lib till he'm rotted down."
These words were the one drop wanting to make the great grief which was swelling in the negro's heart overflow. Giving one low, wild cry, he folded his wife in his arms, and burst into a paroxysm of tears.
"Come now, my chil'ren," said the old preacher, kneeling down, "let us pray."
The whole assemblage then knelt on the cold ground, while the old man prayed, and a more sincere, heart-touching prayer never went up from human lips to that God "who hath made of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the earth." Though clothed in rags, and in feeble age at the mercy of a cruel taskmaster, that old slave was richer far than his master. His simple faith, which saw through the darkness around him into the clear and radiant light of the unseen day, was of far more worth than all the wealth and glory of this world. I know not why it was, but as I looked at him in the dim red light, which fell on his bent form and cast a strange halo around his upturned face, I thought of Stephen, as he gazed upward and behold heaven open, and "the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the throne of God."
Rising from his knees, the old preacher turned slowly to the black mass that encircled him, and said: "My dear brederin and sisters, de Lord say dat 'de dust shill return to de earth as it war, and de spirit to Him who gabe it,' and now, 'cordin' to dat text, my friends, we'm gwine to put dis dust (pointing to the two coffins) in de groun' whar it cum from, and whar it shill lay till de bressed Lord blow de great trumpet on de resumrection mornin'. De spirits of our brudders har de Lord hub already took to hisseff. 'Our brudders,' I say, my chil'ren, 'case ebery one dat de Lord hab made am brudders to you and to me, whedder dey'm bad or good, white or brack.
"Dis young chile, who hab gone 'way and leff his pore fader and mudder suffrin' all ober wid grief, _he_ hab gone to de Lord, _shore_. _He_ neber done no wrong; he allers 'bey'd his massa, and neber said no hard word, nor found no fault, not eben w'en de cruel, bad oberseer put de load so heaby on him dat it kill him. Yes, my brederin and sisters, _he_ hab gone to de Lord; gone whar dey don't work in de swamps; whar de little chil'ren don't tote de big shingles fru de water up to dar knees. No swamps am dar; no shingles am dar; dey doan't need 'em, 'case dar de hous'n haint builded wid hands, for dey'm all builded by de Lord, and gib'n to de good niggers, ready-made, and for nuffin'. De Lord don't say, like as ded massa say, 'Pomp, dar's de logs and de shingles' (dey'm allers pore shingles, de kine dat woant sell; but massa say, 'dey'm good 'nuff for niggers,' ef de roof do leak). De Lord doan't say: 'Now, Pomp, you go to work and build you' own house; but mine dat you does you, task all de time, jess de same!' But de Lord--de bressed Lord--He say, w'en we goes up dar, 'Dar, Pomp, dar's de house dat I'se been a buildin' for you eber sence 'de foundation ob de worle.' It'm done now, and you kin cum in; your room am jess ready, and ole Sal and de chil'ren dat I tuk 'way from you eber so long ago, and dat you mourned ober and cried ober as ef you'd neber see dem agin, dey'm dar too, all on 'em, a waitin' for you. Dey'm been fixin' up de house 'spressly for you all dese long years, and dey'b got it all nice and comfible now.' Yas, my friends, glory be to Him, dat's what our Heabenly massa say, and who ob you wouldn't hab sich a massa as dat? A massa dat doan't set you no hard tasks, and dat gibs you 'nuff to eat, and time to rest and to sing and to play! A massa dat doan't keep no Yankee oberseer to foller you 'bout wid de big free-lashed whip; but dat leads you hisseff to de green pastures and de still waters; and w'en you'm a-faint and a-tired, and can't go no furder, dat takes you up in his arms, and carries you in his bosom! What pore darky am dar dat wudn't hab sich a massa? What one ob us, eben ef he had to work jess so hard as we works now, wudn't tink heseff de happiest nigger in de hull worle, ef he could hab sich hous'n to lib in as dem? dem hous'n 'not made wid hands, eternal in de heabens!'
"But glory, glory to de Lord! my chil'ren, wese all got dat massa, ef we only knowd it, and He'm buildin' dem hous'n up dar, now, for ebery one ob us dat am tryin' to be good and to lub one anoder. _For ebery one ob us_, I say, and we kin all git de fine hous'n ef we try.
"Recolember, too, my brudders, dat our great Massa am rich, bery rich, and he kin do all he promise. _He_ doant say, w'en wese worked ober time to git some little ting to comfort de sick chile, 'I knows, Pomp, you'se done de work, an' I did 'gree to gib you de pay; but de fact am, Pomp, de frost hab come so sudden dis yar, dat I'se loss de hull ob de sebenfh dippin', and I'se pore, so pore, de chile muss go widout dis time.' No, no, brudders, de bressed Lord He neber talk so. He neber break, 'case de sebenfh dip am shet off, or 'case de price of turpentime gwo down at de Norf. He neber sell his niggers down Souf, 'case he lose his money on he hoss-race. No, my chil'ren, our HEABENLY Massa am rich, RICH, I say. He own all dis worle, and all de oder worles dat am shinin' up dar in de sky. He own dem all; but he tink more ob one ob you, more ob one ob you--pore, ign'rant brack folks dat you am--dan ob all dem great worles! Who wouldn't belong to sich a Massa as dat? Who wouldn't be his nigger--not his slave--He doant hab no slaves--but his chile; and 'ef his chile, den his heir, de heir ob God, and de jined heir wid de bressed Jesus.' O my chil'ren! tink of dat! de heir ob de Lord ob all de 'arth and all de sky! What white man kin be more'n dat?
"Don't none ob you say you'm too wicked to be His chile; 'ca'se you haint. He lubs de wicked ones de best, 'ca'se dey need his lub de most. Yas, my brudders, eben de wickedest, ef dey's only sorry, and turn roun' and leab off dar bad ways, he lub de bery best ob all, 'ca'se he'm all lub and pity.
"Sam, har, my chil'ren, war wicked, but don't _we_ pity him; don't _we_ tink he hab a hard time, and don't we tink de bad oberseer, who'm layin' dar in de house jess ready to gwo and answer for it--don't we tink he gabe Sam bery great probincation?
"Dat's so," said a dozen of the auditors.
"Den don't you 'spose dat de bressed Lord know all dat, and dat He pity Sam too. If we pore sinners feel sorrer for him, haint de Lord's heart bigger'n our'n, and haint he more sorrer for him? Don't you tink dat ef He lub and pity de bery worse whites, dat He lub and pity pore Sam, who warn't so bery bad, arter all? Don't you tink He'll gib Sam a house? P'r'aps' 'twont be one ob de fine hous'n, but wont it be a comfible house, dat hain't no cracks, and one dat'll keep out de wind and de rain? And don't you s'pose, my chil'ren, dat it'll be big 'nuff for Jule, too--dat pore, repentin' chile, whose heart am clean broke, 'ca'se she hab broughten dis on Sam--and won't de Lord--de good Lord--de tender-hearted Lord--won't He touch Sam's heart, and coax him to forgib Jule, and to take her inter his house up dar? I knows he will, my chil'ren. I knows----" The old negro paused abruptly; there was a quick swaying in the black crowd--a hasty rush--a wild cry--and Sam's wife burst into the open space around the preacher, and fell at his feet. Throwing her arms wildly about him, she shrieked out: "Say dat agin, Uncle Pomp! for de lub ob de good Lord, oh! say dat agin!"
Bending down, the old man raised her gently in his arms, and folding her there, as he would have folded a child, he said, in a voice thick with emotion: "It am so, Juley. I knows dat Sam will forgib you, and take you wid him up dar."
Fastening her arms frantically around Pompey's neck, the poor woman burst into a paroxysm of grief, while the old man's tears fell in great drops on her upturned face, and many a dark cheek was wet, as with rain.
The scene had lasted a few minutes, and I was turning away to hide the emotion that fast filled my eyes, and was creeping up, with a choking feeling, to my throat, when the Colonel, from the farther edge of the group, called out: "Take that d---- d---- away--take her away, Pomp!"
The old negro turned toward his master with a sad, grieved look, but gave no heed to the words.
"Take her away, some of you, I say," again cried the Colonel. "Pomp, you mustn't keep these niggers all night in the cold."
At the sound of her master's voice the metif woman fell to the ground as if struck by a Minie-ball. Soon several negroes lifted her up to bear her off; but she struggled violently, and rent the woods with her wild cries for "one more look at Sam."
"Look at him, you d---- d----; then go, and don't let me see you again."
She threw herself on the face of the dead, and covered the cold lips with her kisses; then she rose, and with a weak, uncertain step, staggered out into the darkness.
Was not the system which had so seared and hardened that man's heart, begotten in the lowest hell?
The old preacher said no more, but four stout negro men stepped forward, nailed down the lids, and lowered the rough boxes into the ground. Turning to Madam P----, I saw her face was red with weeping. She turned to go as the first earth fell, with a dull, heavy sound, on the rude coffins; and giving her my arm, I led her from the scene.
As we walked slowly back to the house, a low wail--half a chant, half a dirge--rose from the black crowd, and floated off on the still night air, till it died away amid the far woods, in a strange, unearthly moan. With that sad, wild music in our ears, we entered the mansion.
As we seated ourselves by the bright wood-fire on the library hearth, obeying a sudden impulse which I could not restrain, I said to Madam P----: "The Colonel's treatment of that poor woman is inexplicable to me. Why is he so hard with her? It is not in keeping with what I have seen of his character."
"The Colonel is a peculiar man," replied the lady. "Noble, generous, and a true friend, he is also a bitter, implacable enemy. When he once conceives a dislike, his feelings become even vindictive. Never having had an ungratified wish, he does not know how to feel for the sorrows of those beneath him. Sam, though a proud, headstrong, unruly character, was a great favorite with him; he felt his death much; and as he attributes it to Jule, he feels terribly bitter toward her. She will have to be sold to get her out of his way, for he will _never_ forgive her."
It was some time before the Colonel joined us, and when at last he made his appearance, he seemed in no mood for conversation. The lady soon retired; but feeling unlike sleep, I took down a book from the shelves, drew my chair near the fire, and fell to reading. The Colonel, too, was deep in the newspapers, till, after a while, Jim entered the room: "I'se cum to ax ef you've nuffin more to-night, Cunnel?" said the negro.
"No, nothing, Jim," replied his master; "but, stay--hadn't you better sleep in front of Moye's door?"
"Dunno, sar; jess as you say."
"I think you'd better," returned the Colonel.
"Yas, massa," and the darky left the apartment.
The Colonel shortly rose, and bade me "good-night." I continued reading till the clock struck eleven, when I laid the book aside and went to my room.
I lodged, as I have said before, on the first floor, and was obliged to pass by the overseer's apartment in going to mine. Wrapped in his blanket, and stretched at full length on the ground, Jim lay there, fast asleep. I passed on, thinking of the wisdom of placing a tired negro on guard over an acute and desperate Yankee.
I rose in the morning with the sun, and had partly donned my clothing, when I heard a loud uproar in the hall. Opening my door, I saw Jim pounding vehemently at the Colonel's room, and looking as pale as is possible with a person of his complexion.
"What the d--l is the matter?" asked his master, who now, partly dressed, stepped into the hall.
"Moye hab gone, sar--he'm gone and took Firefly (my host's five-thousand-dollar thorough-bred) wid him."
For a moment the Colonel stood stupified; then, his face turning to a cold, clayey white, he seized the black by the throat, and hurled him to the floor. With his thick boot raised, he seemed about to dash out the man's brains with its ironed heel, when, on the instant, the octoroon woman rushed, in her night-clothes, from his room, and, with desperate energy, pushed him aside, exclaiming: "What would you do? Remember WHO HE IS!"
The negro rose, and the Colonel, without a word, passed into his own apartment.
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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11
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THE PURSUIT.
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I sauntered out, after the events recorded in the last chapter, to inhale the fresh air of the morning. A slight rain had fallen during the night, and it still moistened the dead leaves which carpeted the woods, making an extended walk out of the question; so, seating myself on the trunk of a fallen tree, in the vicinity of the house, I awaited the hour for breakfast. I had not remained there long before I heard the voices of my host and Madam P---- on the front piazza: "I tell you, Alice, I cannot--must not do it. If I overlook this, the discipline of the plantation is at an end."
"Do what you please with him when you return," replied the lady, "but do not chain him up, and leave me, at such a time, alone. You know Jim is the only one I can depend on."
"Well, have your own way. You know, my darling, I would not cause you a moment's uneasiness, but I must follow up this d----d Moye."
I was seated where I could hear, though I could not see the speakers, but it was evident from the tone of the last remark, that an action accompanied it quite as tender as the words. Being unwilling to overhear more of a private conversation, I rose and approached them.
"Ah! my dear fellow," said the Colonel, on perceiving me, "are you stirring so early? I was about to send to your room to ask if you'll go with me up the country. My d----d overseer has got away, and I must follow him at once."
"I'll go with pleasure," I replied. "Which way do you think Moye has gone?"
"The shortest cut to the railroad, probably; but old Cæsar will track him."
A servant then announced breakfast--an early one having been prepared. We hurried through the meal with all speed, and the other preparations being soon over, were in twenty minutes in our saddles, and ready for the journey. The mulatto coachman, with a third horse, was at the door, ready to accompany us. As we mounted, the Colonel said to him: "Go and call Sam, the driver."
The darky soon returned with the heavy, ugly-visaged black who had been whipped, by Madam P----'s order, the day before.
"Sam," said his master, "I shall be gone some days, and I leave the field-work in your hands. Let me have a good account of you when I return."
"Yas, massa, you shill dat," replied the negro.
"Put Jule--Sam's Jule--into the woods, and see that she does full tasks," continued the Colonel.
"Haint she wanted 'mong de nusses, massa?"
"Put some one else there--give her field-work; she needs it."
On large plantations the young children of the field-women are left with them only at night, and are herded together during the day, in a separate cabin, in charge of nurses. These nurses are feeble, sickly women, or recent mothers; and the fact of Jule's being employed in that capacity was evidence that she was unfit for outdoor labor.
Madam P----, who was waiting on the piazza to see us off, seemed about to remonstrate against this arrangement, but she hesitated a moment, and in that moment we had bidden her "Good-bye," and galloped away.
We were soon at the cabin of the negro-hunter, and the coachman, dismounting, called him out.
"Hurry up, hurry up," said the Colonel, as Sandy appeared, "we haven't a moment to spare."
"Jest so--jest so, Cunnel; I'll jine ye in a jiffin," replied he of the reddish extremities.
Emerging from the shanty with provoking deliberation--the impatience of my host had infected me--the clay-eater slowly proceeded to mount the horse of the negro, while his dirt-bedraggled wife, and clay-encrusted children, followed close at his heels, the younger ones huddling around for the tokens of paternal affection usual at parting. Whether it was the noise they made, or their frightful aspect, I know not, but the horse, a spirited animal, took fright on their appearance, and nearly broke away from the negro, who was holding him. Seeing this, the Colonel said: "Clear out, you young scare-crows. Into the house with you."
"They arn't no more scare-crows than yourn, Cunnel J----," said the mother, in a decidedly belligerent tone. "You may 'buse my old man--he kin stand it--but ye shan't blackguard my young 'uns!"
The Colonel laughed, and was about to make a good-natured reply, when Sandy yelled out: "Gwo enter the house and shet up, ye---- ----."
With this affectionate farewell, he turned his horse and led the way up the road.
The dog, who was a short distance in advance, soon gave a piercing howl, and started off at the speed of a reindeer. He had struck the trail, and urging our horses to their fastest speed, we followed.
We were all well mounted, but the mare the Colonel had given me was a magnificent animal, as fleet as the wind, and with a gait so easy that her back seemed a rocking-chair. Saddle-horses at the South are trained to the gallop--Southern riders not deeming it necessary that one's breakfast should be churned into a Dutch cheese by a trotting nag, in order that he may pass for a horseman.
We had ridden on at a perfect break-neck pace for half an hour, when the Colonel shouted to our companion: "Sandy, call the dog in; the horses wont last ten miles at this gait--we've a long ride before us."
The dirt-eater did as he was bidden, and we soon settled into a gentle gallop.
We had passed through a dense forest of pines, but were emerging into a "bottom country," where some of the finest deciduous trees--then brown and leafless, but bearing promise of the opening beauty of spring--reared, along with the unfading evergreen, their tall stems in the air. The live-oak, the sycamore, the Spanish mulberry, the holly, and the persimmon--gaily festooned with wreaths of the white and yellow jessamine, the woodbine and the cypress-moss, and bearing here and there a bouquet of the mistletoe, with its deep green and glossy leaves upturned to the sun--flung their broad arms over the road, forming an archway grander and more beautiful than any the hand of man ever wove for the greatest hero the world has worshipped.
The woods were free from underbrush, and a coarse, wiry grass, unfit for fodder, and scattered through them in detached patches, was the only vegetation visible. The ground was mainly covered with the leaves and burrs of the pine.
We passed great numbers of swine, feeding on these burrs, and now and then a horned animal browsing on the cypress-moss where it hung low on the trees. I observed that nearly all the swine were marked, though they seemed too wild to have ever seen an owner, or a human habitation. They were a long, lean, slab-sided race, with legs and shoulders like deer, and bearing no sort of resemblance to the ordinary hog, except in the snout, and that feature was so much longer and sharper than the nose of the Northern swine, that I doubt if Agassiz would class the two as one species. However, they have their uses--they make excellent bacon, and are "death on snakes." Ireland itself is not more free from the serpentine race than are the districts frequented by these long-nosed quadrupeds.
"We call them Carolina race-horses," said the Colonel, as he finished an account of their peculiarities.
"Race-horses! Why, are they fleet of foot?"
"Fleet as deer. I'd match one against an ordinary horse at any time."
"Come, my friend, you're practising on my ignorance of natural history."
"Not a bit of it. See! there's a good specimen yonder. If we can get him into the road, and fairly started, I'll bet you a dollar he'll beat Sandy's mare on a half-mile stretch--Sandy to hold the stakes and have the winnings."
"Well, agreed," I said, laughing, "and I'll give the pig ten rods the start."
"No," replied the Colonel, "you can't afford it. He'll _have_ to start ahead, but you'll need that in the count. Come, Sandy, will you go in for the pile?"
I'm not sure that the native would not have run a race with Old Nicholas himself, for the sake of so much money. To him it was a vast sum; and as he thought of it, his eyes struck small sparks, and his enormous beard and mustachio vibrated with something that faintly resembled a laugh. Replying to the question, he said: "Kinder reckon I wull, Cunnel; howsomdever, I keeps the stakes, ony how?"
"Of course," said the planter, "but be honest--win if you can."
Sandy halted his horse in the road, while the planter and I took to the woods on either side of the way. The Colonel soon manoeuvred to separate the selected animal from the rest of the herd, and, without much difficulty, got him into the road, where, by closing down on each flank, we kept him till he and Sandy were fairly under way.
"He'll keep to the road when once started," said the Colonel, laughing: "and he'll show you some of the tallest running you ever saw in your life."
Away they went. At first the pig, seeming not exactly to comprehend the programme, cantered off at a leisurely pace, though he held his own. Soon, however, he cast an eye behind him--halted a moment to collect his thoughts and reconnoitre--and then, lowering his head and elevating his tail, put forth all his speed. And such speed! Talk of a deer, the wind, or a steam-engine--they are not to be compared with it. Nothing in nature I ever saw run--except, it may be, a Southern tornado, or a Sixth Ward politician--could hope to distance that pig. He gained on the horse at every step, and it was soon evident that my dollar was gone! " 'In for a shilling, in for a pound,' is the adage, so, turning to the Colonel, I said, as intelligibly as my horse's rapid pace and my excited risibilities would allow: "I see I've lost, but I'll go you another dollar that _you_ can't beat the pig!"
"No--sir!" the Colonel got out in the breaks of his laughing explosions; "you can't hedge on me in that manner. I'll go a dollar that _you_ can't do it, and your mare is the fastest on the road. She won me a thousand not a month ago."
"Well, I'll do it--Sandy to have the stakes."
"Agreed," said the Colonel, and away _we_ went.
The swinish racer was about a hundred yards ahead when I gave the mare the reins, and told her to go. And she _did_ go. She flew against the wind with a motion so rapid that my face, as it clove the air, felt as if cutting its way through a solid body, and the trees, as we passed, seemed struck with panic, and running for dear life in the opposite direction.
For a few moments I thought the mare was gaining, and I turned to the Colonel with an exultant look.
"Don't shout till you win, my boy," he called out from the distance where I was fast leaving him and Sandy.
I _did not shout_, for spite of all my efforts the space between me and the pig seemed to widen. Yet I kept on, determined to win, till, at the end of a short half-mile, we reached the Waccamaw--the swine still a hundred yards ahead! There his pigship halted, turned coolly around, eyed me for a moment, then with a quiet, deliberate trot, turned off into the woods.
A bend in the road kept my companions out of sight for a few moments, and when they came up I had somewhat recovered my breath, though the mare was blowing hard, and reeking with foam.
"Well," said the Colonel, "what do you think of our bacon 'as it runs?'"
"I think the Southern article can't be beat, whether raw or cooked, standing or running."
At this moment the hound, who had been leisurely jogging along in the rear, disdaining to join in the race in which his dog of a master and I had engaged, came up, and dashing quickly on to the river's edge, set up a most dismal howling. The Colonel dismounted, and clambering down the bank, which was there twenty feet high, and very steep, shouted: "The d----d Yankee has swum the stream!"
"Why so?" I asked.
"To cover his tracks and delay pursuit; but he has overshot the mark. There is no other road within ten miles, and he must have taken to this one again beyond here. He's lost twenty minutes by this manoeuvre. Come, Sandy, call in the dog, we'll push on a little faster."
"But he tuk to t'other bank, Cunnel. Shan't we trail him thar?" asked Sandy.
"And suppose he found a boat here," I suggested, "and made the shore some ways down?"
"He couldn't get Firefly into a flat--we should only waste time in scouring the other bank. The swamp this side the next run has forced him into the road within five miles. The trick is transparent. He took me for a fool," replied the Colonel, answering both questions at once.
I had reined my horse out of the road, and when my companions turned to go, was standing at the edge of the bank, overlooking the river. Suddenly I saw, on one of the abutments of the bridge, what seemed a long, black log--strange to say, _in motion_!
"Colonel," I shouted, "see there! a live log as I'm a white man!"
"Lord bless you," cried the planter, taking an observation, "it's an alligator!"
I said no more, but pressing on after the hound, soon left my companions out of sight. For long afterward, the Colonel, in a doleful way, would allude to my lamentable deficiency in natural history--particularly in such branches as bacon and "live logs."
I had ridden about five miles, keeping well up with the hound, and had reached the edge of the swamp, when suddenly the dog darted to the side of the road, and began to yelp in the most frantic manner. Dismounting, and leading my horse to the spot, I made out plainly the print of Firefly's feet in the sand. There was no mistaking it--that round shoe on the off forefoot. (The horse had, when a colt, a cracked hoof, and though the wound was outgrown, the foot was still tender.) These prints were dry, while the tracks we had seen at the river were filled with water, thus proving that the rain had ceased while the overseer was passing between the two places. He was therefore not far off.
The Colonel and Sandy soon rode up.
"Caught a live log! eh, my good fellow?" asked my host, with a laugh.
"No; but here's the overseer as plain as daylight; and his tracks not wet!"
Quickly dismounting, he examined the ground, and then exclaimed: "The d--l----it's a fact--here not four hours ago! He has doubled on his tracks since, I'll wager, and not made twenty miles--we'll have him before night, sure! Come, mount--quick."
We sprang into our saddles, and again pressed rapidly on after the dog, who followed the scent at the top of his speed.
Some three miles more of wet, miry road took us to the run of which the Colonel had spoken. Arrived there, we found the hound standing on the bank, wet to the skin, and looking decidedly chop-fallen.
"Death and d----n!" shouted the Colonel; "the dog has swum the run, and lost the trail on the other side! The d--d scoundrel has taken to the water, and balked us after all! Take up the dog, Sandy, and try him again over there."
The native spoke to Cæsar, who bounded on to the horse's back in front of his master. They then crossed the stream, which there was about fifty yards wide, and so shallow that in the deepest part the water merely touched the horse's breast; but it was so roiled by the recent rain that we could not distinguish the foot-prints of the horse beneath the surface.
The dog ranged up and down the opposite bank, but all to no purpose: the overseer had not been there. He had gone either up or down the stream--in which direction, was now the question. Calling Sandy back to our side of the run, the Colonel proceeded to hold a 'council of war.' Each one gave his opinion, which was canvassed by the others, with as much solemnity as if the fate of the Union hung on the decision.
The native proposed we should separate--one go up, another down the stream, and the third, with the dog, follow the road; to which he thought Moye had finally returned. Those who should explore the run would easily detect the horse's tracks where he had left it, and then taking a straight course to the road, all might meet some five miles further on, at a place indicated.
I gave my adhesion to Sandy's plan, but the Colonel overruled it on the ground of the waste of time that would be incurred in thus recovering the overseer's trail.
"Why not," he said, "strike at once for the end of his route? Why follow the slow steps he took in order to throw us off the track? He has not come back to this road. Ten miles below there is another one leading also to the railway. He has taken that. We might as well send Sandy and the dog back and go on by ourselves."
"But if bound for the Station, why should he wade through the creek here, ten miles out of his way? Why not go straight on by the road?" I asked.
"Because he knew the dog would track him, and he hoped by taking to the run to make me think he had crossed the country instead of striking for the railroad."
I felt sure the Colonel was wrong, but knowing him to be tenacious of his own opinions, I made no further objection.
Directing Sandy to call on Madam P---- and acquaint her with our progress, he then dismissed the negro-hunter, and once more led the way up the road.
The next twenty miles, like our previous route, lay through an unbroken forest. As we left the watercourses, we saw only the gloomy pines, which there--the region being remote from the means of transportation--were seldom tapped, and presented few of the openings that invite the weary traveller to the dwelling of the hospitable planter.
After a time the sky, which had been bright and cloudless all the morning, grew overcast, and gave out tokens of a coming storm. A black cloud gathered in the west, and random flashes darted from it far off in the distance; then gradually it neared us; low mutterings sounded in the air, and the tops of the tall pines a few miles away, were lit up now and then with a fitful blaze, all the brighter for the deeper gloom that succeeded. Then a terrific flash and peal broke directly over us, and a great tree, struck by a red-hot bolt, fell with a deafening crash, half way across our path. Peal after peal followed, and then the rain--not filtered into drops as it falls from our colder sky, but in broad, blinding sheets--poured full and heavy on our shelterless heads.
"Ah! there it comes!" shouted the Colonel. "God have mercy upon us!"
As he spoke, a crashing, crackling, thundering roar rose above the storm, filling the air, and shaking the solid earth till it trembled beneath our horses' feet, as if upheaved by a volcano. Nearer and nearer the sound came, till it seemed that all the legions of darkness were unloosed in the forest, and were mowing down the great pines as the mower mows the grass with his scythe. Then an awful, sweeping crash thundered directly at our backs, and turning round, as if to face a foe, my horse, who had borne the roar and the blinding flash till then unmoved, paralyzed with dread, and panting for breath, sunk to the ground; while close at my side the Colonel, standing erect in his stirrups, his head uncovered to the pouring sky, cried out: "THANK GOD, WE ARE SAVED!"
There--not three hundred yards in our rear, had passed the TORNADO--uprooting trees, prostrating dwellings, and sending many a soul to its last account, but sparing _us_ for another day! For thirty miles through the forest it had mowed a swath of two hundred feet, and then moved on to stir the ocean to its briny depths.
With a full heart, I remounted, and turning my horse, pressed on in the rain. We said not a word till a friendly opening pointed the way to a planter's dwelling. Then calling to me to follow, the Colonel dashed up the by-path which led to the mansion, and in five minutes we were warming our chilled limbs before the cheerful fire that roared and crackled on its broad hearth-stone.
|
{
"id": "22960"
}
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12
|
THE YANKEE-SCHOOL-MISTRESS.
|
The house was a large, old-fashioned frame building, square as a packing-box, and surrounded, as all country dwellings at the South are, by a broad, open piazza. Our summons was answered by its owner, a well-to-do, substantial, middle-aged planter, wearing the ordinary homespun of the district, but evidently of a station in life much above the common "corn-crackers" I had seen at the country meeting-house. The Colonel was an acquaintance, and greeting us with great cordiality, our host led the way directly to the sitting-room. There we found a bright, blazing fire, and a pair of bright sparkling eyes, the latter belonging to a blithesome young woman of about twenty, with a cheery face, and a half-rustic, half-cultivated air, whom our new friend introduced to us as his wife.
"I regret not having had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. S---- before, but am very happy to meet her now," said the Colonel, with all the well-bred, gentlemanly ease that distinguished him.
"The pleasure is mutual, Colonel J----," replied the lady, "but thirty miles in this wild country, should not have made a neighbor so distant as you have been."
"Business, madam, is at fault, as your husband knows. I have much to do; and besides, all my connections are in the other direction--with Charleston."
"It's a fact, Sally, the Colonel is the d---- busy man in these parts. Not content with a big plantation and three hundred niggers, he looks after all South Carolina, and the rest of creation to boot," said our host.
"Tom will have his joke, Madam, but he's not far from the truth."
Seeing we were dripping wet, the lady offered us a change of clothing, and retiring to a chamber, we each appropriated a suit belonging to our host, giving our own to a servant, to be dried.
Arrayed in our fresh apparel, we soon rejoined our friends in the sitting-room. The new garments fitted the Colonel tolerably well, but, though none too long, they were a world too wide for me, and as my wet hair hung in smooth flat folds down my cheeks, and my limp shirt-collar fell over my linsey coat, I looked for all the world like a cross between a theatrical Aminodab Sleek and Sir John Falstaff, with the stuffing omitted. When our hostess caught sight of me in this new garb, she rubbed her hands together in great glee, and, springing to her feet, gave vent to a perfect storm of laughter--jerking out between the explosions: "Why--you--you--look jest like--a scare-crow."
There was no mistaking that hearty, hoydenish manner; and seizing both of her hands in mine, I shouted: "I've found you out--you're a "country-woman" of mine--a clear-blooded Yankee!"
"What! _you_ a Yankee!" she exclaimed, still laughing, "and here with this horrid 'secesherner,' as they call him."
"True as preachin', Ma'am," I replied, adopting the drawl--"all the way from Down East, and Union, tu, stiff as buckram."
"Du tell!" she exclaimed, swinging my hands together as she held them in hers. "If I warn't hitched to this 'ere feller, I'd give ye a smack right on the spot. I'm _so_ glad to see ye."
"Do it, Sally--never mind _me_," cried her husband, joining heartily in the merriment.
Seizing the collar of my coat with both hands, she drew my face down till my lips almost touched hers (I was preparing to blush, and the Colonel shouted, "Come, come, I shall tell his wife"): but then turning quickly on her heel, she threw herself into a chair, exclaiming, "_I_ wouldn't mind, but the _old man would be jealous_." Addressing the Colonel, she added, "_You_ needn't be troubled, sir, no Yankee girl will kiss _you_ till you change your politics."
"Give me that inducement, and I'll change them on the spot," said the Colonel.
"No, no, Dave, 'twouldn't do," replied the planter; "the conversion wouldn't be genuwine--besides such things arn't proper, except 'mong blood-relations--and all the Yankees, you know are first-cousins."
The conversation then subsided into a more placid mood, but lost none of its genial, good humor. Refreshments were soon set before us, and while partaking of them I gathered from our hostess that she was a Vermont country-girl, who, some three years before, had been induced by liberal pay to come South as a teacher. A sister accompanied her, and about a year after their arrival, she married a neighboring planter. Wishing to be near her sister, our hostess had also married and settled down for life in that wild region. "I like the country very well," she added; "it's a great sight easier living here than in Vermont; but I do hate these lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggers; they are _so_ slow, and _so_ careless, and _so_ dirty, that I sometimes think they will worry the very life out of me. I do believe I'm the hardest mistress in all the district."
I learned from her that a majority of the teachers at the South are from the North, and principally, too, from New England. Teaching is a very laborious employment there, far more so than with us, for the Southerners have no methods like ours, and the same teacher usually has to hear lessons in branches all the way from Greek and Latin to the simple A B C. The South has no system of public instruction; no common schools; no means of placing within the reach of the sons and daughters of the poor even the elements of knowledge. While the children of the wealthy are most carefully educated, it is the policy of the ruling class to keep the great mass of the people in ignorance; and so long as this policy continues, so long will that section be as far behind the North as it now is, in all that constitutes true prosperity and greatness.
The afternoon wore rapidly and pleasantly away in the genial society of our wayside-friends. Politics were discussed (our host was a Union man), the prospects of the turpentine crop talked over, the recent news canvassed, the usual neighborly topics touched upon, and--I hesitate to confess it--a considerable quantity of corn whiskey disposed of, before the Colonel discovered, all at once, that it was six o'clock, and we were still seventeen miles from the railway station. Arraying ourselves again in our dried garments, we bade a hasty but regretful "good-bye" to our hospitable entertainers, and once more took to the road.
The storm had cleared away, but the ground was heavy with the recent rain, and our horses were sadly jaded with the ride of the morning. We gave them the reins, and, jogging on at their leisure, it was ten o'clock at night before they landed us at the little hamlet of W---- Station, in the state of North Carolina.
|
{
"id": "22960"
}
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13
|
THE RAILWAY STATION.
|
A large hotel, or station-house, and about a dozen log shanties made up the village. Two of these structures were negro-cabins; two were small groceries, in which the vilest alcoholic compounds were sold at a bit (ten cents) a glass; one was a lawyer's office, in which was the post-office, and a justice's court, where, once a month, the small offenders of the vicinity "settled up their accounts;" one was a tailoring and clothing establishment, where breeches were patched at a dime a stitch, and payment taken in tar and turpentine; and the rest were private dwellings of one apartment, occupied by the grocers, the tailor, the switch-tenders, the postmaster, and the negro _attachés_ of the railroad. The church and the school-house--the first buildings to go up in a Northern village--I have omitted to enumerate, because--they were not there.
One of the natives told me that the lawyer was a "stuck-up critter;" "he don't live; he don't--he puts-up at th' hotel." And the hotel! Would Shakspeare, had he have known it, have written of taking one's _ease_ at his inn? It was a long, framed building, two stories high, with a piazza extending across the side and a front door crowded as closely into one corner as the width of the joist would permit. Under the piazza, ranged along the wall, was a low bench, occupied by about forty tin wash-basins and water-pails, and with coarse, dirty crash towels suspended on rollers above it. By the side of each of these towels hung a comb and a brush, to which a lock of everybody's hair was clinging, forming in the total a stock sufficient to establish any barber in the wig business.
It was, as I have said, ten o'clock when we reached the Station. Throwing the bridles of our horses over the hitching-posts at the door, we at once made our way to the bar-room. That apartment, which was in the rear of the building, and communicated with by a long, narrow passage, was filled almost to suffocation, when we entered, by a cloud of tobacco smoke, the fumes of bad whiskey, and a crowd of drunken chivalry, through whom the Colonel with great difficulty elbowed his way to the counter, where "mine host" and two assistants were dispensing "liquid death," at the rate of ten cents a glass, and of ten glasses a minute.
"Hello, Cunnel, how ar' ye," cried the red-faced liquor-vender, as he caught sight of my companion, and, relinquishing his lucrative employment for a moment, took the Colonel's hand, "how ar' ye?"
"Quite well, thank you, Miles," said the Colonel, with a certain patronizing air, "have you seen my man, Moye?"
"Moye, no! What's up with him?"
"He's run away with my horse, Firefly--I thought he would have made for this station. At what time does the next train go up?"
"Wal, it's due half arter 'leven, but 'taint gin'rally 'long till nigh one."
The Colonel was turning to join me at the door, when a well-dressed young man of very unsteady movements, who was filling a glass at the counter, and staring at him with a sort of dreamy amazement, stammered out, "Moye--run--run a--way, zir! that--k--kant be--by G--. I know--him, zir--he's a--a friend of mine, and--I'm--I'm d----d if he ain't hon--honest."
"About as honest as the Yankees run," replied the Colonel, "he's a d----d thief, sir!"
"Look here--here, zir--don't--don't you--you zay any--thing 'gainst--the Yankees. D----d if--if I aint--one of 'em mezelf--zir," said the fellow staggering toward the Colonel. " _I_ don't care _what_ you are; you're drunk."
"You lie--you--you d----d 'ris--'ristocrat," was the reply, as the inebriated gentleman aimed a blow, with all his unsteady might, at the Colonel's face.
The South Carolinian stepped quickly aside, and dexterously threw his foot before the other, who--his blow not meeting the expected resistance--was unable to recover himself, and fell headlong to the floor. The planter turned on his heel, and was walking quietly away, when the sharp report of a pistol sounded through the apartment, and a ball tore through the top of his boot, and lodged in the wall within two feet of where I was standing. With a spring, quick and sure as the tiger's, the Colonel was on the drunken man. Wrenching away the weapon, he seized the fellow by the neck-tie, and drawing him up to nearly his full height, dashed him at one throw to the other end of the room. Then raising the revolver he coolly levelled it to fire!
But a dozen strong men were on him. The pistol was out of his hand, and his arms were pinioned in an instant; while cries of "Fair play, sir!" "He's drunk!" "Don't hit a man when he's down," and other like exclamations, came from all sides.
"Give _me_ fair play, you d----d North Carolina hounds," cried the Colonel, struggling violently to get away, "and I'll fight the whole posse of you."
"One's 'nuff for _you_, ye d----d fire-eatin' 'ristocrat;" said a long, lean, bushy-haired, be-whiskered individual, who was standing near the counter: "ef ye want to fight, _I'll_ 'tend to yer case to onst. Let him go, boys," he continued as he stepped toward the Colonel, and parted the crowd that had gathered around him: "give him the shootin'-iron, and let's see ef he'll take a man thet's sober."
I saw serious trouble was impending, and stepping forward, I said to the last speaker, "My friend, you have no quarrel with this gentleman. He has treated that man only as you would have done."
"P'raps thet's so; but he's a d----d hound of a Secesherner thet's draggin' us all to h--ll; it'll du the country good to git quit of one on 'em."
"Whatever his politics are, he's a gentleman, sir, and has done you no harm--let me beg of you to let him alone."
"Don't beg any thing for me, Mr. K----," growled the Colonel through his barred teeth, "I'll fight the d----d corn-cracker, and his whole race, at once."
"No you won't, my friend. For the sake of those at home you won't;" I said, taking him by the arm, and partly leading, partly forcing him, toward the door.
"And who in h--ll ar you?" asked the corn-cracker, planting himself squarely in my way.
"I'm on the same side of politics with you, Union to the core!" I replied.
"Ye ar! Union! Then give us yer fist," said he, grasping me by the hand; "by ---- it does a feller good to see a man dressed in yer cloes thet haint 'fraid to say he's Union, so close to South Car'lina, tu, as this ar! Come, hev a drink: come boys--all round--let's liquor!"
"Excuse me now, my dear fellow--some other time I'll be glad to join you."
"Jest as ye say, but thar's my fist, enyhow."
He gave me another hearty shake of the hand, and the crowd parting, I made my way with the Colonel out of the room. We were followed by Miles, the landlord, who, when we had reached the front of the entrance-way, said, "I'm right sorry for this row, gentlemen; the boys will hev a time when they gets together."
"Oh, never mind;" said the Colonel, who had recovered his coolness; "but why are all these people here?"
"Thar's a barbacue cumin' off to-morrer on the camp-ground, and the house is cram full."
"Is that so?" said the Colonel, then turning to me he added, "Moye has taken the railroad somewhere else; I must get to a telegraph office at once, to head him off. The nearest one is Wilmington. With all these rowdies here, it will not do to leave the horses alone--will you stay and keep an eye on them over to-morrow?"
"Yes, I will, cheerfully."
"Thar's a mighty hard set, round har now, Cunnel," said the landlord; "and the most peaceable get enter scrapes ef they hain't no friends. Hadn't ye better show the gentleman some of your'n, 'fore you go?"
"Yes, yes, I didn't think of that. Who is here?"
"Wal, thar's Cunnel Taylor, Bill Barnes, Sam Heddleson, Jo Shackelford, Andy Jones, Rob Brown, and lots of others."
"Where's Andy Jones?"
"Reckon he's turned in; I'll see."
As the landlord opened a door which led from the hall, the Colonel said to me, "Andy is a Union man; but he'd fight to the death for me."
"Sal!" called out the hotel keeper.
"Yas, massa, I'se har," was the answer from a slatternly woman, awfully black in the face, who soon thrust her head from the door-way.
"Is Andy Jones har?" asked Miles.
"Yas, massa, he'm turned in up thar on de table."
We followed the landlord into the apartment. It was the dining-room of the hotel, and by the dim light which came from a smoky fire on the hearth, I saw it contained about a hundred people, who, wrapped in blankets, bed-quilts and travelling-shawls, were disposed in all conceivable attitudes, and scattered about on the hard floor and tables, sleeping soundly. The room was a long, low apartment--extending across the entire front of the house--and had a wretched, squalid look. The fire, which was tended by the negro-woman--(she had spread a blanket on the floor, and was keeping a drowsy watch over it for the night)--had been recently replenished with green wood, and was throwing out thick volumes of black smoke, which, mixing with the effluvia from the lungs of a hundred sleepers, made up an atmosphere next to impossible to breathe. Not a window was open, and not an aperture for ventilation could be seen!
Carefully avoiding the arms and legs of the recumbent chivalry, we picked our way, guided by the negro-girl, to the corner of the room where the Unionist was sleeping. Shaking him briskly by the shoulder, the Colonel called out: "Andy! Andy! wake up!"
"What--what the d----l is the matter?" stammered the sleeper, gradually opening his eyes, and raising himself on one elbow, "Lord bless you, Cunnel, is that you? what in ---- brought _you_ har?"
"Business, Andy. Come, get up, I want to see you, and I can't talk here."
The North Carolinian slowly rose, and throwing his blanket over his shoulders, followed us from the room. When we had reached the open air the Colonel introduced me to his friend, who expressed surprise, and a great deal of pleasure, at meeting a Northern Union man in the Colonel's company.
"Look after our horses, now, Miles; Andy and I want to talk," said the planter to the landlord, with about as little ceremony as he would have shown to a negro.
I thought the white man did not exactly relish the Colonel's manner, but saying, "All right, all right, sir," he took himself away.
The night was raw and cold, but as all the rooms of the hotel were occupied, either by sleepers or carousers, we had no other alternative than to hold our conference in the open air. Near the railway-track a light-wood fire was blazing, and, obeying the promptings of the frosty atmosphere, we made our way to it. Lying on the ground around it, divested of all clothing except a pair of linsey trousers and a flannel shirt, and with their naked feet close to its blaze--roasting at one extremity, and freezing at the other--were several blacks, the switch-tenders and woodmen of the Station--fast asleep. How human beings could sleep in such circumstances seemed a marvel, but further observation convinced me that the Southern negro has a natural aptitude for that exercise, and will, indeed, bear more exposure than any other living thing. Nature in giving him such powers of endurance, appears to have specially fitted him for the life of hardship and privation to which he is born.
The fire-light enabled me to scan the appearance of my new acquaintance. He was rather above the medium height, squarely and somewhat stoutly built, and had an easy and self-possessed, though rough and unpolished manner. His face, or so much of it as was visible from underneath a thick mass of reddish gray hair, denoted a firm, decided character; but there was a manly, open, honest expression about it that gained one's confidence in a moment. He wore a slouched hat and a suit of the ordinary "sheep's-grey," cut in the "sack" fashion, and hanging loosely about him. He seemed a man who had made his own way in the world, and I subsequently learned that appearances did not belie him. The son of a "poor white" man, with scarcely the first rudiments of book-education, he had, by sterling worth, natural ability, and great force of character, accumulated a handsome property, and acquired a leading position in his district. Though on "the wrong side of politics," his personal popularity was so great that for several successive years he had been elected to represent the county in the state legislature. The Colonel, though opposed to him in politics--and party feeling at the South runs so high that political opponents are seldom personal friends--had, in the early part of his career, aided him by his endorsements; and Andy had not forgotten the service. It was easy to see that while two men could not be more unlike in character and appearance than my host and the North Carolinian, they were warm and intimate friends.
"So, Moye has been raising h--ll gin'rally, Colonel," said my new acquaintance after a time. "I'm not surprised. I never did b'lieve in Yankee nigger-drivers--sumhow it's agin natur' for a Northern man to go Southern principles quite so strong as Moye did."
"Which route do you think he has taken?" asked the Colonel.
"Wal, I reckon arter he tuk to the run, he made fur the mountings. He know'd you'd head him on the travelled routes; so he's put, I think, fur the Missussippe, where he'll sell the horse and make North."
"I'll follow him," said the Colonel, "to the ends of the earth. If it costs me five thousand dollars, I'll see him hung."
"Wal," replied Andy, laughing, "if he's gone North you'll need a extradition treaty to kotch him. South Car'lina, I b'lieve, has set up fur a furrin country."
"That's true," said the Colonel, also laughing, "she's "furrin" to the Yankees, but not to the old North State."
"D----d if she haint," replied the North Carolinian, "and now she's got out on our company, I swear she must keep out. We'd as soon think of goin' to h----ll in summer time, as of jining partnership with her. Cunnel, you'r the only decent man in the State--d----d if you haint--and _your_ politics are a'most bad 'nuff to spile a township. It allers seemed sort o'queer to me, that a man with such a mighty good heart as your'n, could be so short in the way of brains."
"Well, you're complimentary," replied the Colonel, with the utmost good-nature, "but let's drop politics; we never could agree, you know. What shall I do about Moye?"
"Go to Wilmington and telegraph all creation: wait a day to har, then if you don't har, go home, hire a native overseer, and let Moye go to the d----l. Ef it'll do you any good I'll go to Wilmington with you, though I did mean to give you Secesherners a little h--har to-morrer."
"No, Andy, I'll go alone. 'Twouldn't be patriotic to take you away from the barbacue. You'd 'spile' if you couldn't let off some gas soon."
"I do b'lieve I shud. Howsumdever, thar's nary a thing I wouldn't do for you--you knows that."
"Yes, I do, and I wish you'd keep an eye on my Yankee friend here, and see he don't get into trouble with any of the boys--there'll be a hard set 'round, I reckon."
"Wal, I will," said Andy, "but all he's to do is to keep his mouth shet."
"That seems easy enough," I replied, laughing.
A desultory conversation followed for about an hour, when the steam-whistle sounded, and the up-train arrived. The Colonel got on board and bidding us "good-night," went on to Wilmington. Andy then proposed we should look up sleeping accommodations. It was useless to seek quarters at the hotel, but an empty car was on the turn-out, and bribing one of the negroes we got access to it, and were soon stretched at full length on two of its hard-bottomed seats.
|
{
"id": "22960"
}
|
14
|
THE BARBACUE.
|
The camp-ground was about a mile from the station, and pleasantly situated in a grove, near a stream of water. It was in frequent use by the camp-meetings of the Methodist denomination--which sect at the South is partial to these rural religious gatherings. Scattered over it, with an effort at regularity, were about forty small but neat log cottages, thatched with the long leaves of the turpentine pine, and chinked with branches of the same tree. Each of these houses was floored with leaves or straw, and large enough to afford sleeping accommodations for about ten persons, provided they spread their bedding on the ground, and lay tolerably close together. Interspersed among the cabins were about a dozen canvas tents which had been erected for this especial occasion.
