Sea and Shore Part 3

"Here are croquets too, as I live," said Duganne, lifting a cover before him and peeping in, then returning it quietly to its place. "Are you a fairy, madame?"

"Much more like a witch," she said, with gayety. "You young men, at least, think every old, toothless gray-haired crone like me ready for the stake, you know."

"Not when they make such steaks," said Dr. Durand, attacking the dish, with its savory surroundings, before him.

"Ah! you make calembourgs, my good doctor.--What do you call them, Favraud? It is one of the few English words I do not know--or forget. I believe, to make them, however, is a medical peculiarity."

"Puns, madame, puns, not pills. Don't forget it now. It is time you were beginning to master our language. You know you are almost grown up!" and Favraud looked at her saucily.

"A language which madame speaks more perfectly than any foreigner I have ever known," I remarked. She bowed in answer, well pleased.

In truth, the accent of Madame Grambeau was barely detectable, and her phraseology was that of a well-translated book--correct, but not idiomatic, and bearing about it the idiosyncrasy of the language from which it was derived. She was evidently a person of culture and native power of intellect combined, and her finely-moulded face, as well as every gesture and tone, indicated superiority and character.

In that lonely wild, and beneath that lowly roof, there abode a spirit able and worthy to lead the _coteries_ of the great, and to preside over the councils of statesmen, and (to rise in climax) the drawing-room of the _grande monde_. But it was her whim rather than her necessity to tarry where she could alone be strictly independent, a _sine qua non_ of her being.

The son she had led by the hand from Hew York to Georgia, and who, standing by her side, distinctly remembered to have seen the head of the Princess Lamballe borne on a pole through the streets of Paris, was now a prominent member of the Legislature, and, through his rich wife, the inc.u.mbent of a great plantation.

But the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that philosophic sign-post, still influenced his mother, in her refusal to live under his splendid roof, and partake of his bounty, however liberally offered.

"I have a home of my own," she said, "a few faithful servants, brains, and energy still, besides a small account with General Curzon, in his bank at Savannah, wherewith to meet emergencies; while these things last, I will owe to no man or woman for bread or shelter. And, when these depart, may the grave cover my bones, and the good G.o.d receive my soul!"

Books alone she accepted as gifts from her son, and of these, in a little three-cornered library, she had a goodly store in the two languages which she read with equal facility, if not delight.

She showed us this nook before we left, and I saw, lying face downward, as she had recently left it, the volume she was then perusing at intervals--one of Madame Sand's novels, "Les Mauprats," I remember, a singular and powerful romance, then recently issued, whose root I have always thought might be found in Walter Scott's "Rob Roy," and more particularly in the Osbaldistone family commemorated in that work.

On suggesting this to Madame Grambeau, she too saw the resemblance I spoke of, and she agreed, with me, that the coincidence of genius furnished many such parallels, where no charge of plagiarism could be attached to either side.

A few bottles of "wild-berry wine," as Elizabeth Barrett called such fluids, were added to the dinner toward its close, and Marion begged permission to have her basket of cakes and fruits brought in for dessert, which else had been wanting to our repast; to which request Madame Grambeau graciously acceded.

"I make no confections," she said, "but I have lived on the juices of good meats, well prepared, with such vegetables as the Lord lets grow in this poor region, many years, and behold I am old and still able to do his service!"

"And a little good wine, too, occasionally--eh, madame?" added Major Favraud, impertinently.

"When attainable, Favraud. You drank good wine yourself, when you were here, and I partook with you moderately. But I buy none such. I drown not, Clarence-like, even in b.u.t.ts of malmsey, my hard-earned gold; and I own I am not fond of the juices of the muscadine of your hills;" and she tapped her snuffbox.

"You are going to hear her talk now," whispered Favraud; "that is a sign--equal to General Finistere's--the snuffbox tapping, I mean. The oracle is beginning to arouse! Come I let me stir her further!" and he inclined his head before her.

"I'll tell you what, madame, you must take a little cognac to keep off the chills of age. I have some of the best, and will send you down a demijohn, if you say the word; and in return you shall pray for me. I am a great sinner, Miss Harz thinks."

"Miss Harz is correct; and we will both promise you our prayers. She, too, is Catholic, I hope. No? I regret so, for her own sake; but your brandy I reject, Victor; remember that, and offend me not by sending it.

You must not forget the fate of your malvoisie."

"Ah, madame, that was cruel! but I have forgiven you long since. I think, however, that the grape-vines bore better that year than ever before--thus watered, or wined, I mean.--Just think of it, Miss Harz! To pour good wine round the roots of a Fontainebleau grape, rather than replenish the springs of life with it! Was there ever waste like that since Cleopatra dissolved her pearl in vinegar?"