Nearly in the centre of the group of huts a rude sort of scaffold, four or five feet high, and surrounded by a rustic railing, served for the speaker's stand. It would seat about a dozen persons, and was protected by a roof of pine-boughs, interlaced together so as to keep off the sun, without affording protection from the rain. In the rear of this stand were two long tables, made of rough boards, and supported on stout joists, crossed on each other in the form of the letter X. A canopy of green leaves shaded the grounds, and the whole grove, which was perfectly free from underbrush, was carpeted with the soft, brown tassels of the pine.
Being fatigued with the ride of the previous day, I did not awake till the morning was far advanced, and it was nearly ten o'clock when Andy and I took our way to the camp-ground. Avoiding the usual route, we walked on through the forest. It was mid-winter, and vegetation lay dead all around us, awaiting the time when spring should breathe into it the breath of life, and make it a living thing. There was silence and rest in the deep woods. The birds were away on their winter wanderings; the leaves hung motionless on the tall trees, and nature seemed resting from her ceaseless labors, and listening to the soft music of the little stream which sung a cheerful song as it rambled on over the roots and fallen branches that blocked its way. Soon a distant murmur arose, and we had not proceeded far before as many sounds as were heard at Babel made a strange concert about our ears. The lowing of the ox, the neighing of the horse, and the deep braying of another animal, mingled with a thousand human voices, came through the woods. But above and over all rose the stentorian tones of the stump speaker, "As he trod the shaky platform, With the sweat upon his brow."
About a thousand persons were already assembled on the ground, and a more motley gathering I never witnessed. All sorts of costumes and all classes of people were there; but the genuine back-woods corn-crackers composed the majority of the assemblage. As might be expected much the larger portion of the audience were men, still I saw some women and not a few children; many of the country people having taken advantage of the occasion to give their families a holiday. Some occupied benches in front of the stand, though a larger number were seated around in groups, within hearing of the speaker, but paying very little attention to what he was saying. A few were whittling--a few pitching quoits, or playing leap-frog, and quite a number were having a quiet game of whist, euchre or "seven-up."
The speaker was a well-dressed, gentlemanly-looking man and a tolerably good orator. He seemed accustomed to addressing a jury, for he displayed all the adroitness in handling his subject, and in appealing to the prejudices of his hearers, that we see in successful special pleaders. But he overshot his mark. To nine out of ten of his audience, his words and similes, though correct, and sometimes beautiful, were as unintelligible as the dead languages. He advocated immediate, unconditional secession; and I thought from the applause which met his remarks, whenever he seemed to make himself understood, that the large majority of those present were of the same way of thinking.
He was succeeded by a heavy-browed, middle-aged man, slightly bent, and with hair a little turned to gray, but still hale, athletic, and in the prime and vigor of manhood. His pantaloons and waistcoat were of the common homespun, and he used, now and then, a word of the country dialect, but as a stump-speaker he was infinitely superior to the more polished orator who had preceded him.
He, too, advocated secession, as a right and a duty--separation, now and forever, from the dirt-eating, money-loving Yankees, who, he was ashamed to say, had the same ancestry, and worshipped the same God, as himself. He took the bold ground that slavery is a curse to both the black and the white, but that it was forced upon this generation before its birth, by these same greedy, grasping Yankees, who would sell not only the bones and sinews of their fellow men, but--worse than that--their own souls, for gold. It was forced upon them without their consent, and now that it had become interwoven with all their social life, and was a necessity of their very existence, the hypocritical Yankees would take it from them, because, forsooth, it is a sin and a wrong--as if _they_ had to bear its responsibility, or the South could not settle its own affairs with its MAKER!
"Slavery is now," he continued, "indispensable to us. Without it, cotton, rice, and sugar will cease to grow, and the South will starve. What if it works abuses? What if the black, at times, is overburdened, and his wife and daughters debauched? Man is not perfect anywhere--there are wrongs in every society. It is for each one to give his account, in such matters, to his God. But in this are we worse than they? Are there not abuses in society at the North? Are not their laborers overworked? While sin here hides itself under cover of the night, does it not there stalk abroad at noon-day? If the wives and daughters of blacks are debauched here, are not the wives and daughters of whites debauched there? and will not a Yankee barter away the chastity of his own mother for a dirty dollar? Who fill our brothels? Yankee women! Who load our penitentiaries, crowd our whipping-posts, debauch our slaves, and cheat and defraud us all? Yankee men! And I say unto you, fellow-citizens," and here the speaker's form seemed to dilate with the wild enthusiasm which possessed him, "'come out from among them; be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing,' and thus saith the Lord God of Hosts, who will guide you, and lead you, if need be, to battle and to victory!"
A perfect storm of applause followed. The assemblage rose, and one long, wild shout rent the old woods, and made the tall trees tremble. It was some minutes before the uproar subsided; when it did, a voice near the speaker's stand called out, "Andy Jones!" The call was at once echoed by another voice, and soon a general shout for "Andy!" "Union Andy!" "Bully Andy!" went up from the same crowd which a moment before had so wildly applauded the secession speaker.
Andy rose from where he was seated beside me, and quietly ascended the steps of the platform. Removing his hat, and passing to his mouth a huge quid of tobacco from a tin box in his pantaloons-pocket, he made several rapid strides up and down the speaker's stand, and then turned squarely to the audience.
The reader has noticed a tiger pacing up and down in his cage, with his eyes riveted on the human faces before him. He has observed how he will single out some individual, and finally stopping short in his rounds, turn on him with a look of such intense ferocity as makes a man's blood stand still, and his very breath come thick and hard, as he momentarily expects the beast will tear away the bars of the cage and leap forth on the obnoxious person. Now, Andy's fine, open, manly face had nothing of the tiger in it, but, for a moment, I could not divest myself of the impression, as he halted in his walk up and down the stage, and turned full and square on the previous speaker--who had taken a seat among the audience near me--that he was about to spring upon him. Riveting his eye on the man's face, he at last slowly said: "A man stands har and quotes Scriptur agin his feller man, and forgets that 'God made of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the 'arth.' A man stands har and calls his brother a thief, and his mother a harlot, and axes us to go his doctrin's! I don't mean his brother in the Scriptur sense, nor his mother in a fig'rative sense, but I mean the brother of his own blood, and the mother that bore him; for HE, gentlemen (and he pointed his finger directly at the recent speaker, while his words came slow and heavy with intense scorn), HE is a Yankee! And now, I say, gentlemen, d--n sech doctrin's; d----n sech principles, and d----n the man that's got a soul so black as to utter 'em!"
A breathless silence fell on the assemblage, while the person alluded to sprang to his feet, his face on fire, and his voice thick and broken with intense rage, as he yelled out: "Andy Jones, by----, you shall answer for this!"
"Sartin," said Andy, coolly inserting his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat; "enywhar you likes--har--now--ef 'greeable to you."
"I've no weapon here, sir, but I'll give you a chance mighty sudden," was the fierce reply.
"Suit yourself," said Andy, with perfect imperturbability; "but as you haint jest ready, s'pose you set down, and har me tell 'bout your relations: they're a right decent set--them as I knows--and I'll swar they're 'shamed of you."
A buzz went through the crowd, and a dozen voices called out: "Be civil, Andy"--"Let him blow"--"Shut up"--"Go in, Jones"--with other like elegant exclamations.
A few of his friends took the aggrieved gentleman aside, and, soon quieting him, restored order.
"Wal, gentlemen," resumed Andy, "all on you know whar I was raised--over thar in South Car'lina. I'm sorry to say it, but it's true. And you all know my father was a pore man, who couldn't give his boys no chance--and ef he could, thar warn't no schules in the district--so we couldn't hev got no book-larning ef we'd been a minded to. Wal, the next plantation to whar we lived was old Cunnel J----'s, the father of this cunnel. He was a d----d old nullifier, jest like his son--but not half so decent a man. Wal, on his plantation was an old nigger called Uncle Pomp, who'd sumhow larned to read. He was a mighty good nigger, and he'd hev been in heaven long afore now ef the Lord hadn't a had sum good use for him down har--but he'll be thar yet a d----d sight sooner than sum on us white folks--that's sartin. Wal, as I was saying, Pomp could read, and when I was 'bout sixteen, and had never seen the inside of a book, the old darky said to me one day--he was old then, and that was thirty years ago--wal, he said to me, 'Andy, chile, ye orter larn to read, 'twill be ob use to ye when you'se grow'd up, and it moight make you a good and 'spected man--now, come to ole Pomp's cabin, and he'll larn you, Andy, chile.' Wal, I reckon I went. He'd nothin' but a Bible and Watts' Hymns; but we used to stay thar all the long winter evenin's, and by the light o' the fire--we war both so darned pore we couldn't raise a candle atween us--wal, by the light o' the fire he larned me, and fore long I could spell right smart.
"Now, jest think on that, gentlemen. I, a white boy, and, 'cordin' to the Declaration of Independence, with jest as good blood in me as the old Cunnel had in him, bein' larned to read by an old slave, and that old slave a'most worked to death, and takin' his nights, when he orter hev been a restin' his old bones, to larn me! I'm d----d if he don't get to heaven for that one thing, if for nothin' else.
"Wal, you all know the rest--how, when I'd grow'd up, I settled har, in the old North State, and how the young Cunnel backed my paper, and set me a runnin' at turpentining. P'raps you don't think this has much to do with the Yankees, but it has a durned sight, as ye'll see rather sudden. Wal, arter a while, when I'd got a little forehanded, I begun shipping my truck to York and Bostin'; and at last my Yankee factor, he come out har, inter the back woods, to see me, and says he, 'Jones, come North and take a look at us.' I'd sort o' took to him. I'd lots o' dealin's with him afore ever I seed him, and I allers found him straight as a shingle. Wal, I went North, and he took me round, and showed me how the Yankees does things. Afore I know'd him, I allers thought--as p'raps most on you do--that the Yankees war a sort o' cross atween the devil and a Jew; but how do you s'pose I found 'em? I found that they _sent the pore man's children to schule_, FREE--and that the schule-houses war a d----d sight thicker than the bugs in Miles Privett's beds! and that's sayin' a heap, for ef eny on you kin sleep in his house, excep' he takes to the soft side of the floor, I'm d----d. Yas, the pore man's children are larned thar, FREE! --all on 'em--and they've jest so good a chance as the sons of the rich man! Now, arter that, do you think that I--as got all my schulein, from an old slave, by the light of a borrored pine-knot--der you think that _I_ kin say any thing agin the Yankees? P'r'aps they _do_ steal--though I doant know it--p'r'aps they _do_ debauch thar wives and darters, and sell thar mothers' vartue for dollars--but, ef they do, I'm d----d if they doant send pore children to schule--and that's more'n we do--and let me tell you, until we do thet, we must expec' they'll be cuter and smarter nor we are.
"This gentleman, too, my friends, who's been a givin' sech a hard settin' down ter his own relation, arter they've broughten him up, and given him sech a schulein for nuthin', he says the Yankees want to interfere with our niggers. Now, thet haint so, and they couldn't ef they would, 'case it's agin the Constertution. And they stand on the Constertution a durned sight solider nor we do. Didn't thar big gun--Daniel Webster--didn't he make mince-meat of South Car'lina Hayne on thet ar' subjec'? But I tell you they haint a mind ter meddle with the niggers; they're a goin' to let us go ter h--l our own way, and we're goin' thar mighty fast, or I haint read the last census."
"P'r'aps you haint heerd on the ab'lsh'ners, Andy?" cried a voice from among the audience.
"Wal, I reckon I hev," responded the orator, "I've heerd on 'em, and seed 'em, too. When I was North I went to one on thar conventions, and I'll tell you how they look. They've all long, wimmin's har, and thin, shet lips, with big, bawlin' mouths, and long, lean, tommerhawk faces, as white as vargin dip--and they all talk through the nose (giving a specimen), and they all look for all the world jest like the South Car'lina fire-eaters--and they _are_ as near like 'em as two peas, excep' they don't swar quite so bad, but they make up for thet in prayin'--and prayin' too much, I reckon, when a man's a d----d hippercrit, is 'bout as bad as swearin'. But, I tell you, the decent folks up North haint ablisheners. They look on _'em_ jest as we do on mad dogs, the itch, or the nigger traders.
"Now, 'bout this secession bis'ness--though 'taint no use to talk on that subjec', 'case this state never'll secede--South Car'lina has done it, and I'm raather glad she has, for though I was born thar--and say it as hadn't orter say it--she orter hev gone to h--l long ago, and now she's got thar, why--_let her stay_! But, 'bout thet bis'ness, I'll tell you a story.
"I know'd an old gentleman once by the name of Uncle Sam, and he'd a heap of sons. They war all likely boys--but strange ter tell, though they'd all the same mother, and she was a white woman, 'bout half on 'em war colored--not black, but sorter half-and-half. Now, the white sons war well-behaved, industrious, hard-workin' boys, who got 'long well, edicated thar children, and allers treated the old man decently; but the mulatter fellers war a pesky set--though some on 'em war better nor others. They wouldn't work, but set up for airystocracy--rode in kerriges, kept fast horses, bet high, and chawed tobaccer like the devil. Wal, the result was, _they_ got out at the elbows, and 'case they warn't gettin' 'long quite so fast as the white 'uns--though that war all thar own fault--they got jealous, and one on 'em who was blacker nor all the rest--a little feller, but terrible big on braggin'--he packed up his truck one night, and left the old man's house, and swore he'd never come back. He tried to make the other mulatters go with him, but they put thar fingers to thar nose, and says they, 'No you doant.' I was in favor of lettin' on him stay out in the cold, but the old man was a bernevolent old critter, and so _he_ says: 'Now, sonny, you jest come back and behave yourself, and I'll forgive you all your old pranks, and treat you jest as I allers used ter; but, ef you wont, why--I'll make you, thet's all!'
"Now, gentlemen, thet quarrelsome, oneasy, ongrateful, tobaccer-chawin', hoss-racin', high-bettin', big-braggin', nigger-stealin', wimmin-whippin', yaller son of the devil, is South Car'lina, and ef she doant come back and behave herself in futur', I'm d----d ef she wont be ploughed with fire, and sowed with salt, and Andy Jones will help ter do it."
The speaker was frequently interrupted in the course of his remarks by uproarious applause--but as he closed and descended from the platform, the crowd sent up cheer after cheer, and a dozen strong men, making a seat of their arms, lifted him from the ground and bore him off to the head of the table, where dinner was in waiting.
The whole of the large assemblage then fell to eating. The dinner was made up of the barbacued beef and the usual mixture of viands found on a planter's table, with water from the little brook hard by, and a plentiful supply of corn-whiskey. (The latter beverage had, I thought, been subjected to the rite of immersion, for it tasted wonderfully of water.)
Songs and speeches were intermingled with the masticating exercises, and the whole company was soon in the best of humor.
During the meal I was introduced by Andy to a large number of the "natives," he taking special pains to tell each one that I was a Yankee, and a Union man, but always adding, as if to conciliate all parties, that I also was a guest and a friend of _his_ very particular friend, "thet d----d seceshener, Cunnel J----."
Before we left the table, the secession orator happening near where we were seated, Andy rose from his seat, and, extending his hand to him, said: "Tom, you think I 'sulted you; p'r'aps I did, but you 'sulted my Yankee friend har, and your own relation, and I hed to take it up, jest for the looks o' the thing. Come, there's my hand; I'll fight you ef you want ter, or we'll say no more 'bout it--jest as you like."
"Say no more about it, Andy," said the gentleman, very cordially; "let's drink and be friends."
They drank a glass of whiskey together, and then leaving the table, proceeded to where the ox had been barbacued, to show me how cooking on a large scale is done at the South.
In a pit about eight feet deep, twenty feet long, and ten feet wide, laid up on the sides with stones, a fire of hickory had been made, over which, after the wood had burned down to coals, a whole ox, divested of its hide and entrails, had been suspended on an enormous spit. Being turned often in the process of cooking, the beef had finally been "done brown." It was then cut up and served on the table, and I must say, for the credit of Southern cookery, that it made as delicious eating as any meat I ever tasted.
I had then been away from my charge--the Colonel's horses--as long as seemed to be prudent. I said as much to Andy, when he proposed to return with me, and, turning good-humoredly to his reconciled friend, he said: "Now, Tom, no secession talk while I'm off."
"Nary a word," said "Tom," and we left.
The horses had been well fed by the negro whom I had left in charge of them, but had not been groomed. Seeing that, Andy stripped off his coat, and setting the black at work on one, with a handful of straw and pine leaves, commenced operations on the other, whose hair was soon as smooth and glossy as if it had been rubbed by an English groom.
The remainder of the day passed without incident till eleven at night, when the Colonel returned from Wilmington.
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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15
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THE RETURN.
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Moye had not been seen or heard of, and the Colonel's trip was fruitless. While at Wilmington he sent telegrams, directing the overseer's arrest, to the various large cities of the South, and then decided to return home, make arrangements preliminary to a protracted absence from the plantation, and proceed at once to Charleston, where he would await replies to his dispatches. Andy agreed with him in the opinion that Moye, in his weak state of health, would not take an overland route to the free states, but would endeavor to reach some town on the Mississippi, where he might dispose of the horse, and secure a passage up the river.
As no time was to be lost, we decided to return to the plantation on the following morning. Accordingly, with the first streak of day we bade "good-bye" to our Union friend, and started homeward.
No incident worthy of mention occurred on the way, till about ten o'clock, when we arrived at the house of the Yankee schoolmistress, where we had been so hospitably entertained two days before. The lady received us with great cordiality, forced upon us a lunch to serve our hunger on the road, and when we parted, enjoined on me to leave the South at the earliest possible moment. She was satisfied it would not for a much longer time be safe quarters for a man professing Union sentiments. Notwithstanding the strong manifestations of loyalty I had observed among the people, I was convinced the advice of my pretty "countrywoman" was judicious, and I determined to be governed by it.
Our horses, unaccustomed to lengthy journeys, had not entirely recovered from the fatigues of their previous travel, and we did not reach our destination till an hour after dark. We were most cordially welcomed by Madam P----, who soon set before us a hot supper, which, as we were jaded by the long ride, and had fasted for twelve hours, on bacon-sandwiches and cold hoe-cake, was the one thing needful to us.
While seated at the table the Colonel asked: "Has every thing gone right, Alice, since we left home?"
"Every thing," replied the lady, "except"--and she hesitated, as if she dreaded the effect of the news; "except that Jule and her child have gone."
"Gone!" exclaimed my host; "gone where?"
"I don't know. We have searched everywhere, but have found no clue to them. The morning you left Sam set Jule at work among the pines; she tried hard, but could not do a full task, and at night was taken to the cabin to be whipped. I heard of it, and forbade it. It did not seem to me that she ought to be punished for not doing what she had not strength to do. When released from the cabin, she came and thanked me for having interfered for her, and talked with me awhile. She cried and took on fearfully about Sam, and was afraid you would punish her when you returned. I promised you would not, and she left me seeming more cheerful. I supposed she would go directly home after getting her child from the nurse's quarters; but it appears she went to Pompey's, where she staid till after ten o'clock. Neither she nor the child have been seen since."
"Did you get no trace of her in the morning?"
"Yes, but soon lost it. When she did not appear at work, Sam went to her cabin to learn the cause, and found the door open, and her bed undisturbed. She had not slept there. Knowing that Sandy had returned, I sent for him, and, with Jim and his dog, he commenced a search. The dog tracked her directly from Pompey's cabin to the bank of the run near the lower still. There all trace of her disappeared. We dragged the stream, but discovered nothing. Jim and Sandy then scoured the woods for miles in all directions, but the hound could not recover the trail. I hope otherwise, but I fear some evil has befallen her."
"Oh, no! there's no fear of that," said the Colonel: "she is smart: she waded up the run far enough to baffle the dog, and then made for the swamp. That is why you lost her tracks at the stream. Rely upon it, I am right: but she shall not escape me."
We shortly afterward adjourned to the library. After being seated there a while the Colonel, rising quickly, as if a sudden thought had struck him, sent for the old preacher.
The old negro soon appeared, hat in hand, and taking a stand near the door, made a respectful bow to each one of us.
"Take a chair, Pompey," said Madam P----, kindly.
The black meekly seated himself, when the Colonel asked: "Well, Pomp, what do you know about Jule's going off?"
"Nuffin', massa--I shures you, nuffin'. De pore chile say nuffin to ole Pomp 'bout dat."
"What did she say?"
"Wal, you see, massa, de night arter you gwo 'way, and arter she'd worked hard in de brush all de day, and been a strung up in de ole cabin fur to be whipped, she come ter me wid har baby in har arms, all a-faint and a-tired, and har pore heart clean broke, and she say dat she'm jess ready ter drop down and die. Den I tries ter comfut har, massa; I takes har up from de floor, and I say ter har dat de good Lord He pity har--dat He woant bruise de broken reed, and woant put no more on her dan she kin b'ar--dat He'd touch you' heart, and I toled har you'se a good, kine heart at de bottom, massa--and I knows it, 'case I toted you 'fore you could gwo, and when you's a bery little chile, not no great sight bigger'n har'n, you'd put your little arms round ole Pomp's neck, and say dat when you war grow'd up you'd be bery kine ter de pore brack folks, and not leff 'em be 'bused like dey war in dem days."
"Never mind what _you_ said," interrupted the Colonel, a little impatiently, but showing no displeasure; "what did _she_ say?"
"Wal, massa, she tuk on bery hard 'bout Sam, and axed me ef I raaily reckoned de Lord had forgib'n him, and took'n him ter Heself, and gibin' him one o' dem hous'n up dar, in de sky. I toled her dat I _know'd_ it; but she say it didn't 'pear so ter har, 'case Sam had a been wid har out dar in de woods, all fru de day; dat she'd a _seed_ him, massa, and dough he handn't a said nuffin', he'd lukd at har wid sech a sorry, grebed luk, dat it gwo clean fru har heart, till she'd no strength leff, and fall down on de ground a'most dead. Den she say big Sam come 'long and fine har dar, and struck har great, heaby blows wid de big whip!"
"The brute!" exclaimed the Colonel, rising from his chair, and pacing rapidly up and down the room.
"But p'r'aps he warn't so much ter blame, massa," continued the old negro, in a deprecatory tone; "maybe he 'spose she war shirkin' de work. Wal, den she say she know'd nuffin' more, till byme-by, when she come to, and fine big Sam dar, and he struck har agin, and make har gwo ter de work; and she did gwo, but she feel like as ef she'd die. I toled har de good ma'am wudn't leff big Sam 'buse har no more 'fore you cum hum, and dat you'd hab 'passion on har, and not leff har gwo out in de woods, but put har 'mong de nusses, like as afore.
"Den she say it 'twarn't de work dat trubble har--dat she orter work, and orter be 'bused, 'case she'd been bad, bery bad. All she axed war dat Sam would forgib har, and cum to har in de oder worle, and tell har so. Den she cried, and tuk on awful; but de good Lord, massa, dat am so bery kine ter de bery wuss sinners, He put de words inter my mouf, and I tink dey gib har comfut, fur she say dat it sort o' 'peared to har den dat Sam _would_ forgib har, and take har inter his house up dar, and she warn't afeard ter die no more.
"Den she takes up de chile and gwo 'way, 'pearin' sort o' happy, and more cheerful like dan I'd a seed har eber sense pore Sam war shot."
My host was sensibly affected by the old man's simple tale, but continued pacing up and down the room, and said nothing.
"It's plain to me, Colonel," I remarked, as Pompey concluded, "she has drowned herself and the child--the dog lost the scent at the creek."
"Oh, no!" he replied; "I think not. I never heard of a negro committing suicide--they've not the courage to do it."
"I fear she _has_, David," said the lady. "The thought of going to Sam has led her to it; yet, we dragged the run, and found nothing. What do you think about it, Pompey?"
"I dunno, ma'am, but I'se afeard of dat; and now dat I tinks ob it, I'se afeard dat what I tole har put har up ter it," replied the old preacher, bursting into tears. "She 'peared so happy like, when I say she'd be 'long wid Sam in de oder worle, dat I'se afeard she's a gone and done it wid har own hands. I tole har, too, dat de Lord would oberlook good many tings dat pore sinners do when dey can't help 'emselfs--and it make har do it! Oh! it make har do it!" and the old black buried his face in his hands, and wept bitterly.
"Don't feel so, Pomp," said his master, _very_ kindly. "You did the best you could; no one blames you."
"I knows _you_ doant, massa--I knows you doant, and you'se bery good nottur--but oh! massa, de Lord!" and his body swayed to and fro with the great grief; "I fears de Lord do, massa, for I'se sent har ter Him wid har own blood, and de blood of dat pore innercent chile, on har hands. Oh, I fears de Lord neber'll forgib me--neber'll forgib me for _dat_."
"He will, my good Pomp--He will!" said the Colonel, laying his hand tenderly on the old man's shoulder. "The Lord will forgive you, for the sake of the Christian example you've set your master, if for nothing else;" and here the proud, strong man's feelings overpowering him, his tears fell in great drops on the breast of the old slave, as they had fallen there in his childhood.
Such scenes are not for the eye of a stranger, and turning away, I left the room.
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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16
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"ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE."
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The family met at the breakfast-table at the usual hour on the following morning; but I noticed that Jim was not in his accustomed place behind the Colonel's chair. That gentleman exhibited his usual good spirits, but Madam P---- looked sad and anxious, and _I_ had not forgotten the scene of the previous evening.
While we were seated at the meal, the negro Junius hastily entered the room, and in an excited manner exclaimed: "Oh, massa, massa, you muss cum ter de cabin--Jim hab draw'd his knife, and he swar he'll kill de fuss 'un dat touch him!"
"He does, does he!" said his master, springing from his seat, and abruptly leaving the apartment.
Remembering the fierce burst of passion I had seen in the negro, and fearing there was danger a-foot, I rose to follow, saying, as I did so: "Madam, cannot you prevent this?"
"I cannot, sir; I have already done all I can. Go and try to pacify the Colonel--Jim will die before he'll be whipped." Jim was standing at the farther end of the old cabin, with his back to the wall, and the large spring knife in his hand. Some half-dozen negroes were in the centre of the room, apparently cowed by his fierce and desperate looks, and his master was within a few feet of him.
"I tell you, Cunnel," cried the negro, as I entered, "you touch me at your peril!"
"You d----d nigger, do you dare to speak so to me?" said his master, taking a step toward him.
The knife rose in the air, and the black, in a cool, sneering tone, replied: "Say your prayers 'fore you come nigher, for, so help me God, you'm a dead man!"
I laid my hand on the Colonel's arm, to draw him back, saying, as I did so: "There's danger in him! I _know_ it. Let him go, and he shall ask your pardon."
"I shan't ax his pardon," cried the black; "leff him an' me be, sir; we'll fix dis ourselfs."
"Don't interfere, Mr. K----," said my host, with perfect coolness, but with a face pallid with rage. "Let me govern my own plantation."
"As you say, sir," I replied, stepping back a few paces; "but I warn you--there is danger in him!"
Taking no notice of my remark, the Colonel turning to the trembling negroes, said: "One of you go to the house and bring my pistols."
"You kin shoot me, ef you likes," said Jim, with a fierce, grim smile; "but I'll take you ter h--l wid me, _shore_. You knows WE wont stand a blow!"
The Colonel, at the allusion to their relationship, started as if shot, and turning furiously on the negro, yelled out: "I'll shoot you for that, you d----d nigger, by ----."
"It 'pears ter me, Cunnel, ye've hed 'bout nuff shootin' round har, lately; better stop thet sort o' bis'ness; it moight give ye a sore throat," said the long, lean, loose-jointed stump-speaker of the previous Sunday, as he entered the cabin and strode directly up to my host.
"What brought you here, you d----d insolent hound?" cried the Colonel, turning fiercely on the new-comer.
"Wal, I cum ter du ye a naaboorly turn--I've kotched two on yer niggers down ter my still, and I want ye ter take 'em 'way," returned the corn-cracker, with the utmost coolness.
"Two of my niggers!" exclaimed the Colonel, perceptibly moderating his tone--"which ones?"
"A yaller gal, and a chile."
"I thank you, Barnes; excuse my hard words--I was excited."
"All right, Cunnel; say no more 'bout thet. Will ye send fur 'em? I'd hev fotched 'em 'long, but my waggin's off jest now."
"Yes, I'll send at once. Have you got them safe?"
"Safe? I reckon so! Kotched 'em last night, arter dark, and they've kept right still ever sense, I 'sure ye--but th' gal holds on ter th' young 'un ter kill--we cudn't get it 'way no how."
"How did you catch them?"
"They got 'gainst my turpentime raft--the curren' driv 'em down, I s'pose."
"What! are they dead?"
"Dead? deader'n drownded rats!" replied the native, "My God! drowned herself and her child!" exclaimed the Colonel, with deep emotion.
"It is terrible, my friend. Come, let us go to them, at once," I said, laying my hand on his arm, and drawing him unresistingly away.
A pair of mules was speedily harnessed to a large turpentine wagon, and the horses we had ridden the day before were soon at the door. When the Colonel, who had been closeted for a few minutes with Madam P----, came out of the house, we mounted, and rode off with the "corn-cracker."
The native's farm was located on the stream which watered my friend's plantation, and was about ten miles distant. Taking a by-road which led to it through the woods, we rode rapidly on in advance of the wagon.
"Sort o' likely gal, thet, warn't she?" remarked the turpentine-maker, after a while.
"Yes, she was," replied the Colonel, in a half-abstracted manner; "_very_ likely."
"Kill harself 'case har man war shot by thet han'som overseer uv your'n?"
"Not altogether for that, I reckon," replied my host; "I fear the main reason was her being put at field-work, and abused by the driver."
"Thet comes uv not lookin' arter things yerself, Cunnel. I tend ter my niggers parsonally, and they keer a durned sight more fur this world then fur kingdom-cum. Ye cudn't hire 'em ter kill 'emselves fur no price."
"Well," replied the Colonel, in a low tone, "I _did_ look after her. I put her at full field-work, myself!"
"By----!" cried the native, reining his horse to a dead stop, and speaking in an excited manner: "I doant b'lieve it--'taint 't all like ye--yer a d----d seceshener; thet comes uv yer bringin'-up--but ye've a soul bigger'n a meetin'-house, and ye cudn't hev put thet slim, weakly gal inter th' woods, no how!"
The Colonel and I instinctively halted our horses, as the "corn-cracker" stopped his, and were then standing abreast of him in the road.
"It's true, Barnes," said my host, in a voice that showed deep dejection; "I _did_ do it!"
"May God Almighty furgive ye, Cunnel," said the native, starting his horse forward; "_I_ wudn't hev dun it fur all yer niggers, by ----."
The Colonel made no reply, and we rode on the rest of the way in silence.
The road was a mere wagon-track through the trees, and it being but little travelled, and encumbered with the roots and stumps of the pine, our progress was slow, and we were nearly two hours in reaching the plantation of the native.
The corn-cracker's house--a low, unpainted wooden building--stood near the little stream, and in the centre of a cleared plot of some ten acres. This plot was surrounded by a post-and-rail fence, and in its front portion was a garden, which grew a sufficient supply of vegetables to serve a family of twenty persons. In the rear, and at the sides of the dwelling, were about seven acres, devoted mainly to corn and potatoes. In one corner of the lot were three tidy-looking negro-houses, and close beside them I noticed a low shed, near which a large quantity of the stalks of the tall, white corn, common to that section, was stacked in the New England fashion. Browsing on the corn-stalks were three sleek, well-kept milch cows, and a goat.
About four hundred yards from the farmer's house, and on the bank of the little run, which there was quite wide and deep, stood a turpentine distillery; and around it were scattered a large number of rosin and turpentine barrels, some filled and some empty. A short distance higher up, and far enough from the "still" to be safe in the event of a fire, was a long, low, wooden shed, covered with rough, unjointed boards, placed upright, and unbattened. This was the "spirit-house," used for the storage of the spirits of turpentine when barrelled for market, and awaiting shipment. In the creek, and filling nearly one-half of the channel in front of the spirit-shed, was a raft of pine timber, on which were laden some two hundred barrels of rosin. On such rude conveyances the turpentine-maker sent his produce to Conwayboro'. There the timber-raft was sold to my way-side friend, Captain B----, and its freight shipped on board vessel for New York. Two "prime" negro men, dressed in the usual costume, were "tending the still;" and a negro woman, as stout and strong as the men, and clad in a short, loose, linsey gown, from beneath which peeped out a pair of coarse leggins, was adjusting a long wooden trough, which conveyed the liquid rosin from the "still" to a deep excavation in the earth, at a short distance. In the pit was a quantity of rosin sufficient to fill a thousand barrels.
"Here, Bill," said Barnes to one of the negro men, as we pulled up at the distillery, "put these critters up, and give 'em sum oats, and when they've cooled off a bit, water 'em."
"Yas, yas, massa," replied the negro, springing nimbly forward, and taking the horses by the bridles, "an' rub 'em down, massa?"
"Yas, rub 'em down right smart," replied the corn-cracker; then turning to me, as we dismounted, he said: "Stranger, thet's th' sort o' niggers fur ye; all uv mine ar' jess like him--smart and lively as kittens."
"He does seem to go about his work cheerfully," I replied.
"Cheerfully! d----d ef he doant--all on 'em du! They like me better'n thar own young 'uns, an' it's 'cause I use 'em like human bein's;" and he looked slyly toward the Colonel, who just then was walking silently away, in the direction of the run, as if in search of the browned "chattels."
"Not thar, Cunnel," cried the native; "they're inter th' shed;" and he started to lead the way to the "spirit-house."
"Not now, Barnes," I said, putting my hand on his arm: "leave him alone for a little while. He is feeling badly, and we'd better not disturb him just yet."
The native motioned me to a seat on a rosin-barrel, as he replied: "Wal, he 'pears ter--thet's a fact, and he orter. D----d ef it arn't wicked to use niggers like cattle, as he do."
"I don't think he means to ill-treat them--he's a kind-hearted man."
"Wal, he ar sort o' so; but he's left ev'ry thing ter thet d----d overseer uv his'n. I wudn't ha' trusted him to feed my hogs."
"Hogs!" I exclaimed, laughing; "I supposed you didn't _feed_ hogs in these diggins. I supposed you 'let 'em run.'" " _I_ doant; an' I've got th' tallest porkys round har."
"I've been told that they get a good living in the woods."
"Wal, p'r'aps the' du jest make eout ter live thar; but my ole 'oman likes 'em ter hum--they clean up a place like--eat up all th' leavin's, an' give th' young nigs suthin' ter du."
"It seems to me," I said, resuming the previous thread of the conversation; "that overseers are a necessity on a large plantation." "Wal, the' ar', an' thet's why thar ortent ter be no big plantations; God Almighty didn't make human bein's ter be herded togethar in th' woods like hogs. No man orter ter hev more'n twenty on 'em--he can't look arter no more himself, an' its agin natur ter set a feller over 'em what hain't no int'rest in 'em, an' no feelin' fur 'em, an' who'll drive 'em round like brutes. I never struck one on 'em in my life, an' my ten du more'n ony fifteen th' Cunnel's got."
"I thought they needed occasional correction. How do you manage them without whipping?"
"Manage them! why 'cordin' ter scriptur--do ter 'em as I'd like ter be dun ter, ef I war a nigger. Every one on 'em knows I'd part with my last shirt, an' live on taters an' cow-fodder, fore I'd sell em; an' then I give 'em Saturdays for 'emselfs--but thet's cute dealin' in me (tho' th' pore, simple souls doant see it), fur ye knows the' work thet day for 'emselfs, an' raise nigh all thar own feed, 'cept th' beef and whiskey--an' it sort o' makes 'em feel like folks, too, more like as ef the' war _free_--the' work th' better fur it all th' week."
"Then you think the blacks would work better if free?"
"In _course_ I does--its agin man's natur to be a slave. Thet lousy parson ye herd ter meetin, a Sunday, makes slavery eout a divine institooshun, but my wife's a Bible 'oman, and she says 'taint so; an' I'm d----d ef she arn't right."
"Is your wife a South Carolina women?"
"No, she an' me's from th' old North--old Car'tret, nigh on ter Newbern; an' we doant take nat'rally to these fire-eaters."
"Have you been here long?"
"Wal, nigh on ter six yar. I cum har with nuthin' but a thousan' ter my back--slapped thet inter fifteen hun'red acres--paid it down--and then hired ten likely, North Car'lina niggers--hired 'em with th' chance uv buyin' ef the' liked eout har. Wal, th' nigs all know'd me, and the' sprung ter it like blazes; so every yar I've managed ter buy two on 'em, and now I've ten grow'd up, and thar young'uns; th' still and all th' traps paid fur, an' ef this d----d secesh bis'ness hadn't a come 'long, I'd hev hed a right smart chance o' doin' well."
"I'm satisfied secession will ruin the turpentine business; you'll be shut up here, unable to sell your produce, and it will go to waste."
"Thet's my 'pinion; but I reckon I kin' manage now witheout turpentime. I've talked it over 'long with my nigs, and we kalkerlate, ef these ar doin's go eny furder, ter tap no more trees, but clar land an' go ter raisin' craps."
"What! do you talk politics with your negroes?"
"Nary a politic--but I'm d----d ef th' critters doan't larn 'em sumhow; the' knows 'bout as much uv what's goin' on as I du--but plantin arn't politics; its bisness, an' they've more int'rest in it nor I hev, 'cause they've sixteen mouths ter feed agin my four."
"I'm glad, my friend, that you treat them like men: but I have supposed they were not well enough informed to have intelligent opinions on such subjects."
"Informed! wal, I reckon the' is; all uv mine kin read, an' sum on 'em kin write, too. D'ye see thet little nig thar?" pointing to a juvenile coal-black darky of about six years, who was standing before the "still" fire; "thet ar little devil kin read an' speak like a parson. He's got hold, sumhow, uv my little gal's book o' pieces, an' larned a dozen on 'em. I make him cum inter th' house, once in a while uv an evenin', an' speechify, an' 'twould do yer soul good ter har him, in his shirt tail, with a old sheet wound round him fur a toger (I've told him th' play-acters du it so down ter Charles'on), an' spoutin' out: 'My name am Norval; on de Gruntin' hills my fader feed him hogs!' The little coon never seed a sheep, an' my wife's told him a flock's a herd, an' he thinks 'hog' _sounds_ better'n 'flock,' so, contra'y ter th' book, he puts in 'hogs,' and hogs, you knows, hev ter grunt, so he gits 'em on th' 'Gruntin hills;" and here the kind-hearted native burst into a fit of uproarious laughter, in which, in spite of myself, I had to join.
When the merriment had somewhat subsided, the turpentine-maker called out to the little darky: "Come here, Jim."
The young chattel ran to him with alacrity, and wedging in between his legs, placed his little black hands, in a free-and-easy way, on his master's knees, and, looking up trustfully in his face, said: "Wal, massa?"
"What's yer name?"
"Dandy Jim, massa."
"Thet arn't all--what's th' rest?"
"Dandy Jim of ole Car'lina."
"Who made ye?"
"De good God, massa."
"No, He didn't: God doant make little nigs. He makes none but white folks;" said the master, laughing.
"Yas He'm do; Missus say He'm do; dat He make dis nig jess like He done little Totty."
"Wal, He did, Jim. I'm d----d ef _He_ didn't, fur nobody else cud make _ye_!" replied the man, patting the little woolly head with undisguised affection.
"Now, Jim, say th' creed fur 'de gemman.'"
The young darky then repeated the Apostle's Creed and the Ten Commandments.
"Is thet all ye knows?"
"No, massa, I knows a heap 'sides dat."
"Wal, say suthin' more--sum on 'em pieces thet jingle."
The little fellow then repeated with entire correctness, and with appropriate gestures, and emphasis, though in the genuine darky dialect--which seems to be inborn with the pure-Southern black--Mrs. Hemans' poem: "The boy stood on the burning deck."
"Mrs. Hemans draped in black!" I exclaimed, laughing heartily: "How would the good lady feel, could she look down from where she is, and hear a little darky doing up her poetry in that style?"
"D----d ef I doant b'lieve 'twud make her love th' little nig like I do;" replied the corn-cracker, taking him up on his knee as tenderly as he would have taken up his own child.
"Tell me, my little man," I said: "who taught you all these things?"
"I larned 'em, myseff, sar," was the prompt reply.
"You learned them, yourself! but who taught you to read?"
"I larned 'em myseff, sar!"
"You couldn't have learned _that_ yourself; didn't your 'massa' teach you?"
"No, sar."
"Oh! your 'missus' did."
"No, sar."
"No, sar!" I repeated; then suspecting the real state of the case, I looked him sternly in the eye, and said: "My little man, it's wrong to tell lies--you must _always_ speak the truth; now, tell me truly, did not your 'missus' teach you these things?"
"No, sar, I larned 'em myseff."
"Ye can't cum it, Stranger; ye moight roast him over a slow fire, an' not git nary a thing eout on him but thet," said the corn-cracker, leaning forward, and breaking into a boisterous fit of laughter. "It's agin th' law, an' I'm d----d ef I teached him. Reckon he _did_ larn himself!"
"I must know your wife, my friend. She's a good woman."
"Good! ye kin bet high on thet; she's uv th' stuff th' Lord makes angels eout on."
I had no doubt of it, and was about to say so, when the Colonel's turpentine wagon drove up, and I remembered I had left him too long alone.
The coachman was driving, and Jim sat on the wagon beside him.
"Massa K----," said the latter, getting down and coming to me: "Whar am dey?"
"In the spirit-shed."
He was turning to go there, when I called him back, saying: "Jim, you must not see your master now; you'd better keep out of sight for the present."
"No, massa; de ma'am say de Cunnel take dis bery hard, and dat I orter tell him I'se sorry for what I'se done."
"Well, wait a while. Let me go in first."
Accompanied by the corn-cracker, I entered the turpentine-shed. A row of spirit-barrels were ranged along each of its sides, and two tiers occupied the centre of the building. On these a number of loose planks were placed, and on the planks lay the bodies of the metif woman and her child. The Colonel was seated on a barrel near them, with his head resting on his hands, and his eyes fixed on the ground. He did not seem to notice our entrance, and, passing him without speaking, I stepped to the side of the dead.
The woman's dress, the common linsey gown worn by her class, was still wet, and her short, kinky, brown hair fell in matted folds around her face. One arm hung loosely by her side; the other was clasped tightly around her child, which lay as if asleep on her bosom. One of its small hands clung to its mother's breast, and around its little lips played a smile. But how shall I describe the pale, sweet beauty of the face of the drowned girl, as she lay there, her eyes closed, and her lips parted, as in prayer? Never but once have I seen on human features the strange radiance that shone upon it, or the mingled expression of hope, and peace, and resignation that rested there--and that was in the long-gone time, when, standing by her bedside, I watched the passing away of one who is now an angel in heaven!
"Come, my dear friend, let us go," I said, turning and gently taking the Colonel by the arm, "the negroes are here, and will take charge of the dead."
"No, no!" he replied, rising, and looking around, as if aroused from a troubled dream; "that is for _me_ to do!" Then he added, after a moment's pause, "Will you help me to get them into the wagon?"
"Yes, I will, certainly."
He made one step toward the body of the dead girl, then sinking down again on the barrel, covered his face with his hands, and cried out: "My God! this is terrible! Did you ever see such a look as that? It will haunt me forever!"
"Come, my friend, rouse yourself--this is weakness; you are tired with the long ride and excitement of the past few days. Come, go home--I will look after them."
"No, no! I must do it. I will be a man again;" and he rose and walked steadily to the dead bodies. "Is there any one here to help?" he asked.
Jim was standing in the door-way, and I motioned to him to come forward. The great tears were streaming down his face as he stepped timidly towards his master, and said: "I'll do dis, massa, don't you trubble yerself no more."
"It's good of you, Jim. You'll forgive me for being so cruel to you, wont you?" said the Colonel, taking the black by the hand.
"Forgib ye, massa! _I_ war all ter blame--but ye'll forgib me, massa--ye'll forgib me!" cried the black, with strong emotion.
"Yes, yes; but say no more about it. Come, let us get Julie home."
But the poor girl was already _home_--home where her sufferings and her sorrows were over, and all her tears were wiped away forever!
We four bore away the mother and the child. A number of blankets were in the bottom of the wagon, and we laid the bodies carefully upon them. When all seemed ready, the Colonel, who was still standing by the side of the dead, turned to my new friend, and said: "Barnes, will you loan me a pillow? I will send it back to-night."
"Sartin, Cunnel;" and the farmer soon brought one from the house. Lifting tenderly the head of the drowned girl, the Colonel placed it beneath her, and smoothing back her tangled hair, he gently covered her face with his handkerchief, as if she could still feel his kindness, or longer cared for the pity or the love of mortal. Yet, who knows but that her parted soul, from the high realm to which it had soared, may not then have looked down, have seen that act, and have forgiven him!
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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17
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THE SMALL PLANTER.
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In the first moments of grief the sympathy of friends, and the words of consolation bring no relief. How much more harshly do such words grate on the ear when the soul is bowed down by remorse and unavailing regret! Then the wounded spirit finds peace nowhere but with God.
I saw that the Colonel would be alone, and turning to him, as he prepared to follow the strange vehicle, which, with its load of death, was already jolting its way over the rough forest road, I said, "Will you pardon me, if I remain with your friend here for awhile? I will be at the mansion before dark."
"Oh, certainly, my friend, come when you feel disposed," he replied, and mounting his horse he was soon out of sight among the trees.
"Now, Barnes," I said, shaking off the gloomy feelings that had oppressed me: "come, I must see that wife of yours, and get a glimpse of how you live?"
"Sartin, stranger; come in; I'll give ye th' tallest dinner my 'oman can scare up, an' she's sum pumkins in th' cookin' line;" and he led the way to the farm-house.
As I turned to follow, I slipped a half-dollar into the hand of the darky who was holding my horse, and asked him to put her again into the stable.
"I'll do dat, sar, but I karn't take dis; masaa doant 'low it nohow;" he replied, tendering me back the money.
"Barnes, your negroes have strange ways; I never met one before who'd refuse money."
"Wal, stranger, 'taint hosspetality to take money on yer friends, and Bill gets all he wants from me."
I took the silver and gave it to the first darky I met, who happened to be an old centenarian belonging to the Colonel. As I tossed it to him, he grinned out: "Ah, massa, I'll git sum 'backer wid dis; 'pears like I hadn't nary a chaw in forty yar." With more than one leg in the grave the old negro had not lost his appetite for the weed--in fact, that and whiskey are the only "luxuries" ever known to the plantation black.
As we went nearer, I took a closer survey of the farm-house. It was, as I have said, a low, unpainted wooden building, located in the middle of a ten acre lot. It was approached by a straight walk, paved with a mixture of sand and tar, similar to that which the reader may have seen in the Champs Elysees. I do not know whether my back-woods friend, or the Parisian pavior, was the first inventor of this composition, but I am satisfied the corn-cracker had not stolen it from the stone-cracker. The walk was lined with fruit-bearing shrubs, and directly in front of the house, were two small flower-beds.
The dwelling itself, though of a dingy brown wood-color, was neat and inviting. It may have been forty feet square on the ground, and was only a story and a half high, but a projecting roof, and a front dormer-window, relieved it from the appearance of disproportion. Its gable ends were surmounted by two enormous brick chimneys, carried up on the outside, in the fashion of the South, and its high, broad windows were ornamented with Venetian blinds. Its front door opened directly into the "living-room," and at the threshold we met its mistress.
As the image of that lady has still a warm place in a pleasant corner of my memory, I will describe her. She was about thirty years of age, and had a fresh, cheerful face. To say that she was handsome, would not be strictly true; though she had that pleasant, gentle, kindly expression that sometimes makes even a homely person seem beautiful. But she was not homely. Her features were regular, her hair, glossy and brown, and her eyes, black and brilliant, and, for their color, the mildest and softest I had ever seen. Her figure was tall, and in its outline somewhat sharp and angular, but she had an ease and grace about her that made one forget she was not moulded as softly and roundly as others. She seemed just the woman on whose bosom a tired, worn, over-burdened man might lay his weary head, and find rest and forgetfulness.
She wore a neat calico dress, fitting closely to the neck, and an apron of spotless white muslin. A little lace cap perched cosily on the back of her head, hiding a portion of her wavy, dark hair, and on her feet--a miracle, reader, in one of her class--were stockings and shoes! Giving me her hand--which, at the risk of making her husband jealous, I held for a moment--she said, making a gentle courtesy: "Ye ar welcome, stranger."
"I sincerely thank you, madam; I _am_ a stranger in these parts."
She tendered me a chair, while her husband opened a sideboard, and brought forth a box of Havanas, and a decanter of Scuppernong. As I took the proffered seat, he offered me the refreshments. I drank the lady's health in the wine, but declined the cigars. Seeing this, she remarked: "Yer from th' North, sir; arn't ye?"
"Yes, madam, I live in New York, but I was born in New-England."
"I reckoned so; I knew ye didn't belong in Car'lina."
"How did you know that, madam?" I asked, laughing.
"I seed ye doan't smoke 'fore wimmin. But ye musn't mind me; I sort o' likes it; its a great comfut to John, and may be it ar to ye."
"Well, I do relish a good cigar, but I never smoke before any lady except my wife, and though she's only 'a little lower than the angels,' she _does_, once in awhile, say it's a shame to make the _house_ smell like a tobacco factory."
Barnes handed me the box again, and I took one. As I was lighting it, he said: "Ye've got a good 'oman, hev ye?"
"There's none better; at least, I think so."
"Wal, I'm 'zactly uv thet 'pinion 'bout mine: I wouldn't trade her fur all this worle, an' th' best half uv 'tother."
"Don't ye talk so, John," said the lady; then addressing me, she added: "It's a good husband thet makes a good wife, sir."
"Sometimes, madam, but not always. I've known some of the best of wives who had miserable husbands."
"An' I'm d----d ef I made my wife th' 'oman she ar'," said the corn-cracker.
"Hush, John; ye musn't sw'ar so; ye knows how often ye've said ye wouldn't."
"Wal, I du, an' I wont agin, by ----. But Sukey, whar's th' young 'uns?"
"Out in the lot, I reckon; but ye musn't holler'm in--they'r all dirt."
"No matter for that, madam," I said; "dirt is healthy for little ones; rolling in the mud makes them grow."
"Then our'n orter grow right smart, fur they'r in it allers."
"How many have you, madam?"
"Two; a little boy, four, and a little gal, six."
"They're of interesting ages."
"Yas, the' is int'restin'; ev'ry 'uns own chil'ren is smart; but the' does know a heap. John was off ter Charl'ston no great while back, an' the little boy used ter pray ev'ry mornin' an' ev'nin' fur his fader ter cum hum. I larned 'em thet jest so soon as the' talked, 'cause thar's no tellin' how quick the' moight be tooken 'way. Wal, the little feller prayed ev'ry mornin' an' ev'nin' fur his fader ter cum back; an' John didn't cum; so finarly he got sort o' provoked with th' Lord; an' he said God war aither deaf, an' couldn't har, or he war naughty, an' wouldn't tell fader thet little Johnny wanted to seed 'im 'werry mooch'"--and here the good lady laughed pleasantly, and I joined in most heartily.
Blessed are the children that have such a mother.
Soon the husband returned with the little girl and boy, and four young ebonies, all bare-headed, and dressed alike, in thick trousers, and a loose linsey shirt. Among them was my new acquaintance, "Dandy Jim, of ole Car'lina."
The little girl came to me, and soon I had two white children on one knee, and two black on the other, and Dandy Jim between my legs, playing with my watch-chain. The family made no distinction between the colors, and as the children were all equally clean I did not see why _I_ should do so.
The lady renewed the conversation by remarking; "P'raps ye reckon it's quar, sir, that we 'low our'n to 'sociate 'long with th' black chil'ren; but we karn't help it. On big plantations it works sorry bad, fur th' white young 'ons larn all manner of evil from the black 'uns; but I've laboored ter teach our'n so one wont do no harm ter 'tother."
"I suppose, madam, that is one of the greatest evils of slavery. The low black poisons the mind of the white child, and the bad influence lasts through life."
"Yas, it's so, stranger; an' it's the biggest keer I hev. It often 'pears strange ter me thet our grow'd up men arn't no wuss then the' is."
In those few words that unlettered woman had said, what would--if men were but wise enough to hear and heed the great truth which she spoke--banish slavery from this continent forever!
After awhile the farmer told the juvenile delineator of Mrs. Hemans, and the other poets, to give us a song; and planting himself in the middle of the floor, the little darky sang "Dixie," and several other negro songs, which his master had taught him, but into which he had introduced some amusing variations of his own. The other children joined in the choruses; and then Jim danced breakdowns, "walk-along-Joes," and other darky dances, his master accompanying him on a cracked fiddle, till my sides were sore with laughter, and the hostess begged them to stop. Finally the clock struck twelve, and the farmer, going to the door, gave a long, loud blast on a cow's horn. In about five minutes one after another of the field hands came in, till the whole ten had seated themselves on the verandah. Each carried a bowl, a tin-cup, or a gourd, into which my host--who soon emerged from a back room[J] with a pail of whiskey in his hand--poured a gill of the beverage. This was the day's allowance, and the farmer, in answer to a question of mine, told me he thought negroes were healthier, and worked better for a small quantity of alcohol daily. "The' work hard, and salt feed doant set 'em up 'nough," was his remark.
Meanwhile the hostess busied herself with preparations for dinner, and it was soon spread on a bright cherry table, covered by a spotless white cloth. The little darkies had scattered to the several cabins, and we soon sat down to as good a meal as I ever ate at the South.
We were waited on by a tidy negro woman, neatly clad in a calico gown, with shoes on her feet, and a flaming red and yellow 'kerchief on her head. This last was worn in the form of a turban, and one end escaping from behind, and hanging down her back, it looked for all the world like a flag hung out from a top turret. Observing it, my host said: "Aggy--showin' yer colors? Ye'r Union gal--hey?"
"Yas, I is dat, massa; Union ter de back bone;" responded the negress, grinning widely.
"All th' Union _ye_ knows on," replied the master, winking slyly at me, "is th' union yer goin' ter hitch up 'long with black Cale over ter Squire Taylor's."
"No, 'taint, massa; takes more'n tu ter make de Union."
"Yas, I knows--it gin'rally takes ten or a dozen: reckon it'll take a dozen with ye."
"John, ye musn't talk so ter th' sarvents; it spiles 'em," said his wife.
"No it doant--do it, Aggy?"
"Lor', missus, I doant keer what massa say; but I doant leff no oder man run on so ter me!"
"No more'n ye doant, gal! only Cale."
"Nor him, massa; I makes him stan' roun' _I_ reckon."
"I reckon ye du; ye wudn't be yer massa's gal ef ye didn't."
When the meal was over, I visited, with my host, the negro houses. The hour allowed for dinner[K] was about expiring, and the darkies were preparing to return to the field. Entering one of the cabins, where were two stout negro men and a woman, my host said to them, with a perfectly serious face: "Har, boys, I've fotched ye a live Yankee ab'lishener; now, luk at 'im all roun'. Did ye ever see sech a critter?"
"Doant see nuffin' quar in dat gemman, massa," replied one of the blacks. "Him 'pears like bery nice gemman; doant 'pear like ab'lishener;" and he laughed, and scraped his head in the manner peculiar to the negro, as he added: "kinder reckon he wudn't be har ef he war one of _dem_."
"What der _ye_ knows 'bout th' ab'lisheners? Ye never seed one--what d'ye 'spose the' luk like?"
"Dey say dey luk likes de bery ole debil, massa, but reckon taint so."
"Wal, the' doant; the' luk wusa then thet: they'm bottled up thunder an' lightnin', an' ef the' cum down har, they'll chaw ye all ter hash."
"I reckon!" replied the darky, manipulating his wool, and distending his face into a decidedly incredulous grin.
"What do you tell them such things for?" I asked, good-humoredly.
"Lor, bless ye, stranger, the' knows th' ab'lisheners ar thar friends, jest so well as ye du; and so fur as thet goes, d----d ef the' doan't know I'm one on 'em myseff, fur I tells 'em, ef the' want to put, the' kin put, an' I'll throw thar trav'lin 'spences inter th' bargin. Doan't I tell ye thet, Lazarus."
"Yas, massa, but none ob massa's nigs am gwine ter put--lesswise, not so long as you an' de good missus, am 'bove groun'."
The darky's name struck me as peculiar, and I asked him where he got it. " _'Tain't_ my name, sar; but you see, sar, w'en massa fuss hire me ob ole Capt'in ----, up dar ter Newbern-way, I war sort o' sorry like--hadn't no bery good cloes--an' massa, he den call me Lazarus, 'case he say I war all ober rags and holes, an' it hab sort o' stuck ter me eber sense. I war a'mighty bad off 'fore dat, but w'en I cum down har I gets inter Abr'am's buzzum, I does;" and here the darky actually reeled on his seat with laughter.
"Is this woman your wife?" I asked.
"No, sar; my wife 'longs to Cunnel J----; dat am my new wife--my ole wife am up dar whar I cum from!"
"What! have you two wives?"
"Yas, massa, I'se two."
"But that's contrary to Scripture."
"No, sar; de Cunnel say 'tain't. He say in Scriptur' dey hab a heap ob' 'em, and dat niggers kin hab jess so many as dey likes--a hun'red ef dey want ter."
"Does the Colonel teach that to his negroes?" I asked, turning to the native.
"Yas, I reckon he do--an' sits 'em th' 'zample, too," he replied, laughing; "but th' old sinner knows better'n thet; he kin read."
"Do you find that in the Bible, Lazarus?"
"Yas, massa; whar I reads it. Dat's whar it tell 'bout David and Sol'mon and all dem--dey hab a heap ob wives. A pore ole darky karn't hab 'nuffin 'sides dem, an' he _orter_ be 'low'd jess so many as he likes."
Laughing at the reasoning of the negro, I asked: "How would _you_ like it, if your wife over at Colonel J----'s, had as many husbands as _she_ liked?"
"Wal, I couldn't fine no fault, massa: an' I s'pose she do; dough I doan't knows it, 'case I'se dar only Sundays."
"Have you any children?"
"Yas, sar; I'se free 'longin' ter de Cunnel, an' four or five--I doant 'zactly know--up ter hum; but _dey'se_ grow'd up."
"Is your wife, up there, married again?"
"Yas, massa, she got anoder man jess w'en I cum 'way; har ole massa make har do it."
We then left the cabin, and when out of hearing of the blacks, I said to the corn-cracker: "That _may be_ Scripture doctrine, but _I_ have not been taught so!"
"Scriptur or no Scriptur, stranger, it's d----d heathenism," replied the farmer, who, take him all in all, is a superior specimen of the class of small-planters at the South; and yet, seeing polygamy practised by his own slaves, he made no effort to prevent it. He told me that if he should object to his darky cohabiting with the Colonel's negress, it would be regarded as unneighborly, and secure him the enmity of the whole district! And still we are told that slavery is a _Divine_ institution!
After this, we strolled off into the woods, where the hands were at work. They were all stout, healthy and happy-looking, and in answer to my comments on their appearance, the native said that the negroes on the turpentine farms are always stronger and longer-lived, than those on the rice and cotton-fields. Unless carried off by the fevers incident to the climate, they generally reach a good old age, while the rice-negro seldom lives to be over forty, and the cotton-slave very rarely attains sixty. Cotton-growing, however, my host thought, is not, in itself, much more unhealthy than turpentine-gathering, though cotton-hands work in the sun, while the turpentine slaves labor altogether in the shade. "But," he said, "the' work 'em harder nor we does, an' doan't feed 'em so well. We give our'n meat and whiskey ev'ry day, but them articles is skarse 'mong th' cotton blacks, an' th' rice niggers never get 'em excep' ter Chris'mas time, an' thet cums but onst a yar."
"Do you think the white could labor as well as the black, on the rice and cotton-fields?" I asked.
"Yas, an' better--better onywhar; but, in coorse, 'tain't natur' fur black nor white ter stand long a workin' in th' mud and water up ter thar knees; sech work wud kill off th' very devil arter a while. But th' white kin stand it longer nor the black, and its' 'cordin' ter reason that he shud; fur, I reckon, stranger, that the sperit and pluck uv a man hev a durned sight ter du with work. They'll hole a man up when he's clean down, an' how kin we expec' thet the pore nig', who's nary a thing ter work fur, an' who's been kept under an' 'bused ever sense Adam was a young un'--how kin we expec' he'll work like men thet own 'emselfs, an' whose faders hev been free ever sense creation? I reckon that the parient has a heap ter du with makin' th' chile. He puts the sperit inter 'im: doan't we see it in hosses an' critters an' sech like? It mayn't crap eout ter onst, but it's shore ter in th' long run, and thet's th' why th' black hain't no smarter nor he is. He's been a-ground down an' kept under fur so long thet it'll take more'n 'un gin'ration ter bring him up. 'Tain't his fault thet he's no more sperit, an' p'raps 'tain't ourn--thet is, them on us as uses 'em right--but it war the fault uv yer fader an' mine--yer fader stole 'em, and mine bought 'em, an' the' both made cattle uv 'em."
"But I had supposed the black was better fitted by nature for hard labor, in a hot climate, than the white?"
"Wal, he arn't, an' I knows it. Th' d----d parsons an' pol'tishuns say thet, but 'tain't so. I kin do half agin more work in a day then th' best nig' I've got, an' I've dun it, tu, time an' agin, an' it didn't hurt me nuther. Ye knows ef a man hev a wife and young 'uns 'pendin' on him, an' arn't much 'forehanded, he'll work like th' devil. I've dun it, and ye hev ef ye war ever put ter it; but th' nig's, why the' hain't got no wives and young 'uns ter work fur--the law doan't 'low 'em ter hev any--the' hain't nary a thing but thar carcasses, an' them's thar masters'."
"You say a man works better for being free; then you must think 'twould be well to free the negroes?"
"In coorse, I does. Jest luk at them nig's o' mine; they're ter all 'tents an' purposes free, 'case I use 'em like men, an' the' knows the' kin go whenever the' d----d please. See how the' work--why, one on 'em does half as much agin as ony hard-driv' nigger in creation."
"What would you do with them, if they were _really_ free?"
"Du with 'em? why, hire 'em, an' make twice as much eout on 'em as I does now."
"But I don't think the two races were meant to live together."
"No more'n the' warn't. But 'tain't thar fault thet they's har. We hain't no right ter send 'em off. We orter stand by our'n an' our faders' doin's. The nig' keers more fur his hum, so durned pore as it ar', then ye or I does fur our'n. I'd pack sech off ter Libraria or th' devil, as wanted ter go, but I'd hev no 'pulsion 'bout it."
"Why, my good friend, you're half-brother to Garrison. You don't talk to your neighbors in this way?"
"Wal; I doan't;" he replied, laughing. "Ef I dun it, they'd treat me to a coat uv tar, and ride me out uv th' deestrict raather sudden, I reckon; but yer a Nuthener, an' the' all take nat'rally ter freedum, excep' th' d----d dough-faces, an' ye aren't one on 'em, I'll swar."
"Well, I'm not. Do many of your neighbors think as you do?"
"Reckon not many round har; but op in Cart'ret, whar I cum from, heaps on 'em do, though the' darn't say so."
By this time we had reached the still, and, directing his attention to the enormous quantity of rosin that had been run into the pit which I have spoken of, I asked him why he threw so much valuable material away.
"Wal, 'tain't wuth nothin' har. Thet's th' common, an' it won't bring in York, now, more'n a dollar forty-five. It costs a dollar an' two bits ter get it thar, and pay fur sellin' on it, an' th' barr'l's wuth th' diff'rence. I doan't ship nuthin wuss nor No. 2."
"What is No. 2?"
He took the head from one of the barrels, and with an adze cut out a small piece, then handing me the specimen, replied: "Now hole thet up ter th' sun. Ye'll see though its yaller, it's clean and clar. Thet's good No. 2, what brings now two dollars and two bits, in York, an' pays me 'bout a dollar a barr'l, its got eout o' second yar dip, an' as it comes eout uv th' still, is run through thet ar strainer," pointing to a coarse wire seive that lay near. "Th' common rosum, thet th' still's runnin' on now, is made eout on th' yaller dip--thet's th' kine o' turpentine thet runs from th' tree arter two yars' tappin'--we call it yallar dip ca'se it's allers dark. We doant strain common 't all, an' it's full uv chips and dirt. It's low now, but ef it shud ever git up, I'd tap thet ar' heap, barr'l it up, run a little fresh stilled inter it, an' 'twould be a'most so good as new."
"Then it is injured by being in the ground."
"Not much; it's jest as good fur ev'rything but makin' ile, puttin it in the 'arth sort o' takes th' sap eout on it, an' th' sap's th' ile. Natur' sucks thet eout, I s'pose, ter make th' trees grow--I expec' my bones 'ill fodder 'em one on these days."
"Rosin is put to very many uses?"
"Yes, but common's used mainly for ile and soap, th' Yankees put it inter hard yaller soap, 'case it makes it weigh, an' yer folks is up ter them doin's," and he looked at me and gave a sly laugh. I could not deny the "hard" impeachment, and said nothing. Taking a specimen of very clear light-colored rosin from a shelf in the still-house, I asked him what that quality was worth.
"Thet ar brought seven dollars, for two hundred an' eighty pounds, in York, airly this yar. It's th' very best No. 1; an' its hard ter make, 'case ef th' still gets overhet it turns it a tinge. Thet sort is run through two sieves, the coarse 'un, an' thet ar," pointing to another wire strainer, the meshes of which were as fine as those of the flour sieve used by housewives.
"Do your seven field hands produce enough 'dip' to keep your still a running?"
"No, I buys th' rest uv my naboors who haint no stills; an' th' Cunnel's down on me 'case I pay 'em more'n he will; but I go on Franklin's princerpel: 'a nimble sixpence's better'n a slow shillin.' A great ole feller thet, warn't he? I've got his life."
"And you practice on his precepts; that's the reason you've got on so well."
"Yas, thet, an' hard knocks. The best o' doctrin's am't wuth a d----n ef ye doan't work on 'em."
"That is true."
We shortly afterward went to the house, and there I passed several hours in conversation with my new friend and his excellent wife. The lady, after a while, showed me over the building. It was well-built, well-arranged, and had many conveniences I did not expect to find in a back-woods dwelling. She told me its timbers and covering were of well-seasoned yellow pine--which will last for centuries--and that it was built by a Yankee carpenter, whom they had "'ported" from Charleston, paying his fare, and giving him his living, and two dollars and a half a day. It had cost as near as she "cud reckon, 'bout two thousan' dollars."
It was five o'clock, when, shaking them warmly by the hand, I bade my pleasant friends "good-bye," and mounting my horse rode off to the Colonel's.
[Footnote J: The whiskey was kept in a back room, above ground, because the dwelling had no cellar. The fluid was kept safely, under lock and key, and the farmer accounted for that, by saying that his negroes would steal nothing but whiskey. Few country houses at the South have a cellar--that apartment deemed so essential by Northern housekeepers. The intervening space between the ground and the floor is there left open, to allow of a free circulation of air.]
[Footnote K: No regular dinner-hour is allowed the blacks on most turpentine plantations. Their food is usually either taken with them to the woods, or carried there by house servants, at stated times.]
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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18
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THE BURIAL OF "JULE."
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The family were at supper when I returned to the mansion, and, entering the room, I took my accustomed place at the table. None present seemed disposed to conversation. The little that was said was spoken in a low, subdued tone, and no allusion was made to the startling event of the day. At last the octoroon woman asked me if I had met Mrs. Barnes at the farmer's.
"Yes," I replied, "and I was greatly pleased with her. She seems one of those rare women who would lend grace to even the lowest station."
"She _is_ a rare woman; a true, sincere Christian. Every one loves her; but few know all her worth; only those do who have gone to her in sorrow and trial, as--" and her voice trembled, and her eyes moistened--"as I have."
And so that poor, outcast, despised, dishonored woman, scorned and cast-off by all the world, had found one sympathizing, pitying friend. Truly, "He tempers the wind to the shorn lamb."
When the meal was over, all but Madam P---- retired to the library. Tommy and I fell to reading, but the Colonel shortly rose and continued pacing up and down the apartment till the clock sounded eight. The lady then entered, and said to him.
"The negroes are ready, David; will _you_ go, Mr. K----?"
"I think not, madam," I replied; "at least not now."
I continued reading, for a time, when, tiring of the book, I laid it down, and followed them to the little burial-ground.
The grave of Sam was open, and the plantation blacks were gathered around it. In the centre of the group, and at the head of the rude coffin, the Colonel was seated, and near him the octoroon woman and her son. The old preacher was speaking.
"My chil'ren," he said: "she hab gone ter Him, wid har chile: gone up dar, whar dey doan't sorrer no more, whar dey doan't weep no more, whar all tears am wiped from dar eyes foreber. I knows she lay han's on harseff, and dat, my chil'ren, am whot none ob us shud do, 'case we'm de Lord's; He put us har, an' he'll take us 'way when we's fru wid our work, not afore. We hab no right ter gwo afore. Pore Juley did--but p'raps she cudn't help it. P'raps de great sorrer war so big in har heart, dat she cudn't fine rest nowhar but in de cole, dark riber. P'raps she warn't ter blame--p'raps," and here his eyes filled: "p'raps ole Pomp war all ter blame, for I tole har, my chil'ren"--he could say no more, and sinking down on a rude seat, he covered his face, and sobbed audibly. Even the Colonel's strong frame heaved with emotion, and not a dry eye was near. After a time the old man rose again, and with streaming eyes, and upturned face, continued: "Dars One up dar, my chil'ren, dat say: 'Come unter Me, all ye dat am a weary an' a heaby laden, an' I will gib you ress.' He, de good Lord, He say dat; and p'raps Juley hard Him say it, an' dat make har gwo." Again his voice failed, and he sank down, weeping and moaning as if his heart would break.
A pause followed, when the Colonel rose, and aided by Jim and two other blacks, with his own hands nailed down the lid, and lowered the rude coffin into the ground. Then the earth was thrown upon it, and then the long, low chant which the negroes raise over the dead, mingling now with sobs and moans, and breaking into a strange wild wail, went up among the pines, and floating off on the still night air, echoed through the dark woods, till it sounded like music from the grave. I have been in the chamber of the dying; I have seen the young and the beautiful laid away in the earth; but I never felt the solemn awfulness of death, as I did, when, in the stillness and darkness of night, I listened to the wild grief of that negro group, and saw the bodies of that slave mother and her child, lowered to their everlasting rest by the side of Sam.
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{
"id": "22960"
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19
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HOMEWARD.
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The morning broke bright and mellow with the rays of the winter sun, which in Carolina lends the warmth of October to the chills of January, when, with my portmanteau strapped, and my thin overcoat on my arm, I gave my last "God bless you" to the octoroon woman, and turned my face toward home.
Jim shouted "all ready," the driver cracked his whip, and we were on our way to Georgetown.
The recent rains had hardened the roads, the bridges were repaired, and we were whirled rapidly forward, and, at one o'clock, reached Bucksville. There we met a cordial welcome, and remained to dinner. Our host pressed us to pass the night at his house, but the Colonel had business with one of his secession friends residing down the road--my wayside acquaintance, Colonel A----, and desired to stay overnight with him. At three o'clock, bidding a kindly farewell to Captain B---- and his excellent family, we were again on our way.
The sun was just sinking among the western pines, when we turned into a broad avenue, lined with stately old trees, and rode up to the door-way of the rice-planter. It was a large, square, dingy old house, seated on a gentle knoll, a short half-mile from the river, along whose banks stretched the rice-fields. We entered, and were soon welcomed by its proprietor.
He received my friend warmly, and gave me a courteous greeting, remarking, when I mentioned that I was homeward bound, that it was wise to go. "Things are very unsettled; there's no telling what a day may bring forth; feeling is running very high, and a Northern man, whatever his principles, is not safe here. By-the-way," he added, "did you not meet with some little obstruction at Conwayboro', on your way up?"
"Yes, I did; a person there ordered me back, but when things began to look serious, Scipio, the negro whom you saw with me, got me out of the hobble."
"Didn't he tell the gentleman that you were a particular friend of mine, and had met me by appointment at Captain B----'s?" he asked, smiling.
"I believe he did, sir; but I assure you, _I_ said nothing of the kind, and I think the black should not be blamed, under the circumstances."
"Oh, no; I don't blame him. I think he did a smart thing. He might have said you were my grandmother, if it would have served you, for that low fellow is as fractious as the devil, and dead sure on the trigger."
"You are very good, sir," I replied: "how did you hear of it?"
"A day or two afterward, B---- passed here on his way to Georgetown. I had been riding out, and happened to be at the head of my avenue when he was going by. He stopped, and asked if I knew you. Not knowing, then, the circumstances, I said that I had met you casually at Bucksville, but had no particular acquaintance with you. He rode on, saying nothing further. The next morning, I had occasion to go to Georgetown, and at Mr. Fraser's office, accidentally heard that Scip--who is well-known and universally liked there--was to have a public whipping that evening. Something prompted me to inquire into it, and I was told that he had been charged by B---- with shielding a well-known abolitionist at Conwayboro'--a man who was going through the up-country, distributing such damnable publications as the New York _Independent_ and _Tribune_. I knew, of course, it referred to you, and that it wasn't true. I went to Scip and got the facts, and by stretching the truth a little, finally got him off. There was a slight discrepancy between my two accounts of you" (and here he laughed heartily), "and B----, when we were before the Justice, remarked on it, and came d----d near calling me a liar. It was lucky he didn't, for if he had, he'd have gone to h--l before the place was hot enough for him."
"I cannot tell you, my dear sir, how grateful I am to you for this. It would have pained me more than I can express, if Scip had suffered for doing a disinterested kindness to me."
Early in the morning we were again on our way, and twelve o'clock found us seated at a dinner of bacon, corn-bread, and waffles, in the "first hotel" of Georgetown. The Charleston boat was to leave at three o'clock; and, as soon as dinner was over, I sallied out to find Scip. After a half-hour's search I found him on "Shackelford's wharf," engaged in loading a schooner bound for New York with a cargo of cotton and turpentine.
He was delighted to see me, and when I had told him I was going home, and might never see him again, I took his hand warmly in mine, and said: "Scip, I have heard of the disgrace that was near being put upon you on my account, and I feel deeply the disinterested service you did to me; now, I _can not_ go away without doing _something_ for you--showing you in _some_ way that I appreciate and _like_ you."
"I like's _you_, massa," he replied, the tears coming to his eyes: "I tuk ter you de bery fuss day I seed you, 'case, I s'pose," and he wrung my hand till it ached: "you pitied de pore brack man. But you karnt do nuffin fur _me_, massa; I doant want nuffin; I doant want ter leab har, 'case de Lord dat put me har, arn't willin' I shud gwo. But you kin do suffin, massa, fur de pore brack man,--an' dat'll be doin' it fur _me_, 'case my heart am all in dat. You kin tell dem folks up dar, whar you lib, massa, dat we'm not like de brutes, as dey tink we is. Dat we's got souls, an' telligence, an' feelin's, an' am men like demselfs. You kin tell 'em, too, massa,--'case you's edication, and kin talk--how de pore wite man 'am kep' down har; how he'm ragged, an' starvin', an' ob no account, 'case de brack man am a slave. How der chil'ren can't get no schulein', how eben de grow'd up ones doan't know nuffin--not eben so much as de pore brack slave, 'case de 'stockracy wan't dar votes, an cudn't get 'em ef dey 'low'd 'em larning. Ef your folks know'd all de trufh--ef dey know'd how both de brack an' de pore w'ite man, am on de groun', and can't git up, ob demselfs--dey'd do _suffin'_--dey'd break de Constertution--dey'd do suffin' ter help us. I doant want no one hurted, I doant want no one wronged; but jess tink ob it, massa, four million ob bracks, and nigh so many pore wites, wid de bressed gospil shinin' down on 'em, an' dey not knowin' on it. All dem--ebry one of 'em--made in de image ob de great God, an' dey driven roun', an' 'bused wuss dan de brutes. You's seed dis, massa, wid your own eyes, an' you kin tell 'em on it; an' you _will_ tell 'em on it, massa;" and again he took my hand while the tears rolled down his cheeks; "an' Scip will bress you fur it, massa; wid his bery lass breaf he'll bress you; an' de good Lord will bress you, too, massa; He will foreber bress you, for He'm on de side ob de pore, an' de 'flicted: His own book say dat, an' it am true, I knows it, fur I feels it _har_;" and he laid his hand on his heart, and was silent.
I could not speak for a moment. When I mastered my feelings, I said, "I _will_ do it Scip; as God gives me strength, I _will_."
Reader, I am keeping my word.
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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20
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CONCLUSION.
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This is not a work of fiction. It is a record of facts, and therefore the reader will not expect me to dispose of its various characters on artistic principles--that is, lay them away in one of those final receptacles for the creations of the romancer--the grave and matrimony. Death has been among them, but nearly all are yet doing their work in this breathing, busy world.
The characters I have introduced are real. They are not drawn with the pencil of fancy, nor, I trust, colored with the tints of prejudice. The scenes I have described are true. I have taken some liberties with the names of persons and places, and, in a few instances, altered dates; but the events themselves occurred under my own observation. No one acquainted with the section of country I have described, or familiar with the characters I have delineated, will question this statement. Lest some one who has not seen the slave and the poor white man of the South, as he actually is, should deem my picture overdrawn, I will say that "the half has not been told!" If the whole were related--if the Southern system, in all its naked ugliness, were fully exposed--the truth would read like fiction, and the baldest relation of fact like the wildest dream, of romance.
* * * * * The overseer was never taken. A letter which I received from Colonel J----, shortly prior to the stoppage of the mails, informed me that Moye had succeeded in crossing the mountains into Tennessee, where, in an interior town, he disposed of the horse, and then made his way by an inland route to the free states. The horse the Colonel had recovered, but the overseer he never expected to see. Moye is now, no doubt, somewhere in the North, and is probably at this present writing a zealous Union man, of somewhat the same "stripe" as the conductors of the New York _Herald_ and the Boston _Courier_.
I have not heard directly from Scipio, but one day last July, after a long search, I found on one of the wharves of South Street, a coasting captain, who knew him well, and who had seen him the month previous at Georgetown. He was at that time pursuing his usual avocations, and was as much respected and trusted, as when I met him.
A few days after the tidings of the fall of Sumter were received in New York, and when I had witnessed the spontaneous and universal uprising of the North, which followed that event, I dispatched letters to several of my Southern friends, giving them as near as I could an account of the true state of feeling here, and representing the utter madness of the course the South was pursuing. One of these letters went to my Union acquaintance whom I have called, in the preceding pages, "Andy Jones."
He promptly replied, and a pretty regular correspondence ensued between us, which has continued, at intervals, even since the suspension of intercourse between the North and the South.
Andy has stood firmly and nobly by the old flag. At the risk of every thing, he has boldly expressed his sentiments everywhere. With his life in his hand, and--a revolver in each of his breeches-pockets, he walked the streets of Wilmington when the secession fever was at its height, openly proclaiming his undying loyalty to the Union, and "no man dared gainsay him."
But with all his patriotism, Andy keeps a bright eye on the "main chance." Like his brother, the Northern Yankee, whom he somewhat resembles and greatly admires, he never omits an opportunity of "turning an honest penny." In defiance of custom-house regulations, and of our strict blockade, he has carried on a more or less regular traffic with New York and Boston (_via_ Halifax and other neutral ports), ever since North Carolina seceded. His turpentine--while it was still his property--has been sold in the New York market, under the very eyes of the government officials--and, honest reader, _I_ have known of it.
By various roundabout means, I have recently received letters from him. His last, dated in April, and brought to a neutral port by a shipmaster whom he implicitly trusts, has reached me since the previous chapters were written. It covers six pages of foolscap, and is written in defiance of all grammatical and orthographical principles; but as it conveys important intelligence, in regard to some of the persons mentioned in this narrative, I will transcribe a portion of it.
It gave me the melancholy tidings of the death of Colonel J----. He had joined the Confederate army, and fell, bravely meeting a charge of the Massachusetts troops, at Roanoke.
On receiving the news of his friend's death, Andy rode over to the plantation, and found Madam P---- plunged in the deepest grief. While he was there a letter arrived from Charleston, with intelligence of the dangerous illness of her son. This second blow crushed her. For several days she was delirious, and her life despaired of; but throughout the whole the noble corn-cracker, neglecting every thing, remained beside her.
When she returned to herself, and had in a measure recovered her strength, she learned that the Colonel had left no will; that she was still a slave; and soon to be sold, with the rest of the Colonel's _personal property_, according to law.
This is what Andy writes about the affair. I give the letter as he wrote it, merely correcting the punctuation, and enough of the spelling, to make it intelligible.
"W'en I hard thet th' Cunel hadent leff no wil, I was hard put what ter dew; but arter thinkin' on it over a spell, I knowed shede har on it sumhow; so I 'cluded to tel har miseff. She tuk on d----d hard at fust, but arter a bit, grew more calm like, and then she sed it war God's wil, an' she wudent komplane. Ye nows I've got a wife, but wen the ma'am sed thet, she luk'd so like an angel, thet d----d eff I cud help puttin' my arms round har, an' hugin' on har, till she a'moste screeched. Wal, I toled har, Id stan' by har eff evrithing went ter h--l--an I wil, by ----.
"I made up mi minde to onst, what ter dew. It war darned harde work tur bee'way from hum jess then, but I war in fur it; soe I put ter Charleston, ter see th' Cunel's 'oman. Wal, I seed har, an' I toled har how th' ma'am felte, an' how mutch shede dun at makein' th' Cunel's money--(she made nigh th' hul on it, 'case he war alers keerles, an' tuk no 'count uv things; eff tadent ben fur thet, hede made a wil,) an' I axed har ter see thet the ma'am had free papers ter onst. An' whot der ye 'spoze she sed? Nuthin, by ---- 'cept she dident no nuthin' 'bout bisniss, an' leff all uv sech things ter har loryer. Wal, then I went ter him--he ar one on them slick, ily, seceshun houn's, who'd sell thar soles fur a kountterfit dollar--an' he toled me, th' 'ministratur hadent sot yit, an' he cudent dew nuthin til he hed. Ses I: 'ye mean th' 'ooman's got ter gwo ter th' hi'est bider?' 'Yas,' he sed, 'the Cunel's got dets, an' the've got ter bee pade, an' th' persoonel prop'ty muste bee sold ter dew it.' Then I sed, 'twud bee sum time fore thet war dun, an' the 'ooman's 'most ded an' uv no use now; 'what'll ye _hire_ har tur me fur.' He sed a hun'red for sicks months. I planked down the money ter onst, an' put off.
"I war bilin' over, but it sumhow cum inter my hed thet the Cunnel's 'ooman cudn't bee _all_ stun; so I gose thar agin; an' I toled har what the loryer sed, an' made a reg'lar stump-'peal tew har bettar natur. I axed har eff she'd leff the 'ooman who'd made har husban's fortun, who war the muther ov his chil'ren, who fur twenty yar, hed nussed him in sickness, an' cheered him in healtf; ef shede let _thet 'ooman_, bee auckyund off ter th' hi'est bider. I axed al thet, an' what der ye think she sed, Why jest this. ' _I_ doant no nuthin' bout it, Mister Jones. Ye raily must talke ter mi loryer; them maters I leaves 'tirely ter him.' Then, I sed, I 'spozed the niggers war ter bee advertist. 'O, yas!' she sed, (an' ye see, she know'd a d----d site 'bout _thet_), 'all on 'em muss be solde, 'case, ye knows, I never did luv the kuntry,--'sides _I_ cud'ent karry on the plantashun, no how.' Then, sed I: 'the Orlean's traders 'ill be thar--an' she wunt sell fur but one use, fur she's hansum yit; an' ma'am, ye wunt leff a 'ooman as white as you is, who fur twenty yar, hes ben a tru an' fatheful _wife_ tar yer own ded husban,' (I shudn't hev put thet in, but d----d ef I cud help it,) ye wunt put _har_ up on the block, an' hev har struck down ter the hi'est bider, ter bee made a d---- d---- on?'
"Wal, I s'pose she hadent forgot thet, fur more'n twelve yar, the Cunnel hed _luv'd_ t'other 'ooman, an' onely _liked_ har; fur w'en I sed thet, har ize snapped like h--l, an' she screetched eout thet she dident 'low no sech wurds in har hous', an' ordurd me ter leave. Mi'tey sqeemish thet, warn't it? bein' as shede ben fur so mony yar the Cunnel's ----, an' th' tuther one his raal wife.
"Wal, I _did_ leav'; but I left a piece of mi mind a-hind. I toled har I'de buy that ar 'ooman ef she cost all I war wuth and I had ter pawne my sole ter git the money; an' I added, jess by way ov sweet'nin' the pill, thet I ow'd all I hed ter har husband, an' dident furget _my_ debts ef she did _her'n_, an' ef his own wife disgraced him, I'd be d----d ef _I_ wud.
"Wal, I've got th' ma'am an' har boy ter hum, an' my 'ooman hes tuk ter har a heep. I doant no w'en the sale's ter cum off, but ye may bet hi' on my beein' thar; an' I'll buy har ef I hev ter go my hull pile on har, an' borrer th' money fur ole Pomp. But _he'll_ go cheap, 'case the Cunnel's deth nigh dun him up. It clean killed Ante Lucey. She never held her hed up arter she heerd 'Masser Davy' war dead, fur she sot har vary life on him. Don't ye fele consarned 'bout the ma'am--I knows ye sot hi' on har--_I'll buy har_, shore. Thet an' deth ar th' onely things thet I knows on, in this wurld, jess now, that ar SARTIN."
Such is Andy's letter. Mis-spelled and profane though it be, I would not alter a word or a syllable of it. It deserves to be written in characters of gold, and hung up in the sky, where it might be read by all the world. And it _is_ written in the sky--in the great record-book--and it will be read when you and I, reader, meet the assembled universe, to give account of what _we_ have done and written. God grant that our record may show some such deed as that!
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{
"id": "22960"
}
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1
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CAPTAIN GRAYBROOK'S HOME.
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A heavy gale was blowing, which shook the windows of the little drawing-room in which Mrs Graybrook and her daughter Hannah were seated at their work.
Their cottage was situated close to the sea on the north coast of Wales, so that from it, on a clear day, many a tall ship bound for Liverpool, or sailing from that port, could be seen through the telescope which stood ever ready pointed across the water.
A lamp burning on the table, for it was night, shed its light on the comely features and matronly figure of the elder lady, as she busily plied her needle, while it showed that those of Hannah, a fair and interesting-looking girl just growing into womanhood, were unusually pale. Every now and then she unconsciously let her work drop on her lap while, with her eyes turned towards the window and lips apart, she seemed to be listening for some sound which her mother's ear had not noticed.
A glance into the little room might have shown why both mother and daughter should feel anxious when tempests were raging and the sea was tossing with angry waves.
The mantel-piece was ornamented with some beautiful branches of coral, several large and rare shells, and two horns of the narwhal, or sea-unicorn, fixed against the wall, and above it was the picture of a ship under all sail, with boats hoisted up along her sides, and flags flying at her mastheads and peak. On the top of a bookcase stood the perfect model of a vessel; another part of the wall was adorned with Indian bows and spears and clubs, arranged in symmetrical order; while one side of the room was hung with pictures, in which boats in chase of the mighty monsters of the deep formed the chief subjects, or which represented scenes on the coasts of far-distant lands.
Hannah had more than once risen and gone to the window, across which-- for the weather was still warm--the curtain had only partially been drawn.
Another fierce blast shook the whole house.
"Oh, mother, what a dreadful night it is!" she exclaimed, at length. "I fancied I heard the sound of a distant gun; it must come from some ship in distress. What can she do if embayed off our shore in this terrific gale?"
Mrs Graybrook looked up from her work.
"I was thinking, my child, how thankful we should be that the _Steadfast_ has long ago been far away from this. Your father and Harry are enjoying, I hope, smooth seas and gentle breezes, and may such, I pray, follow them wherever they go."
"I trust that they are, mother; but still I cannot help feeling anxious on such a night as this, with the wind howling and raging round us, when I think in what condition a ship must be placed, exposed on the wild sea to its fury."
"Your father has often said that he cares little for the heaviest gale, provided he has plenty of sea-room; and a better-found ship and stauncher crew than his, he declares, does not sail out of the port of Liverpool."
"I know that he has great faith in the _Steadfast's_ good qualities; but even the finest ship may meet with accidents; and oh, how many are the dangers she must have to run before she returns home!" said Hannah, with a sigh.
"Your father is a careful navigator, my dear, and he has vigilant officers. His first mate is a tried hand, and he considers Leonard Champion, his second mate, young as he is, an excellent seaman and fully capable of taking charge of a ship; he hopes, indeed, to get him the command of one when he returns, though he would be sorry to lose him."
"I know that, mother; and I am wrong to express my fears," answered Hannah. "Still I cannot help feeling for the poor seamen who may be battling with the tempest to-night; and that makes me more anxious, perhaps, about those who are far away, and of the dangers to which they may be exposed. Surely there was another gun!"
She again went to the window, and, throwing it open, looked out into the darkness. The fierce wind coming in made the curtains flutter, and almost blew out the lamp.
"I saw the flash of a gun, mother. It is in the direction of those dark rocks which lift their heads above the water!" exclaimed Hannah. "Ah! I heard the sound also. There is another flash! They must have come from some unfortunate ship. Perhaps she is already on the rocks. Can any boat venture out to her assistance in a storm like this? I will shut the window directly, mother," she added, looking round, and trying to catch the fluttering curtains.
Again she looked out. "I cannot be mistaken!" she exclaimed, the tone of her voice showing her anxiety. "There is another gun. The ship must be in fearful peril! Can nothing be done to help the poor people?"
Mrs Graybrook, convinced that Hannah was right in her conjecture, came to the window, and mother and daughter stood gazing out for some minutes, and trying to penetrate the thick gloom which hung over the wild, tempestuous sea raging below them.
A fiercer blast than before, which drove the rain and spray against their faces, compelled them to close the window; yet Hannah could not withdraw herself from it, for she still caught an occasional flash, and could distinguish the roar of the guns even amidst the howling of the wind.
"What help can we render to them?" she again asked.
"We may give them aid--all the aid which we have the power to give," said Mrs Graybrook, placing her work on the table. "We can pray for them as we pray for those who are far away."
"I never cease to pray for those dear ones, mother, morning and evening, and every hour of the day," said Hannah. "Oh, that they had learned to pray for themselves," she murmured; "to seek that aid in time of need which will never be withheld!"
Together the mother and daughter knelt, and offered up their prayers to the throne of grace, that help might be sent to those near at hand, while their petitions went up also for those loved ones at a distance. They knew that the all-seeing eye of the God of mercy could follow them, that His far-reaching hand could protect them, and that, feeble as were their petitions, He heard and would grant them if He saw fit.
They rose with hearts cheered and comforted.
"I should indeed be happier if Harry had known and accepted the truth," said Mrs Graybrook, continuing the conversation just before begun. "He is so light-hearted, and, enjoying health and strength, so confident in himself, that his mind has hitherto appeared incapable of attending to spiritual things; though, when I have spoken to him, he has respectfully listened with a grave countenance; but the subject has evidently not been to his taste. My grief is, also, that your father so admires his bold and daring spirit, that he encourages him to think more of the things of this world than of the future. Excellent as your father is, too, he has not had the same advantages of receiving religious instruction which we have possessed, and is therefore unable to impart it to Harry. This made me very unwilling that your brother should go to sea before he was a confirmed Christian; but your father was so determined to take him that I was compelled to consent."
Mrs Graybrook would not have spoken thus to Hannah of her father's want of religious principle, but that she knew her daughter was well aware of it, and mourned for it with her, while she had often joined with her in prayer that he might be brought to know the truth. Mrs Graybrook had far too much delicacy and sense of what is right, under other circumstances, to have spoken to her daughter in any way which might have appeared disrespectful of Captain Graybrook, for whom they both entertained the deepest affection. Her true and faithful love for her husband made her feel as she did; for, having learned the value of her own soul, she was anxious about his and that of her dear boy.
"I at first had hoped that Leonard Champion would have proved an advantageous companion to Harry," continued Mrs Graybrook. "But, if not inclined to laugh at religion, he is, I fear, ignorant of its vital truths or indifferent to them, and Harry therefore cannot be benefited through his means."
Hannah sighed.
"You are right, mamma; Mr Champion cannot lead Harry to the fountain in which he does not see the need of being washed himself. I spoke to him earnestly on the subject, but without avail, though he accepted some books which I offered him, and promised to read them when he had time."
The two ladies had, since they settled in Wales, enjoyed the ministry of one of those gifted servants of God, to whom the honour has been given of winning souls to Christ by their preaching and private exhortations. He had been a frequent visitor at the cottage; and mother and daughter, having accepted the truth, had been built up in their faith, becoming earnest yet humble Christians.
This was after Harry went to school. During his short holidays, though his mother and sister had often earnestly and lovingly spoken to him, they had made no apparent impression on his mind, all his thoughts being set on going to sea. His mother had now deeply to regret that she herself, ignorant of the truth during his childhood's days, had been unable to instruct him while his young mind was ready to receive the religious knowledge she might have imparted.
How many a mother must feel as she did!
Captain Graybrook had been constantly at sea, and when he came home for a brief visit, though he remarked the change in his wife and daughter, and found that they were unwilling to engage in any of the frivolous amusements of society, he looked upon the opinions they expressed as mere passing fancies, and begged to be excused from listening to the preacher of whom they spoke so highly.
"Those sort of things are very good, my dear wife, for some people," he answered, carelessly; "but sailors have no time to attend to them; I, at all events, have not, for I have to see to the refitting of the ship; and you must acknowledge that I have been a good husband and father. I have done my duty; and what more can you want of me?"
"The best of human beings are sinful by nature, and have committed numberless sins, and require to be washed in the blood of Jesus to fit them to enter into the presence of a pure and holy God," answered Mrs Graybrook, gently.
"I dare say it is all true," said the captain, kissing his wife. "You are a good creature, and mean well; but I have not time to listen now, and must be off; so good-bye, Betty, good-bye!" and he hurried away.
Hannah had entertained hopes of inducing her father's young mate, Leonard Champion, to listen to the subject which occupied her thoughts. He had been a frequent visitor at the house while the ship was undergoing repairs in the dockyard, for he was an especial favourite of her father.