"Miss Harz will agree with me that a principle that could not resist the gift of a dozen bottles of choice wine was little worth. Of such stuff was made not the fathers of your Revolution. But stay, there is an explanation due to me, yet unrendered," she pursued, "I am a puzzled _bourgeoise_, I confess," she said, shaking her head. "Come, Favraud, explain. Who is this young lady?"

"A _bourgeoise_ also," I replied for him, anxious to turn the tide of conversation into another channel for some reasons. "I had thought you an expatriated marquise, at least, madame!" I continued. "As for me, I am simply a governess."

"It is my glory, mademoiselle, to have been of that cla.s.s to which belonged Madame Roland herself, and which represented that _juste milieu_ which maintained the balance of society in France. When the dregs of the _bas peuple_ rose to the surface of the revolution, commenced by the sound middle cla.s.ses, we regarded the sc.u.m of aristocracy as the smaller of the two evils. As soon as the true element had ceased to a.s.sert itself in France, I fled forever from a land of bloodshed and misrule, and took shelter under the broad wing of your boasted American eagle."

"Which still continues to flap over you shelteringly, madame," I rejoined, somewhat flippantly, I fear, "and will to the end, no doubt; for, in its very organization, our country can never be subjected to the fluctuations of other lands--revolt and revolution."

"I am not so certain of this," she observed, shaking her white head slowly as she spoke, and, lifting a pinch of snuff from her tortoise-sh.e.l.l box (the companion of her whole married life, as she acquainted us), she inhaled it with an air of meditative self-complacency, then offered it quietly to the gentlemen, who were still sitting over their wine and peaches; pa.s.sing by Marion, Alice Durand, and myself, completely, in this ovation.

"Good snuff is not to be sneezed at," said Major Favraud. "None offered to young ladies, it seems," taking a huge pinch, and thrusting it bravely up his nostrils, as one takes a spoonful of unpleasant medicine.

Then contradicting his own a.s.sertion immediately afterward, he succeeded in expelling most of it in a series of violent sternutatory spasms, which left him breathless, red-faced, and watery-eyed, with a handkerchief much begrimed.

But Madame Grambeau seemed not to have noticed this ridiculous proceeding, which, of course, created momentary mirth at the expense of the penitent Favraud, to whom Dr. Durand repeated the tantalizing saying, that "it is a royal privilege to take snuff gracefully"--giving the example as he spoke, in a mock-heroic manner, quite as absurd and irrelevant as Favraud's own.

Lost in deep thought, and gently tapping her snuffbox as she mused--the tripod of her inspiration, as it seemed--Madame Grambeau sat silently, with what memories of the past and what insight into the future none can know save those like herself grown h.o.a.ry with wisdom and experience.

At last she spoke, addressing her remarks to me, as though the careless words I had hazarded had just been spoken, and the attention of her hearers undiverted by divers absurdities--among others the affected gambols of Duganne--anxious to place himself in an agreeable aspect before both of his _inamoratas_, past and present.

"I do not agree with you, mademoiselle. I am one of those who think that in the very framing of this Const.i.tution of ours the dragon's teeth were sown, whose harvest is not yet produced. Mr. Calhoun, with his prophetic eye, foresees that this crop of armed men is inevitable from such germs, as does Mr. Clay, were he only frank, which he is not, because he deludes himself--the most incurable and inexcusable of all deceptions."

And she applied herself again a.s.siduously to her snuffbox, tapping it peremptorily before opening it, and, with a gloomy eye fixed on s.p.a.ce, she continued:

"In all lands, from the time of Ca.s.sandra and Jeremiah up, there have been prophets. Prophets for good and prophets for ill--of which some few have been G.o.d-appointed, and the sayings of such alone have been preserved. The rest vanish away into oblivion like chaff before the wind--never mind what their achievement, what their boast.

"In this nation we have only two true prophets, Calhoun and Clay--both men of equal might, and resolution, and intellect--gifted as beseems their vocation, masterful and heroic; and to these all other men are subordinate in the great designs of Providence."

"Where do you leave Mr. Webster, John Quincy Adams, General Jackson himself, in such a category, madame?" I asked, eagerly.

"They are doing, or have done, the work G.o.d has appointed for them to do, I suppose, mademoiselle; but they are accessories merely of the times, and will pa.s.s away with the necessities of the moment."

"'The earth has bubbles as the water hath, and these are of them,'" said Major Favraud aside, between his short, set teeth, nodding to me as he spoke, and lending the next moment implicit attention to what Madame Grambeau was saying; for the brief pause she had made for another pinch of snuff was ended, and she continued impetuously, as if no interval had occurred:

"Clay is, unconsciously, I trust, for the honor of mankind, fulfilling his destiny--this great prophet who still refuses to prophesy. He is entering the wedge for what he declines to admit the possibility of--yet there must be moments when that eye of power pierces the clouds of prejudice and party, wherewith it seeks to blind its kingly vision, and descries the horrors beyond as the result of the acts he is now committing; and when such moments of clear conviction come to him, the ambitions tool of a party, I envy not his sensations," and she shook her head mournfully. "Not Napoleon at St. Helena, not Prometheus on his rock, were more to be pitied than he! the man whose ambition shall never know fruition, whose measures shall pa.s.s and leave no trace in less than fifty years after he has ceased to exist--the splendid failure of our century!"