He was a young man of superior attainments, not having gone to sea till he had completed his education at school and had entered college. At that time, his father, who was a merchant, dying just as his firm, by unforeseen circumstances, had become bankrupt, Leonard was left destitute. He had always had a predilection for the sea, and Captain Graybrook, an old friend of his father, at once offered, in the most liberal way, to give him an outfit and to receive him on board his ship.
Leonard thankfully accepted the offer, and, devoting all his energies and talents to acquire a knowledge of the profession he had entered, soon became an excellent navigator and a first-rate seaman. Delighting in his new calling, generous and good-natured as he was cool and daring in danger, he won the confidence of his captain, and was beloved and willingly obeyed by the crew.
He had not seen the captain's daughter till the last time the ship returned home, and had not expected to find her so engaging and refined a girl. He was, in her sight, superior to any one she had ever met, and her affections were engaged before she was aware of the state of her own feelings. He did not conceal his, and, little versed in the ways of the world, while utterly free from deceit, he expressed his opinions with a freedom which many persons under the circumstances would not have done. Hannah, though admiring his many fine qualities, could not forget that he was destitute of the most important of all things--sound religious principle. Not denying the interest she felt in him, she distinctly told him that she would never engage herself to marry one who did not desire faithfully to serve the same God and Master whom she did.
Leonard did not clearly understand her meaning, as, indeed, no one still following the ways of the world can comprehend the spiritually minded.
In vain she spoke to him. Perhaps not till he had sailed did she discover how completely, in spite of her resolutions, she had given him her heart. All she could now do was to pray that the young sailor might be brought to a knowledge of the truth.
That evening, while the storm was raging, her mind had been far away on board the _Steadfast_, and her heart sickened as she remembered the dangers to which he might be exposed, and the hazardous pursuit in which he was engaged.
"Perhaps Mr Champion may give Harry some of the books to read which he took with him," observed Hannah. "I chose such as I thought most likely to interest him."
"I fear Harry is very little addicted to reading," answered Mrs Graybrook.
"Is there no one else on board likely to speak to Harry on religious subjects, mother? Are none of the other mates Christians?" asked Hannah, anxiously.
"I fear not," said Mrs Graybrook. "There is, however, old Tom Hayes, who has sailed for many years with your father, and has frequently been at our house. I have at times heard him let drop expressions which induced me to believe that he is a Christian man. Your father has spoken of him as a Methodist, and observed that, though he did not think much of his opinions, he was the most sober and steady man he ever had with him, and one of his best boat-steerers and harpooners. I remember being struck by the old man's calm and intelligent countenance and his gentle and unassuming manners, which true and simple religious faith could alone impart. When we were last on board the ship he expressed himself more openly to me than he had ever before done. I spoke to him about Harry, and he assured me that he would do his best to look after him and keep him out of danger. He was going to say more, when he was called away to attend to some duty, and I had no other opportunity of speaking to him."
"I remember the old sailor," said Hannah. "How I wish that I had thought of talking with him! But I am afraid that Harry will not be inclined to listen to anything which a person whom he will look upon as his inferior may say to him. Still the old man may be able to speak to him, and if he is, as you think, a true Christian, he will certainly endeavour to do so."
"After all, dear Hannah, while we rest assured that God will hear our petitions, we must remember that He knows best how to answer them," observed Mrs Graybrook. "Confiding in His love, let our hearts be comforted."
More than once the conversation of the mother and daughter had been interrupted by the loud uproar of the storm, and Jane, their maid-servant, who had been sitting by herself in the kitchen, came running in, exclaiming that she was afraid the whole house would be blown away.
"It has stood many a severer gale than this, Jane," answered her mistress. "But bring your work in here, as you are alarmed at being alone," she added, kindly. "We should be worse off if we were to run out into the garden."
The girl thankfully took advantage of Mrs Graybrook's permission to sit in the drawing-room; and her presence prevented the two ladies from speaking further on the subject which occupied their thoughts.
The usual time for their evening prayers arrived.
It seemed to Hannah, even while they were on their knees, that the gale blew with less fury than before. It was, indeed, one of those storms which occasionally, during the equinox, sweep along the coast, and, though brief, cause much damage to vessels caught near the shore, especially to such as are ill-found and ill-manned. So do the trials of life wreck those persons destitute of sound faith and religious principle, while those who are resting on Jesus are carried through them and preserved.
Next morning the wind had ceased, and the sun shone forth.
Hannah anxiously looked through the telescope in the direction she had seen the flashes of the guns. There lay a large ship on the rocks, but her masts were standing, and boats were passing to and fro from the shore. She was greatly relieved when she soon afterwards heard that, though the ship had received much damage, no lives had been lost.
"I was wrong last night in giving way to my faithless fears and running the risk of alarming you, my dear mother," she said, with a smile. "I feel my heart happier this morning, and believe that God will protect those we love, and that we shall yet see the _Steadfast_, with a full cargo, sailing back towards the Mersey, and, better still, that father and Harry" (she could not bring herself to utter the name of Leonard Champion aloud) "may have accepted the truth, and then--" and she looked upwards--"when we are called upon to part, we may know that we shall meet together to enjoy the glorious happiness which our gracious Saviour has prepared for all those who love Him."
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{
"id": "23072"
}
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2
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WHALING IN THE PACIFIC.
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The _Steadfast_, South Sea whaler, having doubled Cape Horn, was traversing the broad waters of the Pacific. Royals and studding-sails were set to catch the light breeze which sent her gliding majestically along over the calm ocean; her six whaleboats, with stem and stern alike, hung from the davits above her black sides. A tropical sun shone down on her deck, making the pitch hiss and bubble in the seams, and driving all on deck whose duty did not compel them to keep elsewhere, into such shade as the sails and bulwarks afforded.
Captain Graybrook, a fine-looking man, with an open, intelligent expression of countenance, stood aft, sextant in hand, prepared to take a meridional altitude. Near him was his second mate, Leonard Champion, with two boys, one of whom also held a sextant.
"You can now, Harry, take an observation as well as I can, and before long, if you pay attention, you will become a good navigator," observed the young mate.
"Thank you for teaching me, Mr Champion; that's just my wish," answered Harry.
"Where there's a will there's a way; and you, Mr Bass," said the mate, turning to the other boy, "ought to do as well as Harry by this time."
"Dickey is fonder of skylarking than shooting the stars," remarked Harry, laughing.
"Not fonder than you are, Harry," retorted Dickey Bass, who was the son of a former shipmate of Captain Graybrook, and brought by him to sea through regard for the boy's father. "I don't happen to understand sums as well as you do, and so I don't always get my day's work done as correctly as yours."
"Always! why, if we were to go by your reckoning, Dickey, we should have been in the middle of the forests of South America, or on the top of the Andes, before now. When did you ever make a right calculation?" asked Harry, who delighted in bantering Dickey, though they were really great friends.
"Why, for the last fortnight I don't suppose I have been more than eight or ten degrees out at the utmost."
Mr Champion and Harry laughed heartily.
"Rather a serious error, Mr Bass."
"I meant minutes," said Dickey, "or perhaps seconds; I always forget which is which."
At that moment Captain Graybrook lifted his instrument to his eye, and the mate and Harry followed his example.
"The sun has dipped; make it noon," said the captain; and the ship's bell was struck.
Having written off their observations and quickly made their calculations, the ship was found to be about seventeen degrees south of the line, off the coast of Peru.
Look-out men were sent aloft, for they were now approaching a part of the ocean where whales were in those days likely to be found. As they looked over the side, many polypi, medusae, and squid were observed floating on the surface; and occasionally a covey of flying-fish, rising from the water, darted rapidly over it, quickly again, as their brilliant wings dried, to sink down and become the prey of their enemies, the dolphin or bonito. A seaman had just hauled a bucket of water on deck. Within it was a gelatinous-looking mass. The mate and his young companions examined it.
"That is part of a squid," he observed, "the whale's food. Probably the remainder is down the monster's maw. We shall sight a whale before the day is over, I hope."
"I hope so too," said Harry. "I long to see one killed and brought alongside. We have had a dull time of it since we touched at Valparaiso. I thought we should have captured a dozen or more before this."
"You will have to learn patience at sea, my boy," observed the mate. "We have three years to remain out, and may consider ourselves fortunate if we get a full ship at the end of that time."
The sextants had been returned to their cases in the cabin, and Harry and his chum, Dickey Bass, finding it very hot, seated themselves in the shade by the side of a gun, of which the _Steadfast_ carried eight, besides a good supply of muskets and cutlasses and other weapons; for, having to visit regions inhabited by fierce and savage tribes, she was well armed.
"I say, Harry, what was old Tom talking to you about in your watch last night, and what made you look so grave this morning? I could not tell what had come over you," said Dickey Bass.
"He asked me whether I was prepared to die. I thought it an odd question."
"I should think it was," said young Bass. "What did you say in return?"
"I told him that I had not thought about it, and that, as I enjoyed life, I had no intention of leaving it," answered Harry. "He then reminded me that I might fall overboard any day, or the ship might be lost with all hands, or the boat in which I happened to be might be capsized, or I might die of fever, or be cut off by savages, or that I might lose my life in a number of other ways. He asked me, if any of these disagreeable things were to happen, where I expected to go. I told him, of course, that I wished to go to heaven; and he then inquired what right I had to go there."
"I do not think he had any right to ask you any such questions," observed Harry's companion. "I should have told him to mind his own business. I do not like to be bothered by that sort of questions."
"I could not answer him in that way," replied Harry, "for he spoke very kindly. He is, besides, an old man, and has been for a number of years with my father, who thinks highly of him, for I have heard him say so. Besides, he has taken great pains to teach me seamanship, always tells me anything I ask him; and if it were not for him I should not know half as much as I do."
"Still, I do not see why he should try to frighten you about dying, or ask you where you expect to go if you do. It looks as if he doubted that you would go to heaven," said Dickey.
"He told me very distinctly that I had no claim whatever to go there, and that unless my sins were washed away, the Bible says that I should be unfit to go there; that heaven is a pure and holy place, and that all people are impure and unholy," said Harry, in a graver tone than usual.
"But I suppose he wants you to become religious, and read good books, and give up laughing and singing and being the capital jolly fellow you are now, Harry," interrupted Dickey Bass. "If I were you, I would not listen to him; neither your father nor Mr Champion ever speaks to us in that way. Just forget all he said, and drive dull care away."
"I have already forgotten, I am afraid, a great deal that he said," answered Harry; "but he seemed, at all events, very much in earnest, and I cannot help remembering some of the things. Besides, Mr Champion has lately spoken to me more seriously than he has ever done before; and only last Sunday he gave me a book to read, and told me that he thought it would do me good. As I found my sister Hannah's name in it, I suppose she asked him to give it to me, and that he had forgotten to do so till then."
"I saw you with one in your hand. Did you read it?" asked young Bass.
"It seemed very dry, and I fell asleep over it, so that I cannot say I know much about it," answered Harry.
"The best thing you could have done," remarked Dickey. "Whatever you do, Harry, don't turn Methodist. I cannot say that I admire old Tom, and do not want you to become like him. To my mind he is a dull, stiff old fellow, with a very good opinion of himself, and I have never felt inclined to be intimate with him."
"I did not at first; but he seemed so anxious to help me, and to put me up to all sorts of things, that I could not help liking him, though I own that I would rather he did not talk to me about religion. The next time he does so I shall try to get him to change the subject."
"Of course you must," said Dickey Bass. "It's all very well for parsons and ministers, but an old boat-steerer has no business to trouble one with such things. Why, I only yesterday heard him lecturing Rob Burton there, the merriest, happiest fellow in the ship;" and he pointed to a fine, active-looking young seaman at work on the other side of the deck. "I have a notion that he was talking to him about his soul and death, as if he was not likely to live as long as any one on board, and longer too than most of the old hands. Why should he put melancholy thoughts into his head, and take the pluck out of him?"
"I suppose he thought Rob Burton careless about religious matters, and wanted to get him to read his good books and tracts," observed Harry. "Old Tom means well, at all events."
"He may mean well, but for my part I don't like those well-meaning fellows," answered Dickey. "If I catch him lecturing you I will join in, and we will soon put a stop to his preaching."
The thoughtless lads talked on for some time in the same strain, till any good effect which the conversation Tom Hayes had held with Harry might have produced on him was completely eradicated.
They were interrupted by a startling cry from the masthead, so welcome to a whaler's ears, of "There she spouts!" and in a moment the crew, hitherto so lethargic, were aroused into action. Some flew to the falls, to lower a couple of boats, others sprang up the shrouds, to observe the position of the whale; and soon afterwards the boats, of which the first and second mates had the command, shoved off from the ship's side. Another cry came of "There again!" indicating that the whale had once more come to the surface, and was spouting. The monster was at no great distance. Mr Gibson, the first mate, took the lead, pulling the bow oar of his boat, that he might be ready to strike the harpoon into the animal as soon as it was reached.
Harry and his friend were in the rigging watching the proceedings.
Quitting his oar, the mate stood up, harpoon in hand; it flew from his grasp just in time to strike the monster, which was about to "sound," or dive. The line attached to the weapon led aft to a tub, in which it lay coiled at the bottom of the boat. The mate, who acted as boat-steerer, now came to his proper place in the stern, where he guided the boat by an oar passed through a ring called a grummet, while the headsman, who had before been steering, took his place in the bow, armed with several lances, ready to plunge into the body of the whale the instant it again appeared.
After some minutes, up came the monster, lying somewhat exhausted with its exertions to escape and the effects of the harpoon in its body. The boat pulling close up to it, the headsman thrust first one lance and then another into its body, near the fin, shouting as he did so, "Stern all." Instantly the boat backed away as fast as the crew could use their oars, only just in time to avoid the violent movements of the monster, which now reared its tail, lashing the water into foam, and, lifting its enormous head, threatened destruction to its assailants with its formidable jaws. Suddenly its movements ceased, and the boat-steerers, believing that its last struggles were over, and eager to secure their victim, urged their men to give way towards it.
The first mate's boat still took the lead, and approached with less caution than usual. The apparently vanquished monster, as it saw her, without a moment's warning whirled round its enormous tail, which, striking her, sent the boat flying into the air, scattering her crew on either side in the blood-stained water, when it rushed forward with open mouth to attack Mr Champion's boat. He narrowly avoided the fierce assault, and then boldly steered to the assistance of his shipmates, who were struggling for their lives. Once more the whale turned, dragging the boat after it, swimming directly through the midst of the men in the water.
The accident had been clearly seen from the ship. Several had been picked up. Mr Champion then steered towards the whale, which was in its death struggle a short distance off. Another boat had been lowered to go to his assistance, under the command of Tom Hayes.
In a short time, the first mate's boat having been righted, all three were seen returning.
"Any one hurt, Mr Gibson?" inquired the captain, as the whale was brought alongside.
"Sorry to say, sir, that Rob Burton has gone," was the answer. "Either the whale or the boat struck him, and he went down like a shot."
"Poor Rob Burton!" exclaimed several voices. "The gayest and best-hearted fellow aboard."
"Dickey, you said he was likely to live as long as any of us," remarked Harry, very much shocked. "I wonder whether he listened to what old Tom said to him?"
"It's not a subject I like to think about," answered Dickey. "I wish it had not happened."
"So do I. But our wishes cannot bring poor Burton to life again," observed Harry. "I cannot help thinking that old Tom must be right; and when he speaks to me I think I ought to listen to what he says."
"Now, Harry, don't let this thing make you turn Methodist!" exclaimed Bass, after a silence of some minutes. "It is very shocking, of course; but that's no reason why we should mope and grow serious, and fancy that the same is going to happen to us. I don't feel quite comfortable myself, I own; but we shall get over it in a few days, and all hands will be as merry as ever."
Such, indeed, was the case. Poor Burton's clothes were put up to auction and disposed of among the crew, and his name was seldom or never mentioned afterwards. Too often the same thing happens on board ship when a seaman is lost, much as his shipmates may mourn for him at the time.
Old Tom did not, however, fail to speak to Harry about Burton.
"I was talking to him on the state of his soul only just two or three days before he had to go and stand in the presence of his Maker, and give an account of the deeds done in the body," said the old man. "I asked him whether he knew that it was washed in the blood of the Saviour, or whether he had his sins still clinging to him. He did not know, poor lad, that his soul needed cleansing; and when I said that it was vile and foul, and loaded with sin, and that unless it was washed he could not enter heaven and stand before the all-righteous Judge, he asked me how that was to be done. So I told him the way God has appointed--the only way by which it could be done--through faith in the blood of the risen Saviour shed for us on Calvary. And I tell you, Harry, that it gives me great joy to think that his answer was, `I do believe Jesus died for me. May God in His mercy help my unbelief.' I told him to pray, and that he might be sure God would answer his prayer. He said he would that very night; and next morning he told me that he had prayed, and that he felt happier than he had ever done before. I had not another word with him after that; but I only wish that you and every one in the ship were like Rob Burton. I know little more about him than what I have told you, but that is enough to give me comfort; and if I ever get home and can visit his mother, it will give her comfort too, for she is a Christian woman, and had taught him to pray, and had never ceased praying for him, he said. Of that he was sure."
"Then do you think he has gone to heaven?" asked Harry.
"Yes," answered old Tom; "for God has promised that He will receive all who trust in Jesus. Whatever are their sins, He will put them as far from Him as the east is from the west; that though they be red like scarlet, they shall become white as wool."
"I wish that I understood these things better than I do," said Harry, earnestly.
"You have your Bible, Harry; read that, with prayer for grace to understand it."
Harry said he would try and find time; and he actually took out a small Bible which his mother had put into his chest, and carried it in his pocket; but he did not like reading it when Dickey was looking on, and somehow or other never found the time he expected.
Dickey tried his best to do away with the impression old Tom had made on Harry's mind; and the thoughtless boys soon, like the rest of the crew, forgot the fate of poor Burton. All hands were, indeed, kept actively employed. Numerous whales appeared, several of which were captured, and night after night the crew were engaged in "cutting in" and "trying out"--that is, cutting the blubber off the body of the animal and boiling it in huge cauldrons on deck. The bright glare falling on the masts and rigging, and the sturdy frames of the sailors, as they stirred up the cauldrons, placed on tripods, with their forks, gave them the wildest and most savage appearance.
"I don't think my mother and sister would recognise the ship if they were to see us now," observed Harry to his companion, as they stood aft, ready to cast off the carcase of a whale which had been stripped of its blubber, and had an opportunity of observing the scene going on beyond them.
"They would think we were a set of spirits from the lower world busy over some diabolical work, I suspect," said Dickey.
The business was not exactly pleasant, but as there was no disagreeable smell, Harry did not mind it; and even Mr Champion, whom he looked upon as very refined, was so accustomed to the work that he took it as a matter of course.
After the oil was thus extracted, it was ladled into casks, which were stowed below.
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{
"id": "23072"
}
|
3
|
ADVENTURE WITH SEA-LIONS.
|
The _Steadfast_ had made so successful a commencement of her voyage that all hands hoped she would get full much sooner than many had expected, and be able to return home. The whales, however, having disappeared from the fishing-ground where she had been engaged, she was about to proceed to the western part of the Pacific, when a mass of rugged rocks was sighted out of the ocean.
"An awkward spot to run against on a dark night," observed Harry, as they approached them. "Hark! what is that strange roaring noise? I could fancy that a thousand lions or more were assembled together holding a concert."
"They are sea-lions, Master Harry," observed old Tom; "the whole rock is covered with them and their cubs. If we could manage to get hold of some of them, we should find their skins very useful."
Captain Graybrook was of this opinion, and as the wind was light and there was no dangerous current running, the ship was hove to, and he ordered two of the boats to be got ready to capture some of the sea-lions, the ordinary species of seal found in the southern seas. Mr Champion took command of one boat and old Tom of the other, and the boys got leave to accompany the second mate.
They pulled away towards the rocks. As a heavy surf broke on the rocks, rushing up some distance with great force and then back again, which would have dashed the boats to pieces, had they got within its influence, they were compelled to pull a considerable distance round before a spot was found on which a landing could be effected with any degree of safety. Even there, those who were to land had to watch for an opportunity, as the boat was sent forward on the crest of a breaker, to leap out and spring up the rocks, while the boats, with a couple of hands in each, were pulled back again out of danger.
No sooner had the party scrambled up the rocks than the seals, alarmed at their approach, made towards the water, rushing down impetuously, and working themselves along by means of their fins--their heads and manes giving them the appearance of lions. Their threatening aspect, and the loud roars they uttered, were enough to daunt any one not accustomed to encounter them.
"I wish that I had remained on board," cried Dickey. "See, here comes a fellow; he will knock us over to a certainty. What shall we do?"
The men, however, had brought heavy clubs, with which they struck right and left as the monsters, with glistening fangs, rushed down on them, snapping their jaws, powerful enough to bite off a limb in an instant. The position of the party was dangerous in the extreme as the monsters came rolling and sliding down the rocks. To avoid them, the men were compelled to climb over the bodies of those which had been stunned; but still more met them, and Harry would have been knocked over by a big seal, and probably carried into the sea, had not Mr Champion, close to whom he kept, struck the creature on the head and dragged Harry out of the way. Old Tom saved Dickey in the same way.
Though most of the seals which had not been killed had made their escape, a few remained on the higher ground, among which was an enormous male seal. The monster seemed determined to give battle to his assailants, and came down the rocks towards them shaking his mane and extending wide his jaws armed with sharp tusks. Old Tom, who boldly went forward to meet the creature, inflicted a tremendous blow with his club on its head, but without stopping its career. Wishing to secure it, he took a harpoon which one of the men, by his orders, had carried with a line attached to it, and plunged it into the animal, trying to make fast the line to a jutting point of rock. The seal, however, rendered only more furious from its wounds, rushed into the midst of the party, dragging the rope, which, as Mr Champion sprang forward to meet it, became entangled around his leg. Before any one could rescue him, he was carried away into the midst of the wild surf dashing up against the rocks.
A cry of horror and dismay rose from all the party as they saw the young mate buried beneath the waves. Old Tom and several of the men sprang forward in a vain attempt to seize him, and were nearly swept away.
The boats were at too great a distance to render assistance. The next instant Leonard Champion was seen struggling amid the curing crest of a breaker; but, alas! much too far off to be reached.
"Oh, he is gone! he is gone!" cried Harry, wringing his hands.
Little did he think of the agony his gentle sister would have suffered could she have witnessed the scene. Happily, those at home are not aware of the dangers to which their loved ones are exposed till they are over. When ending fatally there comes, it is true, the unavoidable sorrow; but even that does not equal the intense suffering of mind which is endured when the peril is witnessed and no help can be sent.
Again the young mate disappeared.
"There, there he is!" cried Harry, as he was seen struggling on the snowy summit of an enormous roller.
Onward he was borne. His shipmates, clasping each other's hands, formed a line, the strongest bravely dashing in towards him. He was already almost senseless; one outstretched hand was seized. Exerting all their strength, the men worked their way up the rock, and then, two of them clasping him in their arms, he was borne in triumph out of the power of the greedy waves. Harry threw himself down by his side overcome by his feelings.
"You are safe, Mr Champion!"
"Thank God for it!" answered the young man, pressing Harry's hand; but he could say no more.
The task of embarking was a hazardous one. The mate was first placed in his boat, when the seal-skins, which had been quickly stripped off, were thrown on board; and, thankful to escape from the treacherous rocks, the party returned to the ship.
Leonard Champion was for several days confined to his cabin. He thought much, and he was constantly reading. Harry recognised the books which had been his sister's. "You must find them very interesting, Mr Champion," he observed.
"I wish that I had begun reading them sooner, Harry," was the answer. "I feel that I have been rescued from the jaws of death through God's mercy; and how unprepared I was to die."
"But I hope you will not be exposed to the same danger again, Mr Champion."
"I pray not, for it was terrible--I can scarcely make you understand how terrible. I cannot help seeing that I should be indeed ungrateful if I did not acknowledge the loving mercy of God, who preserved my life, and endeavour from henceforth to serve Him faithfully, instead, as I have hitherto done, of rebelling against Him. Yet I am sure that we should accept the offers of God, and serve Him from love and gratitude, and not from fear of death; I do not mean simply the death of the body, but eternal death--the doom of all who die unreconciled, and therefore at enmity with God."
"Is that what Hannah's books say?" inquired Harry, in perfect sincerity.
"Yes, and much more. You would have found what I now say in the book I lent you," observed the mate.
"I have not yet read it, but I will try and do so," said Harry; "still, except on a Sunday, I have not much time, as you know, and the book appeared to me very dull."
"I am not surprised at that, for I thought it so myself, though I read it. But now, Harry, that I have had time for reflection, and feel how nearly I was lost, I see its value," said Mr Champion. "Let me ask you to read it, Harry, even although you do find it dull."
Harry promised that he would, and fully intended to read it.
Captain Graybrook observed the change which had come over his mate, but he forbore to ask him questions; he could scarcely suppose, however, that a peril to which seamen are so constantly exposed should have produced the change.
"I thought Mr Champion was as brave as any fellow in the ship," observed Dickey Bass to Harry. "It seems to me that he must have been in a terrible fright, being carried off by the seal, or he would not look so grave and down-hearted as he seems."
"I don't think it was fear, for I am very sure he is as brave as any man alive," answered Harry; but he made no other remark, for of late he had become less willing than formerly to talk to Bass on such a subject, suspecting as he did the real cause of the change which his young shipmate had observed in the second mate.
|
{
"id": "23072"
}
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4
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A NIGHT ADVENTURE.
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The _Steadfast_ now steered westward across the Pacific. Leonard Champion was indeed much changed. He no longer took pleasure in the light reading and frivolous conversation in which he had previously indulged. He knew that he was a sinner, and he believed that Jesus Christ died to save sinners; but he had not discovered that by simple faith in the all-sufficient atonement of the Saviour's precious blood shed on Calvary, his sins were already washed away, and that he might live rejoicing in the love of God, and go to Him as a child goes to an affectionate parent, with the certainty of obtaining all he asks for, if it is for his good.
Leonard, however, took every opportunity of talking to Harry. Harry listened respectfully; but he thought that the mate was ill and out of spirits, and he did not feel, therefore, that he need be much influenced by what was said.
Several weeks passed, and once more the cheering cry of "There she spouts!" was heard, and several whales were captured.
The ship was in sight of a rocky island. Three of the boats had already gone away in pursuit of a whale in an opposite direction from the island, the captain himself being in one of them, when another was seen spouting towards the land. The boat of which old Tom had charge was immediately lowered. Harry and Dickey, who had long been eager to go in chase of a whale, slipped down just as she was shoving off. The first mate, who remained in charge of the ship, hailed them to come back.
"The captain promised to let us go some day, and we could not have a better opportunity," shouted Bass.
The mate, understanding that the captain had given them leave, told them that they might go; and old Tom, who had been busy arranging his harpoons, was under the same impression.
The crew giving way, the boat was soon at a distance from the ship. Before she got up to the whale, the monster had sounded; but from the direction it had taken old Tom felt certain that it would rise again still nearer the island. The boat accordingly pulled on. He was not mistaken, but the whale was still some way off. Once more the men bent to their oars. The monster, unconscious of danger, was still above water. As the boat drew near, old Tom was standing up in the bow, harpoon in hand, ready to plunge it into the whale's side. Its flukes were just going up as, with unerring aim, he darted his weapon, which sunk deep into its side. With rapid strokes the boat was backed away, and old Tom returned aft to manage the line, now running rapidly out as the whale sounded. The second line was got ready and made fast to the first, that had almost run out before it began to slacken, as the whale returned to the surface. The crew were hauling it in when the monster appeared. They had just time to make it fast round the bollard, when the whale darted off, towing the boat at a rapid rate towards the island. It seemed in no way disposed to slacken its speed; but old Tom knew that if the harpoon held they would at length come up with it.
The ship had in the meantime been standing after the other boats, and was now almost hull down; still, as the island would mark their position, they had little fear of not being picked up after the other whales were captured.
The sun was by this time near the horizon, and the wind had increased considerably since they left the ship, but, as it blew off the shore, the sea was tolerably smooth.
At length the monster, growing weary, slackened its speed, and the line was hauled in. The boat had got nearly up to it when it again sounded, but only for a short time. On its return to the surface, old Tom was able to plunge several lances into its body, and then, the boat backing away from it, after it had struggled and lashed the water with its tail for a few minutes, it turned over on its side, and a shout proclaimed that the crew were victors. They now prepared to tow their prize towards the ship; but darkness had come on, and when they looked out for her she was nowhere to be seen. Still, as they knew the direction in which she was to be found, they hoped to get alongside before midnight, and bending lustily to their oars, pulled away. They had not gone far before they had to meet the wind, which had hitherto come off the shore, and was in their favour; and the sea rising rapidly, they made but slow way with the whale in tow. No sound was heard but the roaring of the surf on the rocky island and the breaking of the sea-caps, which ever and anon leaped on board. Harry and Dickey heartily wished themselves safe on board again, while old Tom, as he stood up steering with his oar, looked out anxiously ahead, in the hope of seeing a light from the ship. The sea-caps, however, came tumbling on board faster than ever.
"There is work for you, boys," he observed. "We must get rid of some of this water, or else we shall have more than enough."
The boys turned to and bailed with might and main; but their efforts were not sufficient, and one of the men was obliged to assist them.
"There is the light, lads!" cried old Tom; "but it's a long way off," he murmured.
Far away, just above the breaking seas ahead, could be seen the glare of a blue light; it seemed to come out of the water, and showed that the ship was indeed a long way off.
"We shall not get alongside with the whale to-night," observed old Tom.
"Neither with it nor without it," answered one of the men.
"It will be lucky if we get anywhere," said another.
The sea had now risen still more than at first, and dark heavy masses crested with foam came rolling on towards the boat.
It was proposed to hang on to the whale, and wait till the ship stood towards them. The boat was made fast under the lee of the monster's body, which served somewhat to break the force of the seas.
Again a pale blue light was seen, but it was evidently only the upper rays, showing that the ship was hull down. The captain might not dare to venture so near a rocky coast, off which unknown reefs might lie hid, even to save their lives.
In a short time the body of the whale scarcely afforded them shelter, and the seas, rolling over it, broke on board. The crew cried out that they should be swamped, and proposed pulling for the island and landing on the rocks.
"We shall have a chance of saving our lives, and it will be better than being swamped out here!" exclaimed the man who had first spoken.
"We shall have but a poor chance if we attempt to land on the rocks, I tell you that, lads," said old Tom. "I would rather keep hold of the whale."
Still the men declared that they would, at all events, rather chance it.
Just as they were speaking, the clouds to windward appeared to open, and a bright light darted from the sky. This decided old Tom, for he knew that it was the sign of a still further increase of wind.
"I hope we shall not have to run on the rocks," he said; "just, however, as we made fast to the whale, I observed an opening in the surf. It was a very narrow one, though. If we can find it we will attempt to run through, for there is sure to be a harbour inside, and we have no other hope of saving our lives that I can see."
The boat was accordingly cast off from the whale, and her head being kept to the seas, to prevent her from being swamped, the crew exerted all their strength to gain the land. Ahead appeared a long line of roaring, foaming breakers, with a rocky shore beyond, and the dim outline of the dark hills farther on. For an hour or more they pulled on, but no opening in the mass of foaming breakers could be discerned. They were beginning to despair, when old Tom said that he could see the place he was in search of, for he had remarked the peculiar shape of the hills at that spot. He accordingly steered in for the shore. Harry and Dickey, however, could see nothing but the threatening breakers.
"It's very awful!" observed Dickey to his companion. "I wish I was prepared to die. It's bad enough now, and if the boat once gets caught in those breakers it will be all over with us. Harry, can you say any prayers?"
"I am trying to do so," said Harry, who saw the danger as well as Dickey.
Old Tom was too much occupied to make any remark. He kept his eye steadily fixed on a dark patch of water which appeared in the white line of foam, and he steered towards it. The roaring sound of the surf as it dashed against the wild rocks grew louder and louder. Still old Tom urged the men to pull as hard as they could. Many of them thought, however, that they were only pulling to meet destruction the sooner.
"I see the passage now!" exclaimed Harry, as he looked up for a moment while bailing the water out.
"You are right, lad," said old Tom. "Steady, lads! there is One above who will protect us. We will do our best, and trust to Him."
The men gave way. They knew well that in a few minutes more they should be safe, or struggling helplessly among the foaming waters. The loud roar of the breakers sounded in their ears. They bent to their oars; the boys bailed as hard as they could. Old Tom kept his eye ahead. A huge wave lifted up the boat, and seemed about to heave her into the midst of the boiling surf. Onwards she was borne; now she was between two walls of white hissing foam, which flew in thick masses over her; but still she went on, and, gliding downwards with the rapidity of an arrow, in a few seconds she shot into smooth water, leaving the dark rocks and the roaring breakers astern. The wind blew fiercely, the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed vividly; but she was now safe within the shelter of a deep bay. By the glare of the lightning it could be seen that there were cliffs on either side. The crew pulled steadily up the centre till they reached a sandy beach at the farther end, where they landed, and hauled their boat up.
"Now, lads, let us return thanks to God for preserving us from the greatest danger I have ever been in, or any of you either, probably," said old Tom. "If we had not been guided into the passage when we were, it is my belief that the boat would in a few minutes have gone to the bottom, for the gale is blowing nearly twice as hard as it did when we cast off from the whale."
Though most of the men had refused to join with old Tom in prayer on board ship when in safety, no one now declined to do as he suggested; and, led by him, they knelt down on the sands, and offered up thanksgivings for their preservation from the danger in which they had been placed. Even Dickey Bass uttered a fervent "Amen," and Harry felt that God had indeed been merciful to him.
"Where should we have been now, Bass, if we had missed the passage?" he asked.
"I don't know," answered Dickey; "but I am very thankful that we are safe."
It was too dark to enable them to go in search of shelter, if shelter was to be found; so they stretched the boat's sail out from her side, and formed a low tent, beneath which they lay down to shelter themselves from the storm till the return of daylight.
|
{
"id": "23072"
}
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5
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ON THE DESERT ISLAND.
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The storm raged furiously all night, the thunder roared, the lightning, darting forth from the dark sky, flashed ever and anon, in a zigzag course, from side to side of the cliffs around the bay, and the howling wind threatened frequently to tear off the sail and carry it away. Still the weary seamen slept, although Harry and young Bass did not for a long time close their eyes.
"I feel, Harry, that old Tom is right; and next time he speaks to me I will listen to him," said the latter. "He was as cool and collected from the beginning of the storm as if there had been no danger. If it had not been for him, I do not think we should have been where we are."
Harry agreed with his companion, and urged him not to forget his good resolutions should they ever again get on board the ship. What had become of her they could not tell, and they felt very anxious about her fate. She might have been cast on some of the numerous reefs which lay thereabouts, or have been driven far away from the island.
"At all events, the captain will probably suppose that the boat is lost, and not think it worth while to come and look for us," observed Dickey.
"I am very sure my father won't give us up, if he thinks there is a chance of finding us," answered Harry.
"But what if the ship is lost?" said Dickey, thoughtlessly.
"Oh! do not talk of anything so dreadful!" exclaimed Harry; "I could not bear to think that we are not again to see my father and Mr Champion and the rest. My father is a good seaman, and our ship is stout enough to weather out the worst gale that ever raged."
"I hope so," said Dickey, in a mournful voice; "but it blows a regular hurricane; and, oh! what a fearful crash of thunder that last was! See, see! The lightning seems to stir up the very water of the harbour; and oh! there is another peal! I cannot help feeling as if the sky itself was coming down upon us."
The last peal was succeeded by a loud rending and crashing sound, as if a number of trees had been torn up by their roots or the stout branches wrenched off from the stems.
"Lie down, boys, and try and get some sleep." It was old Tom who spoke. They were not aware that he was awake and overheard them. "God will take care of us, for we can do nothing more to take care of ourselves. We are safer here than we should be farther inland among the trees."
It was some time, however, before they followed his advice. At length there was a lull, and they both lay down. Scarcely had they placed their heads on the ground, than they were lost in forgetfulness, and took no more notice of the storm than the seamen who had slept through it all.
When morning dawned all hands awakened. The fury of the gale was over. The sun arose, and, bursting through the clouds, his rays soon dried their damp clothing.
The ground rose slightly from the head of the bay, and on the lower portion grew a grove of cocoa-nut trees loaded with fruit. One of the men, by means of a belt round his waist and the trunk, soon managed to climb to the top of one of them, when he threw down a number of nuts, which were eagerly seized by the rest. The outer husks were quickly torn off, and a nut was given to Harry, the eye being pierced. He declared that he had never tasted so delicious a draught of milk. The meat served the party for food, but did not satisfy their hunger, as they had eaten nothing since leaving the ship.
"This is better than nothing, but it won't keep body and soul together," said one of the men, in a grumbling tone.
"Lad, we should be thankful that God has sent us where we can find such wholesome food, instead of complaining that we have not better," said old Tom. "Maybe, too, there are shell-fish and crabs to be got, and perhaps other food besides; and see, there is a rill of fresh water. We should be thankful for that. We have an axe and our knives, and if we are obliged to live here we may build ourselves a hut, though we need not think about that, as I hope the ship has escaped and will come to look for us before long."
Still the men grumbled. They were all out of spirits, and had made up their minds that the ship was lost. They had begun to wander about, as sailors generally do under such circumstances, one in one direction and one in another, when Harry, who had gone to the boat, exclaimed, "See, here are some fishing-lines. Who put them there I do not know, but we shall not be in want of a dinner if we make use of them."
"This is a godsend," observed Dickey.
"Everything good is sent by God," said old Tom; and he called to the men to come and assist him in launching the boat.
A short search along the shore enabled them to find mussels and other shell-fish, which they hoped would serve for bait; and, shoving off, they went down towards the mouth of the harbour, where they quickly caught as many fine fish as they could eat. Returning to the beach, sticks were collected, and a tinder-box, which was in the tub with other articles always carried in a whale-boat, enabled them to light a fire.
An ample meal raised their spirits. They once more embarked and pulled down to the mouth of the harbour, in the hope of seeing the ship standing towards the island. The heavy surf which rolled in, however, made it impossible for them to get out. Old Tom and the two boys, therefore, landed and climbed to the summit of a high cliff overlooking the ocean. Hence they gazed round in every direction, but no ship was in sight. In the far distance they could discern here and there some dark rocks, over which the sea broke in masses of foam. Harry's heart sank within him as he thought that possibly the _Steadfast_ might have been driven upon those fearful rocks, when, as he knew too well, she must speedily have gone to pieces without a chance of any one on board escaping. He scarcely liked to ask Tom Hayes what he thought, but he observed that the old man looked unusually grave as his eye turned in that direction.
"This is no place for us to build our hut on, though it is the best spot for a look-out," observed old Tom, as he surveyed the rough broken ground all around them. "We must take it by turns, however, to spend the day here, though it will be best to take up our quarters near where we first landed."
They waited for some time watching the dark, heaving sea, which still rolled and tumbled in huge billows before them; but not even a speck which might be the topsails of the _Steadfast_ appeared above the horizon. At length they returned to the boat.
The men had, in the meantime, caught a large supply of fish, and, in better spirits than before, they pulled back to the head of the bay.
Old Tom advised that they should put up some shelter for the night; and while one of the men cooked the fish, the remainder cut down some young trees and a quantity of boughs, with which they formed a tolerably substantial arbour, while some dried leaves and smaller boughs supplied them with as good beds as they required.
"If we had a good stock of grog, and some bread and potatoes, we should be as happy as princes," observed one of the men.
"You are right, Ned," said another. "For my part, I do not care how long we stay."
"What if there should be savages on the island! Most of them are cannibals in these parts, I have heard say; and, as we have no arms to defend ourselves, we should look foolish," remarked a third.
"I have seen no signs of any natives, so I do not think we should make ourselves unhappy about them," said old Tom. "If there are any we must make friends with them, and it's more than likely that they will give us help and show us where we can obtain food."
Thus old Tom did his utmost to keep up the spirits of the men, and to prevent them from falling into despondency. Harry, however, could not help feeling sad as he thought of the possible loss of the ship. He eagerly set off the next morning to look out for her, and while two of the men who pulled the boat remained fishing below he and Dickey climbed the cliff. The gale had considerably abated, but the ocean still swelled and broke with the effects of the gale. They returned with an unsatisfactory report.
The men who had remained in the camp had, in the meantime, been looking out for traces of natives. None had been discovered. They had also begun to build a hut. As they had only one axe, this was a slow process. They had cut out a couple of rude spades with which to dig the holes for the foundation, and, as all hands worked hard, by the close of the day they had made some progress. The cocoa-nut fibre, twisted into rope, enabled them to bind the rafters together, and the long leaves of some palms, which grew farther inland, served for thatch. Old Tom encouraged them to proceed, though he had lost all hopes that the ship would return.
As had been agreed on, one man went down and remained on the look-out during the first part of the day, and a second took his place in the afternoon. Thus all were employed.
Harry took the afternoon of the second day. Climbing to the top of the hill, he gazed, as before, anxiously round the horizon. A sigh escaped him when no sail appeared. Sitting down, he remembered his Bible, which he had always carried since he formed the resolution of doing so. He took it out. From its sacred pages he drew that comfort which it always affords. Never before had he read it with so much satisfaction, for he prayed earnestly that his mind might be enlightened; and he now was enabled to see many of the important truths he had never before comprehended. He read and read on, page after page.
"I would rather have this than every book on board!" he exclaimed.
He was surprised when he heard a hail from below, and found that the boat had come for him.
Sunday came round, and old Tom urged his companions to make it a day of rest. Harry now produced his Bible, greatly to old Tom's delight. Morning and evening Tom had offered up a prayer, Harry and Bass and one or two of the seamen joining him, though others showed no inclination to do so.
Harry offered to read from his Bible, to which the men agreed; but though they sat quiet and listened, some did so with apparent indifference. He, however, selected such portions as he thought that they would best understand. By degrees they became interested. He was reading the fourteenth chapter of Matthew--the account of our Lord's feeding five thousand men, besides women and children; followed by that of Peter walking on the sea, when, through want of faith, he began to sink, and the Lord stretched forth His hand and saved him, saying, "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?"
"So, lads," observed old Tom, "you see how Jesus Christ fed the multitudes when they were hungering, and saved Peter when in danger, though his faith was weak. We have been fed, you will all allow, when we thought we had reached a barren island where no food was to be found; and in the same way, though I fear our faith is weak, He will take care of us. Then it seems to me that we must give Him our hearts, just as Peter stretched out his hands to Christ for safety."
"Old Tom speaks the truth, it seems to me," observed one of the men to a companion, in an undertone. "If I thought that Jesus would hold out His hand as He did to Peter, I should not despair; but I am such a terrible bad fellow, that I am sure I could not keep straight by myself."
"Jesus is ready, not only to grasp the hand of every one who cries for help, but when once He has got the man's hand in His He does not let it go," said old Tom, who had overheard the remark.
When evening closed and the boat's crew lay down in their hut, several of them acknowledged that they had never spent so happy a Sunday in their lives.
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{
"id": "23072"
}
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6
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IN AN OPEN BOAT.
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A fortnight had elapsed, still the _Steadfast_ did not return. The whole island had been explored. It was found not to be more than a couple of miles long, and scarcely half a mile in width, the greater portion consisting of black volcanic rocks thrown up by some mighty convulsion of nature. No other harbour was discovered; indeed, there was not a spot besides the bay they had entered on which a landing could be effected without danger. They probably were the first people who had entered the bay, for there were no signs of the island ever having been inhabited. There was but a very small portion of ground fit for cultivation; the only trees were those which clothed the side of the valley and the little cocoa-nut grove on the shore of the bay; while no other stream of water was discovered besides that near which they had formed their camp.
As the trees could not be perceived from the sea, Harry thought that, even if the island was marked on the chart, it was probably set down as a barren rock on which no one could land.
"My father, depend upon it, thought that our boat was swamped in attempting to regain the ship, or else that she was driven on the rocks, when he might well suppose that none of us could have escaped. He would otherwise, I am sure, have come back before this," he observed to old Tom.
"I hope that is the reason why he has not come back," was the answer; for old Tom had come to the conclusion that the ship, with all hands, had been lost, though he did not like to say so to Harry.
The men were beginning to get very impatient at their long detention on the island. Old Tom did his best to keep them employed; but it was difficult to find work for them. It was evident, too, that the cocoa-nuts would not last for ever; and when they had come to an end, what would they do for food? the men inquired. They might live on fish; but three or four of their hooks had already been lost, and in time they might be unable even to catch fish.
"One thing is clear, lads," observed Tom; "if we are to get away, we must carry water with us as well as food. Our small breaker will only hold enough for two or three days on short allowance, and, though we may carry some in the tubs, it will be difficult to keep that from being spilled. My advice is, that we set to work and scoop out a number of cocoa-nuts--they will hold a good supply--and we must try and smoke or salt some fish. I calculate that we can carry enough to last us three or four weeks, and in that time we may be able to reach a more fertile island than this is--one likely to be visited by whalers--if we are not so fortunate as to be picked up by a ship first."
The men were eager to be off, and set to work readily to prepare for the voyage. Harry would rather have remained, still believing that the ship would come back to look for them. Some time, however, was occupied in catching fish, and in drying and salting them, for it was necessary first to erect a building of stone for the former operation, and they had to collect the salt in the holes of the rock along the shore.
A lovely day, just a month after they landed, found them ready, with the cocoa-nut bottles and tubs full of water, and as many whole cocoa-nuts and as much dried and salt fish as they could stow away.
"Before we shove off, lads, let us return thanks to God for bringing us safely here and giving us food to eat, and then let us pray that He will take care of us in the voyage we are about to make," said old Tom. "I tell you that we shall meet with many dangers, from which He alone can preserve us."
The men agreed to old Tom's proposal; and then in good spirts they pulled down the harbour and glided out into the open ocean, now shining in the bright sun of the early morning. The surf, which broke on the rocks on either side in a gentle murmur, glittered brightly, presenting a very different appearance to the wild fury it exhibited when they took refuge within the bay. A light breeze springing up from the northward, the sail was hoisted, and the whale-boat stood to the south, away from the dark, forbidding-looking island. The small compass which is usually carried in a whale-boat enabled them to steer in a tolerably direct course.
"Now, lads," said old Tom, "we may reach land in about a fortnight; but it may be a month or six weeks before we fall in with an island where provisions are to be found. It will be well, therefore, to put ourselves on an allowance both of water and food. Remember that God helps those who help themselves, and if we take more than we require to keep up our strength, we cannot expect Him to send us a fresh supply."
Harry and Dickey were always ready to support him, and the men, without murmuring, agreed to do as he advised.
The crew having been divided into watches, old Tom taking charge of one and Harry of the other, and all other arrangements being made, old Tom lay down to rest, saying that he would keep the first night-watch.
They had a few candles for their lanterns, which had been carefully husbanded; these were kept to be used should any night prove particularly dark and cloudy, and the compass be required, for when the stars were shining they were sufficient to steer by.
For several days the boat sailed on over the tranquil ocean. Sometimes it fell calm, when the men took to their oars. The rest of the day they spent lying along the thwarts. Morning and evening, however, Tom offered up prayer, and Harry read some chapters in the Bible, to which most of the men listened attentively.
"What we should have done without your Bible, Mr Harry, I do not know," observed old Tom. "I believe it has mainly contributed to keep the men contented and happy; I only hope that they will remain in the same temper."
"I at all events will read the Bible to them," said Harry. Harry kept to his resolution. Dickey was one of the most attentive of the listeners.
"Harry," he said, one day, "I confess that I did not before know what was in the Bible when I used to sneer at old Tom for being religious, and was afraid that he would make you so. I wish that he would make me like himself or like you."
"God's Holy Spirit can alone make you, Mr Bass, what you ought to be," observed old Tom, who had been listening to the boys' conversation. "But you have to seek His grace, and to trust in Jesus, according to the teaching of His word; for we are there told that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. I never yet met an infidel or careless, bad fellow who really had read the Bible with prayer. It is only thus that we can benefit by it. Many complain that they have no faith, and that it is no fault of theirs--and yet they will not do the very thing that God tells us to do; so you see that it is not God's fault if a man does not believe, but the man's own fault. Do you read and pray earnestly and faithfully, and depend upon it God's Holy Spirit will do His part and help you."
"I will try, Tom, indeed I will," said Dickey; "and will you and Harry pray for me?"
"That we will, Mr Bass, because God has said that earnest, believing prayer availeth much; but you must pray for yourself--you must not trust to others praying instead of you. God will hear your prayers, though they may be very weak and imperfect, just as He heard the prayer of the poor publican who smote on his breast and said, `God be merciful to me a sinner.'"
It cannot be said that all in the boat listened to Harry when he read the Bible, or to old Tom when he spoke, or followed their example.
While the weather remained fine and they had enough to eat, they kept up their spirits, and began to talk of what they would do when they got on shore. Two or three of them indeed declared that they had had enough knocking about at sea, and that if they should land on a pleasant island with good-natured natives, they would take up their quarters there and marry wives and live a life of ease.
"If you do so, lads, you will run the risk of becoming heathens like them, and forget God and all His benefits," observed old Tom. "Remember, if we do land safely, it will not be our own right arm or our own strength which will have preserved us, but His merciful kindness; and I tell you, you will be ungrateful fellows if you do as you propose."
"Old Tom is always preaching," muttered one of the men to whom he spoke. "I don't see why we have not a right to please ourselves."
Old Tom did not hear this remark, and he probably would not then have answered even if he had.
For ten days or so the voyage had continued without any change in the weather. The sun was very hot, and the fish, which they thought had been well salted and smoked, began to taste very strong. Harry and Dickey could only eat very small pieces at a time, with the help of some cocoa-nut and a sip of water between each mouthful. Next day a perfect calm came on, and the sun beat down with intense force on the boat. Although their provisions were covered up and kept as cool as possible, the fish grew worse and worse. Several of the men, when it was served out to them, threw it overboard with disgust, declaring that they could eat it no longer.
"Seeing we have nothing else to live upon, we should be thankful that we have got that, and not throw it from us," observed old Tom. "It's bad-tasted, I'll allow; but as long as we can manage to get it down it will help to support life, and we should try to eat it."
Harry and Bass did as he advised, and as yet they did not find their strength much diminished.
Most of the men, however, began to complain of pains and aches, and unwillingly got out their oars. Tom urged them to pull on, in the hope that they might in a day or two reach some island which Harry thought could not be far off.
Day after day they had gone on, ever appearing to be in the midst of the same circle where sky and sea met, without sighting land or a distant sail. At night, while one watch rowed the other slept.
Another morning came, but still the glass-like ocean showed no signs of a coming breeze. They had put in their oars, and were munching their share of cocoa-nut and such small pieces of the fish as they could still eat, when suddenly, at a little distance, the surface of the water was broken, and a covey of flying-fish darted through the air towards them. A dozen or more fell into the boat, and were eagerly seized and killed by the famishing crew.
"Let us thank God, who sent them to us," said Tom, as several of the men greedily began to bite at the fresh, tempting-looking morsels.
Half the number were cut up, and the remainder Tom advised should be reserved for dinner.
The food somewhat restored the men's spirits, and they pulled on for some hours without murmuring.
Another and another day passed by, and then a breeze sprang up, and the sail was hoisted, and they ran on before the wind. All felt that unless they should shortly reach land or be picked up by a ship their fate was certain. Their cocoa-nuts and water were nearly exhausted, and even old Tom could with difficulty manage to eat a small portion of fish. Still he appeared calm and happy, and did his best to encourage his companions; he sat at the steering oar for the greater part of the day and night, taking but little rest. When he lay down he charged those who were on the watch to keep a bright look-out for land, while he himself, when awake, had his eyes moving round the horizon in the hope of discovering it.
At length all the water was gone, and not a piece of cocoa-nut remained. One of the crew, who had long been complaining, had lain down in the bow, saying he should go to sleep. When it was his turn to keep watch, Jack Harding, one of the men, tried to arouse him. Jack lifted his arm, which fell down by his side.
"Bill has slipped his cable, I am afraid," said Jack, in a hollow voice.
Harry went forward to ascertain if such was the case. Bill was indeed dead.
"Lads," said old Tom, "I don't know which of us will go next, but this I know, that the case of those who are not trusting in Christ is a very terrible one. I won't say anything about poor Bill, but I speak to you as a dying man to dying men. The day of grace has not yet passed-- to-morrow it may have gone by for some, if not for all those who are still unreconciled to God. I said this before to you when you were in health; God in His mercy has allowed you to suffer from starvation and sickness, that He might lead you to Himself."
"We dare say you speak the truth, Mr Hayes," answered one of the men; "but it's hard to believe that God, if He is as kind as you say, should allow us to suffer as we are doing."
"He allowed His faithful apostles of old, and many thousands of Christians since then, to suffer far more than we are doing; and yet they acknowledged to the last that He does all things well," answered old Tom. "I have just told you why He allows you to suffer; and remember what Saint Paul says, `The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.'"
Tom's address served as the funeral sermon of poor Bill, who was shortly afterwards lifted overboard by his sorrowing companions.
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{
"id": "23072"
}
|
7
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SAVAGES AND MISSIONARIES.
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It was again night. For the greater part of it old Tom sat at the helm, while a gentle breeze wafted them on. Once more the sun rose. It was Harry's watch. As he glanced round the horizon, he caught sight of a blue undulating line to the south-west. At first he thought that it was a bank of clouds, but at length he was convinced that it was land he saw.
"Land! land!" he cried out.
His shouts aroused all the sleepers.
"Land it is! there is no doubt about that!" said old Tom, taking his seat at the helm and steering towards it.
As they approached they saw it was an island of some extent, with hills covered with trees, but a coral reef intervened. A passage, however, was at length discovered. How eagerly the famished crew longed to get on shore to quench their burning thirst and satisfy their hunger!
The first object which met their sight, as they pulled into a small picturesque bay, was a stream of water, which came sparkling and foaming down the side of the hill. Not far off was a grove of cocoa-nut palms, near which were several other fruit-bearing trees. Without stopping to ascertain whether any natives, were in the neighbourhood, they pulled to the shore, and leaping out, rushed forward to quench their thirst at the nearest point of the stream which they could reach. Some cocoa-nuts were also quickly obtained, and sitting down, they soon emptied the contents of the shells of several.
"If we had fallen in with this island two or three days ago, poor Bill, maybe, would have been alive and merry now," observed one of the men.
"It might have been so, lads," said Tom; "but one thing I know, that we should be thankful for God's mercy in bringing us thus far in safety."
The strength of all the party was revived by the food and water. By Tom's advice they refilled the casks and cocoa-nut bottles. He then proposed that they should push off into the bay, and try and catch some fish. Two of the men replied that they had had food enough, and preferred remaining in the shade under the trees; the rest, however, agreed to accompany him. Some crabs and shell-fish, as before, served them as bait.
They had been fishing for some time with good success, and were contemplating returning to the shore to cook the fish and to rest for the night, when they caught sight among the trees, at some distance from the beach, of several savages, who had apparently been watching them. These were joined by others, who began flourishing their weapons and shouting. The two men who had been left on shore, on hearing their voices, started up, and, observing their menacing attitude, ran towards the beach. The crew of the boat, seeing the danger of their companions, pulled in as fast as they could bend to their oars, in the hope of rescuing them. The distance was considerable. Neither of the poor fellows could swim. They rushed into the water up to their necks. The natives came on yelling towards them. Long before the boat could get up to them they were dragged back, and in another instant dispatched by the clubs of the savages.
"It's too late, lads!" cried old Tom, who saw what had occurred; "we shall be treated as they have been if we let the savages get hold of us. We must make the best of our way out of the bay. It's a mercy that we have got the water and food."
There was indeed no time to be lost, for at that moment another party of savages were seen bringing several canoes down to the beach. Old Tom told Harry to take the helm, while he and the three remaining men pulled away out to sea. Happily, just as they got near the passage through the reef, a breeze sprang up, and they were able to hoist the sail. At that instant four canoes were seen paddling out of the bay. It still seemed doubtful whether they would escape. The breeze, however, freshened, and the whale-boat darting ahead, soon distanced her pursuers.
Tom urged his companions not to despair.
"We may still reach another island where the natives will treat us more kindly than these have done," he observed.
Harry thought that there were other islands to the southward, the natives of which were well spoken of. That was all he could say on the subject. How far off they were he could not tell.
They had now a good supply of water; but they had put only a few cocoa-nuts into the boat, and though they had several fish, they would very soon be unfit to eat.
"He who has brought us thus far will still take care of us, lads, if we will but trust Him," said old Tom.
This was the burden of his address day after day.
The fish they were still able to eat on the second day, so that they could reserve their cocoa-nuts.
They had been living on the latter, with some water, for two days longer, when again a covey of flying-fish passed over the boat, nearly a dozen falling into her. This afforded them the means of subsistence for two days more, then again they had to resort to the remainder of the cocoa-nuts. These were, however, at length finished.
Day after day they sailed on, no land appearing in sight. Even should they reach shore, they were aware that they might be received in the same hostile way that they were before.
The last cocoa-nut was eaten, the last drop of water exhausted. The hapless wanderers gazed with lack-lustre eyes in each other's faces. What would next happen?
"All we can now do is to lay ourselves down and die," said Harry.
"No, no, lad; trust still in God," answered old Tom. "He has preserved us hitherto. If He thinks fit He can still carry us safe to shore. See away there over the starboard bow--what do you make out?"
Harry and Dickey lifted their heads and gazed in the direction in which old Tom pointed.
"My old eyes are sharper than your young ones," he observed, when they made no reply.
"I make out the top of a mountain rising above the horizon. We shall see more of it before nightfall if the wind holds; let us pray that it may."
The rest of the people would not believe old Tom, and declared that he was mistaken; but he persisted in his assertion that land was ahead, and urged them to keep up their spirits.
Before nightfall land appeared clearly in view, but still at a great distance. All night long they ran on, old Tom sitting at the helm, for he would trust no one else, while Harry and Dickey did their best to keep a look-out ahead, for, young as they were, they endured their sufferings better than the older men, who lay stretched out on the thwarts.
When morning dawned a beautiful island, with rocks and trees and mountains in the centre, appeared about two miles ahead; but it was surrounded by a reef, over which the sea dashed in masses of foam, barring their approach to the shore.
"Never fear, boys, we shall find a passage through it," said old Tom.
They sailed on, and in a short time the expected passage was seen, the water shining calm and blue within it.
They glided on towards a bay, beyond which a valley opened up into the interior of the country. On one side, on the slope of a hill, appeared a few neat cottages, and among them a building of larger size.
"If my eyes don't deceive me, that's a chapel!" exclaimed old Tom; "and where there is a chapel there will be Christians, and we shall be received by them as friends."
The men roused up on hearing this, for in their despair they believed that on landing they should be murdered like their companions.
Old Tom steered without hesitation towards the cottages. As they approached, several persons were seen coming down to the beach. Two were in European costume, one of whom was a woman, while most of the rest were dressed in shirts and trousers. Before the boat's keel had touched the shore, several of the latter came rushing forward into the water; and, seeing the condition of those on board, they carefully lifted them out, and bore them to the shore in their arms. The white people, who were at once recognised by old Tom as missionaries, kindly pressing his hand, invited him and his companions to their house.
"We will not ask questions now," they said; "your appearance shows the sufferings you have endured."
The natives, receiving directions from the missionary, again lifted them up, and followed him, while his wife hastened on with two native girls to make preparations for their reception.
Food and water were, however, what they most required.
"I can allow you to partake of them but sparingly at first," observed the missionary. "God's greatest blessings are too often abused by being enjoyed in excess."
Harry and old Tom thanked him, and said they did not wish for more than would be beneficial; but the men grumbled at not being allowed to have as much as they could devour, when they were so hungry. Poor Dickey was unable to speak, and could scarcely eat the food given to him.
The missionary, who told them that his name was Hart, and that he and his wife had resided scarcely a year on the island, showed them the greatest sympathy and kindness. Mrs Hart took poor Dickey under her especial care, and gave him nourishing food in small quantities till she saw that his strength was returning, and that his pulse was beating more regularly. He could not help feeling, indeed, that it was mainly owing to her care that his life was preserved.
In the course of two or three days the strength of all the party was much restored, and Harry and old Tom were able to get up and join Mr and Mrs Hart at their meals. They then gave an account of their adventures. "You have indeed been mercifully preserved," observed Mr Hart. "What confidence does it give us when we know that we are under the protection of our Heavenly Father! Were it not for that, my wife and I could not live as we do in this island, surrounded by hostile savages, far away from other Europeans. It is true that we have with us a small band of Christian natives; but their numbers are insufficient for our defence, even if we wished them to fight. We have often been threatened, but hitherto the heathens have been restrained from attacking us. Many, indeed, have come to listen to the doctrines we preach, and now one and now another has acknowledged Jehovah to be the true God. The more progress we have made, the greater has been the animosity of the heathens, and of late, instigated by their priests, they have threatened our destruction. Still we persevere, in the hope, whatever may happen, of gaining more souls for Christ's kingdom."
Harry was surprised to hear Mr Hart speak so calmly of the dangers which surrounded him, and to observe that Mrs Hart did not appear in any way alarmed.
"But if the heathen party attack you, what do you propose doing?" he asked.
"We know that our friends will protect us as long as they have the power to do so," answered the missionary. "We are perfectly resigned to whatever God, in His providence, may allow. Should the heathens have resolved to put us to death, we are sure that if God allows them to succeed He has an important object in view, and that our death will ultimately tend to His honour and glory. At the same time, should means of escape be afforded us, we should consider it our duty to take advantage of them. Our friends know of some hiding-places in the mountains to which they have promised to take us, should they obtain timely notice of an intended attack on the station; but we suspect that, even should we succeed in reaching a place of concealment, it may be discovered by our enemies, and we have little expectation of being in safety even there."
Mrs Hart spoke to the same effect, but expressed a hope that the enmity of the heathens might abate, or that friends might arrive who would turn them from their purpose.
Notwithstanding the threatening aspect of affairs, Mr and Mrs Hart attended zealously to their missionary duties. Mr Hart not only preached the gospel, but held a school for men and boys, whom he instructed in various branches of knowledge, while Mrs Hart taught the women and girls and young children. Mr Hart also instructed them in several mechanical arts, and showed them improved methods of cultivating the ground.
With their assistance he had built the house he inhabited, and had manufactured most of the furniture it contained, as also the school-house and chapel, and many of the natives had erected neat cottages after the same model. Indeed, the whole place already wore an air of civilisation and comfort, which contrasted greatly with the heathen portion of the island.
The missionary and his wife were employed from morning till night among their converts, and much of the time spent in their own house was devoted to study. They enjoyed, indeed, none of that luxurious ease which some people in England suppose falls to the lot of missionaries in the sunny isles of the Pacific, but, harassed by numerous cares and anxieties, their days were spent in toil, while they knew that their lives were in constant danger.
As soon as Harry and old Tom were able to move about, they begged that Mr Hart would allow them to assist him in his labours. Harry would gladly have tried to teach the natives, but his ignorance of their language prevented him being of use in that way. They both, however, could carpenter and dig, and accordingly helped in fitting up the school-house, which had just been erected.
Dickey was soon able to join them. Two days afterwards the three men had sufficiently recovered to take their share of the work.
Again a rumour reached the settlement that the heathens were about to attack it.
"I'll tell you what, Harry," said old Tom, when they happened to be alone together. "There is one thing we ought to do, and that is to get the boat ready for use. I don't fancy Mr and Mrs Hart hiding away in the mountains. They are pretty sure to be starved to death, if the savages don't get hold of them, which I fear it is very likely they will do. And as to fighting to defend them, though we should be ready enough to risk our lives, yet as we have no arms we cannot hope to succeed. If we had had half a dozen muskets we might have thrown up a fortification and defended our friends, but without them the naked savages are our superiors when it comes to fighting; besides, Mr Hart does not wish to fight."
"He is, I suspect, right on that point," said Harry. "He wishes to show the savages that the religion of the gospel is one of love and mercy and long-suffering; and musket bullets, even if we had arms, would not contribute to do that. I agree with you, however, that the sooner we can get the boat ready the better."
Old Tom on this called the other men, and they all set to work to prepare the boat for sea. Harry also informed the missionary and his wife of their intentions, and urged Mrs Hart to get ready such a stock of provisions as she could collect.
"For your sakes I will do so," she answered; "but if my husband still thinks it right that we should remain, I cannot try to persuade him to fly. We ought to stop and share the lot of the poor converts."
"You would, I think, by remaining, only increase their danger," observed Harry. "They might, if alone, escape to the mountains and hide themselves; but if they have you to attend to, they would run a much greater risk of being discovered. Whereas if you accompany us, and our lives are preserved, you may return when the rage of the heathens is abated, and re-establish the mission."
These arguments seemed to have considerable effect on Mrs Hart, and Harry hoped that she and her husband would no longer hesitate to embark, should the heathens seriously threaten to attack the station.
Things, however, went on much as usual for several days. The boat was made ready for sea, while as much water and provisions as she could carry were prepared to be put on board at a moment's notice.
The three men had by this time grown weary of the monotonous life they were compelled to live at the station, and, notwithstanding the dangers they had gone through, they were anxious again to be off in search of some other island, where they could live at their ease among the natives, without running the risk of being murdered, as they were assured they would be should they wander away among the heathens. Old Tom and the two boys did their best to persuade them to remain contentedly where they were; but, from some remarks overheard by Bass, Harry was afraid that they contemplated running off with the boat, should they be detained much longer.
"If they make the attempt they will lose their lives to a certainty," observed old Tom, when Harry told him. "But I think better of them. We will make them understand that we remain for the sake of the poor lady and gentleman who have left their home in England to try and benefit the ignorant savages, and that while they are in danger we should be cowards to desert them."
The men acknowledged, when Tom spoke to them, that he was right, and promised to remain contentedly to assist the missionary and his wife.
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{
"id": "23072"
}
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8
|
ATTACK AND FLIGHT.
|
Old Tom and the three men had built a hut for themselves at a short distance from the missionary's house, that they might not incommode him and his wife. He, however, kindly insisted that the two lads should continue their guests.
The more Harry saw of Mr Hart, the more anxious he became to assist him, and in order to do so he commenced studying the language of the natives.
"I wonder you take so much trouble, Harry," observed his companion Bass; "it seems to me like labour lost, when we may at any moment be compelled to run away."
"But I hope, if we do, we shall be able to return," said Harry. "I think, of all the works in which man can engage, that of converting the heathen, and instructing them in the truths of the gospel, is the first and noblest. I would rather be employed in it than in any other. We look with respect on a man who has saved the life of a fellow-creature; but surely, as the soul is of infinitely more value than the body, it must be infinitely more noble to be the means of saving souls. If it were not for my mother and sister, I would rather remain out here and labour with Mr Hart than return home. But still I feel that it is my first duty to try and go back to England, that I may comfort my mother and sister, should, as I fear is the case, the _Steadfast_ and all hands have been lost."
"Each man to his task," answered Dickey; "but I should have thought that you, who have a good chance of some day getting the command of a ship, would have preferred remaining at sea, even should the _Steadfast_ be lost."
"I have not given up all hopes of her even yet," answered Harry; "though I cannot account for her not coming to look for us."
Harry was soon able to speak a few words to the natives, and, as they were anxious to learn English, they took pains to teach him their own tongue in return for the instruction he gave them, and he and they were thus able to understand each other on ordinary subjects.
Rumours that the heathens were meditating an attack again reached the station. A large body of savages had been seen on the hills a short distance off flourishing their weapons, and making fierce and threatening gestures. Perhaps they had been deterred from their purpose by the arrival of the boat, and, believing that all white men were possessed of firearms, been unwilling to encounter them. As, however, heathens were constantly coming to the village and going away again, some of them would probably report that they had seen no muskets, and that the number of white men was very small.
One evening, after prayers had been offered up in the missionary's house, and old Tom and his companions had returned to their hut, just as Harry and Bass were about to go to bed, a knocking was heard at the door, Harry opened it, when a native appeared, and, in an agitated voice, told them that a friend who still lived among the heathens had just stolen into the village with the intelligence that a large band of savages, led on by one of their priests, was approaching at a rapid rate, having vowed to destroy all the Christians before the morning.
Harry at once told Mrs Hart, who was at first inclined to believe that it was only another false report, such as had often before reached them. The native, however, was positive that his friend was not mistaken, and declared that if their dear missionary and his wife would not fly, he and the other converts would carry them off by force to the mountains. Harry proposed that scouts should be sent out to ascertain the fact, and entreated Mr and Mrs Hart to embark at once, and to wait in the boat till the return of the scouts. In the meantime he sent Bass to summon Tom and his companions. Several of the converts were ready to act as scouts, though they declared that there was no doubt of the truth of the report, and that it would be wiser to escape at once to the mountains.
The whole population now gathered round the mission-house, and urged Mr and Mrs Hart to go on board the boat, which had been sent, they asserted, on purpose to preserve their lives. The missionary and his wife at length agreed to act as they were advised, though still loth to leave the converts. The people, though they knew the danger they themselves ran by remaining, would not commence their flight till they had seen their white friends, whom they hurried down to the beach, safe on board. At the same time, some of them carried the provisions which had been prepared on board, while others brought from their own stores a still further supply, and would have added more, had not old Tom assured them that the boat was already overloaded. She had just been launched into deep water, when one of the scouts came hurrying back with the intelligence that the savages were close to the village, and that there was but little time for their countrymen to make their escape. While the Christian natives hurried off in the direction of the mountains, the boat pulled away from the shore towards the passage which led into the open sea.
The night was cloudy and dark, but a strong breeze was blowing, which sent the surf high over the reef, so that the passage could easily be distinguished. Mr Hart, even to the last, was very unwilling to desert his station, and begged old Tom to remain inside the lagoon till they could see what would happen. They were not left long in doubt, for a few minutes only had elapsed after they had quitted the beach when fearful shouts and yells rent the air. The savages, expecting to entrap their victims, had evidently surrounded the village, and were rushing forward with the intention of putting all within it to death.
In a short time torches which they had lighted were seen flaring up, their glare being cast on the tall trees and rocks and the sides of the hills, as they rushed forward to throw them into the buildings. In a few seconds more the whole village was in a blaze, and burning furiously. The dark figures of the savages could be seen as they stood ready with uplifted weapons to strike those whom they expected to issue forth. Their rage and disappointment must have been great when no one appeared. The delay, however, it was hoped, would enable the fugitives to escape to their proposed hiding-places. As the bright light from the burning buildings shed a glare over the water, at length the savages perceived the boat, and rushed down to the beach, shouting loudly to those in her to return, some darting their spears, and others shooting arrows towards her. She was happily too far off for the weapons to reach her.
"The heathens have been allowed to triumph for a time," said Mr Hart. "I pray that our poor converts will escape their fury. We must now trust to the protection of Him who is able to guide us over the stormy ocean to a haven of rest. His will be done."
"The sooner we are out of the reach of those savages the better, or they will be coming after us in their canoes," observed old Tom. "When we are outside we shall be able to make sail and stand to the eastward. If the wind favours us we shall reach a Christian island in the course of a week, where we are sure to meet a hearty welcome. We have provisions enough on board to last us a month, so we need have no fear of starving, whatever happens."
This address encouraged the men, who pulled away in good spirits, Harry and Bass, who had each an oar, setting them an example. Mr Hart offered to row.
"No, no, sir," answered old Tom. "You are not accustomed to the sort of life we shall have to lead for the next few days, and you will have enough to do to look after your poor wife. We all feel more for her than for ourselves, and will do our best to make her as comfortable as we can."
Mrs Hart thanked old Tom, and assured him that she was resigned to whatever might happen, and felt no alarm, notwithstanding the fearful scene they had witnessed.
The boat now reached the passage, and passing between the two walls of foam which rose up on either hand, was soon tossing on the wild sea outside. Harry, as he pulled away, had watched the shore anxiously, and was thankful to find that they were not as yet pursued. He had little doubt, however, that, as soon as the savages could reach their canoes, they would put off in chase, they not supposing that so small a boat would venture out into the open sea on so stormy a night.
"Now, lads, we will set up the mast and make sail," said old Tom, after the boat had got some distance from the reef. "You need not be alarmed, marm," he continued, addressing Mrs Hart; "this whale-boat of ours is strong, and will go through twice as much sea as we have now."
Old Tom did not over-estimate the good qualities of the boat. Though the dark seas rose up capped with foam around her, she sprang lightly over them, guided by his experienced hands, scarcely shipping a drop of water.
Thus she went on during the night.
When morning dawned she had run the island out of sight. As the wind had been gradually decreasing, and the sea going down, they were able to re-stow the boat.
By Harry's forethought several articles had been put on board which might conduce to Mrs Hart's comfort. Among them was a small mattress and a tarpaulin, which had served to protect their luggage when they first landed. With this a cabin was fitted in the stern of the boat, which, though narrow and confined, afforded her the shelter she so much needed. Within, shaded from the rays of the sun, she could recline during the heat of the day, while by lifting up the edges, sufficient air was admitted. Not a murmur escaped her lips, while she warmly expressed her thanks for the attention bestowed on her.
"We should be very ungrateful, marm, if we did not do our best to make you comfortable; for if it had not been for you and Mr Hart, I am pretty sure none of us would have been now alive. If we had landed on another part of the island, the savages, judging from the way they behaved last night, would have knocked us all on the head. I am sure, lads, I say what you all feel."
The men acknowledged that old Tom spoke the truth, and promised to do their best to take care of the missionary and his wife.
Mr Hart began the day by offering up a prayer for protection, and thanking their Father in heaven for preserving their lives from the fury of the savages. Then, opening his Bible, he read several portions showing how full of loving-kindness and mercy God is; at the same time, being just, He can by no means overlook iniquity. On this account it was that He gave us the inestimable gift of His Son, the Lamb without spot or blemish, to die instead of sinful man. And He requires now that men should believe that Christ thus died for their sakes, that His blood atones for all their sins, that God receives them, rebels though they have hitherto been, as His dear children, and makes them holy by His own good Spirit, fitted to enter the glorious heaven which He has prepared for all those who love Him.
Again and again, with earnest prayer that they might receive it, Mr Hart impressed these truths on his hearers. They had heard them before; but their minds were so dull, and their hearts so hard even now, that but slight impression appeared to have been made on them. Young Bass alone at length murmured, "I do believe, and desire to give my heart to Jesus; pray for me, Mr Hart, for I am afraid if I were to get back among careless companions, that I should again become as they are."
"From that God will assuredly guard you, my young friend, if you earnestly seek for His guidance; and our prayers, as well as yours, will be heard at the throne of grace."
Day after day went by, the boat making but slow progress, for it was an almost perfect calm; and, though the oars were got out, and kept going, the men either could not, or would not, make much exertion in rowing. Mr Hart, and Harry and Bass, and old Tom, took their turns at the oars, and endeavoured to encourage the men. Still no land appeared in sight. The men grumbled, and declared that they would rather have a gale than this long continuance of calm.
"Let us rather be thankful, my friends, for the fine weather; and, though our voyage is prolonged, we may still hope to reach a haven of safety," observed Mr Hart.
The gale the men were wishing for came, however, with more fury than they desired. Once more the boat was tossing on the foaming waves, when the sea, breaking over her, washed away a portion of their provisions, and compelled them to be constantly bailing to keep her afloat. She was driven, too, far out of her course, and often it seemed as if she could not live amid the raging seas which rose up around her. Old Tom, however, sat at the helm, calm and undismayed, steering with his accustomed skill. All knew well that their lives depended, under Providence, on him.
Still the tempest was increasing. In spite of the admirable way old Tom managed the boat, another sea broke on board, washing out of her more of the provisions, and almost carrying away one of the men as he lay asleep in the bows. He was caught by the man next to him, and hauled in, and all hands had instantly to set to work to bail out the water.
"It looks to me as if this hurricane was never going to cease!" cried the chief grumbler of the party. "We might as well have stopped and fought the savages, and if they had killed us there would have been an end of it."
"My friend, God will cause the hurricane to cease when He thinks fit," said Mr Hart, solemnly. "Be thankful rather that you are yet alive, and that the day of grace still lasts. You had not then accepted Christ, and heaven would never have been your home. Have you done so now? God is still willing to receive you; and He shows it by having preserved you hitherto from the perils by which we have been surrounded."
"You are right, sir," answered the man, at length touched; "I am an ungrateful fellow, God be merciful to me a sinner! I will never complain again."
"God is always merciful, my friend; He has offered you the means by which you may be saved. He has not thought fit to establish any other means, or opened up any other way by which you can enter heaven but that one single way, and He says, `Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.' Believe, my dear friend; think how precious your soul is. Remember the thief on the cross; and if, like him, you can truly say, `I believe,' should the boat be overwhelmed the next minute, you will be where he is, with Jesus in heaven."
The storm at length ceased, and the sorely battered boat was left floating calmly on the water; but nearly all the provisions were gone, two of the oars had been washed overboard, and there was a leak in her side which it was found impossible altogether to stop, while the crew were well-nigh worn out.
Mr Hart sat with his beloved wife in his arms, feeling that it might be God's will that they should not again see land. They were prepared for whatever He might decree, and they felt more for their two young companions, and for Harry's mother and sister, of whom he had been speaking to them, than for themselves. As they gazed at the haggard faces of the two boys and the old man, it seemed to them that before long one or the other would be called away.
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{
"id": "23072"
}
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9
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SAVED AND WRECKED.
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Well might the unhappy fugitives have despaired. The larger portion of their provisions had been washed overboard; the remainder were almost exhausted; their boat was battered and leaky, the seamen were apparently dying, and unable to determine in what direction to seek for land. For weeks they might sail on and not find it. Still the missionary and his companions placed their trust in Him who is able to save them.
A light breeze once more sent the boat through the water. They were gliding on when Harry observed that old Tom's eye was intently gazing towards the south-west, yet he did not speak. Harry looked in the same direction.
"What do you see, lad?" asked old Tom.
Harry rubbed his eyes.
"Yes, it is. A sail! a sail!" he exclaimed.
"I thought so, but feared that my hopes might have deceived me," said old Tom. "She is standing this way, and is close-hauled."
The boat was steered so as to intercept the stranger. Harry kept his gaze fixed on her. She was evidently a whaler.
"Can she be the _Steadfast_?" exclaimed Dickey, who was also earnestly looking at her.
"I was in hopes that she might be," exclaimed Harry.
"The _Steadfast_ would be deeper in the water, and has a new cloth on her foretopsail, and that ship has not," observed old Tom.
"We should be thankful, whatever she is," said Mr Hart. "Let us return thanks to God for sending her to rescue us."
The men roused up on hearing that a ship was approaching, and managed even to get their oars out to pull alongside her.
As they drew near they saw clearly that she was not the _Steadfast_.
The stranger hove to. A person, whom they supposed to be the captain, asked whence they had come and what they wanted.
"We are escaping from savages, and entreat you to receive us on board, for we are almost starved," answered Mr Hart.
"You may come on deck, then," said the captain; but that was more than any one in the boat unassisted could do. Even old Tom, the strongest of the party, could not manage to clamber up the side. A ladder was therefore let down, and two seamen descending carried up Mrs Hart and then her husband. The boys followed, old Tom being the last to leave the boat, which was then hoisted up, but almost fell to pieces in the operation.
"You people have had a narrow escape," observed the captain, as he examined the boat. "You and your wife can have a cabin, though I am not fond of missionaries, I tell you," he observed, turning to Mr Hart. "The rest can manage to shift for'ard among the men."
"I shall be grateful for any accommodation you will afford my wife and me," said Mr Hart. "You see how much she requires attention;" and he pointed to his wife, who was seated on a hencoop almost fainting. "I would ask you, too, to allow those two young gentlemen to live in the cabin; one is a captain's son, the other an apprentice."
"Oh, they can shift for themselves well enough forward," answered the captain, gruffly. "We are bound for the Sandwich Islands, which I hope to make in the course of a couple of weeks, and we shall then part company, as you will then be able to find a vessel to carry you wherever you may wish to go. I cannot undertake charge of you for a longer time."
"All I can say is that we shall be grateful to you for preserving our lives; for I believe, humanly speaking, we should have perished before many days had elapsed," said Mr Hart. "I do not at present see how we can repay you, but if I have the power be assured I will gladly do so."
The crew, though rough in appearance and rough spoken, paid every attention in their power to old Tom and his companions, and put them into their berths, where they all in a few minutes fell fast asleep.
Next day Harry and Bass, having somewhat recovered, crawled on deck. They learned that the ship was the _Swordfish_; that Captain Boucher, the master, was an odd-tempered man, and that, as she had been out more than a year and caught but few whales, and had of late had nothing but ill-luck, he was in an especial bad humour. The captain was walking up and down, abusing the officers, who behaved in the same way towards the men, while the latter growled in return and performed their work in a sulky way.
Harry was afraid that poor Mr and Mrs Hart would be neglected, and, waiting till the captain was quiet, humbly asked leave to be allowed to go down and pay them a visit.
"What do you want with them?" asked the captain.
"They are my friends," said Harry, "and I wish to see if they require anything."
"If you go below you shall wait upon them and on me too, youngster. My cabin-boy fell overboard the other day, and I want another."
"While I remain on board I will do as you wish," answered Harry, glad to have the means of being of service to his friends.
He found them in a small cabin--poor Mrs Hart still very weak and ill, and Mr Hart seated by her side, though much requiring rest himself.
One of the men who had taken in the captain's breakfast had brought them some, but they had received no other attention, while they had heard the captain abusing missionaries as a useless, idle set who never did any good.
Harry set about the duty he had undertaken with alacrity, though for some days he had great difficulty in moving about. He said nothing when the captain abused him as an idle young dog, but did his best to do as he was required. He spread the table as he had seen it arranged on board the _Steadfast_, and tried to keep the cabin in good order. He was constant in his attendance on Mr and Mrs Hart, though he had often a difficulty in obtaining proper food for them from the cook.
Dickey was anxious to assist him, and proposed to ask the captain's leave.
"I am sure he would not grant it," said Harry; "he would only say that one boy is more than enough, and that we should be playing tricks together."
Harry could not help acknowledging that he had an uncomfortable life of it; but he willingly bore all the captain's abuse for the sake of his friends, and his chief consolation was to remain in their cabin and to listen to Mr Hart's conversation. The captain, however, who at length one day found he was there, ordered him on deck.
"What are you and that man plotting about?" he asked, abusing him as an idle young dog. "I'll give you work to do;" and Harry was sent to assist Bass in blacking down the rigging.
After that the captain kept him constantly employed in the dirtiest work about the ship.
Harry bore this treatment without murmuring.
"I only wish that the voyage was over," he remarked to Bass. "Still, whatever he does, we should be thankful to him for saving our lives."
"I am not so certain that he will let us go free, even when we reach the Sandwich Islands," answered Bass. "The men say he will swear we are apprentices, and keep us on board."
"Don't let him suppose that you think so. If we have our wits about us we may make our escape," said Harry.
Day after day the wind continued light, and the voyage was prolonged. The captain treated the boys in the same tyrannical way as at first. Harry could only exchange a few words with his friends when he took them their meals; he was thankful that the captain had not deprived him of the opportunity of doing so.
"It is our duty, my dear Harry, to bear with ill-treatment," observed Mr Hart. "It is hard to do so, but let us pray for grace, and we shall not seek it in vain."
At length the Island of Oahu, in which the capital Honolulu is situated, was sighted. As the ship approached the harbour, and Harry and Bass were congratulating themselves that their emancipation drew near, the captain ordered them to go down into the cabin. When there they found themselves suddenly seized by two of the mates, who thrust them into a small side cabin.
"You will remain there; and take care that you make no noise," said one of the mates. "When we are at sea again you will be let out." The poor boys expostulated in vain. The door was locked upon them, and they were left in almost total darkness.
"I told you so," said Bass. "I was sure he meant us mischief."
"I am very sure that Mr Hart will make every effort to obtain our release," observed Harry. "So will old Tom; and I should think the captain would scarcely venture to detain him."
In a short time they heard the anchor let go, and they knew that the ship had entered the harbour. They waited in the hope that Mr Hart would discover where they were and come at least to speak to them, but night came on and they were left alone. They had to coil themselves up and go to sleep.
Next morning the first mate opened the door and put in some breakfast, saying that it would be worse for them if they made any noise.
Several days passed by and they were thus kept in durance. They heard at different times voices in the cabin; but not knowing who the speakers were, they were afraid of crying out. At last they knew by the movements of the ship that she was once more under way; and shortly afterwards the mate came to the door and told them that they might go on deck to attend to their duty. Greatly to their satisfaction, they saw old Tom. He made a sign to them not to speak to him and turned away.
They waited till it was dark. He then came up to them as they were standing together.
"I discovered that the captain had shut you up," he said; "and I did all I could to get him to allow you to go on shore, but he said that he had a right to detain you, and I of course would not leave the ship without you. We must therefore watch for an opportunity of getting on shore at some place where English authority is established, and we can make complaints of the way you have been treated."
"I would rather land among savages than remain on board," said Harry.
"And so would I," exclaimed Bass. "And if you will come with us we will try to escape at the first place we touch at."
"We must learn what sort of a place it is first," said old Tom, "or we may be worse off than we are on board."
"We will talk about that by-and-by," said Harry. "I am very anxious to know what has become of Mr and Mrs Hart."
"I am thankful to say they are among friends," answered old Tom. "Missionaries have been for some time settled in these islands, and the king and a considerable number of his people have become Christians. Mr Hart did not forget you either, and he came on board to try and learn what had become of you. The captain must have deceived him, and persuaded him that you were no longer in the ship. He was coming off again just as we were getting under way, and the captain would not then allow him to come up the side."
"I am thankful, at all events, to hear that our friends are safe," said Harry; "and we must try to make the best of it."
"That's a wise resolution, Harry," said Tom. "Even though the captain should continue to ill-treat you, behave as you have hitherto done, and even his hard heart may be softened. However, we must not be found talking together, so now go and turn into your berths, and try and get a better night's rest than you could have had in that close cabin."
Harry and Bass followed old Tom's advice; and next morning when they came on deck they found that the ship was off the magnificent coast of the large island of Hawaii, with the two lofty mountains, Mouna Kea and Mouna Roa, rising far off.
The weather looked threatening, and in a short time a heavy gale began to blow. The wind increased in fury till it became a perfect hurricane. The sails were closely reefed. The captain endeavoured to beat out to sea, as there was no port under his lee into which he could run. Notwithstanding all the efforts made to keep off the land, the ship drove closer and closer to it. A terrific line of breakers could be seen dashing on the shore. Should the ship be driven among them, her destruction would be certain; and there was little hope of an anchor a holding to save her from her impending fate. To avoid this, sail was kept on the ship, though, under any other circumstances, with an open sea before her, she would have been running under bare poles.
Harry and Bass were standing together.
"What do you think of it, Tom?" asked Harry, as the old man came up to them.
"Badly enough, as far as this world is concerned," answered old Tom. "Happy are those who are prepared to enter another world, as I know you are, and I hope Mr Bass is too. He who died for us is ready to welcome us there, if we are trusting to Him alone down here, and not to our own strength and doings, however good our fellow-men may think us. That's my comfort, whatever happens, though for your sakes, and that of the poor fellows aboard, I pray we may escape. I cannot say, however, that I see much prospect of it. If the worst comes, do you boys stick by me, and I will do my best to save your lives."
The ship drifted nearer and nearer the shore. The captain and mates, hardy and bold as they were, looked pale and anxious, now gazing up at the bending masts, now at the shore under their lee.
"If we get a slant of wind we may do it yet," said the captain.
"But if not?" observed the first mate.
"We must let go our anchors, and cut away the masts. There is nothing else to be done," was the answer.
The hoped-for change of wind did not come.
"Let go the best bower," shouted the captain. "Stand by with the axes."
The order was obeyed. The ship for a moment rode head to wind. At the same instant the men, with gleaming axes in their hands, were seen cutting away at the masts.
Tom led his young friends under shelter of the poop deck.
Down came the masts with a crash. Not a hundred fathoms astern the sea in wild masses was breaking furiously. The next instant the anchor parted; another was let go, but it scarcely held for a moment; and then the ship drove broadside into the midst of the wild, raging tumult of waters. Now she rose for a moment on the summit of a huge wave, now borne onwards she sank into a hollow between the waves. The next sea swept her decks, carrying many of the hapless crew overboard, and washing away the caboose and a large portion of the bulwarks.
By Tom's advice Harry and Bass clung to a stanchion near which they had taken their post. Tom held on to another near them.
Another sea struck the devoted ship, and threw her with tremendous force on the coral rocks, crushing in her bottom and sides. Others of the crew were carried off as the seas continued to strike her. Now portions of her bows, now the remainder of her bulwarks, were swept away, while on each occasion the fearful crashing and rending of timbers showed that she was rapidly breaking up.
"What had we best do?" asked Bass.
"Hold on to the last," answered Harry; "perhaps the gale may abate, and we may yet reach the shore."
There seemed, however, but little hope of their doing this. Every instant larger portions of the wreck were carried away. It was evident that in a short time she would break up completely. Tom handed to each of the boys a length of rope.
"Make yourselves fast to any piece of timber you can get hold of," he said; "it will give you the best chance of safety."
Few of the people had by this time escaped, and every sea which broke over the wreck carried one or more away.
At length another tremendous sea came rolling towards them. A fearful crash followed. Harry and Bass found themselves floating together amid the boiling waters, with pieces of wreck tossed to and fro near them, a blow from which would have proved fatal, but not one struck them. Not far off they caught sight of Tom clinging to a portion of the poop deck. A sea carried them towards him. He hauled them up, and they made themselves fast to some ring-bolts. Though the seas washed over them, and they felt as if the breath would be knocked out of their bodies, they were not carried off; and they found that their raft was being driven rapidly towards the shore, now scarcely a quarter of a mile from them. Every instant they expected the raft to be turned over and over, but it floated as before, and, now lifted high on the summit of a breaker, and now sunk down into the hollow of the sea, went on and on till they felt it ground on the beach.
Tom told them to cast themselves adrift, when, seizing each by the arm, he dragged them forward, and in another instant they were on dry ground.
"Praise God for His mercy! We are safe!" cried Tom. "But now, boys, let us see if we can help any of our shipmates."
They looked along the beach on either hand, but for some minutes they could discover no one.
"There is a man!" at length cried Tom. "I caught sight of his head and hand among the foam."
They ran in the direction Tom pointed, waiting anxiously, in the hope of dragging the man out of the surf as it broke on the shore. Tom rushed in and seized him, as for an instant he was thrown on the beach, or the receding waves would have carried him back. The boys assisted Tom. They recognised the features of the captain, but the hue of death was on his face. His arms fell down as they placed him on the ground.
"He has gone!" cried Tom.
They did what they could to revive him, but life was extinct.
Two other bodies were washed up, but not a human being besides themselves reached the shore alive. They looked around them. The whole bay into which they had been thrown presented a scene of barren wildness and grandeur. A valley opened up from it, and in the distance rose the summit of a lofty volcano, the stream of lava from which had caused the desolation they saw around.
"I am glad we have got ashore alive; but I am afraid we shall die of hunger if we cannot manage to get out of this soon," said Bass.
"He who brought us on shore will take care of us," observed Tom. "But we must do our best. The sooner we set off to look for some natives the better."
"If there are any Christians about here, we are sure, if we can find them, to be treated kindly."
Having examined the coast as far as they could see on either hand, they agreed to move to the east, in which direction some green shrubs and trees were distinguishable. As they all felt weak and exhausted, there was no time to be lost.
"Won't it be well to get hold of something to defend ourselves if we are attacked?" said Bass. "I should like to have a club to fight with."
"It would be no use, Mr Bass," answered Tom. "We must try to make friends with the natives; I have no fear about the matter."
"Nor have I," said Harry.
Tom and the two boys made their way along the shore. Sometimes they had to climb over rocks, sometimes to wade through black sand. At length they reached a firmer beach, and got on better than at first.
The day was wearing on. They had had nothing to eat or drink since the previous evening. They all felt faint and hungry.
At length they caught sight of a stream of sparkling water trickling down the rocks. How eagerly they drank of it! It revived them, and they pushed on. They were anxious to fall in with natives before dark who might give them food and shelter.
The appearance of the country rapidly improved. At last, after climbing some rocks, they found themselves looking down into a beautiful bay, on the shore of which a number of women and girls were collected, who, from the way they were employed in combing their dark hair or dressing their heads with flowers, had apparently just come out of the water.
On seeing the three strangers several of the girls shrieked out. Among them was a tall, dignified-looking person, who, on observing Tom and the boys approaching, rose from the ground on which she had been seated and advanced towards them. To their surprise, she addressed them in broken English.
"Who you? where you come from?" she asked.
Tom replied that they were English, and had escaped from their ship, which had been wrecked some way along the coast.
"And, please, marm," he added, "we are very hungry, especially these two boys, and shall be thankful if you will give us some food as soon as possible."
"We are not more hungry than he is," said Harry; "but he always thinks more of us than of himself."
The lady smiled and made signs to them to accompany her, evidently understanding what they said, though she herself had soon apparently exhausted her stock of English words. She led the way, followed by her maidens.
Climbing the rocks, which were easily surmounted, they found themselves in a level country with trees growing luxuriantly, while plantations of various descriptions were seen in every direction. At a little distance was a cottage, which, though built after the native fashion, was of considerable size.
"There is my house," said the lady, pointing to it. "You welcome food, plenty sleep till to-morrow, and praise Jehovah."
"What! marm, if I may make so bold to ask, are you a Christian?" exclaimed Tom.
The lady nodded and smiled.
"You Christian too, I hope?" she said.
"That I am, marm, and so are these boys," answered Tom.
"I told you all would be right, Harry," he added. "You see we could not have fallen into better hands."
On reaching the house, the girls, by the directions of their mistress, hurried to prepare food, and several dishes of fish and fruits were soon placed on mats on the floor. Before bidding her guests to eat, the lady, who had been sitting, rose and said a grace in her own language, adding a few words of English. Tom and the boys uttered "Amen," at which she seemed pleased, and she then served each of them with her own hands.
As soon as she saw that her guests had eaten enough, she assembled her family and attendants, who seated themselves before her; she read to them the Bible in her own language, and then offered up a prayer. After this, she leading, the rest joined in singing a hymn, the tune of which Tom recognised, though the words were strange to him. The evening's devotions being thus concluded, she led them to a part of the house screened off by mats, and bidding them enter, pointed to three beds, also covered with matting, which her maidens had in the meantime prepared for them.