She ceased for a moment, with her eye fixed on s.p.a.ce, her hands clasped, her whole face and manner uplifted, as if, indeed, on her likewise the prophet's mantle had dropped from a chariot of fire.

"As to Calhoun--he is G.o.d-fearing," she continued, fervently. "In the solitudes of a spiritual Mount Sinai, he has received the tablets of the Lord, and bends every energy to their fulfillment. He, too, foresees--not with an eye like Clay's, clear only at intervals--and clouded by vanity, ambition, and sophistry, at other seasons--he, too, foresees the coming of our doom! His clear vision embraces anarchy, dissension, civil war, with all its attendant horrors, as the consequence of man's injustice; and, like Moses, he beholds the promised land into which he can never enter! Would that it were given to him to appoint his Joshua, or even to see him face to face, recognizingly! But this is not G.o.d's will. He lurks among the shadows yet--this Joshua of the South, but G.o.d shall yet search him out and bring him visibly before the people! Not while I live," she added, solemnly, "but within the natural lives of all others who sit this day around my table!"

"She is equal to Madame Le Normand!" said Major Favraud, aside, nodding approvingly at me.

"If one waits long enough, most prophecies may be fulfilled," I ventured; "but, madame, your words point to results too terrible--too unnatural, it seems to me, ever to be realized in these enlightened times or in this land of moderation."

"Child," she responded, "blood a.s.serts itself to the end of races. There are two separate civilizations in this land, destined some day to come in fearful conflict; and the wars of Scylla, of the Jews themselves, shall be outdone in the horror and persistence of that strife of partners--I will not say brothers--for there is no brotherhood of blood between South and North, of which Clay and Calhoun stand forth to my mind as distinct types. No union of the red and white roses possible."

"But you forget, madame, that Mr. Clay is a Western man, a Virginian, a Kentuckian, and the representative of slave-holders," I remonstrated.

"His interests are coincident with those of the South. His hope of the presidency itself vests in his const.i.tuents, and the wand would be broken in his hand were he to lend himself to partiality of any kind.

Mr. Clay is a great patriot, I believe, Jacksonite though I am--he knows no South nor North, nor East nor West, but the Union alone, solid and undivided."

"All this is true," she answered, "in one sense. It is thus he speaks, and, like all partial parents, even thinks he feels toward his offspring; but observe his acts narrowly from first to last. He has a manufacturer's heart, with all his genius. He loves machinery--the sound of the mill, the anvil, the spinning-jenny, the sight of the ship upon the high-seas, or steamboat on the river, the roar of commerce, far more than the work of the husbandman. We are an agricultural people, we of the South and West--and especially we Southerners, with our poverty of invention, our one staple, our otherwise helpless habits, incident to the inst.i.tution which, however it may be our curse, is still our wealth, and to which, for the present time, we are bound, Ixion-like, by every law of necessity. What does this tariff promise? Where will the profit rest? Where will the loss fall crushingly? The slow torture of which we read in histories of early times was like to this. Each day a weight was added to that already lying on the breast of a strong man, bound on his back by the cords of his oppressors, until relief and destruction came together, and the man was crushed; such was the _peine forte et dure_."

"Calhoun is patriarchal,[4] and is now placing all his individual strength to the task of heaving off this incubus from the breast of our body politic, but with small avail, for he has no lever to a.s.sist him--no fulcrum whereon to rest it; otherwise he might say with Archimedes, 'With these I could move a world.' He is unaided, this eagled-eyed prophet of ours, looking sorrowfully, sagaciously down into the ages! South Carolina is the Joseph, that his cruel brothers, the remaining Southern States, have sold to the Egyptians, as a bond-slave.

But they shall yet come to drink of his cup, and eat of his bread of opinion, in the famine of their Canaan. Nullification shall leave a fitting successor, as Philip of Macedon left Alexander to carry out his plans. The abolitionist and the slave-holder are as distinct as were Charles I. and Cromwell, or Catharine de Medicis and Henry of Navarre.

The germ that Calhoun has planted shall lie long in the earth, perhaps, but when it breaks the surface, it shall grow in one night to maturity, like that in your so famous 'Mother Goose' story of 'Jack and his Bean-stalk,' forming a ladder wherewith to scale the abode of giants and slay them in their drunken sleep of security. But he who does this deed, this Joshua of the Lord's, this fierce successor of our gentle Moses, shall wade through his oceans of blood to gain the stone. G.o.d knoweth--He only--how all this shall end, whether in success or overthrow. It is so far wrapped in mystery."