Their clothes had been thoroughly dried during their journey. She showed that she had thought of their comfort by presenting each of them with some cotton garments, and making them understand that their own clothes, saturated with the salt water, should be washed and ready for them the next day.
"We have indeed fallen into good hands, as you say, Mr Hayes," observed Harry, after they had all three knelt down and said their prayers.
"No doubt about that," answered old Tom. "We shall find that a missionary has been here; and I hope by his means to gain tidings of our friends and be able to rejoin them."
With this pleasant thought they lay down to rest. Harry hoped not only to meet Mr and Mrs Hart again, but to be able to find a ship returning to England. He longed once more to be with his dear mother and sister, and to comfort them in their affliction.
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{
"id": "23072"
}
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10
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KAPOIOLANI.
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After a long sleep, produced by weariness, Tom and the two boys dressed, and made their appearance before their hostess. They found an ample meal provided for them. She told them that her name was Kapoiolani, that she was the wife of one of the chief men of the island, who had gone away on a preaching tour with the missionary by whose means she and her husband had been taught the truth, and begged Tom and the boys to remain till their return. This they were very glad to do, as they still felt weary, and Bass complained of aches in all his limbs.
At every hour of the day people were coming in to receive instructions from Kapoiolani, who was evidently better acquainted with the truths of Christianity than her neighbours. She had for some time accepted the gospel, and showed the deepest earnestness and zeal in making it known to others.
"If people at home, who profess to be true Christians, were as anxious as this lady is to teach others, there would not be so many poor men and women who sink into their graves without ever having heard of the love of Christ for sinners," observed old Tom. "She puts many civilised people to shame."
"But in England there are regular ministers to do that sort of work," observed Harry.
"Every one who loves Christ is a regular minister, to my mind," answered Tom; "and is bound, when he can find the opportunity, to tell others that Christ died for them, and that His blood cleanseth from all sin."
"I hope that I may be able to find opportunities when I get home; though I don't think I shall be able to preach," said Harry.
"You must make opportunities," answered Tom. "You can preach in your life and daily conversation, in gently speaking a word to those among whom you mix. Souls are won to Christ as much by that as by preachers in their pulpits; and the only object of preaching is to win souls."
Two days passed by, when the chief, Kapoiolani's husband, returned, saying that the missionary had gone on with some other friend to a distant part of the island.
Naihi, the chief, seemed as zealous and earnest as his wife; and as he spoke more English than she could, he was able to give his guests a considerable amount of information about the island. He told them that the larger portion of the inhabitants were still heathens, and worshippers of their great goddess, Pele, whose abode, he said, they supposed was in the lofty volcano.
"There is need without delay to preach the gospel to them, for our people are rapidly passing away; and unless we hasten they may sink into their graves still ignorant heathens as they now are," he observed, in a solemn and sad tone.
Naihi, after remaining at home two days, again set off to join his friend the missionary.
Tom and the boys wished to accompany him, but he advised them to remain with his wife, telling them that the journey was fatiguing; and as they could not speak the language of the people, they could be of no use, whereas if they remained with Kapoiolani, they might assist her in acquiring a knowledge of English, which she was anxious to do, so that she might read books in that language. Harry was her chief instructor; and never was there a more attentive pupil. He was surprised at the rapidity with which she learned to read.
Some time had thus been spent, when there was a commotion in the village, and it was announced that a person of importance was approaching, no less than the high-priestess of Pele, if not Pele herself, as the heathen inhabitants asserted.
"She is an impostor, and I will prove her to be so!" exclaimed Kapoiolani, when she heard of it; and, attended by a band of Christians, she went out to meet the priestess.
A woman appeared descending from the hills, dressed in a fantastic way, with her robes scorched and partially consumed by fire. She was followed by a band of women and girls, dressed in the same manner. As she drew near, she shouted with a loud voice that she was come to warn the followers of the new faith to be prepared for the fearful punishment she was about to inflict on them for deserting their ancient gods.
"You are but a miserable woman, and a wretched impostor!" answered Kapoiolani, in an authoritative tone. "The worshippers of Jehovah are not to be frightened by your foolish threats."
On hearing this the pretended Pele became very indignant, and, drawing a document written on native cloth from her bosom, declared that it would prove her authority.
"It will prove that you yourself cannot write, but some one else has assisted you in your imposture, and that is all it will prove, foolish woman!" exclaimed Kapoiolani. "I have a book which announces that there are many false gods, among whom is the one you serve, but that there is only one true God, Jehovah, whom I serve. Let me advise you to throw away your idols, and to turn to Him, I know Pele can do me no harm, because Pele does not really exist, and to prove it I intend to ascend the mountain where you say she resides, and to eat the berries which you hold sacred to her, that when I come back, as I know I shall do, uninjured, my people may see their folly and turn to the true God. I advise you in the meantime to give up your follies, and to labour industriously for your support."
The pretended priestess and her followers appeared very indignant at this; but when Kapoiolani offered them food they gladly partook of it, the priestess of Pele herself joining in the feast. Kapoiolani pointed her out to her people, remarking, "If she were a goddess she would not require food; but see, she eats as greedily as any one."
The next morning Kapoiolani, who had long resolved to visit the volcano Kilauea, the supposed abode of Pele, was ready to set out. She sent word to her husband and the missionary of her intention, saying that it was necessary to do so at once, in order to convince the people of the imposture of the pretended priestess, and that they might understand that Jehovah was the only true God.
With this laudable object in view, she was ready to undergo the fatigue of the journey. She did not object to old Tom and the two boys attending her.
"My people," she said, "believe that any strangers approaching the crater will meet with certain destruction; your going will more easily convince them of their folly."
Kapoiolani performed her journey on foot, as there were at that time no horses in the island, and she objected to be carried by her people. She was attended by a number of persons, with baskets of provisions, who were to proceed to the foot of the mountain, while she, with a select band, proposed mounting to the summit.
The country through which they passed was wild and savage in the extreme. In some places they had to penetrate through thick woods, in others over wide fields of lava.
After many days' journey the base of the mountain was reached. Resting for the night, the next morning at daybreak Kapoiolani and her attendants, aided by long poles, commenced the ascent. Some carried provisions and others materials for building a hut for the accommodation of the chieftainess.
It was past noon before the edge of the crater was reached, near which grew the bushes bearing the supposed sacred berries. It seemed surprising that any vegetation could be produced on such a spot.
They now stood on the edge of a vast basin upwards of seven miles in circuit and nearly a thousand feet deep. At the bottom was a level floor two miles in length, in the centre of which was a vast lake of liquid lava, out of which rose numerous cones sending forth jets of smoke.
Harry had not imagined the existence of so wild and terrible a scene, and he was not surprised that the ignorant inhabitants should have believed it the abode of a goddess delighting in fire and heat.
Kapoiolani told him that at times the lake which they saw below them rose up high above the cones, filling the whole space within a hundred feet of the edge with a sea of liquid lava, and that it occasionally burst its way through the edges, carrying destruction in its course, towards the ocean, while at other times new cones arose in the side of the mountain, through which the lava burst its way, flowing down in all directions.
Having plucked some of the berries, Kapoiolani ate them, and desired her attendants to do the same.
"Now watch the lake!" she exclaimed, extending her hand towards it. "Does it rise because we few poor mortals have eaten the fruit which God allows to grow here? No!" she said, lifting her hand, and pointing towards heaven. "He who lives there, the great Jehovah, has ordained that these things should be, for a wise purpose. There is no such person as Pele, whom, in their ignorance, our fathers have worshipped. You now understand, my friends, that we have nothing therefore to fear."
While some of her attendants were building the hut, Kapoiolani, with old Tom and the boys, and a few other persons, descended the side of the crater, where it sloped sufficiently to enable them to make their way.
The scene around was wild and sombre in the extreme. Mighty cliffs of jet black rock were on every side, with the lake of shining lava below them, though relieved by the blue sky overhead, to which Kapoiolani looked up and pointed.
"There!" she said, "above us is the glorious heaven, which is to be the future home of believers; below, the dark pit, the dwelling-place of those who reject the Lord of light and love."
On regaining the edge of the crater, they saw several persons approaching, among whom, to Kapoiolani's great satisfaction, was the missionary, accompanied by her husband.
The people who followed her, as soon as they saw them, set up a loud shout of joy; for many of them till then had fully believed that their chieftainess would have been destroyed by the vengeance of Pele.
The missionary now offered up a prayer, and having addressed the people, a hymn was sung.
The party remained on the summit of the mountain during the night. The early portion of it was passed by Tom and the boys seated round the fire with the missionary, who told them that they would find little difficulty in returning to Honolulu, where they would soon, probably, find a ship sailing for England.
While they were speaking they were aroused by a brighter light than usual, and on going to the edge of the crater they perceived that the numerous cones, in the centre were now in violent action, some emitting flame, which darted upwards to a height of fifty and a hundred feet, while boiling lava flowed down the sides of others into the lake, out of which they arose like so many islands.
Kapoiolani came out of the hut to witness the scene. She remained calm as before, and quieted the fears of her attendants by observing-- "I know in whom I trust. Even should the lava continue flowing, many days must elapse before the crater is full, and long before it is so we shall be in safety. Pele has nothing to do with it."
Having watched the eruption for some time, Kapoiolani and her female attendants returned to their hut, while the rest of the party gathered round their camp fires to spend the remainder of the night.
After breakfast, having plucked more of the berries and again descended the crater, they proceeded down the mountain.
On reaching the camp where the chief body of her attendants had remained, she addressed them, and urged them from henceforth to dismiss all thoughts of the pretended Pele, and other false deities, from their minds, and to trust alone to Jehovah, the only true God, and His Son Jesus Christ, whom He had sent into the world to die instead of them, and to reconcile them, His outcast children, to Himself. With one voice the people shouted out, "There is no such being as Pele; Jehovah is the only true God; we will serve Him!"
The news of the pious and heroic Kapoiolani's visit to the mountain of Pele was carried through the island; and the people from henceforth acknowledged that they had been foolishly frightened by believing in a being who had no existence, and were everywhere ready to listen to the addresses either of the missionaries or of their own chiefs who had turned from idols.
It is a remarkable circumstance that in the Sandwich Islands the chiefs set the example of overturning their idols, and were generally the first to accept the truth.
After visiting several places on the coast, Kapoiolani and her attendants, accompanied by Tom and the boys, returned to her village.
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{
"id": "23072"
}
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11
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HAPPY RE-UNIONS.
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Several weeks passed away, and no vessel appeared in which the voyagers could obtain a passage to Honolulu. They were rapidly acquiring a knowledge of the language of the island, and Harry and Tom employed much of their time in instructing the natives. Bass did not make so much progress as the rest, and began to grow very weary of the life he led.
"The truth is, Dickey," observed Harry to him one day, "your heart is not in the matter. I wish to reach home, I confess; but if it were not for the dear ones there, I should be content to labour on as I am now doing. I never find the day too long."
"I wish I were like you," said Bass; "but I cannot bring myself to care about the people."
"My dear Dickey," said Harry, "you must pray for grace, then, to do what you know to be right. Think of the great value of human souls, and of the inestimable price which was paid that they might enjoy the happiness of heaven, and then you will become more anxious to win them."
Bass tried to do as his friend advised, and in a short time he was almost as eager as Harry to instruct the natives, and found himself rapidly acquiring their language to enable him to do so.
One day Tom and the two boys set off to visit a village at some distance along the coast. After going some way they saw, by the appearance of the sky, that a storm was threatening, but they hoped to reach their destination before it broke. It came on, however, more rapidly than they had expected.
As they doubled a headland they caught sight of a ship close in with the land, in nearly the same dangerous position that the _Swordfish_ had been. Tom stopped and looked at her.
"She appears to be a whaler, and pretty full," observed Harry.
"A whaler she is; there is no doubt about that," answered Tom. "Just do you scan her narrowly, and tell me if you have ever seen a ship like her."
"What!" exclaimed Harry, shading his eyes, and gazing at her earnestly. "Do you really think she is the _Steadfast_? She is wonderfully like her, as far as I can judge at this distance."
"I know every yard in her canvas, and the _Steadfast_ she is, I am nearly as certain as that we three stand here!" said old Tom, his voice showing the unusual agitation he felt.
"If she is not, she is very like her," observed Bass.
"Oh, she is--I am certain that she is the _Steadfast_!" cried Harry. "But I wish she were farther off the coast, or she may be driven on the rocks and lost after all."
"There is a deep bay two miles on," said Tom, "with a good entrance. It must be down on the chart, and it's my belief the ship is standing for it. If the wind holds as it is now she will be safe."
"I pray that the wind will hold, then!" cried Harry. "Oh, my dear father! I little thought to see him again, and Mr Champion, and the rest. I cannot believe that they will be lost, now that we are about to meet them."
"God knows what is best--you must always remember that, Harry," observed Tom. "It is our business, however, to pray for them. If He thinks fit He will grant our prayers; and even though He does not as we may wish, we must not doubt His justice and mercy."
Right earnestly Tom and his young companions, as they knelt on the ground, offered up their prayers for the safety of the ship, and then hurried on towards the harbour of which Tom had spoken.
The wind continued increasing. They saw first one sail and then another furled till the ship stood on under close-reefed topsails. They hurried forward, every now and then getting a glimpse of her as they reached some elevation overlooking the sea.
They met several natives, who seemed to sympathise in their anxiety, and accompanied them towards the harbour.
The ship heeled over to the blast. Still her canvas stood. Every moment, however, they expected to see it blown from the bolt-ropes.
At last they were obliged to leave the coast to reach the shore of the harbour, and now came the most anxious time of all, when they could not watch the progress of the ship. Hurrying on, they arrived at length at a point of land which projected out into the harbour, and made their way over the rough rocks towards the end.
"There she is! there she is!" shouted Harry, as at that moment he caught sight of the ship, with her yards squared away, running into the harbour.
The natives, who had accompanied them, got a canoe ready, and Tom and the boys jumping into her, their friends paddled away to show the stranger the best spot for anchoring. Their signals were understood by those on board, and the sails being quickly furled and the anchor let go, she rode in safety.
"Harry," exclaimed old Tom, "there is no doubt about her being the _Steadfast_. I caught sight of Mr Champion on the forecastle, with many another well-known face, though I don't think any one recognised us. Let me go up the side first, and learn if it is all well with your father, and if so tell him that you are safe. You know we must always be ready to say `God's will be done,' and you must be prepared for whatever He has ordered."
"Do as you think best, Tom," answered Harry. "I am sure that is right."
Tom climbed up the side. Directly after reaching the deck he stepped back and beckoned to the boys. They quickly climbed up after him. Harry caught sight of his father talking to Tom. In another instant he was in Captain Graybrook's arms. Bass, also, was warmly welcomed. Mr Champion shortly afterwards came aft, and the three castaways were soon surrounded by the remainder of the officers and crew.
They had much to recount to each other. Harry, as clearly as he could, told his father all that had happened to them.
"We have indeed mourned for you and your companions, Harry, as lost," said Captain Graybrook. "The ship was almost knocked to pieces, and after striking on a reef and having our sails blown to ribbons, we drove, with a fearful leak, hardly able to keep the ship afloat, many hundred leagues to the southward. At last, mercifully preserved, we were able to get safely into a harbour in one of the Samoan islands. As soon as the ship was repaired we made sail to the northward to look for you. On reaching the island off which your boat had last been seen, we searched every part of the coast, and went up the only harbour in it, where we hoped that you might have taken shelter, but finding no traces of you, we at length gave you up for lost.
"I believe I should have died of grief, but my friend Champion afforded me comfort from a source of which, till then, I was ignorant. He told me of the love of Jesus, and that he felt sure that you had accepted the offers of salvation, and if it had been God's will to take you to Himself, that you were safe with Him in heaven, where you were free from all the troubles and trials of life, and that I might look forward to the certainty of meeting you there, with your dear mother and sister, if I, too, would yield my stubborn heart to Him. My friend spoke faithfully and firmly, and at length, by grace, through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, I became reconciled to that loving God, and assured that He orders all things for the best.
"We have lately been very successful in fishing, and, having got a full ship, were about to return home, but, requiring fresh provisions, I determined to touch at the Sandwich Islands for the sake of obtaining them, little dreaming of the surprise in store for me.
"When writing to your poor mother I had not the heart to tell her that I had given up all hope of finding you, though it was necessary to prepare her for the worst, and I have told her of your boat being driven away from the ship. I have dreaded the time when I must tell her the sad news that you were, as I supposed, lost to us. What joy it will be to take you back with me, and to set the minds of your dear mother and sister at rest about your safety!"
What Harry said in return need not be repeated. He told his father, however, that he was anxious, before returning home, to let Mr and Mrs Hart know of his and Tom's and Bass's safety, and to thank Kapoiolani and her husband for their kindness.
As the gale threatened to keep the ship in harbour for some days, Tom offered to go back with a message to their native friends, and set off immediately.
As a sufficient supply of provisions, and especially certain stores, could best be obtained at Honolulu, Captain Graybrook, greatly to Harry's satisfaction, had determined to touch there before commencing the homeward voyage.
Two days afterwards several canoes were seen coming off to the ship. In one of them were Kapoiolani and Naihi.
They came, they said, to beg that the captain would bear a message to the missionary, Mr Hart, and his wife, requesting that they would come and reside with them, that they might instruct their people in the gospel. A house should be built for them, and a church and schools, and they should be amply provided with food and all things they might require.
"We have wealth in abundance," observed Kapoiolani, "and we cannot employ that wealth so well as in supporting those who are working to make known the truth to our perishing fellow-countrymen."
Captain Graybrook gladly undertook to carry the message, promising, if possible, to bring Mr and Mrs Hart to the island.
On reaching Honolulu, which the _Steadfast_ did in a few days afterwards, Harry was delighted to find that his friends were willing to accept the invitation; and the stores and provisions being soon obtained, the ship returned with them on board to Hawaii.
On landing at Kapoiolani's village, Mr and Mrs Hart found that a house was already prepared for their reception, and that a church was commenced.
Old Tom said that he felt very much inclined to remain with them; but the ship was short-handed.
"It's my duty to stay on board; there is no doubt about that," he observed; "and I am sure that a man does no good when he deserts his first duty for the sake of doing anything else, however right that may be."
Although several natives had been engaged, the addition of the two lads and Tom to the strength of the crew was very welcome.
Harry and his companion, having bidden farewell to the Christian chief and his wife, and their many other friends, prepared to embark. Mr Hart accompanied them to the beach.
"My dear Harry," he said, "I trust that, when far away from this place, you will not forget the long-benighted savages inhabiting the numberless islands of the vast Pacific. You will have many opportunities of telling people at home of their condition, and perhaps may be the means of inducing some fitted for the task to come out and labour in the glorious work of making known the gospel."
"Indeed I will, Mr Hart," answered Harry; "and, if my father will permit me, I will return here as soon as possible myself. I love a sea life, but would thankfully employ myself, when I possess more knowledge, in spreading the gospel among the islanders."
"You may possibly combine both objects," answered Mr Hart. "Missionary ships to convey missionaries from place to place, and to visit them as often as practicable, are much required, and it is most important that they should be officered by Christian men; and you may be doing good service if you obtain a berth on board one, and ultimately be able to take the command."
"That is exactly what I feel I ought to do," said Harry, as he pressed his friend's hand; "I will pray that I may be directed aright in the matter."
Away the _Steadfast_ sailed on her homeward voyage. Harry, to his great satisfaction, soon found that Mr Champion had resolved to try to induce his friends at home, or one of the missionary societies, to send out a mission ship, of which he purposed offering to take the command.
"And I will go with you as mate," exclaimed Harry. "That will indeed be delightful, and I am sure my father will agree to it; and, from what he has said to me lately, I do not think he intends to come to sea again."
On speaking to his father, Harry found that he was right in his conjecture.
"I had, however, intended giving the command of the _Steadfast_ to Champion, as I have long known he wishes to make your sister Hannah his wife; and allowing her to accompany him, with you as his second mate, as I feel sure she and the ship will be well taken care of. However, though there is no doubt that Champion would make a much better income in command of the _Steadfast_ than as captain of a mission ship, yet I will not thwart his views, if he resolves to do as you tell me he wishes."
Frequently during the voyage the subject was discussed; and though formerly Captain Graybrook would have thought his young mate mad to entertain such a notion, he now cordially entered into his views, and it was settled that Hannah should decide what was to be done.
At length the _Steadfast_, freighted with the richest cargo Captain Graybrook had ever brought into port, was safely at anchor. As soon as he could leave the ship, accompanied by Harry, he hastened home.
The deep anxiety Mrs Graybrook and Hannah long had felt was set at rest.
Mr Champion, directly his duties allowed him, joined them. Hannah discovered the all-important change which had taken place in his mind. She no longer hesitated to promise him her hand.
He told her of the heathen state of the people inhabiting the countless isles of the Pacific, of the earnest wish he entertained of being instrumental in carrying the gospel among them, of the offer her father had made to him of the command of the _Steadfast_, and of his own wish to command a missionary ship, or to engage still more directly in the glorious work by going out as a minister of the gospel.
"I believe that you may be as usefully employed in following your profession as in the latter work, but on whichever you decide I am ready to accompany you," was Hannah's answer.
As no missionary vessel was ready, Leonard Champion, soon after his marriage, took command of the _Steadfast_, and, accompanied by his wife, with Harry and Dickey Bass as his mates, and Tom Hayes as boatswain, made two voyages to the Pacific; and while acting as the father of his crew, and bringing many to a knowledge of the truth, he was the means, by touching whenever he could at missionary stations, of rendering much assistance to those engaged in the most glorious of enterprises; while, by the example he and his crew set, and by the efforts he made at every heathen place at which he touched, he gained the goodwill of the inhabitants, and disposed them to think favourably of Christianity.
At length, having given up the _Steadfast_, he obtained the command of a mission ship, though he had in the meantime succeeded to a good property; and conveyed many missionaries to the stations to which they were appointed.
On the death of Captain and Mrs Graybrook, he and his wife settled in one of the larger islands of the Pacific, where, with Harry and Bass, who shortly afterwards joined them, they have laboured faithfully on till they have seen most of the inhabitants converted to the truth.
Old Tom resided with them, labouring devotedly to the last, till he was called away to hear the words, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
|
{
"id": "23072"
}
|
1
|
LORD AND LADY CARSE.
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Scotland was a strange and uncomfortable country to live in a hundred years ago. Strange beyond measure its state of society appears to us when we consider, not only that it was called a Christian country, but that the people had shown that they really did care very much for their religion, and were bent upon worshipping God according to their conscience and true belief. Whilst earnest in their religion, their state of society was yet very wicked: a thing which usually happens when a whole people are passing from one way of living and being governed to another. Scotland had not long been united with England. While the wisest of the nation saw that the only hope for the country was in being governed by the same king and parliament as the English, many of the most powerful men wished not to be governed at all, but to be altogether despotic over their dependents and neighbours, and to have their _own_ way in everything. These lords and gentlemen did such violent things as are never heard of now in civilised countries; and when their inferiors had any strong desire or passion, they followed the example of the great men, so that travelling was dangerous; citizens did not feel themselves safe in their own houses if they had reason to believe they had enemies; few had any trust in the protection of the law; and stories of fighting and murder were familiar to children living in the heart of cities.
Children, however, had less liberty then than in our time. The more self-will there was in grown people, the more strictly were the children kept in order, not only because the uppermost idea of everyone in authority was that he would be obeyed, but because it would not do to let little people see the mischief that was going on abroad. So, while boys had their hair powdered, and wore long coats and waistcoats, and little knee-breeches, and girls were laced tight in stays all stiff with whalebone, they were trained to manners more formal than are ever seen now.
One autumn afternoon a party was expected at the house of Lord Carse, in Edinburgh; a handsome house in a very odd situation, according to our modern notions. It was at the bottom of a narrow lane of houses--that sort of lane called a Wynd in Scotch cities. It had a court-yard in front. It was necessary to have a court-yard to a good house in a street too narrow for carriages. Visitors must come in sedan chairs and there must be some place, aside from the street, where the chairs and chairmen could wait for the guests. This old fashioned house had sitting-rooms on the ground floor, and on the sills of the windows were flower-pots, in which, on this occasion, some asters and other autumn flowers were growing.
Within the largest sitting-room was collected a formal group, awaiting the arrival of visitors. Lord Carse's sister, Lady Rachel Ballino, was there, surrounded by her nephews and nieces. As they came in, one after another, dressed for company, and made their bow or curtsey at the door, their aunt gave them permission to sit down till the arrival of the first guest, after which time it would be a matter of course that they should stand. Miss Janet and her brothers sat down on their low stools, at some distance from each other; but little Miss Flora had no notion of submitting to their restraints at her early age, and she scrambled up the window-seat to look abroad as far as she could, which was through the high iron gates to the tall houses on the other side the Wynd.
Lady Rachel saw the boys and Janet looking at each other with smiles, and this turned her attention to the child in the window, who was nodding her little curly head very energetically to somebody outside.
"Come down, Flora," said her aunt.
But Flora was too busy, nodding, to hear that she was spoken to.
"Flora, come down. Why are you nodding in that way?"
"Lady nods," said Flora.
Lady Rachel rose deliberately from her seat, and approached the window, turning pale as she went. After a single glance in the court-yard, she sank on a chair, and desired her nephew Orme to ring the bell twice. Orme who saw that something was the matter, rang so vigorously as to bring the butler in immediately.
"John, you see?" said the pale lips of Lady Rachel, while she pointed, with a trembling finger, to the court-yard.
"Yes, my lady; the doors are fastened."
"And Lord Carse not home yet?"
"No, my lady. I think perhaps he is somewhere near, and cannot get home."
John looked irresolutely towards the child in the window. Once more Flora was desired to come down, and once more she only replied, "Lady nods at me."
Janet was going towards the window to enforce her aunt's orders, but she was desired to keep her seat, and John quickly took up Miss Flora in his arms and set her down at her aunt's knee. The child cried and struggled, said she would see the lady, and must infallibly have been dismissed to the nursery, but her eye was caught, and her mind presently engaged by Lady Rachel's painted fan, on which there was a burning mountain, and a blue sea, and a shepherdess and her lamb--all very gay. Flora was allowed to have the fan in her own hands--a very rare favour. But presently she left off telling her aunt what she saw upon it, dropped it, and clapped her hands, saying, as she looked at the window, "Lady nods at me."
"It is mamma!" cried the elder ones, starting to their feet, as the lady thrust her face through the flowers, and close to the window-pane.
"Go to the nursery, children," said Lady Rachel, making an effort to rise. "I will send for you presently." The elder ones appeared glad to escape, and they carried with them the struggling Flora.
Lady Rachel threw up the sash, crossed her arms, and said, in the most formal manner, "What do you want, Lady Carse?"
"I want my children."
"You cannot have them, as you well know. It is too late. I pity you; but it is too late."
"I will see my children. I will come home and live. I will make that tyrant repent setting up anyone in my place at home. I have it in my power to ruin him. I--" "Abstain from threats," said Lady Rachel, shutting the window, and fastening the sash.
Lady Carse doubled her fist, as if about to dash in a pane; but the iron gates behind her creaked on their hinges, and she turned her head. A chair was entering, on each side of which walked a footman, whose livery Lady Carse well knew. Her handsome face, red before, was now more flushed. She put her mouth close to the window, and said, "If it had been anybody but Lovat you would not have been rid of me this evening. I would have stood among the chairmen till midnight for the chance of getting in. Be sure I shall to-morrow, or some day. But now I am off." She darted past the chair, her face turned away, just as Lord Lovat was issuing from it.
"Ho! ho!" cried he, in a loud and mocking tone. "Ho, there! my Lady Carse! A word with you!" But she ran up the Wynd as fast as she could go.
"You should not look so white upon it," Lord Lovat observed to Lady Rachel, as soon as the door was shut. "Why do you let her see her power over you?"
"God knows!" replied Lady Rachel. "But it is not her threats alone that make us nervous. It is the being incessantly subject--" She cleared her throat; but she could not go on.
Lord Lovat swore that he would not submit to be tormented by a virago in this way. If Lady Carse were his wife-- "Well! what would you do?" asked Lady Rachel.
"I would get rid of her. I tell your brother so. I would get rid of her in one way, if she threatened to get rid of me in another. She may have learned from her father how to put her enemies out of the way."
Lady Rachel grew paler than ever. Lord Lovat went on.
"Her father carried pistols in the streets of Edinburgh and so may she. Her father was hanged for it; and it is my belief that she would have no objection to that end if she could have her revenge first. Ay! you wonder why I say such things to you, frightened as you are already. I do it that you may not infuse any weakness into your brother's purposes, if he should think fit to rid the town of her one of these days. Come, come! I did not say rid the world of her."
"Merciful Heaven! no!"
"There are places, you know, where troublesome people have no means of doing mischief. I could point out such a place presently, if I were asked--a place where she might be as safe as under lock and key, without the trouble and risk of confining her, and having to consider the law."
"You do not mean a prison, then?"
"No. She has not yet done anything to make it easy to put her in prison for life; and anything short of that would be more risk than comfort. If Carse gives me authority, I will dispose of her where she can be free to rove like the wild goats. If she should take a fancy to jump down a precipice, or drown herself, that is her own affair, you know."
The door opened for the entrance of company. Lord Lovat whispered once more, "Only this. If Carse thinks of giving the case into my hands, don't you oppose it. I will not touch her life, I swear to you."
Lady Rachel knew, like the rest of the world, that Lord Lovat's swearing went for no more than any of his other engagements. Though she would have given all she had in the world to be freed from the terror of Lady Carse, and to hope that the children might forget their unhappy mother, she shrank from the idea of putting any person into the hands of the hard, and mocking, and plotting Lord Lovat. As for the legality of doing anything at all to Lady Carse while she did not herself break the law, that was a consideration which no more occurred to Lady Rachel than to the violent Lord Lovat himself.
Lady Rachel was exerting herself to entertain her guests, and had sent for the children, when, to her inexplicable relief, the butler brought her the news that Lord Carse and his son Willie were home, and would appear with all speed. They had been detained two hours in a tavern, John said.
"In a tavern?"
"Yes, my lady. Could not get out. Did not wish to collect more people, to cause a mob. It is all right now, my lady."
When Lord Carse entered, he made formal apologies to his guests first, and his sister afterwards, for his late appearance. He had been delayed by an affair of importance on his way home. His rigid countenance was somewhat paler than usual, and his manner more dictatorial. His hard and unwavering voice was heard all the evening, prosing and explaining. The only tokens of feeling were when he spoke to his eldest son Willie, who was spiritless, and, as the close observer saw, tearful; and when he took little Flora in his arms, and stroked her shining hair, and asked her if she had been walking with the nurse.
Flora did not answer. She was anxiously watching Lady Rachel's countenance. Her papa bade her look at him and answer his question. She did so, after glancing at her aunt, and saying eagerly, in a loud whisper, "I am not going to say anything about the lady that came to the window, and nodded at me."
It did not mend the matter that her sister and brothers all said at once, in a loud whisper, "Hush! Flora."
Her father sat her down hastily. Lord Carse's domestic troubles were pretty well-known throughout Edinburgh; and the company settled it in their own minds that there had been a scene this afternoon.
When they were gone, Lord Carse gave his sister his advice not to instruct any very young child in any part to be acted. He assured her that very young children have not the discretion of grown people, and gave it as his opinion that when the simplicity, which is extremely agreeable by the domestic fireside, becomes troublesome or dangerous in society, the child is better disposed of in the nursery.
Lady Rachel meekly submitted; only observing what a singular and painful case was that of these children, who had to be so early trained to avoid the very mention of their mother. She believed her brother to be the most religious man she had ever known; yet she now heard him mutter oaths so terrible that they made her blood run cold.
"Brother! my dear brother," she expostulated.
"I'll tell you what she has done," he said, from behind his set teeth. "She has taken a lodging in this very Wynd, directly opposite my gates. Not a child, not a servant, not a dog or cat can leave my house without coming under her eye. She will be speaking to the children out of her window."
"She will be nodding at Flora from the court-yard as often as you are out," cried Lady Rachel. "And if she should shoot you from her window, brother."
"She hints that she will; and there are many things more unlikely, considering (as she herself says) whose daughter she is. --But, no," he continued, seeing the dreadful alarm into which his sister was thrown. "This will not be her method of revenge. There is another that pleases her better, because she suspects that I dread it more. --You know what I mean?"
"Political secrets?" Lady Rachel whispered--not in Flora's kind of whisper, but quite into her brother's ear.
He nodded assent, and then he gravely informed her that his acquaintance, Duncan Forbes, had sent a particular request to see him in the morning. He should go, he said. It would not do to refuse waiting on the President of the Court of Session, as he was known to be in Edinburgh. But he wished he was a hundred miles off, if he was to hear a Hanoverian lecture from a man so good natured, and so dignified by his office, that he must always have his own way.
Lady Rachel went to bed very miserable this night. She wished that Lady Carse and King George, and all the House of Brunswick had never existed; or that Prince Charlie, or some of the exiled royal family, would come over at once and take possession of the kingdom, that her brother and his friends might no longer be compelled to live in a state of suspicion and dread--every day planning to bring in a new king, and every day obliged to appear satisfied with the one they had; their secret, or some part of it, being all the while at the mercy of a violent woman who hated them all.
|
{
"id": "23115"
}
|
2
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THE TURBULENT.
|
When Lord Carse issued from his own house the next morning to visit the President, he had his daughter Janet by his side, and John behind him. He took Janet in the hope that her presence, while it would be no impediment to any properly legal business, would secure him from any political conversation being introduced; and there was no need of any apology for her visit, as the President usually asked why he had not the pleasure of seeing her, if her father went alone. Duncan Forbes's good nature to all young people was known to everybody; but he declared himself an admirer of Janet above all others; and Janet never felt herself of so much consequence as in the President's house.
John went as an escort to his young lady on her return.
Janet felt her father's arm twitch as they issued from their gates; and, looking up to see why, she saw that his face was twitching too. She did not know how near her mother was, nor that her father and John had their ears on the stretch for a hail from the voice they dreaded above all others in the world. But nothing was seen or heard of Lady Carse; and when they turned out of the Wynd Lord Carse resumed his usual air and step of formal importance; and Janet held up her head, and tried to take steps as long as his.
All was right about her going to the President's. He kissed her forehead, and praised her father for bringing her, and picked out for her the prettiest flowers from a bouquet before he sat down to business; and then he rose again, and provided her with a portfolio of prints to amuse herself with; and even then he did not forget her, but glanced aside several times, to explain the subject of some print, or to draw her attention to some beauty in the one she was looking at.
"My dear lord," said he, "I have taken a liberty with your time; but I want your opinion on a scheme I have drawn out at length for Government, for preventing and punishing the use of tea among the common people."
"Very good, very good!" observed Lord Carse, greatly relieved about the reasons for his being sent for. "It is high time, if our agriculture is to be preserved, that the use of malt should be promoted to the utmost by those in power."
"I am sure of it," said the President. "Things have got to such a pass, that in towns the meanest people have tea at the morning's meal, to the discontinuance of the ale which ought to be their diet; and poor women dank this drug also in the afternoons, to the exclusion of the twopenny."
"It is very bad; _very_ unpatriotic; very immoral," declared Lord Carse. "Such people must be dealt with outright."
The President put on his spectacles, and opened his papers to explain his plan--that plan, which it now appears almost incredible should have come from a man so wise, so liberal, so kind-hearted as Duncan Forbes. He showed how he would draw the line between those who ought and those who ought not to be permitted to drink tea; how each was to be described, and how, when anyone was suspected of taking tea, when he ought to be drinking beer, he was to tell on oath what his income was, that it might be judged whether he could pay the extremely high duty on tea which the plan would impose. Houses might be visited, and cupboards and cellars searched, at all hours, in cases of suspicion.
"These provisions are pretty severe," the President himself observed. "But--" "But not more than is necessary," declared Lord Carse. "I should say they are too mild. If our agriculture is not supported, if the malt tax falls off, what is to become of us?"
And he sighed deeply.
"If we find this scheme work well, as far as it goes," observed the President, cheerfully, "we can easily render it as much more stringent as occasion may require. And now, what can Miss Janet tell us on this subject? Can she give information of any tea being drunk in the nursery at home?"
"Oh! to be sure," said Janet. "Nurse often lets me have some with her; and Katie fills Flora's doll's teapot out of her own, almost every afternoon."
"Bless my soul!" cried Lord Carse, starting from his seat in consternation. "My servants drink tea in my house! Off they shall go-- every one of them who does it."
"Oh! papa. No; pray papa!" implored Janet. "They will say I sent them away. Oh! I wish nobody had asked me anything about it."
"It was my doing," said the President. "My dear lord, I make it my request that your servants may be forgiven."
Lord Carse bowed his acquiescence; but he shook his head, and looked very gloomy about such a thing happening in his house. The President agreed with him that it must not happen again, on pain of instant dismissal.
The President next invited Janet to the drawing-room to see a grey parrot, brought hither since her last visit--a very entertaining companion in the evenings, the President declared. He told Lord Carse he would be back in three minutes, and so he was--with a lady on his arm, and that lady was--Lady Carse.
She was not flushed now, nor angry, nor forward. She was quiet and ladylike, while in the house of one of the most gentlemanly men of his time. If her husband had looked at her, he would have seen her so much like the woman he wooed and once dearly loved, that he might have somewhat changed his feelings towards her. But he went abruptly to the window when he discovered who she was, and nothing could make him turn his head. Perhaps he was aware how pale he was, and desired that she should not see it.
The President placed the lady in a chair, and then approached Lord Carse, and laid his hand on his shoulder, saying, "You will forgive me when you know my reasons. I want you to join me in prevailing on this good lady to give up a design which I think imprudent--I will say, wrong."
It was surprising, but Lady Carse for once bore quietly with somebody thinking her wrong. Whatever she might feel, she said nothing. The President went on.
"Lady Carse--" He felt, as his hand lay on his friend's shoulder, that he winced, as if the very name stung him.
"Lady Carse," continued the President, "cannot be deterred by any account that can be given her of the perils and hardships of a journey to London. She declares her intention of going."
"I am no baby; I am no coward," declared the lady. "The coach would not have been set up, and it would not continue to go once a fortnight if the journey were not practicable; and where others go I can go."
"Of the dangers of the road, I tell this good lady," resumed the President, "she can judge as well as you or I, my lord. But of the perils of the rest of her errand she must, I think, admit that we may be better judges."
"How can you let your Hanoverian prejudices seduce you into countenancing such a devil as that woman, and believing a word that she says?" muttered Lord Carse, in a hoarse voice.
"Why, my good friend," replied the President, "it does so vex my very heart every day to see how the ladies, whom I would fain honour for their discretion as much as I admire them for their other virtues, are wild on behalf of the Pretender, or eager for a desperate and treasonable war, that you must not wonder if I take pleasure in meeting with one who is loyal to her rightful sovereign. Loyal, I must suppose, at home, and in a quiet way; for she knows that I do not approve of her journey to London to see the minister."
"The minister!" faltered out Lord Carse.
He heard, or fancied he heard his wife laughing behind him.
"Come, now, my friends," said the President, with a good-humoured seriousness, "let me tell you that the position of either of you is no joke. It is too serious for any lightness and for any passion. I do not want to hear a word about your grievances. I see quite enough. I see a lady driven from home, deprived of her children, and tormenting herself with thoughts of revenge because she has no other object. I see a gentleman who has been cruelly put to shame in his own house and in the public street, worn with anxiety about his innocent daughters, and with natural fears--inevitable fears, of the mischief that may be done to his character and fortunes by an ill use of the confidence he once gave to the wife of his bosom."
There was a suppressed groan from Lord Carse, and something like a titter from the lady. The President went on even more gravely.
"I know how easy it is for people to make each other wretched, and especially for you two to ruin each other. If I could but persuade you to sit down with me to a quiet discussion of a plan for living together or apart, abstaining from mutual injury--" Lord Carse dissented audibly from their living together, and the lady from living apart.
"Why," remonstrated the President, "things cannot be worse than they are now. You make life a hell--" "I am sure it is to me!" sighed Lord Carse.
"It is not yet so to me," said the lady. "I--" "It is not!" thundered her husband, turning suddenly round upon her. "Then I will take care it shall be."
"For God's sake, hush!" exclaimed the President, shocked to the soul.
"Do your worst," said the lady, rising. "We will try which has the most power. You know what ruin is."
"Stop a moment," said the President. "I don't exactly like to have this quiet house of mine made a hell of. I cannot have you part on these terms."
But the lady had curtseyed, and was gone. For a minute or two nothing was said. Then a sort of scream was heard from upstairs.
"My Janet!" cried Lord Carse.
"I will go and see," said the President. "Janet is my especial pet, you know."
He immediately returned, smiling, and said, "There is nothing amiss with Janet. Come and see."
Janet was on her mother's lap, her arms thrown round her neck, while the mother's tears streamed over them both. "Can you resist this?" the President asked of Lord Carse. "Can you keep them apart after this?"
"I can," he replied. "I will not permit her the devilish pleasure she wants--of making my own children my enemies."
He was going to take Janet by force: but the President interfered, and said authoritatively to Lady Carse that she had better go: her time was not yet come. She must wait; and his advice was to wait patiently and harmlessly.
It could not have been believed how instantaneously a woman in such emotion could recover herself.
She put Janet off her knee. In an instant there were no more traces of tears, and her face was composed, and her manner hard.
"Good-bye, my dear," she said to the weeping Janet. "Don't cry so, my dear. Keep your tears; for you will have something more to cry for soon. I am going home to pack my trunk for London. Have my friends any commands for London?"
And she looked round steadily upon the three faces.
The President was extremely grave when their eyes met; but even his eye sank under hers. He offered his arm to conduct her downstairs, and took leave of her at the gate with a silent bow.
He met Lord Carse and Janet coming downstairs, and begged them to stay awhile, dreading, perhaps, a street encounter. But Lord Carse was bent on being gone immediately--and had not another moment to spare.
|
{
"id": "23115"
}
|
3
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THE WRONG JOURNEY.
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Lady Carse and her maid Bessie--an elderly woman who had served her from her youth up, bearing with her temper for the sake of that family attachment which exists so strongly in Scotland,--were busy packing trunks this afternoon, when they were told that a gentleman must speak with Lady Carse below stairs.
"There will be no peace till we are off," observed the lady to her maid. In answer to which Bessie only sighed deeply.
"I want you to attend me downstairs," observed the lady. "But this provoking nonsense of yours, this crying about going a journey, has made you not fit to be seen. If any friend of my lord's saw your red eyes, he would go and say that my own maid was on my lord's side. I must go down alone."
"Pray, madam, let me attend you. The gentleman will not think of looking at me: and I will stand with my back to the light, and the room is dark."
"No; your very voice is full of tears. Stay where you are."
Lady Carse sailed into the room very grandly, not knowing whom she was to see. Nor was she any wiser when she did see him. He was muffled up, and wore a shawl tied over his mouth, and kept his hat on; so that little space was left between hat, periwig, and comforter. He apologised for wearing his hat, and for keeping the lady standing--his business was short:--in the first place to show her Lord Carse's ring, which she would immediately recognise.
She glanced at the ring, and knew it at once.
"On the warrant of this ring," continued the gentleman, "I come from your husband to require from you what you cannot refuse,--either as a wife, or consistent with your safety. You hold a document,--a letter from your husband, written to you in conjugal confidence five years ago, from London,--a letter--" "You need not describe it further," said the lady. "It is my chief treasure, and not likely to escape my recollection. It is a letter from Lord Carse, containing treasonable expressions relating to the royal family."
"About the treason we might differ, madam; but my business is, not to argue that, but to require of you to deliver up that paper to me, on this warrant," again producing the ring.
The lady laughed, and asked whether the gentleman was a fool or took her to be one, that he asked her to give up what she had just told him was the greatest treasure she had in the world,--her sure means of revenge upon her enemies.
"You will not?" asked the gentleman.
"I will not."
"Then hear what you have to expect, madam. Hear it, and then take time to consider once more."
"I have no time to spare," she replied. "I start for London early in the morning; and my preparations are not complete."
"You must hear me, however," said the gentleman. "If you do not yield your husband will immediately and irrevocably put you to open shame."
"He cannot," she replied. "I have no shame. I have the advantage of him there."
"You have, however, personal liberty at present. You have that to lose,--and life, madam. You have that to lose."
Lady Carse caught at the table, and leaned on it to support herself. It was not from fear about her liberty or life; but because there was a cruel tone in the utterance of the last words, which told her that it was Lord Lovat who was threatening her; and she _was_ afraid of him.
"I have shaken you now," said he. "Come: give me the letter."
"It is not fear that shakes me," she replied. "It is disgust. The disgust that some feel at reptiles I feel at you, my Lord Lovat."
She quickly turned and left the room. When he followed she had her foot on the stairs. He said aloud, "You will repent, madam. You will repent."
"That is my own affair."
"True, madam, most true. I charge you to remember that you have yourself said that it is your own affair if you find you have cause to repent."
Lady Carse stood on the stairs till her visitor had closed the house door behind him, struggled up to her chamber, and fainted on the threshold.
"This journey will never do, madam," said Bessie, as her mistress revived.
"It is the very thing for me," protested the lady. "In twelve hours more we shall have left this town and my enemies behind us; and then I shall be happy."
Bessie sighed. Her mistress often talked of being happy; but nobody had ever yet seen her so.
"This fainting is nothing," said Lady Carse, rising from the bed. "It is only that my soul sickens when Lord Lovat comes near; and the visitor below was Lord Lovat."
"Mercy on us!" exclaimed Bessie. "What next?"
"Why, that we must get this lock turned," said her lady, kneeling on the lid of a trunk. "Now, try again. There it is! Give me the key. Get me a cup of tea, and then to bed with you! I have a letter to write. Call me at four, to a minute. Have you ordered two chairs, to save all risk?"
"Yes, madam; and the landlord will see your things to the coach office to-night."
Lady Carse had sealed her letter, and was winding up her watch with her eyes fixed on the decaying fire, when she was startled by a knock at the house door. Everybody else was in bed. In a vague fear she hastened to her chamber, and held the door in her hand and listened while the landlord went down. There were two voices besides his; and there was a noise as of something heavy brought into the hall. When this was done, and the bolts and bars were again fastened, she went to the stair-head and saw the landlord coming up with a letter in his hand. The letter was for her. It was heavy. Her trunks had come back from the coach office. The London coach was gone.
The letter contained the money paid for the fare of Lady Carse and her maid to London, and explained that a person of importance having occasion to go to London with attendants, and it being necessary to use haste, the coach was compelled to start six hours earlier than usual; and Lady Carse would have the first choice of places next time;--that is in a fortnight.
Bessie had never seen her mistress in such a rage as now: and poor Bessie was never to see it again. At the first news, she was off her guard, and thanked Heaven that this dangerous journey was put off for a fortnight; and much might happen in that time. Her mistress turned round upon her, said it was not put off,--she would go on horseback alone,--she would go on foot,--she would crawl on her knees, sooner than give up. Bessie was silent, well knowing that none of these ways would or could be tried, and thankful that there was only this one coach to England. Enraged at her silence, her mistress declared that no one who was afraid to go to London was a proper servant for her, and turned her off upon the spot. She paid her wages to the weeping Bessie, and with the first light of morning, sent her from the house, herself closing the door behind her. She then went to bed, drawing the curtains close round it, remaining there all the next day, and refusing food.
In the evening, she wearily rose, and slowly dressed herself,--for the first time in her life without help. She was fretted and humbled at the little difficulties of her toilet, and secretly wished, many times, that Bessie would come back and offer her services, though she was resolved to appear not to accept them without a very humble apology from Bessie for her fears about London. At last, she was ready to go down to tea, dressed in a wrapping-gown and slippers. When halfway down, she heard a step behind her, and looked round. A Highlander was just two stairs above her: another appeared at the foot of the flight; and more were in the hall. She knew the livery. It was Lovat's tartan. They dragged her downstairs, and into her parlour, where she struggled so violently that she fell against the heavy table, and knocked out two teeth. They fastened down her arms by swathing her with a plaid, tied a cloth over her mouth, threw another over her head, and carried her to the door. In the street was a sedan chair; and in the chair was a man who took her upon his knees, and held her fast. Still she struggled so desperately, that the chair rocked from side to side, and would have been thrown over; but that there were plenty of attendants running along by the side of it, who kept it upright.
This did not last very long. When they had got out of the streets, the chair stopped. The cloth was removed from her head; and she saw that they were on the Linlithgow road, that some horsemen were waiting, one of whom was on a very stout horse, which bore a pillion behind the saddle. To this person she was formally introduced, and told that he was Mr Forster of Corsebonny. She knew Mr Forster to be a gentleman of character; and that therefore her personal safety was secure in his hands. But her good opinion of him determined her to complain and appeal to him in a way which she believed no gentleman could resist. She did not think of making any outcry. The party was large; the road was unfrequented at night; and she dreaded being gagged. She therefore only spoke,--and that as calmly as she could.
"What does this mean, Mr Forster? Where are you carrying me?"
"I know little of Lord Carse's purposes, madam; and less of the meaning of them probably than yourself."
"My Lord Carse! Then I shall soon be among the dead. He will go through life with murder on his soul."
"You wrong him, madam. Your life is very safe."
"No; I will not live to be the sport of my husband's mercy. I tell you, sir, I will not live."
"Let me advise you to be silent, madam. Whatever we have to say will be better said at the end of our stage, where I hope you will enjoy good rest, under my word that you shall not be molested."
But the lady would not be silent. She declared very peremptorily her determination to destroy herself on the first opportunity; and no one who knew her temper could dispute the probability of her doing that, or any other act of passion. From bewailing herself, she went on to say things of her husband and Lord Lovat, and of her purposes in regard to them, which Mr Forster felt that he and others ought not, for her own sake, to hear. He quickened his pace, but she complained of cramp in her side. He then halted, whispered to two men who watched for his orders, and had the poor lady again silenced by the cloth being tied over her mouth. She tried to drop off, but that only caused the strap which bound her to the rider to be buckled tighter. She found herself treated like a wayward child. When she could no longer make opposition, the pace of the party was quickened, and it was not more than two hours past midnight when they reached a country house, which she knew to belong to an Edinburgh lawyer, a friend of her husband's.
Servants were up--fires were burning--supper was on the table. The lady was shown to a comfortable bedroom.
From thence she refused to come down. Mr Forster and another gentleman of the party therefore visited her to explain as much as they thought proper of Lord Carse's plans, and of their own method of proceeding.
They told her that Lord Carse found himself compelled, for family reasons, to sequestrate her. For her life and safety there was no fear; but she was to live where she could have that personal liberty of which no one wished to deprive her, without opportunity of intercourse with her family.
"And where can that be?" she asked. "Who will undertake to say that I shall live, in the first place, and that my children shall not hear from me, in the next?"
"Where your abode is to be, we do not know," replied Mr Forster. "Perhaps it is not yet settled. As for your life, madam, I have engaged to transfer you alive and safe, as far as lies in human power."
"Transfer me! To whom?"
"To another friend of your husband's, who will take equal care of you. I am sorry for your threats of violence on yourself. They compel me to do what I should not otherwise have thought of--to forbid your being alone, even in this your own room."
"You do not mean--" "I mean that you are not to be left unwatched for a single instant. There is a woman in the house--the housekeeper. She and her husband will enter this room when I leave it; and I advise you to say nothing to them against this arrangement."
"They shall have no peace with me."
"I am sorry for it. It will be a bad preparation for your further journey. You would do better to lie down and rest,--for which ample time shall be allowed."
The people in charge of the house were summoned, and ordered, in the lady's hearing, to watch her rest, and on no account to leave the room till desired to do so. A table was set out in one corner, with meat and bread, wine and ale. But the unhappy lady would not attempt either to eat or sleep. She sat by the fire, faint, weary and gloomy. She listened to the sounds from below till the whole party had supped, and lain down for the night. Then she watched her guards,--the woman knitting, and the man reading his Bible. At last, she could hold up no longer. Her head sank on her breast, and she was scarcely conscious of being gently lifted, laid upon the bed, and covered up warm with cloak and plaid.
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{
"id": "23115"
}
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4
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NEWSPAPERS.
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Lady Carse did not awake till the afternoon of the next day; and then she saw the housekeeper sitting knitting on the same chair, and looking as if she had never stirred since she took her place there in the middle of the night. The man was not there.
The woman cheerfully invited the lady to rise and refresh herself, and come to the fire, and then go down and dine. But Lady Carse's spirit was awake as soon as her eyes were. She said she would never rise-- never eat again. The woman begged her to think better of it, or she should be obliged to call her husband to resume his watch, and to let Mr Forster know of her refusal to take food. To this the poor lady answered only by burying her face in the coverings, and remaining silent and motionless, for all the woman could say.
In a little while, up came Mr Forster, with three Highlanders. They lifted her, as if she had been a child, placed her in an easy chair by the fireside, held back her head, and poured down her throat a basin full of strong broth.
"It grieves me, madam," said Mr Forster, "to be compelled to treat you thus--like a wayward child. But I am answerable for your life. You will be fed in this way as often as you decline necessary food."
"I defy you still," she cried.
"Indeed!" said he, with a perplexed look. She had been searched by the housekeeper in her sleep; and it was certain that no weapon and no drug was about her person. She presently lay back in the chair, as if wishing to sleep, throwing a shawl over her head; and all withdrew except the housekeeper and her husband.
In a little while some movement was perceived under the shawl, and there was a suppressed choking sound. The desperate woman was swallowing her hair, in order to vomit up the nourishment she had taken--as another lady in desperate circumstances once did to get rid of poison. The housekeeper was ordered to cut off her hair, and Mr Forster then rather rejoiced in this proof that she carried no means of destroying her life.
As soon as it was quite dark she was compelled to take more food, and then wrapped up warmly for a night ride. Mr Forster invited her to promise that she would not speak, that he might be spared the necessity of bandaging her mouth. But she declared her intention of speaking on every possible occasion; and she was therefore effectually prevented from opening her mouth at all.
On they rode through the night, stopping to dismount only twice; and then it was not at any house, but at mere sheepfolds, where a fire was kindled by some of the party, and where they drank whisky, and laughed and talked in the warmth and glow of the fire, as if the poor lady had not been present. Between her internal passion, her need of more food than she would take, the strangeness of the scene, with the sparkling cold stars overhead, and the heat and glow of the fire under the wall-- amidst these distracting influences the lady felt confused and ill, and would have been glad now to have been free to converse quietly, and to accept the mercy Mr Forster had been ready to show her. He was as watchful as ever, sat next her as she lay on the ground, said at last that they had not much further to go, and felt her pulse. As the grey light of morning strengthened, he went slower and slower, and encouraged her to lean upon him, which her weakness compelled her to do. He sent forward the factor of the estate they were now entering upon, desiring him to see that everything was warm and comfortable.
When the building they were approaching came in view, the poor lady wondered how it could ever be made warm and comfortable. It was a little old tower, the top of which was in ruins, and the rest as dreary looking as possible. Cold and bare it stood on a waste hill-side. It would have looked like a mere grey pillar set down on the scanty pasture, but for a square patch behind, which was walled in by a hard ugly wall of stones. A thin grey smoke arose from it, showing that someone was within; and dogs began to bark as the party drew near.
One woman was here as at the last resting place. She showed the way by the narrow winding stair, up which Lady Carse was carried like a corpse, and laid on a little bed in a _very_ small room, whose single window was boarded up, leaving only a square of glass at the top to admit the light. Mr Forster stood at the bedside, and said firmly, "Now, Lady Carse, listen to me for a moment, and then you will be left with such freedom as this room and this woman's attendance can afford you. You are so exhausted, that we have changed our plan of travel. You will remain here, in this room, till you have so recruited yourself by food and rest as to be able to proceed to a place where all restraint will be withdrawn. When you think yourself able to proceed, and declare your willingness to do so, I, or a friend of mine, will be at your service-- at your call at any hour. Till then this room is your abode; and till then I bid you farewell."
He unfastened the bandage, and was gone before she could speak to him. What she wanted to say was, that on such terms she would never leave this room again. She desired the woman to tell him so; but the woman said she had orders to carry no messages.
Where there is no help and no hope, any force of mere temper is sure to give way, as Mr Forster well knew. Injured people who have done no wrong, and who bear no anger against their enemies, have an inward strength and liberty of mind which enable them to bear on firmly, and to be immovable in their righteous purposes; so that, as has been shown by many examples, they will be torn limb from limb sooner than yield. Lady Carse was an injured person--most deeply injured, but she was not innocent. She had a purpose; but it was a vindictive one; and her soul was all tossed with passion, instead of being settled in patience. So her intentions of starving herself--of making Mr Forster miserable by killing herself through want of sleep and food, gave way; and then she was in a rage with herself for having given way. When all was still in the tower, and the silent woman who attended her knitted on for hours together, as if she was a machine; and there was nothing to be seen from the boarded window; and the smouldering peats in the fireplace looked as if they were asleep, Lady Carse could not always keep awake, and, once asleep, she did not wake for many hours.
When, at length, she started up and looked around her, she was alone, and the room was lighted only by a flickering blaze from the fireplace. This dancing light fell on a little low round table, on which was a plate with some slices of mutton-ham, some oatcake, three or four eggs, and a pitcher. She was ravenously hungry, and she was alone. She thought she would take something--so little as to save her pride, and not to show that she had yielded. But, once yielding, this was impossible. She ate, and ate, till all was gone--even the eggs; and it would have been the same if they had been raw. The pitcher contained ale, and she emptied it. When she had done, she could have died with shame. She was just thinking of setting her dress on fire, when she heard the woman's step on the stair. She threw herself on the bed, and pretended to be asleep. Presently she was so, and she had another long nap. When she woke the table had nothing on it but the woman's knitting; the woman was putting peats on the fire, and she made no remark, then or afterwards, on the disappearance of the food. From that day forward food was laid out while the lady slept; and when she awoke, she found herself alone to eat it. It was served without knife or fork, with only bone spoons. It would have been intolerable shame to her if she had known that she was watched, through a little hole in the door, as a precaution against any attempt on her life.
But her intentions of this kind too gave way. She was well aware that though not free to go where she liked she could, any day, find herself in the open air with liberty to converse, except on certain subjects; and that she might presently be in some abode--she did not know what-- where she could have full personal liberty, and her present confinement being her own choice made it much less dignified, and this caused her to waver about throwing off life and captivity together. The moment never came when she was disposed to try.
At the end of a week she felt great curiosity to know whether Mr Forster was at the tower all this time waiting her pleasure. She would not enquire lest she should be suspected of the truth--that she was beginning to wish to see him. She tried one or two distant questions on her attendant, but the woman knew nothing. There seemed to be no sort of question that she could answer.
In a few days more the desire for some conversation with somebody became very pressing, and Lady Carse was not in the habit of denying herself anything she wished for. Still, her pride pulled the other way. The plan she thought of was to sit apparently musing or asleep by the fire while her attendant swept the floor of her room, and suddenly to run downstairs while the door was open. This she did one day, when she was pretty sure she had heard an unusual sound of horses' feet below. If Mr Forster should be going without her seeing him it would be dreadful. If he should have arrived after an absence this would afford a pretext for renewing intercourse with him. So she watched her moment, sprang to the door, and was down the stair before her attendant could utter a cry of warning to those below.
Lady Carse stood on the last stair, gazing into the little kitchen, which occupied the ground floor of the tower. Two or three people turned and gazed at her, as startled, perhaps, as herself; and she _was_ startled, for one of them was Lord Lovat.
Mr Forster recovered himself, bowed, and said that perhaps she found herself able to travel; in which case, he was at her service.
"O dear, no!" she said. She had no intention whatever of travelling further. She had heard an arrival of horsemen, and had merely come down to know if there was any news from Edinburgh.
Lord Lovat bowed, said he had just arrived from town, and would be happy to wait on her upstairs with any tidings that she might enquire for.
"By no means," she said, haughtily. She would wait for tidings rather than learn them from Lord Lovat. She turned, and went upstairs again, stung by hearing Lord Lovat's hateful laugh behind her as she went.
As she sat by the fire, devouring her shame and wrath, her attendant came up with a handful of newspapers, and Lord Lovat's compliments, and he had sent her the latest Edinburgh news to read, as she did not wish to hear it from him. She snatched the papers, meaning to thrust them into the fire in token of contempt for the sender; but a longing to read them came over her, and she might convey sufficient contempt by throwing them on the bed--and this she accordingly did.
She watched them, however, as a cat does a mouse. The woman seemed to have no intention of going down any more to-day. Whether the lady was watched, and her impatience detected, through the hole in the door, or whether humanity suggested that the unhappy creature should be permitted an hour of solitude on such an occasion, the woman was called down, and did not immediately return.
How impatiently, then, were the papers seized! How unsettled was the eye which ran over the columns, while the mind was too feverish to comprehend what it read! In a little while, however, the ordinary method of newspaper reading established itself, and she went on from one item to another with more amusement than anxiety. In this mood, and with the utmost suddenness, she came upon the announcement, in large letters, of "The Funeral of Lady Carse!" It was even so! In one paper was a paragraph intimating the threatening illness of Lady Carse; in the next, the announcement of her death; in the third, a full account of her funeral, as taking place from her husband's house.
Her fate was now clear. She was lost to the world for ever! In the midst of the agony of this doom she could yet be stung by the thought that this was the cause of Lord Lovat's complaisance in sending her the newspapers; that here was the reason of the only indulgence which had been permitted her!
As for the rest, her mind made short work of it. Her object must now be to confound her foes--to prove to the world that she was not dead and buried. From this place she could not do this. Here there was no scope and no hope. In travelling, and in her future residence, there might be a thousand opportunities. She could not stay here another hour, and so she sent word to Mr Forster. His reply was that he should be happy to escort her that night. From the stair-head she told him that she could not wait till night. He declared it impossible to make provision for her comfort along the road without a few hours' notice by a horseman sent forward. The messenger was already saddling his horse, and by nine in the evening the rest of the party would follow.
At nine the lady was on her pillion, but now comfortably clad in a country dress--homely, but warm. It was dark, but she was informed that the party thoroughly knew their road, and that in four or five days they should have the benefit of the young moon.
So, after four or five days, they were to be still travelling! Where could they be carrying her?
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{
"id": "23115"
}
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5
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CROSS ROADS AND SHORT SEAS.
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Where they were carrying her was more than Lady Carse herself could discover. To the day of her death she never knew what country she had traversed during the dreary and fatiguing week which ensued. She saw Stirling Castle standing up on its mighty rock against the dim sky; and she knew that before dawn they had entered the Highlands.
But beyond this she was wholly ignorant. In those days there were no milestones on the road she travelled. The party went near no town, stopped at no inn, and never permitted her an opportunity of speaking to anyone out of their own number. They always halted before daylight at some solitary house--left open for them, but uninhabited--or at some cowshed, where they shook down straw for her bed, made a fire, and cooked their food; and at night they always remounted, and rode for many hours, through a wild country, where the most hopeful of captives could not dream of rescue. Sometimes they carried torches while ascending a narrow ravine, where a winter torrent dashed down the steep rocks and whirled away below, and where the lady unawares showed her desire to live by clinging faster to the horseman behind whom she rode. Sometimes she saw the whole starry hemisphere resting like a dome on a vast moorland, the stars rising from the horizon here and sinking there, as at sea.
The party rarely passed any farmsteads or other dwellings; and when they did silence was commanded, and the riders turned their horses on the grass or soft earth, in order to appear as little as possible like a cavalcade to any wakeful ears. Once, on such an occasion, Lady Carse screamed aloud; but this only caused her to be carried at a gallop, which instantly silenced her, and then to be gagged for the rest of the night. She would have promised to make no such attempt again, such a horror had she now of the muffle which bandaged her mouth, but nobody asked her to promise. On the contrary, she heard one man say to another, that the lady might scream all night long now, if she liked; nobody but the eagles would answer her, now she was among the Frasers.
Among the Frasers! Then she was on Lord Lovat's estates. Here there was no hope for her; and all her anxiety was to get on, though every step removed her further from her friends, and from the protection of law. But this was exactly the place where she was to stop for a considerable time.
Having arrived at a solitary house among moorland hills, Mr Forster told her that she would live here till the days should be longer, and the weather warm enough for a more comfortable prosecution of her further journey. He would advise her to take exercise in the garden, small as it was, and to be cheerful, and preserve her health, in expectation of the summer, when she would reach a place where all restrictions on her personal liberty would cease. He would now bid her farewell.
"You are going back to Edinburgh," said she, rising from her seat by the fire. "You will see Lord Carse. Tell him that though he has buried his wife, he has not got rid of her. She will haunt him--she will shame him--she will ruin him yet."
"I see now--" observed a voice behind her. She turned and perceived Lord Lovat, who addressed himself to Mr Forster, saying, "I see now that it _is_ best to let such people live. If she were dead, we cannot say but that she might haunt him; though I myself have no great belief of it. As it is, she is safe out of his way--at any rate, till she dies first. I see now that his method is the right one."
"Why, I don't know, my lord," replied Lady Carse. "You should consider how little trouble it would have cost to put me out of the way in my grave; and how much trouble I am costing you now. It is some comfort to me to think of the annoyance and risk, and fatigue and expense, I am causing you all."
"You mistake the thing, madam. We rejoice in these things, as incurred for the sake of some people over the water. It gratifies our loyalty-- our loyalty, madam, is a sentiment which exalts and endears the meanest services, even that of sequestrating a spy, an informer."
"Come, come, Lovat, it is time we were off," said Mr Forster, who was at once ashamed of his companion's brutality, and alarmed at its effect upon the lady. She looked as if she would die on the spot. She had not been aware till now how her pride had been gratified by the sense of her own importance, caused by so many gentlemen of consequence entering into her husband's plot against her liberty. She was now rudely told that it was all for their own sakes. She was controlled not as a dignified and powerful person, but as a mischievous informer. She rallied quickly-- not only through pride, but from the thought that power is power, whencesoever derived, and that she might yet make Lord Lovat feel this. She curtseyed to the gentlemen, saying, "It is your turn now to jeer, gentlemen; and to board up windows, and the like. The day may come when I shall sit at a window to see your heads fall."
"Time will show," said Lord Lovat, with a smile, and an elegant bow. And they left her alone.
They no longer feared to leave her alone. Her temper was well-known to them; and her purposes of ultimate revenge, once clearly announced, were a guarantee that she would, if possible, live to execute them. She would make no attempts upon her life henceforward. Weeks and months passed on. The snow came, and lay long, and melted away. Beyond the garden wall she saw sprinklings of young grass among the dark heather; and now the bleat of a lamb, and now the scudding brood of the moor-fowl, told her that spring was come. Long lines of wild geese in the upper air, winging steadily northwards, indicated the advancing season. The whins within view burst into blossom; and the morning breeze which dried the dews wafted their fragrance. Then the brooding mists drew off under the increasing warmth of the sun; and the lady discovered that there was a lake within view--a wide expanse, winding away among mountains till it was lost behind their promontories. She strained her eyes to see vessels on this lake, and now and then she did perceive a little sail hoisted, or a black speck, which must be a rowboat traversing the waters when they were sheeny in the declining sun. These things, and the lengthening and warmth of the days, quickened her impatience to be removed. She often asked the people of the house whether no news and no messengers had come; but they did not improve in their knowledge of the English tongue any more than she did in that of the Gaelic, and she could obtain no satisfaction. In the sunny mornings she lay on the little turf plat in the garden, or walked restlessly among the cabbage-beds (being allowed to go no further), or shook the locked gate desperately, till someone came out to warn her to let it alone. In the June nights she stood at her window, only one small pane of which would open, watching the mists shifting and curling in the moonlight, or the sheet lightning which now and then revealed the lake in the bosom of the mountains, or appeared to lay open the whole sky. But June passed away, and there was no change. July came and went--the sun was visibly shortening his daily journey, and leaving an hour of actual darkness in the middle of the night: and still there was no prospect of a further journey. She began to doubt Mr Forster as much as she hated Lord Lovat, and to say to herself that his promises of further personal liberty in the summer were mere coaxing words, uttered to secure a quiet retreat from her presence. If she could see him, for only five minutes, how she would tell him her mind!
She never again saw Mr Forster: but, one night in August, while she was at the window, and just growing sleepy, she was summoned by the woman of the house to dress herself for a night ride. She prepared herself eagerly enough, and was off presently, without knowing anything of the horsemen who escorted her.
It was with a gleam of pleasure that she saw that they were approaching the lake she had so often gazed at from afar: and her heart grew lighter still when she found that she was to traverse it. She began to talk, in her new exhilaration; and she did not leave off, though nobody replied. But her exclamations about the sunrise, the clearness of the water, and the leaping of the fish, died away when she looked from face to face of those about her, and found them all strange and very stern. At last, the dip of the oars was the only sound; but it was a pleasant and soothing one. All went well this day. After landing, the party proceeded westwards--as they did nightly for nearly a week. It mattered little that they did not enter a house in all that time. The weather was so fine, that a sheepfold, or a grassy nook of the moorland, served all needful purposes of a resting place by day.
On the sixth night, a surprise, and a terrible surprise, awaited the poor lady. Her heart misgave her when the night wind brought the sound of the sea to her ears--the surging sea which tosses and roars in the rocky inlets of the western coast of Scotland. But her dismay was dreadful when she discovered that there was a vessel below, on board which she was to be carried without delay. On the instant, dreadful visions arose before her imagination, of her being carried to a foreign shore, to be delivered into the hands of the Stuarts, to be punished as a traitor and spy; and of those far off plantations and dismal colonies where people troublesome to their families were said to be sent, to be chained to servile labour with criminals and slaves. She wept bitterly: she clasped her hands--she threw herself at the feet of the conductor of the party--she appealed to them all, telling them to do what they would with her, if only they would not carry her to sea. Most of them looked at one another, and made no reply--not understanding her language. The conductor told her to fear nothing, as she was in the hands of the Macdonalds, who had orders from Sir Alexander Macdonald, of Skye, to provide for her safety. He promised that the voyage would not be a long one; and that as soon as the sloop should have left the loch she should be told where she was going. With that, he lifted her lightly, stepped into a boat, and was rowed to the sloop, where she was received by the owner, and half a dozen other Macdonalds. For some hours they waited for a wind; and sorely did the master wish it would come; for the lady lost not a glimpse of an opportunity of pleading her cause, explaining that she was stolen from Edinburgh, against the laws. He told her she had better be quiet, as nothing could be done. Sir Alexander Macdonald was in the affair. He, for one, would never keep her or anyone against their will unless Sir Alexander Macdonald were in it: but nothing could be done. He saw, however, that some impression was made on one person, who visited the sloop on business, one William Tolney, who had connexions at Inverness, from having once been a merchant there, and who was now a tenant of the Macleods, in a neighbouring island. This man was evidently touched; and the Macdonalds held a consultation in consequence, the result of which was that William Tolney was induced to be silent on what he had seen and heard. But for many a weary year after did Lady Carse turn with hope to the image of the stranger who had listened to her on board the sloop, taken the address of her lawyer, and said that in his opinion something must be done.
In the evening the wind rose, and the sloop moved down the loch. With a heavy heart the lady next morning watched the vanishing of the last of Glengarry's seats, on a green platform between the grey and bald mountains; then the last fishing hamlet on the shores; and, finally, a flock of herons come abroad to the remotest point of the shore from their roosting places in the tall trees that sheltered Glengarry's abode. After that all was wretchedness. For many days she was on the tossing sea--the sloop now scudding before the wind, now heaving on the troubled waters, now creeping along between desolate looking islands, now apparently lost amidst the boundless ocean. At length, soon after sunrise, one bright morning, the sail was taken in, and the vessel lay before the entrance of an harbour which looked like the mouth of a small river. At noon the sun beat hot on the deck of the sloop. In the afternoon the lady impatiently asked what they were waiting for--if this really was, as she was told, their place of destination. The wind was not contrary; what where they waiting for?
"No, madam; the wind is fair. But it is a curious circumstance about this harbour that it can be entered safely only at night. It is one of the most dangerous harbours in all the isles."
"And you dare to enter it at night? What do you mean?"
"I will show you, madam, when night comes."
Lady Carse suspected that the delay was on her account; that she was not to land by daylight, less too much sympathy should be excited by her among the inhabitants. Her indignation at this stimulated her to observe all she could of the appearance of the island, in case of opportunity occurring to turn to the account of an escape any knowledge she might obtain. On the rocky ledges which stretched out into the sea lay basking several seals; and all about them, and on every higher ledge, were myriads of puffins. Hundreds of puffins and fulmars were in the air, and skimming the waters. The fulmars poised themselves on their long wings; the fat little puffins poffled about in the water, and made a great commotion where everything else was quiet. From these lower ridges of rock vast masses arose, black and solemn, some perpendicular, some with a slope too steep and smooth to permit a moment's dream of climbing them. Even on this warm day of August the clouds had not risen above the highest peaks; and they threw a gloom over the interior of the small island, while the skirting rocks and sea were glittering in the sunshine. Even the scanty herbage of the slopes at the top of the rocks looked almost a bright green where the sun fell upon it; and especially where it descended so far as to come into contrast with the blackness of the yawning caverns with which the rocky wall was here and there perforated.
The lady perceived no dwellings; but Macdonald, who observed her searching gaze, pointed his glass and invited her to look through it. At first she saw nothing but a dim confusion of grey rocks and dull grass; but at length she made out a grey cottage, with a roof of turf, and a peat stack beside it.
"I see one dwelling," said the lady.
"You see it," observed Macdonald, satisfied, and resuming his glass. Then, observing the lady was not satisfied, he added, "There are more dwellings, but they are behind yonder ridge, out of sight. That is where my place is."
Lady Carse did not at present discern where the dangerous sympathy with her case was to come from. But there was no saying how many dwellings there might be behind that ridge. She once more insisted on landing by daylight; and was once more told that it was out of the question. She resolved to keep as wide awake as her suspicions, in order to see what was to be done with her. She was anxiously on the watch in the darkness an hour before midnight, when Macdonald said to her, "Now for it, madam! I will presently show you something curious."
The sloop began to move under the soft breathing night wind; and in a few minutes Macdonald asked her if she saw anything before her, a little to the right. At first she did not; but was presently told that a tiny spark, too minute to be noticed by any but those who were looking for it, was a guiding light.
"Where is it?" asked the lady. "Why have not you a more effectual light?"
"We are thankful enough to have any: and it serves our turn."
"Oh! I suppose it is a smuggler's signal, and it would not do to make it more conspicuous."
"No, madam. It is far from being a smuggler's signal. There is a woman, Annie Fleming, living in the grey house I showed you, an honest and pious soul, who keeps up that light for all that want it."
"Why? Who employs her?"
"She does it of her own liking. Some have heard tell, but I don't know it for true, that when she and her husband were young she saw him drown, from his boat having run foul in the harbour that she overlooks, and that from that day to this she has had a light up there every night. I can say that I never miss it when I come home; and I always enter by night, trusting to it as the best landmark in this difficult harbour."
"And do the other inhabitants trust to it, and come in by night?"
Macdonald answered that his was the only boat on the island; but he believed that all who had business on the sea between this and Skye knew that light, and made use of it, on occasion, in dangerous weather. And now he must not talk, but see to his vessel.
This is the only boat on the island! He must mean the only sloop. There must be fishing boats. There must and should be, the lady resolved; for she would get back to the mainland. She would not spend her days here, beyond the westerly Skye, where she had just learned that this island lay.
The anxious business of entering the harbour was accomplished by slow degrees, under the guidance of the spark on the hill-side. At dawn the little vessel was moored to a natural pier of rock, and the lady was asked whether she would proceed to Macdonald's house immediately or take some hours' rest first.
Here ended her fears of being secluded from popular sympathy. She was weary of the sea and the vessel, and made all haste to leave them.
Her choice lay between walking and being carried by Highlanders. She chose to walk; and with some fatigue, and no little internal indignation, she traversed a mile and a half of rocky and moorland ways, then arriving at a sordid and dreary looking farmhouse, standing alone in a wild place, to which Macdonald proudly introduced her as Sir Alexander's estate on this island, of which he was the tenant.
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{
"id": "23115"
}
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6
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THE STEADFAST
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It was a serene evening when, the day after her landing, Lady Carse approached Widow Fleming's abode. The sun was going down in a clear sky; and when, turning from the dazzling western sea, the eye wandered eastwards, the view was such as could not but transport a heart at ease. The tide was low, and long shadows from the rocks lay upon the yellow sands and darkened, near the shore, the translucent sea. At the entrance of the black caverns the spray leaped up on the advance of every wave,--not in threatening but as if at play. Far away over the lilac and green waters arose the craggy peaks of Skye, their projections and hollows in the softest light and shadow. As the sea-birds rose from their rest upon the billows, opposite the sun, diamond drops fell from their wings. Nearer at hand there was little beauty but what a brilliant sunset sheds over every scene. There were shadows from the cottage over the dull green sward, and from the two or three goats which moved about on the ledges and slopes of the upper rocks. The cottage itself was more lowly and much more odd than the lady had conceived from anything she had yet seen or heard of. Its walls were six feet thick, and roofed from the inside, leaving a sort of platform all round, which was overgrown with coarse herbage. The outer and inner surfaces of the wall were of stones, and the middle part was filled in with earth; so that grass might well grow on the top. The roof was of thatch--part straw, part sods, tied down to cross poles by ropes of twisted heather. The walls did not rise more than five feet from the ground; and nothing could be easier than for the goats to leap up, when tempted to graze there. A kid was now amusing itself on one corner. As Lady Carse walked round, she was startled at seeing a woman sitting on the opposite corner. Her back was to the sun--her gaze fixed on the sea, and her fingers were busy knitting. The lady had some doubts at first about its being the widow, as this woman wore a bright cotton handkerchief tied over her head: but a glance at the face when it was turned towards her assured her that it was Annie Fleming herself.
"No, do not come down," said the lady. "Let me come up beside you. I see the way."
And she stepped up by means of the projecting stones of the wall, and threw herself down beside the quiet knitter.
"What are you making? Mittens? And what of? What sort of wool is this?"
"It is goats' hair."
"Tiresome work!" the lady observed. "Wool is bad enough; but these short lengths of hair! I should never have patience."
The widow replied that she had time in these summer evenings; and she was glad to take the chance of selling a few pairs when Macdonald went to the main, once or twice a year.
"How do they sell? What do you get for them?"
"I get oil to last me for some time."
"And what else?"
"Now and then I may want something else; but I get chiefly oil--as what I want most."
The widow saw that Lady Carse was not attending to what she said, and was merely making an opening for what she herself wanted to utter: so Annie said no more of her work and its payment, but waited.
"This is a dreadful place," the lady burst out. "Nobody can live here."
"I have heard there are kindlier places to live in," the widow replied. "This island must appear rather bare to people who come from the south,--as I partly remember myself."
"Where did you come from? Do you know where I come from? Do you know who I am?" cried the lady.
"I came from Dumfries. I have not heard where you lived, my lady. I was told by Macdonald that you came by Sir Alexander Macdonald's orders, to live here henceforward."
"I will not live here henceforward. I would sooner die."
The widow looked surprised. In answer to that look Lady Carse said, "Ah! you do not know who I am, nor what brought me here, or you would see that I cannot live here, and why I would rather die. --Why do not you speak? Why do you not ask me what I have suffered?"
"I should not think of it, my lady. Those who have suffered are slow to speak of their heart pain, and would be ashamed before God to say how much oftener they would rather have died."
"I must speak, however, and I will," declared Lady Carse. "You know I must; and you are the only person in the island that I can speak to. --I want to live with you. I must. I know you are a good woman. I know you are kind. If you are kind to mere strangers that come in boats, and keep a light to save them from shipwreck, you will not be cruel to me-- the most ill used creature--the most wretched--the most--" She hid her face on her knees, and wept bitterly.
"Take courage, my lady," said Annie. "If you have not strength enough for your troubles to-day, it only shows that there is more to come."
"I do not want strength," said the lady. "You do not know me. I am not wanting in strength. What I want--what I must have--is justice."
"Well--that is what we are all most sure of when God's day comes," said Annie. "That we are quite sure of. And we may surely hope for patience till then, if we really wish it. So I trust you will be comforted, my lady."
"I cannot stay here, however. There are no people here. There is nobody that I can endure at Macdonald's, and there are none others but labourers, and they speak only Gaelic. And it is a wretched place. They have not even bread. --Mrs Fleming, I must come and live with you."
"I have no bread, my lady. I have nothing so good as they have at Macdonald's."
"You have a kind heart. Never mind the bread now. We will see about that. I don't care how I live; but I want to stay with you. I want never to go back to Macdonald's."
The widow stepped down to the ground, and beckoned to the lady to follow her into the house. It was a poor place as could be seen:--one room with a glazed window looking towards the harbour, a fireplace and a bed opposite the window;--a rickety old bedstead, with an exhausted flock bed and a rug upon it; and from one end of the apartment, a small dim space partitioned off, in which was a still less comfortable bed, laid on trestles made of driftwood.
"Who sleeps here?"
"My son, when he is at home. He is absent now, my lady: and see, this is the only place;--no place for you, my lady."
Lady Carse shrank back impatiently. She then turned and said, "I might have this larger room, and you the other. I shall find means of paying you--" "Impossible, madam," the widow replied. "I am obliged to occupy this room."
"For to-night, at least, you will let me have it. I cannot go back to Macdonald's to-night. I will not go back at all; and you cannot turn me out to-night. I have other reasons besides those I mentioned. I must be in sight of the harbour. It is my only hope."
"You can stay here, if you will, madam: and you can have that bed. But I can never leave this room between dark and light. I have yonder lamp to attend to."
"Oh! I will attend to the lamp."
The widow smiled, and observed that she hoped the lady would have better sleep than she could enjoy if she had the lamp to watch; and that was a business which she could not commit to another hand. In the course of the argument, the lady discovered that it would be a serious matter to let out both the fire and lamp, as there was no tinder-box on the island, and no wood, except in the season of storms, when some was drifted up wet.
"I should like to live with you, and help you to keep up your lamp," said the lady. "If you could only manage a room for me--Not that I mean to stay in this island! I will not submit to that. But while I am waiting to get away, I should like to spend my time with you. You have a heart. You would feel for me."
"I do feel for you, madam. This must be a terrible place for you, just to-day,--and for many days to come. But oh! my lady, if you want peace of mind, this is the place! It is a blessing that may be had anywhere, I know. One would think it shone down from the sky or breathed out from the air,--it is so sure to be wherever the sky bends over, or the air wraps us round. But of all places, this is the one for peace of mind."
"This! --this--dreary island!"
"This quiet island. Look out now, and see if you can call it dreary. Why, madam, there can hardly be a brighter glory, or a more cheerful glow among the sons of God about the throne, than there is at this moment over sea and shore, and near at home up to the very stone of my threshold. Madam, I could never think this island dreary."
"It is not always sunset, nor always summer time," said Lady Carse, who could not deny nor wholly resist the beauty of the scene.
"Other beauty comes by night and in the winter," observed the widow, "and at times a grandeur which is better than the beauty. If the softness of this sunshine nourishes our peace of mind, yet more does the might of the storms. The beauty might be God's messenger. The might is God Himself."
"You speak as if you did not fear God," said the lady, with the light inexperience of one to whom such subjects were not familiar.
"As a sinner, I fear Him, madam. But as His child--Why, madam, what else have we in all the universe? And having Him, what more do we want?"
"He has made us full of wants," said the lady. "I, for one, am all bereaved, and very, very wretched. --But do not let us talk of that now. One who is alone in this place, and knows and needs nothing beyond, cannot enter into my sorrows at once. It will take long to make you conceive such misery as mine. But it will be a comfort to me to open my heart to you. And I must live within view of the harbour. I must see every boat that comes. They say you do."
"I do. They are few; but I see them all."
"And you save a good many by the spark in your window."
"It has pleased God to save some, it is thought, who would have perished as some perished before them. He set me that task, in a solemn way, many years ago; and any mercy that has grown out of it is His. --Do you see any vessel on the sea, madam? I always look abroad the last thing before the sun goes down. My eyes can hardly be much older than yours: but they are much worn."
"How have you so used your eyes? Is it that hair-knitting?"
"That is not good. But it is more the sharp winds, and the night watching, and the shine of the sea in the day."
"I must live with you. I will watch for you, night and day. You think I cannot. You think I shall tire. Why, you are not weary of it."
"Oh, no! I shall never be weary of it."
"Much less should I. You want only to keep up your lamp. I want to get away. All the interests of my life lie beyond this sea; and do you think I shall tire of watching for the opportunity? --I will watch through this very night. You shall go to bed, and sleep securely, and I will keep your lamp. And to-morrow we will arrange something. Why should I not have a room,--a cottage built at the end of yours? I will."
"If you could find anyone to build it," suggested the widow.
"Somebody built Macdonald's, I suppose. And yours."
"Macdonald's is very old;--built, it is thought, at the same time with the chapel, which has been in ruins these hundred years. My husband built ours,--with me to help him; and also his brother, who died before it was finished."
"Where is your son?" inquired the lady. "If he will undertake to work for me, I will get it done. Where is your son? And what is his business?"
"I do not know exactly where he is."
"Well, but is he on the island?"
"I believe so. He comes and goes according to his business. In the early summer he seeks eggs all over the island; and, somewhat later, the eider-down. When he can get nothing better he brings the birds themselves."
"What do you do with them?"
"We keep the feathers, and also the skins. The skins are warm to cover the feet with, when made into socks. If the birds are not very old, we salt them for winter food: and at worst, I get some oil from them. But I get most oil from the young seals, and from the livers of the fish he catches at times."
"Fish! then he has a boat! Does he go out in a boat to fish?"
"I can hardly say that he has a boat," replied the mother, with an extraordinary calmness of manner that told of internal effort. "Our caverns run very deep into the rocks; and the ledges run out far into the sea. Rollo has made a kind of raft of the driftwood he found: and on this he crosses the water in the caverns, and passes from ledge to ledge, fishing as he goes. This is our only way of getting fish, except when a chance boat comes into the harbour."
"Could that raft go out on a calm day,--on a very smooth sea,--to meet any boat at a distance?"
"Impossible! madam. I think it too dangerous in our smallest coves to be used without sin. It is against my judgment that Rollo ever goes round the end of a ledge, which he has been seen to do."
"But it is impossible to get a boat? Have you never had a boat?"
"We once had a boat, madam: and it was lost." Even the selfish Lady Carse reproached herself for her question. It struck her now that boat and husband had been lost together; for Macdonald had told her that Annie Fleming had seen her husband drown.
"I wish I knew where Rollo is," she said to break the silence. "I think something might be done. I think I could find a way. Do not you wish you knew where he was?"
"No, madam."
"Well! perhaps you might be uneasy about him if you did. But which way did he go?"
The widow pointed northwards, where huge masses of rock appeared tumbled one upon another, and into the sea, at the base of a precipice two hundred feet high. She further told, in reply to a question, that Rollo went forth yesterday, without saying where he was going; and there were caves among the rocks she had pointed out, where Rollo might possibly be fishing.
Lady Carse found it vexatious that darkness was coming on. She had a purpose; but the sun did not set the later, nor promise to rise the earlier, on that account. When the widow set before her some oaten bread and dried fish, she ate, without perceiving that none was left for her hostess. And when the widow lighted the iron lamp and set it in the window, the lady made only faint pretences of a wish to sit up and watch it. She also said nothing of occupying the meaner bed. She was persuaded that her first duty was to obtain some good rest, preparatory to going forth to seek Rollo, and induce him to take her on his raft to some place whence she might escape to the mainland. So she lay down on the widow's bed, and slept soundly,--her hungry hostess sitting by the smouldering peats in the rude fireplace,--now and then smiling at the idea of her guest's late zeal about watching the lamp for her, in order to give her a good night's rest. When daylight came, she retired to her son's bed, and had just dropped asleep when Lady Carse roused her to ask for some breakfast to take with her, as she did not know when she should be back from her expedition. Again the widow smiled as she said there was nothing in the house. At this time of the year there were no stores; and a good appetite at night left nothing for the morning.
"O dear!" said the lady. "Well: I daresay your sitting up made you hungry enough to finish everything while I was asleep. No doubt it must. But what to do I know not. I will not go back to Macdonald's, if I starve for it. Perhaps I may meet some fishermen, or somebody. I will try. --Good morning. I shall come back: but I will not put you long out of your ways. I will get a cottage built at the end of yours as soon as possible." The door closed behind her, and once more the widow smiled, as she composed herself to rest on her own bed. She had already returned thanks for the blessings with which the new day had opened; and especially that to one so lowly as herself was permitted the honour and privilege--so unlooked for and unthought of--of dispensing hospitality.
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{
"id": "23115"
}
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7
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THE ROVING OF THE RESTLESS.
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The lady began walking at a great rate, being in a vast hurry to find Rollo. She descended to the shore, knowing that if she kept on the heights she should arrive at the precipices which would forbid all access to the caves below.
The tide was going down; and as soon as she reached the sands of a little cove she was pleased to see a good many shell fish. Her first thought was that she would collect some and carry them up for Annie Fleming's breakfast; but she immediately remembered that this would add to her fatigues, and consume her precious time; and she gave up the thought, and began picking up cockles for herself--large blue cockles, which she thought would afford her an excellent breakfast, if only she could meet with some fresh bread and butter in some nook in the island. She turned up her skirt--the skirt of the country woman's gown which she wore--and made a bag of it for her cockles, rejoicing for the moment that it was not one of her own silks. Then she remembered that she had seen at the widow's a light and strong frail basket, made of the sea-bent which grew in the sands. This basket would be useful to her: so she would, after all, go up--carry some cockles for Annie, and borrow the basket. She did so, and came away again without awakening the widow.
At first, Lady Carse thought that Annie was right, and that the island was not so dreary after all. The morning breeze was fresh and strengthening; the waves ran up gaily upon the sands, and leaped against the projecting rocks, and fell back with a merry splash. And the precipices were so fine, she longed for her sketch-book; and the romance of her youth began to revive within her. Here was a whole day for roving. She would somehow make a fire in a cave, and cook for herself. She was sure she could live among these caves; and if she was missing for a considerable time, the Macdonalds would think she had escaped, or was drowned; and she could slip away at last, when some vessel put into the harbour. She stopped and looked round; but on all the vast stretch of waters there was no vessel to be seen but the sloop in the harbour; while on shore there was no human being visible, nor any trace of habitation. The solitude rather pressed on her heart; but she hastened on, and rounded the point which would shut out from her the land view, and prevent her being seen by any one from Macdonald's. She had no fear of her return being cut off by the tide. She had the whole day before her, and could climb the rocks to a safe height at any time.
These were caves indeed! At sight of them her heart was in a sort of tumult very different from any it had experienced for long. She eagerly entered the first, and drew deep breath as the thunder of the waters and the echoes together almost confounded her senses. At the lowest tides there was some depth of water below, in a winding central channel. In the evening how black that channel must be! how solemn the whole place! Now the low sun was shining in, lighting up every point, and disclosing all the hollows, and just catching a ripple now and then, which, in its turn, made a ripple of light on the roof; and, far in, there was an opening--a gaping chink in the side of the cave--which gave admission to a second rocky chamber.
Lady Carse was bent on reaching this opening; and did so, at last. She could not cross the clear deep water in the channel below her. It was just too wide for a safe leap. But she found a footing over the rocks which confined it; and on she went--now ascending, now descending almost to the water--amidst dancing lights and rising and falling echoes; on she went, her heart throbbing, her spirits cheered--her whole soul full of a joy which she had not experienced for long. She stepped over the little chasm to which the waters narrowed at last, and, reaching the opening thrust herself through it.
She seemed to have left light and sound behind her. Dim, cool, and almost silent was the cavern she now stood in. Its floor was thickly strewn with fine sand, conveying the sensation that her own footsteps were not to be heard. Black pillars of rock rose from a still pool which lay in her way, and which she perceived only just in time to prevent her stepping into it. These pillars and other dark masses of rock sprang up and up till her eye lost them in the darkness; and if there was a roof, she could not see it. A drip from above made a plash about once in a minute in the pool; and the murmur from without was so subdued--appeared to be so swallowed up in vastness and gloom--that the minute drop was loud in comparison. Lady Carse lay down on the soft sand, to rest, and listen, and think--to ponder plans of hiding and escape. All her meditations brought her round to the same point: that three things were necessary to any plan of escape--a supply of food, a boat, and an accomplice. She arose, chilled and hungry, determined to try whether she could not meet with one or all of these this very day.
As she slowly proceeded round the pool, she became aware that it was not so perfectly still as hitherto; and a gurgle of waters grew upon the ear. It was only that the tide was coming up, and that the pool was being fed by such influx as could take place through a few crannies. She perceived that these crannies had let in a glimmering of light which was now sensibly darkened. She had no fear--only the delicious awe which thrills through the spirit on its admission to the extreme privacies of nature. There was some light, and safe opportunity of return by the way she had come. She would not go back till she had tried whether she could get on.
On she went--more than once in almost total darkness--more than once slipping on a piece of wet and weedy rock where she expected to tread on thick sand--more than once growing irritable at little difficulties, as hungry people of better tempers than hers are apt to do in strange places. A surprise awaited her at last. She had fancied she perceived a glimmer of light before her; and she suddenly found herself at the top of a steep bank of sand, at the bottom of which there was an opening--a very low arch--to the outer air. While she was sliding down this bank, she heard a voice outside. She was certain of it. Presently there was a laugh, and the voice again. If she had found Rollo, there was somebody else too; and if Rollo was not here, there was the more to hope something from.
Now the question was whether she could get through the arch. She pushed her basket through first, and then her own head; and she saw what made her lie still for some little time. The arch opened upon a cove, deep and narrow, between projecting rocks. A small raft rose and fell on the surface of the water; and on the raft stood a man, steading himself with his legs wide apart, while he held a rope with both hands, and gazed intently upwards. The raft was in a manner anchored; tied with ropes to masses of rock on each side of the cove; but it still pitched so much that Lady Carse thought the situation of the man very perilous: and she, therefore, made no noise, lest she should startle him. She little dreamed how safe was his situation compared with that of the comrade he was watching.
In a short time the man changed his occupation. He relaxed his hold of the rope, fastened it to a corner of the raft, gazed about him like a man of leisure, and then once more looked upwards, holding out his arms as if to catch something good. And immediately a shower of sea-birds began to fall: now one, now three, now one again: down they came, head foremost, dead as a stone. Two fell into the water; but he fished them up with a stick with a noose of hair at the end, and flung them on the heap in the middle of the raft.
When the shower began to slacken, Lady Carse thought it the time to make herself heard. She put her head and shoulders through the low arch, and asked the man if he thought she could get through. His start at the voice, his bewildered look down the face of the rock, and the scared expression of his countenance when he discovered the face that peeped out at the bottom, amused Lady Carse extremely. She did not remember how unlike her fair complexion and her hair were to those of the women of these islands, nor that a stranger was in this place more rare than a ghost. And as for the man--what could he suppose but that the handsome face that he saw peeping out, laughing, from the base of the precipice, was that of some rock spirit, sent perhaps for mischief? However, in course of time the parties came to an explanation; that is, of all that the lady said, the man caught one word--Macdonald; and he saw that she had a basket of cockles, and knew the basket to be of island manufacture. Moreover he found, when he ventured to help her out, that her hand was of flesh and blood, though he had never before seen one so slender and white.
When she stood upright on the margin of the creek, what a scene it was! Clear as the undulating waters were, no bottom was visible. Their darkness and depth sent a chill through her frame. Overhead the projecting rocks nearly shut out the sky, while the little strip that remained was darkened by a cloud of fluttering and screaming sea-birds. The cause of their commotion was pointed out to her. A man, whom she could scarcely have distinguished but for the red cap on his head, was on the face of the precipice; now appearing still, now moving, she could not tell how, for the rock appeared to her as smooth up there as the wall of a house. But it was not so--there were ledges; and on one of these he stood, plundering the nests of the sea fowl, which were screaming round his head.
"Rollo?" the lady asked, as she turned away, her brain reeling at the sight she had seen.
"Rollo," replied the man, now entirely satisfied. No spirit would want to be told who anyone was.
And now Rollo was to descend. His comrade again stepped upon the raft, pushed out to the middle of the channel, secured the raft, grasped the rope, and steadied himself. Lady Carse thought she could not look; but she glanced up now and then, when there was a call from above, or a question from below, or when there was a fling of the rope or a pause in the proceedings. When Rollo at last slid down upon the raft, hauled it to shore, and jumped on the rock beside her, he was as careless as a hedger coming home to breakfast, while she was trembling in every limb.
And Rollo was thinking more of his breakfast than of the way he had earned it, or of the presence of a stranger. He was a stout, and now hungry, lad of eighteen, to whom any precipice was no more startling than a ladder is to a builder. And, as his mother had taught him to speak English, and he had on that account been employed to communicate with such strangers as had now and then come to the island during Macdonald's absence, he was little embarrassed by the apparition of the lady. He was chiefly occupied with his pouchful of eggs, there being more than he had expected to find so late in the season. It was all very well, he said, for their provision to-day; but it was a sign that somebody knew this cove as well as themselves, and that it was no longer a property to himself and his comrade.
"How so?" inquired the lady. "How can you possibly tell by the eggs that anyone has been here?"
Rollo glanced at his comrade, in a sort of droll assurance that it could be no voice from the grave, no ghostly inhabitant of a cave, who could require to have such a matter explained. He then condescendingly told her that when the eggs of the eider-duck are taken she lays more; and this twice over, before giving up in despair. Of course, this puts off the season of hatching; and when, therefore, eggs are found fresh so late in the season, it is pretty plain that someone has been there to take those earlier laid. Rollo seemed pleased that the lady could comprehend this when it was explained to her. He gave her an encouraging nod, and began to scramble onward over the rocks, his companion being already some paces in advance of him. The lady followed with her basket as well as she could; but she soon found herself alone, and in not the most amiable mood at being thus neglected. She had not yet learned that she was in a place where women are accustomed to shift for themselves, and precedence is not thought of, except by the fireside, with aged people or a minister of the Gospel in presence.
She smoothed her brow, however, when she regained sight of the young men. They were on their knees in the entrance of a cavern, carefully managing a smouldering peat so as to obtain a fire. It was ticklish work; for the peat had been left to itself rather too long; and chips and shavings were things never seen in these parts. A wisp of dry grass, or a few fibres of heather, were made to serve instead; and it was not easy to create with these heat enough to kindle fresh peats. At last, however, it was done; and eggs were poked in, here and there, to roast. The cockles must be roasted, too; and two or three little mouse-coloured birds, the young of the eider-duck, were broiled as soon as plucked. So much for the eating. As for the drinking, there was nothing but pure whisky, unless the lady could drink sea-water. Thirsty as she was she thought of the drip in the cave; but, besides that it was far to go, and scanty when obtained, she remembered all the slime she had seen, and she did not know whence that drip came. So she gulped down two or three mouthfuls of whisky, and was surprised to find how little she disliked it, and how well it agreed with her after her walk.
As soon as Rollo could attend to her, she told him where she had spent the night--how she had resolved to live with his mother, and in sight of the harbour--and how she wanted two or more rooms built for her at the end of the widow's cottage, unless, indeed, she could get a boat built instead, to take her over to the main, for which she would engage to pay hereafter whatever should be asked. Rollo told his companion this; and they both laughed so at the idea of the boat, that the lady rose in great anger, and walked away. Rollo attended her, and pointed to his raft, saying that there was no other such craft as even that in the island; and people did not think of boats, even in their dreams, though he could fancy that any lady in the south might, for he had heard that boats were common in the south. But, he went on to say, if she could not have a boat, she might have a house.
"Will you help to build it?" asked the lady. "Will your companion--will all the people you know--help me to build it?"
"Why, yes," Rollo replied. "We shall have to build some sort of a cottage for the minister that is coming--for the minister and his wife; and we may as well--" "Minister! Is there a minister coming?" cried the lady.
"O thank God, whose servant he is! Thank God for sending me deliverance, as He surely will by these means!" She had sunk on her knees. Rollo patted her on the shoulder and said the folk were certainly coming. What to make of Rollo she did not know. He treated her as if she were a child. He used a coaxing way of talking, explained to her the plainest things before her eyes, and patted her on the shoulder. She drew away, looking very haughtily at him, but he only nodded.
"Why was I not told before that the minister and his wife were coming? Macdonald did not tell me. Your mother did not tell me."
"They do not know it yet. They seldom know things till I tell them; and I did not want to be kept at home to build a house till I had got some business of my own done."
He would not tell how he had obtained his information; but explained that it was the custom for a minister to live for some time on each of the outlying islands, where there were too few people to retain a constant pastor. This island was too little inhabited to have had a minister on its shores since the chapel had gone to ruin, a hundred years before--but the time was at hand at last. There had been a disappointment in some arrangements in the nearest neighbour islet; and Mr Ruthven and his wife were appointed to reside here for a year or more, as might appear desirable. Rollo considered this great news. Children and betrothed persons would be brought hither to be baptised and married--arriving perhaps more than once in the course of the year; and it would be strange if the minister were not, in that time, to be sent for in a boat to bury somebody. Or, perhaps, a funeral or two might come to the old chapel. Some traffic there must be; and that would make it a great year for Rollo. And, to begin with, there would be the house to build; and he might be sent for materials. He should like that, though he did not much fancy the trouble of the building.
After a moment's thought the lady asked him if he could not keep the secret of the minister's coming till the last possible hour. She would reward him well if he would get the house built as for her. Seeing how precious was the opportunity, she gave Rollo her confidence, showed him how it would tend to satisfy Macdonald if she appeared to be settling herself quietly in the island; whereas, if he knew of the approach of vessels with strangers, he would probably imprison her, or carry her away to some yet wilder and more remote speck in the ocean. Rollo saw something of her reasons, and said patronisingly, "Why, you talk like an island woman now. You might almost have lived here, by the way you understand things."
Yet better did he apprehend her promises of vast rewards, if he would do exactly as she wished. There was an air about her which enabled him to fancy her some queen or other powerful personage; and as it happened to suit him to keep the secret till the last moment, he promised, for himself and his comrade, to be discreet, and obey orders.
This settled, the lady turned homewards, with a basket full of eggs, and fish, and young birds, and news for the widow that her son was safe, and not far off, and about to come home to try his hand at building a house.
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{
"id": "23115"
}
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8
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THE WAITING OF THE WISE.
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The house proceeded well. Macdonald had no express orders about it; but he had express orders to keep Lady Carse on the island, and, if possible, in a quiet and orderly state of manners. When he saw how completely engrossed she was in the building of this dwelling, and what a close friendship she appeared to have formed with Annie Fleming, he believed that she was a woman of a giddy mind and strong self-will, who might be managed by humouring. If he could assist her in providing herself with a succession of new objects, he hoped that she might be kept from mischief and misery, as a child is by a change of toys. He would try this method, and trust to his chief's repaying him any expenses incurred for the strange lady's sake. So he granted the use of his ponies and his people,--now a man or two,--and now their wives, to bring stones and earth and turf, and to twist heather bands. Once or twice he came himself, and lent a strong hand to raise a corner-stone, and help to lay the hearthstone. The house consisted of two rooms, divided by a passage. If Lady Carse had chosen to admit the idea of remaining after the arrival of the Ruthvens, she would have added a third room; but she had resolved that she would leave the island in the vessel which brought them, or in the next that their arrival would bring: and she would not dwell for an instant on any doubt of accomplishing her purpose.
So the thick walls rose, and the low roof was on, and the thatch well bound down, and secured moreover with heavy stones, before the autumn storms arrived. And before the hard rains came down, all Macdonald's ponies were one evening seen approaching in a string, laden with peat--a present to the lady. In the course of the day there was stacked, at the end of her cottage, enough to last for some months. When the widow came out to see it and wish her joy--for a good stack of well dried peat was the richest of all possessions in that region--the lady smiled as cheerfully as Annie; not at the peat, however, but at the thought that she should see little or none of it burn. She intended to dispose of her winter evenings far otherwise.
As for the widow, she was thankful now that she had never thought her situation dreary. If, in her former solitude, when her boy was absent, she had murmured at that solitude, her present feelings would have been a rebuke to her. She was not happy now; so far from it, that her former life appeared, in comparison with it, as happy as she could desire. Perhaps it had been too peaceful, she thought, and she might need some exercise of patience. It was a great advantage, certainly, for both herself and Rollo to hear the thing; the lady could tell of ways of living in other places, and to learn such a variety of knowledge from a person so much better informed than themselves. But then this knowledge appeared to be all so unsanctified! It did not make the poor lady herself strong in heart and peaceful in spirit. It was wonderful, and very stirring to the mind, to learn how wise people were who lived in cities and what great ability was required to conduct the affairs of life where men were gathered together in numbers; but then these wonders did not seem to impress those who lived in the midst of them. There was no sign that they were watching and praising God's hand working among the faculties of men, as more retired people do in much meaner things-- in the warmth which the eider-duck gives to her eggs by wrapping them in down from her own breast, and the punctuality with which the herring shoals pass by in May and October, making the sea glitter with life and light as they go. She feared that when people lived out of sight of green pastures and still waters--and she looked at the moment upon the down on which the goats were browsing, and the fresh water pool, where the dragon fly hovered for a few hot days in summer--when men lived out of sight of green pastures and still waters, she feared that they became perplexed in a sort of Babel, where the call of the shepherd was too gentle to be heard. At least, it appeared thus from the effect upon Rollo of the lady's conversation. She had always feared for him the effect of seeing the world, as she remembered the world--of his seeing it before he had better learned to see God everywhere, and to be humble accordingly--and the conversation he now heard was to him much like being on the mainland, and even in a town. It had not made him more humble, or more kind, or more helpful; except, indeed, to the lady-- there was nothing he would not do to help her.
And here Annie sighed and smiled at once, as the thought struck her that while she was mourning over other people's corruption she was herself not untouched. She detected herself admitting some dislike to the lady because she so occupied Rollo that he had left off supplying his mother with fishes' livers and seal-fat for oil. The best season had passed:-- she had spoken to him several times not to lose the six-weeks-old seals; but he had not attended to it; and now her stock of oil was very low; and the long winter nights were before her. She must speak to Macdonald to procure her some oil. But very strictly must she speak to herself about this new trouble of discontent. Did she not know that He who appointed her dwelling-place on that height, and who marked her for her life's task by that touch on her heart-strings the night she saw her husband drown, would supply the means? If her light was to be set on the hill for men to see from the tossing billows and be saved, it would be taken care of that, as of old, the widow's cruise of oil did not fail. What _she_ had to look to was that the lamp of her soul did not grow dim and go out. How lately was she thanking God for the new opportunities afforded her by the arrival of this stranger! and now she was shrinking from these very opportunities, and finding fault with everybody before herself!
There was some little truth in this, and it was very natural; for this kind of trial was new to Annie. But she never yielded to it again--not even when the trial was such as few would have been able to bear.
As the dark blustering month of November advanced, the widow's rheumatism came on more severely than ever before. She had given up her bed to Lady Carse, and when Rollo was at home, slept on the floor, on some ashes covered with a blanket; the only materials for a bed which she had been able to command, as Rollo had been too busy to get seal-skins, or go to any distance for heather while it was soft. She had caught cold repeatedly, and was likely to have a bad winter with her rheumatism, however soon the lady might get into her own house and yield up the widow's bed. One gusty afternoon, when the wet fogs were driving past, Annie waited long for the lady and Rollo to come in to the evening meal. She could not think what detained them next door in such weather; for it was no weather for working--besides that, it was getting dark. She could not, with her stiff and painful limbs, go out of doors; and when she perceived that her smallest lamp was gone, she satisfied herself that they had some particular work to finish for which they needed light, and would come in when it was done.
But it grew dark, and the wind continued to rise, and they did not appear. They did not mean to appear this night. Macdonald had been informed, at last, from his chief, of the intended arrival of the minister and his lady; had been very angry at the long concealment of the news, and would now, Lady Carse apprehended, keep a careful watch over her, and probably confine her till the expected boats had come and gone. So she and her accomplices at once repaired to the cave--a cave which Rollo was sure none of Macdonald's people had discovered--where for some time past Rollo and his comrade had stored dried fish, such small parcels of oatmeal as they could obtain, and plenty of peat for fuel. There they were now sitting at supper over a good fire, kindled in a deep sand, which would afford a warm and soft bed--they were at supper while the widow was waiting for them in pain and anxiety--and, at last, in cold and dreariness.
When the fire was low, she rose painfully from her seat, to feed it, and to trim and light the lamp. Alas! there were no peats in the corner. She knew there were plenty at mid-day: but Lady Carse had, at the last moment, bethought herself that the fuel in the cave might be damp, and had carried off those in the corner, desiring Rollo to bring in more from the stack to dry; and this Rollo had neglected to do. The fire would be quite out in an hour. Annie saw that she must attempt to get out to the stack. She did attempt it; but the stormy blast and the thick cold drizzle so drove against her that she could not stand it, and could only with difficulty shut the door. She turned to her lamp, to light it while the fire was yet alive. There was but little oil in it. She reached out her hand for the oil can. It was not there. Rollo had considered that the lady would want light in the cave; Lady Carse had considered that the widow might for one night make a good fire serve her purposes; and so the oil can was gone to the same place with the peats.
Annie sank down on her seat, almost subdued. Not quite subdued, however, even by this threat of the baffling of the great object of her life. Not quite subdued, for her heart and her ear were yet open to the voices of nature.
The scream of a sea-bird reached her, as the creature was swept by on the blast.
"That is for me," she said to herself, the blood returning to her stricken heart and pale cheek. "How God sends His creatures to teach us at the moment when we need His voice! I have seen the cormorant sitting in his hole in wintry weather,--sitting there for days together, hungry and cold, trying now and then to get out, and driven back by such a blast as he cannot meet,--by such a blast as this. And then he sits on patiently, and moves no more till the wind lulls and the sky clears. And if his wing is weak at first it soon strengthens. The blast drives me back to-night; but I, who have thoughts to rest upon, may well bear what a winged creature can. That screamer was sent to me. I wonder what has become of it. I hope it is not swept quite away."
But it would not do to sit thinking while the fire was just out, and the lamp likely to burn only an hour. She lighted the lamp with difficulty,--with a beating heart and trembling hands, lest the last available spark should go out first. But the wick caught; and the lamp was placed in the window, sending, as it seemed to Annie, a gleam through the night of her own mind, as well as through that of the stormy air. It quickened her invention and her hopes.
"There is an hour yet," thought she. "I am sure it will burn an hour; and something may be sent by that time."
She took off her cotton handkerchief, tore off the hem, and ravelled out the cotton as quickly as she could, and twisted it into a wick which she thought she could fix by a skewer across a tin cup from which Rollo drank his whisky when at home. She brought down from the chimney and looked over rapidly all the oily parts of the fish, and every fatty portion of the dried meat hung up in the smoke for winter use; and these she made a desperate endeavour to melt in the flames of her lamp. She wrung out a few drops,--barely enough to soak her wick. This would not burn five minutes. She persevered to the last moment,--saying to herself, "Not once for these seventeen years since I saw my husband drown, has there been a dark night between this window and the sea. Not once has my spark been put out: and I will not think it now. God can kindle fire where He pleases. I have heard tell that people in foreign countries have seen a lightning-shaft dart down into a forest, and make a tree blaze up like a torch. God has His own ways."
All the while her hands wrought so busily that she scarcely felt their aching in the cold of the night. But now her new wick was wanted, for the old was going out. It blazed up, but she saw it must soon be gone. She broke up her old stool, all shattered as it was already. Some splinters she stuck one after another into the lamp; and then she burned the larger pieces in the hearth, saying to herself incessantly, as if for support, "God has His own ways."
But the rising and falling flame became more and more uncertain; and at last, very suddenly, it went quite out. There was not, in another minute, a spark left.
For a while there was silence in the cottage, now dark for the first time since Annie was a widow. She crept to her cold bed; and there, under cover of the strange darkness she shed a few tears. But soon she said to herself, "God has His own ways of kindling our spirits as well as the flame of a lamp. Perhaps by humbling me, or by changing my duty when I became too fond of it, He may warm my heart to new trust in Him. His will be done! But He will let me pray that there may be none in the harbour this night who may drown, or be buffeted in the storm because He is pleased to darken my light."
Before she had quite calmed her heart with this prayer, there was noise at a little distance, and red gleams on the fitful mist which drove past the window; and then followed a loud knocking at the door.
It was Macdonald with his people, come to see whether the lady was safe. He looked perplexed and uneasy when Annie told him that she could not think that the lady could be otherwise than safe, now she knew the places about the island so well, and was so fearless. It often happened that she was absent for a night and day; and no doubt the storm had this night detained her and her companions in some sheltered place,--some place where, she had reason to believe, they had fire and light. As for herself, when Annie saw the torch that Macdonald carried, her eyes glistened in the blaze, and she said once more in the depth of her mind, "Surely God has His own ways."
Macdonald was very wrathful when he learned by questioning Annie how it was that her house was dark. As he hastily kindled the peats he brought in from the stack, he muttered that it seemed to have pleased God to afflict the island again with a witch, after all the pains that were taken twenty years before, as he well remembered, to clear the place of one. This woman must be a witch-- "Nay," said Annie. "I take her to be sent to us for good. Let us wait and learn."
"Good? What good?"
"It is through her, you see, that I find how kind a neighbour you are, at need," replied Annie; not adding aloud what she was thinking of,--how this night had proved that God brings help at the least likely moments.
"She is a witch," Macdonald persisted. "No power short of that could have quenched your lamp, and drawn away your only son from honouring his parent to be a slave to a stranger."
As Annie could not at the moment speak, Macdonald went on raising a flame meantime by flapping the end of his plaid.
"It is the chapel, I know. Things have never gone well for any length of time here since the chapel fell completely down, and the bleat of the kid came out from where the psalm ought to sound. We must apply ourselves to build up the chapel; and, as there is a minister coming, we may hope to be released from witches and every kind of curse."
"There will be little room for any kind of curse," thought Annie, "when the minister has taught us to `be kindly affectioned one to another,' and not to make our little island more stormy with passions than it ever is with tempests of wind and hail."
"There, now, there is a good fire for you," said Macdonald, rising from his knees; "and I won't ask you. Annie, what was in your mind as the blaze made your eyes shine. I won't ask you, because you might tell me that I am in need of the minister, to make me merciful to a banished lady. Ah, your smile shows that that is what you were thinking of. But I can tell you this: she is a wicked woman. Her father committed murder, and she is quite able and willing to do the same thing. So I must go and find her, and take care that her foot is set in no boat but mine."
"Yours?"
"Yes. I must carry her out of the way of all boats but mine. This island was chosen for such a purpose, and now--" "And now," said Annie, "if the lady is afflicted with such hardness of heart, is it not cruel to take her away from God's word and worship, just when there is a minister coming? Oh, Macdonald! what would you do to one who should carry away your poor sick little Malcolm to Saint Kilda, just when your watching eye caught sight of an eastward sail, and you knew it was the physician coming; sent, moreover, for Malcolm's sake? What would you think then, Macdonald?"
"I should think that if Sir Alexander was in it there could be nothing done, and there ought to be nothing said. And Sir Alexander is in this, so I must go."
While Macdonald and his people were beating about among the caves, as morning drew on, Lady Carse and Rollo slipped up to the house, partly to secure a few more comforts that they had a mind for, and partly to obtain a wide view over the sea, and a certainty whether any boats were in sight.
"Have you brought up my oil can, Rollo?" asked his mother. "If not, you must go for it, and never again touch it without my leave."
"I took it," said Lady Carse; "and I cannot spare it."
"It cannot be spared from this room, my lady. It never left this room before but by my order, and it never must again."
"It shall never leave the place where it now is," declared Lady Carse, reddening. "I threw myself on your hospitality, and you grudge me light in the night. You, who are housed in a cottage of your own, with a fire, and everything comfortable about you--that is, every comfort that a poor woman like you knows how to value. You think yourself very religious, I am aware, and I rather believe you think yourself charitable, too; and you grudge me your oil can, when there is no one thing on earth you can do for me but lend it."
"Your way of thinking is natural, my lady, till you better know me and my duty. But to-day I must say that the oil can is mine, and I cannot lend it. You will please desire Rollo to bring it to me."
"I know well enough about you and your duty, as you call it. I know your particularity about a fancy of your own. I know well enough how obstinate you are about it, and how selfish, that you would sacrifice me to your whim about your duty, and your husband, and all that set of notions. And I know more. I know what it is to have a husband, and that you ought to be thankful that yours was gone before he could play the tyrant over you. You pretend to speak with authority because this cottage is yours, and your precious oil can, and your rotten old bedstead. But, besides that, I can teach you many things. You may be assured I can pay you for more oil than I shall burn to the end of my days, and for more sleeps than I hope ever to have on your old bed. You need not fear but that I shall pay for everything--pay more money than you ever saw in your life."
"Money will not do, madam. I must have my oil can. Rollo will fetch it. And you will lie down, my lady--lie down and rest on my old bed, without thinking of money, or of anything but ease to your head and your weary heart. Lie down in safety here, madam, for your head and your heart are aching sadly."
"What do you know about my head and heart aching?"
"By more signs than one. When anyone is hunted like the deer upon the hills--" Lady Carse groaned.
"That is only for a while, however," said Annie, tenderly. "When there is peace of mind, there is no one to hunt us--no one to hurt us. We abide here or anywhere; for the shadow of the Almighty is everywhere. No one can hunt us from it, nor hurt us within it. And I assure you, my lady, this is the place of all places for peace of mind."
"I hurt you just now, however," said the lady; "and I left you little peace of mind last night."
"If so, it must be my own fault," said Annie, cheerfully. "But never mind that. I never have any troubles now hardly; and you, madam, have so many, and such sad ones."
"That is true," said Lady Carse, as burning tears forced their way. "You never knew--you cannot conceive--such misery as mine."
Annie kissed the hand which was wet with those scalding tears, and laid her own hand on the head which was shaken on the pillow with sobs.
After a time, the lady murmured out, "This seems very childish: but it is so long--so long since anyone--since I met with any tenderness--any affection from anyone!"
"Is that it?" said the widow, cheerfully. "Well--this is a poor place enough; and we are no companions for anybody beyond ourselves: but what you speak of is ours to give. That you may always depend on here."
"In spite of anything I may say or do? You see how hasty I am at times. Will you love me and caress me, through anything I may say or do?"
"No doubt," replied Annie, smiling. "It will be the happiest way if you constrain us to love and cherish you as your due. But if not, these are charities that God has put into every hand that is reached out to Him, that the very humblest and poorest may have the best of alms to give."
"Alms!" sighed the lady. She shook off the kind hand that was upon her aching brow, for the thought struck upon her heart that she was a destitute beggar for those smallest offices of kindness and courtesy which she had not affections or temper to reciprocate or claim.
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{
"id": "23115"
}
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9
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THE COVE.
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Rollo brought word that Macdonald and his people had left the eastern caves, and were now exploring the large northern one called Asdrafil. It was time the lady was returning to her hiding place.
"O dear!" exclaimed she. "May I not rest under a roof for one night? Will Macdonald come here again so soon?"
The widow had little doubt he would. He would be popping in at all times of the day or night till he could learn where his prisoner was. She could not advise the lady to stay here, if she wished to remain on the island till the minister came.
"I must," said Lady Carse. "But I dread that cave. I hate it, with its echoes that startle one every moment, and the rough walls that look so strangely in the red light of the fire. I hate it. But," she continued impetuously, "no matter! I hate this place" (looking round with disgust). "I hate every place that I ever was in. I wish I was dead. I wish I had never been born. Now don't look at me so piteously. I won't be pitied. I can't bear to be pitied: and do you think I will let you pity me? No, indeed, I may have my own troubles. God knows I have troubles enough. But I would not change places with you--no, not for all else that God or man could give me. Now what are you smiling at? Woman, do you mean to insult my misfortunes? I am brought low indeed, if I am to be smiled at by a hag in a desert--I who once--O! I see; you don't choose to yield me the small respect of listening to what I say."
Annie was now looking round her cottage to see what she could send down to render the lady more comfortable in her retreat. She tried to absorb her own attention in this business till Lady Carse should have exhausted her anger and become silent. But Lady Carse once again seized the oil can.
"Pardon me, madam," said Annie, "I cannot spare that, as you know. Rollo is carrying some things that I hope may make you comfortable. If you see anything else that you wish for, you shall have it--anything but my lamp and my oil."
"The oil is the only thing I want; and a small matter it is for me, who had dozens of wax-lights burning in my house at Edinburgh, and will have dozens more before I die."
"Your fire must serve you, madam. I give you what I have to bestow. My light is not mine to give: it belongs to wanderers on the sea. You cannot think, madam, of taking what belongs, as I may say, neither to you nor me."
Lady Carse had that in her countenance at this moment which alarmed the widow for her light; and she therefore desired her son, with authority, to relieve the lady of the oil can, and trim the lamp ready for night.
Lady Carse, setting her teeth, and looking as malicious as an ill-bred cur, said that if the light belonged to nobody here nobody else should have the benefit of it; and attempted to empty the oil upon the hearth. This was more than Rollo was disposed to permit. He seized her arm with no gentle grasp, and saved all the oil but a few drops, which blazed amongst the peats. He moreover told the lady, with an air of superiority, that he had almost begun to think she had as much wit as the islanders; but that he now saw his mistake; and she must manage her own affairs. He should stay with his mother to-night.
It was his mother who, rebuking his incivility, desired him to attend upon the lady. It was his mother who, when Lady Carse burst away from them and said she would be followed by nobody, awoke in Rollo something of the feeling which she herself entertained.
"Carry down these things," she said. "It is too true; as she says, that every place is hateful to her; and that is the more reason why we should do what we can to make some comfort in the place she is in."
"But she says such things to you, mother! I don't want to hear any more such things."
"When people are in torment, Rollo, they do not know what they say. And she has much to torment her, poor lady! Now go; and let us try to hide her from Macdonald. If she and the minister can have speech of each other, I trust she may become more settled in mind. You know God has made His creatures to differ one from another. There are some that sit all the more still in storms; and there are others that are sadly bewildered in tempests: but, if one ray of God's sun is sent to them, it is like a charm. They stop and watch it; and when it spreads about them, it seems to change their nature: they lie down and bask in it, and find content. It may be so with this lady if the minister gives her a glimpse of light from above."
"She shall not be carried off, if David and I can hide her," declared Rollo. "One of us must watch the Macdonalds, while the other entertains the lady."
"While she entertains you, you mean," said Annie, smiling. "She has many wonderful things to tell to such as we are."
"Not more than we have to tell her. Why, mother, she knows no more--" "Well, well," said the mother, smiling; "you cannot do wrong in amusing her to the best of your ability, till she can see the minister, and hear better things. So go, my son."
Rollo trimmed the lamp; saw that his mother was provided with fuel and water, and departed; leaving her maternal heart cheered, so that her almost bare cottage was like a palace to her. She was singing when Macdonald put his head in, as he said, to bid her good night, but in fact to see if Lady Carse had come home, David and Rollo acted in turn as scouts; and from their report it appeared that, though the minister's boat had not shown itself, there was a blockade of the eastern caves. The lady's retreat was certainly suspected to be somewhere in this part of the shore; for some of Macdonald's people were always in sight. Now and then, a man, or a couple of women, came prying along the rocks; and once two men took shelter in a cave which adjoined that in which the trembling lady was sitting, afraid to move, and almost to breathe, lest the echoes should betray her. The entrance to her retreat was so curiously concealed by projections of rock, that she had nothing to fear but from sound. But she could not be sure of this; and she would have extinguished her fire by heaping sand upon it, and left herself in total darkness in a labyrinth which was always sufficiently perplexing, if Rollo had not held her hand. He stepped cautiously through the sand to the nearest point to the foe, listened awhile, and then smiled and nodded to Lady Carse, and seemed wonderfully delighted. This excited her impatience so much that it seemed to her that the enemy would never decamp. She was obliged to control herself; but by the time she might speak, she was very irritable. She told Rollo not to grin and fidget in that manner, but to let her know his news.
"Great news!" Rollo declared. "The sloop which was to bring the minister and his wife was to lie-to this very night, in a deep cove close at hand; and the reason for its coming here, instead of into the harbour, was--the best of reasons for the lady--that Macdonald had fears that the Macleods who manned the vessel would be friendly to his prisoner. So the minister and his party were to be landed in the sloop's yawl; and the sloop was to be quietly brought into the cove after dark, that the lady, supposed to be still on the island, might not have _any_ opportunity of getting on board."
This did appear a most promising opportunity of deliverance. The sloop came round when expected; and, soon after she was moored, Rollo and David went on their raft, and spoke from it to a man who appeared to be in command, and who was, after some time, persuaded to think that he could, for sufficient payment, go so far out of his way as to land a lady passenger on the main--the lady being in anxiety about her family, and able to pay handsomely for an early opportunity of joining them. The negotiation was rather a long one, as some of the points were difficult to arrange; and the master of the vessel appeared somewhat careless about the whole matter. But at last Lady Carse's anxious ear heard the slight splash of the raft approaching through the water; and then the tall figures of the young men were dimly seen between her and the sky. Her tongue was so parched that she could not speak the question which swelled in her heart.
"Come," said Rollo, aloud. "The master will land you on the main. You had better get on board now, before the sea roughens. Come, they are looking out for you."
Lady Carse endeavoured to make haste; but her limbs would hardly support her. Her companions lifted her upon the raft, and one held her steady while the other paddled. Strong arms were ready on board the sloop to hoist her up and carry her to a heap of plaids, made into a sort of bed on deck. In another moment she sprang up, saying that she must speak to her companions one more word. A sailor who stood over her held her back; but she declared that she must thank those who had rendered her a great service. At the bidding of someone who spoke in Gaelic, the sailor withdrew his opposition, and she tottered to the side of the vessel, called to Rollo, desired him to give her love to his mother, and promised that he and David should find that she was not ungrateful.
Rollo and his comrade leaped ashore with a comfortable feeling that their business was all achieved; but yet with some little regret at losing the excitements of their late employment, and of the lady's presence and conversation. They talked her over while eating their suppers, wondered what rewards she would send, and how angry Macdonald would be; and they were about to lie down to sleep, when the night air was rent by such a scream as they had never heard. They ran out upon the rocks, and there they heard from the sloop shriek upon shriek.
"What is it?" exclaimed David. "They are murdering her!"
"No," said Rollo, after a pause. "They may be up to that, if this is a trick; but they would not do it here, nor so soon. They could do it more safely between this and Saint Kilda, with a rope and heavy stone. No--they are not murdering her, whoever they may be."
"What, then? Who are they?"
"It may be a trick, and that would put the lady in a great passion; and when she is in a passion, let me tell you, not all the birds in the face of this rock can make more noise. I am not sure, but I think that is a passionate scream."
"I wish it would leave off," said David, turning away. "I don't like it."
"If you don't like it," said Rollo, "I should hardly think she can. I must see about it. I think it is a trick, and that she is in a passion."
It was a trick from beginning to end. It was Macdonald's sloop; and Macdonald himself was on board, prepared to carry his prisoner to Saint Kilda. The conversation overheard by Rollo in the cavern was a trick. A similar conversation had been held that day in _every_ cave known to Macdonald along that part of the shore, in hopes of some one version being overheard by the lady's accomplices. She had fallen into the trap very easily.
"And now," said Macdonald to a clansman, "I have nearly done with the business. _We_ have only to land her in Saint Kilda; and then it will be the Macleod's affair. I shall be glad to have done with the witch. I have no wish to carry people anywhere against their wishes; and I never would, if Sir Alexander Macdonald were not in it. But I shall have done with the business presently."
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{
"id": "23115"
}
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10
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WHICH REFUGE?
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Macdonald's self congratulations were premature. He had more uneasiness to undergo about the lady than he had suffered yet. When her screams of rage had sunk into sobs and moans, and these again had been succeeded by silence, he had left her undisturbed to cry herself to sleep. At daylight he had gone to take a look, but she had, as he supposed, muffled herself up in the plaids provided for her, so as to cover her head, and thus conceal her face. But it soon after appeared that these plaids had nothing under them--the lady was not there.
No one had seen her move; and it must have been done in the thickest darkness of the night. One man had heard a splash in the water alongside. A cotton handkerchief, which she had worn on her head, was found floating. It was to be feared that the lady had drowned herself. After searching about in the neighbourhood all day, Macdonald departed in his vessel, leaving a man to watch, in case of the body being thrown up among the rocks. He had now no doubt of her death; and with a heavy heart he went to confide this event--unfortunate for him, whether so or not for anyone else--first to friends on the island, and next to his chief. He met the minister on his landing, and took the opportunity of whispering his news to some of those who came down to greet the pastor, to his own wife, and to Annie Fleming, desiring them not to inform the pastor, without his permission, that such a person as Lady Carse had been among them. Then he set sail for Skye, to tell Sir Alexander, with what face he might, that the poor lady would trouble them no more. It would have been a vast relief to him to have anticipated the way in which his chief would receive the news--how he would say that a great perplexity was thus solved--that no harm could ensue, as the lady was buried so long ago at Edinburgh--and that he had himself many times repented having gone into the affair, and that he never would, but for political and party reasons, and that he was heartily glad now to be quit of it, in any way--to say nothing of this being, after all, a happy event for the wretched lady herself and all belonging to her.
Meanwhile Lady Carse was not yet out of their way. She had still voice to utter political secrets, and temper all eager to punish her foes. She had slipped away in the dark, thrown herself overboard when she found Rollo below, got drenched with sea-water and bruised against the rocks, but was safe in hiding again.
Rollo's trouble was, that she laughed so heartily and so incessantly for some time, that there was danger of her merriment betraying her. He told her at last that she must try if she would leave off laughing when left to herself. If she could not, she would then, at any rate, cause no one but herself to be taken. He should go by a way of his own to a point whence he could look out and see what was doing at sea and ashore.
When he reappeared, it was with a face which would have stopped any laughter on the side of the lady, if the laughter had not stopped of itself long before. She must not hope to escape by the minister's boat. Macdonald had so managed his plot as to allure the lady into his boat just when she should have been attempting to get on board the other. It was too late now.
The lady would not be finally convinced of this till, by Rollo's assistance, she had reached the spot whence she could observe the facts for herself. The knowledge that there was a watch set below, who would not fail to take her alive, though his affair was to pick up her dead body, kept her from yielding to audible grief, but never had she been more convulsed with passion. She pulled up the heather by handfuls. She dashed her head against the ground, till Rollo restrained her.
On the dun wintry sea a vessel was sailing northwards. It had deposited the pastor and his lady, and had actually passed and repassed the very shore where she had been concealed. The long looked for vessel had come and gone. Another was sailing eastwards in the direction she longed to go. This was Macdonald's; and seeing that it was going to Skye or the main, she now bitterly lamented having left it. She would not believe a word about the intention to carry her to Saint Kilda. She would rather believe her own eyes, and passionately condemned herself for her haste in returning to this dreary island.
Rollo next turned her attention to the little procession which appeared upon the hills, bringing the pastor and his wife to their new abode. She looked that way; she saw the group ascending the hill--a sight so unusual in this place, that Rollo was much excited about it; but her eyes kept filling with tears, and she was so heart-sick that she could not bear any thoughts but of her own troubles. She desired Rollo to leave her. She wanted to be alone; nobody had any feeling for her; people might go and amuse themselves; all she wanted was to live and die alone.
Rollo knew that she could not do that, but he wished to go where others were going--said to himself that the lady would be the better for being left to herself for awhile, and left her accordingly. He first asked her whether he should help her down to the cave, but she made no answer, so he walked off, leaving her lying on the heather in a cold and dreary place.
She did not feel the cold, and she was too dreary within to be sensible of the desolation without. How deserted she felt as she saw Rollo walking away, quickening his pace to a run when he reached the down. It might be said that she was without a hope in heaven or on earth, but that passion always hopes for its own gratification--always expects it, in defiance of all probability, and in opposition to all reason. This is one chief mode in which the indulgence of any kind of passion is corrupting. It injures the integrity of the faculties and the truthfulness of the mind, inducing its victims to trust to chances instead of likelihood, and to dwell upon extravagances till they become incapable of seeing things as they are.
So Lady Carse now presently forgot that she was alone on a hill in a far island of the Hebrides, with no means of getting away, and no chance of letting any friend know that she was not buried long ago--and her imagination was busy in London. She fancied herself there, and, if once there, how she would accomplish her revenge. She imagined herself talking to the minister, and repeating to him the things her husband had written and said against himself and the royal family. She imagined herself introduced to the king, and telling into his anxious ear the tidings of the preparations made for driving him from the throne and restoring the exiled family. She imagined the list made out of the traitors to be punished, at the top of which she would put the names of her own foes--her husband first, and Lord Lovat next. She imagined the king's grateful command to her to accompany his messengers to Scotland, that she might guide and help them to seize the offenders. She clasped her hands behind her head in a kind of rapture when she pictured to herself the party stealing a march upon her formal husband, presenting themselves before him, and telling him what they came for--marking, and showing him how they marked his deadly paleness, perhaps by making courteous inquiries about his health. She feasted her fancy on scenes in the presence of her old acquaintance, Duncan Forbes, when she would distress him by driving home her charges against the friends of his youth, and by appeals to his loyalty, which he could not resist. She pictured to herself the trials and the sentences--and then the executions--her slow driving through the streets in her coach in her full triumph, people pointing her out all the way as the lady who was pretended to be dead and buried, but who had come back, in favour with the king, to avenge him and herself at once on their common enemies. She wondered whether Lord Lovat's cool assurance would give way at such a moment--she almost feared not--almost shrank already from the idea of some wounding gibe--frowned and clenched her hands while fancying what it would be, and then smiled at the thought of how she would smile, and bow an eternal farewell to the dying man, reminding him of her old promise to sit at a window and see his head fall.
But the astonishment to all Edinburgh would be when she should look on triumphantly to see her husband die. He had played the widower in sight of all Edinburgh, and now it would be seen how great was the lie, and nobody could dispute that the widowhood was hers. She hoped that he would turn his prim figure and formal face her way, that she might make him, too, an easy bow, showing how she despised the hypocrite, and how completely he had failed in breaking her spirit. She hoped she should be in good looks at that time, not owning the power of her enemies by looking worn and haggard. She must consider her appearance a little more than she had done lately in view of this future time. Her being somewhat weather-browned would not matter; it would be rather an advantage, as testifying to her banishment; but she must be in comfortable plight, and for this purpose-- Here her meditations were cut short by the approach of some people. She heard a pony's feet on the rock, and caught sight of a woman's head, wrapped in a plaid, as the party mounted directed towards her. It was too late for escape--and there was no need. The woman on the pony was Annie; and nobody else was there but Rollo.
"The wonder is that you are not frozen," said Rollo, "if you have been lying here all this time. You look as red in the face, and as warm as if you had been by the fire below in the snug sand. And that is where we must go now directly; for mother cannot stand the cold up here. She would come, as it happened she could have one of Macdonald's ponies to-day. Well, I cannot but think how you could keep yourself warm, unless you are a witch as Macdonald says you are."
"It is the mother's heart in her, Rollo, that keeps out the cold and the harm," said Annie. "It may be a wonder to you; for how should you know what it is to have had a hope of seeing one's children, to have dreamed of nothing else, waking or sleeping, and then to find it nothing but a dream. See her now, Rollo, as the cold comes over her heart. The heart can live warm on its own thoughts, when it is chilling to hear another voice speak of them."
Lady Carse was now very pale. She had once said, and then fully believed it, that she had no shame. It was long since she had felt shame. She felt it now, when it struck her that during all her long reveries about her escape and her restoration to the world, not one thought of her children had entered into the imagery of her dream. Like all people of strong passions, she had taken for granted that there was something grand and fine in the intensity of her feelings. Now, for a moment, the clear mirror of Annie's mind was held up before her own, and she saw herself as she was. For one instant she perceived that she was worthy of her husband's detestation. But she was not one to tolerate painful and humbling ideas long. She recurred to her unequalled wrongs, and was proud and comforted. She walked down to her retreat without looking behind her, leaving Rollo to tether the pony, and help his mother down as he could.
When Annie entered the cave, the drops were standing on her face, so great had been the pain to her rheumatic limbs on descending to the shore.
"But," said she, as she sank down on the sand by the smouldering fire, "I could not but come, when I heard from Rollo that you were still breathing God's air."
"Do you mean that that was good news or bad?"
"Oh, good! Surely good news. At first, for a moment after Macdonald told me you were drowned in the night, I felt thankful that your troubles were over. But I soon saw it the right way; and when Rollo whispered you were--" "What do you mean by seeing it the right way? How do you know that your first feeling was not the right one? I am sure it was the kindest to me. You think yourself religious, and so you ought to be glad when an unhappy person is `where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.'"
Annie did not reply. She was looking at the fire, and by its light it might be seen that tears were gathering in her eyes.
"Ah!" said the irritable lady, "you, and such as you, who think you abide in the Scriptures so that nothing can move you; what becomes of you when you are answered by Scripture?"
"I do not feel myself answered," Annie quietly replied. "Oh, indeed!"
"I feel what you said out of Scripture to be quite true; and that it is a great blessing that God has set the quiet grave before our eyes for such as can find no other rest. But I would not forget that there is another and a better rest, without waiting for the grave."
"You are so narrow, Annie! You judge of everybody by yourself!"
"That is a great danger I know," Annie agreed. "And I cannot speak from my own knowledge of being troubled by the wicked. But I have read and heard much of good men who were buffeted by the wicked for the best part of their lives, and at last got over being troubled by it, and more than that."
"Ah! gloried in it, no doubt. Everyone is proud of something; and they were proud of that."
"Some such I fear there may have often been, madam; but I was not thinking of those that could fall into such a snare as being proud of the ill-will of their brethren. I was thinking of some who felt the ill opinion of their brethren to be very humbling, and who humbled themselves to bear it. Then in time they had comfort in forgiving their enemies, and at last they grew fit for a sweeter pleasure still which yet remained. Not that, as I believe, they spoke of it, unless at moments when the joy would speak for itself; but then it has been known to burst forth from the lips of the persecuted--from some as cruelly persecuted as you, madam, that of all the thrillings that God's spirit makes in men's hearts, there is none so sweet as the first stirrings of the love of enemies."
There was no answer, and Annie went on.
"I could believe that there is no love so altogether good--at least for us here. It is as yearning as that of a mother for her child, and as tender as that of lovers; and I should say, more holy than either, for theirs is natural to them in their mortal life, though it may be the purest part of it; the other love is an instinct belonging to the immortal life, a tongue of fire, sent down upon the head of a chosen one here and there, gifting them with the language of angels, to tell us on this side the grave what we shall find beyond. One must see that to such as these the wicked have ceased from troubling, and their weariness has long sunk into rest without help from death."
Lady Carse sighed.
"This was why I was glad, madam, to hear that death had not overtaken you yet. If you may enter into a living rest which we may see, that will, under God's blessing, be better than the blank rest of going away from your enemies, when their old wrongs may be still in your heart, making death a stinging serpent instead of a guiding dove."
Some sweet old words here occurred to Lady Carse, linked with a sweet old psalm tune--words of longing to have wings like a dove, to flee away and be at rest. She murmured these words; and they brought softening tears.
"You see, madam," said Annie, "your nest is made for you. You have been permitted to flee away from your enemies! now you are not to have wings, for the sails of the vessels are out of sight, and this makes it plain that here is to be your nest. It is but a stormy place to abide in, to be sure; but if Christ be sought, He is here to command peace, and the winds and the sea obey Him."
"I cannot stay here," sobbed Lady Carse. "I cannot give up my hopes and my efforts--the only aim of my life."
"It _is_ hard," said the widow, with starting tears. "The last thing that a mother can give up,--the very last thing she can lay freely into God's hand is her yearning for her children. But you will--" "It is not my children that I most want. You say falsely that they are the last to be given up. There is--" "Falsely!" cried Rollo, springing to his feet. "My mother speak falsely! If you dare--" "Gently, my boy," said Annie. "We have not heard what the lady means."
"Be quiet, Rollo," said Lady Carse. "Your mother speaks falsely as regards me; but I do not say that it is not after her own kind that she speaks. If God gives me to see my children, I will thank him devoutly; but there is another thing that I want more--revenge on all my enemies, and on my husband first."
Rollo looked breathlessly at his mother. Her face was calm; but he could see in the dim red light its expression of infinite sorrow. She asked her son to help her to rise and go.
"I came," said she to Lady Carse, "to entreat you to come among us, and rest in a spirit of surrender to God, on His clear showing that He chooses this to be your abiding place; and one reason for my coming was to tell you that the minister has brought his children, lest the sight of a child's face should move you too suddenly. But I see that your thoughts are on other things; and that your spirit of surrender has yet to be prayed for. Next Sabbath, we are to have worship once more, and--" "Where?"
"In the old chapel, if it can be enclosed by that time. If not, we must wait another week: but I think it will be done. It needs but a word, madam, and the minister will ask all our prayers for one under affliction--" "By no means. I forbid you to speak of me, in one way or another, to the minister or his wife. I insist on my wishes being observed in this."
"Certainly, madam. It is not for us to interfere with your plans."
"Then go; go both of you: and do not come near me without my leave. I want to be alone--I want to be at rest; that is--" "Ay--at rest," said Annie, half aloud. She was thinking that there would be prayers from one heart at least in the chapel for peace to a troubled spirit.
And she did not wait for the Sabbath to pray. As, assisted by her son, she painfully ascended to the heights, she saw the birds fly in and out, and hover round on the face of the precipice, as at a bidding she did not hear, she could not but silently ask that God would send His dove to harbour in the hollow of this rock with one who sorely needed a visitation of His peace.
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{
"id": "23115"
}
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