The Memories of Fifty Years Part 19

"Is it romance, or are you the young gentleman with flowing hair and black, curling beard I met, and who shot the arrow into the cotton bale for my amus.e.m.e.nt? O! how often have I seen you in my dreams; but I shall never see you as I saw you then. What a study you were to me! How could your words be so soft and gentle in the wild costume of the murderous savage? Had you uttered the war-whoop and strode away with the stride and pride of the savage warrior, there would have been euphony in it, and I should have felt and known you were a savage--and you would have pa.s.sed from my mind. But, ah! look how beautifully bounds away the startled doe we have aroused from her lair in the cave here."

"She seems scarcely more startled than did you when I came so unexpectedly upon you in the store at Bayou Sara. Were you not surprised to see that I could write?"

"You must not question me now. Why have you cut your hair and beard?

why doffed the prairie chieftain's robes of state and come forth a plain man? You have dispelled my romance. I have tried to paint you as I saw and remembered you, and made charcoal sketches for the gratification of friends to whom I would describe you. I would so like to see you as you were! O! you were a wonder to me, a very Orson--now, you are simply a--"

"Miserable creature in plain clothes, and by no means a lady's fancy.

Why did you not let me die, since all that was to be fancied about me--my hair, my beard, and my buckskin coat, pants, and moccasins are gone and destroyed?"

The maiden laughed wildly; it was not the laugh of mirth or mischief, there was a madness in it that thrilled and awed.

"Do you know you are on the graves of a great nation?" she asked. "This mound and yonder three, were, the burial-places of the Natchez Indians.

The Suns and Sachems sleep here, and he, the Great Sun, who came from the orbit's self, and was their lawgiver, and in whom and whose divinity they believed as the Jews in that of Moses, or the Christians in the Redeemer. Is it not all a mystery--strange, strange, incomprehensible, and unnatural? What is your faith?"

"To worship where I love; the divinity of my soul's worship is the devotion of my wild heart.'

"Why, you are mysterious! Have you, as had the Natchez, a holy fire which is never extinguished in your heart? Is the flame first kindled burning still? Did your sun come to you with fire in her hand and kindle it in your heart? Your words mean so much. Was she, or is she a red maiden of the wild prairies; or dwells she in a mansion surrounded with the appliances of wealth, reclining on cushions of velvet and sleeping on a bed of down, canopied with a pavilion of damask satin fretted with stars of silver; with handmaids to subserve and minister to every want?" And again the wild laugh rang to the echo among the hills and dense forests all around. "O! I see I have tuned the wrong chord and have made discord, not music in your mind. Shall we return?

You are not yet strong, and your weakness I have made weaker, because I have disturbed the fountain of your heart and brought up painful memories?"

"You are strange," said her companion, "and guess wide of the mark. The untutored savage is only a romance at a distance--the reality of their presence a disgusting fact. They are wild, untamable, and wicked, without sentiment or sympathy, cruel and murderous; disgusting in their habits and brutal in their pa.s.sions."

"And yet, sir, the stories which come down to us of these so quietly sleeping here are full of romance and poetry. Their intercourse with the French impressed that mercurial people with exalted notions of their humanity, chivalry, and n.o.bleness of nature. Can it be that these historians only wrote romances? You must not disturb this romance. If it is an illusion let me enjoy it; do not strip from it the beard, the hair, the hunting-shirt, the bow and quiver--reality or fiction, it is sweet to the memory. How often have I wandered from our home and stood here alone and conjured from the spirit-land the ghosts of the Great Suns, the Stung Serpent, and the chief of the Beard, and hers who warned the French of the conspiracy for their destruction. In my day-dreaming I have talked with these; and learned with delight of their bliss in their eternal hunting-grounds. And as I have knelt here, they in hosts have come to me with all their legends and long accounts against the white man, and I have wept above these dry bones, and felt too it was the fate of the white man, when his mission shall have been completed on earth, and his nation's age bear him into the ground, and only his legends shall live a tradition, like that of the Natchez.

"The hieroglyphics of Thotmes, of Rameses, of Menephthah, and of the host of kings gone before these in Egypt's old life, cannot be read; their language, letters, and traditions, too, sleep beyond the revelations of time, and yet their tombs, like these, give up their bones to the curious, who group through the catacombs, or dig at the base of their monumental pyramids. All besides has pa.s.sed away and is lost. Not even the color of the great people who filled these monuments, and carved from the solid stone these miles of galleries, now filled to repletion with their mummied dead, and whose capacity is sufficient to entomb the dead of a nation for thousands of years, is known now to those who people the fields reclaimed from the forest beyond the memory of time.

"Nations are born, have their periods of youthful vigor, their manhood of st.u.r.dy strength, the tottering of decrepit age, the imbecility of superst.i.tious dotage--and their death is final extinction. Such is man, and such is the world. What we are, we know; what we shall be, we know not, save that we only leave a pile of bones. Come, we are approaching home, and the moon dares to shine, ere yet the sun has gone. Yonder is brother, and I expect a scolding; but let him fret--it is not often I have a toy. Fate threw you in my way and you must not complain if I use you."

"I shall not complain," replied the astonished young man; "but will you ride again to-morrow?"

She checked up her steed (a n.o.ble one he was) and seemed to take in his entire man, as slowly her eye went up from his stirrup to his face, when she said: "To-morrow, ah, to-morrow! Who can tell what to-morrow may bring forth? To you and to me, there may come no to-morrow. We may in a twinkling be hurled from our sphere into oblivion. The earth may open to-night, or even now, and we may drop into her bosom of liquid fire, and be only ashes to-morrow.

"'Take no heed for to-morrow,' is the admonition of wisdom. Look, yonder I was born. Here sleep the Natchez. See yonder tall mound, shaded from base to summit with the great forest trees peculiar to our land. On the top of that mound stood the temple dedicated to the worship of the sun. He smiles on it as the earth rolls up to hide his light away, as he did when the holy fire was watched by the priests in that temple. But the Indian worshipper is gone; to him there comes no morrow. There, on that mound, sleep the parents of my mother; to them comes no morrow. _Allons!_ We shall be late for tea. Brother has gone to sister's, and we shall be alone." In a few minutes they were galloping down the avenue to the old Spanish-looking mansion, hid away almost from view in the forest and floral surroundings, which made it so lovely to view.

There had come in their absence another; it was she who was the youthful companion of his fairy at the Bayou Sara--a silent, reserved woman: very timid and very polished. Upon the gallery she was awaiting the return of her cousin. The meeting was (as all meetings between high-bred women should be) quiet, but cordial; without show, but full of heart. They loved one another, and were highbred women. The stranger was presented, and at tea the cousin was informed that he was the man from the mountains, and there was a curious, silent surprise in her face, when she almost whispered, "I am pleased, sir, to meet you again.

I hope you will realize the romance of my cousin's dream with your legends of the West, the woods, and the wild men of the prairies."

Days went by, and still the fever raged in the city. The cerulean was bright and unflecked with a speck of vapor, like a concave mirror of burnished steel. It hung above, and the red sun seemed to burn his way through the azure ma.s.s. The leaves drooped as if weighted with lead, and in the shade kindly thrown upon the wilting gra.s.s by the tulips, oaks, and pecans about the yard, the poultry lifted their wings and panted with exhaustion in the sickly heat of the fervid atmosphere. The sun had long pa.s.sed the zenith, dinner was over, and the inmates were enjoying the siesta, so refreshing in this climate of the sun. Here and there the leaves would start and dally with a vagrant puff from vesper's lips, then droop again as if in grief at the vagaries of the little truant which now was fanning and stirring into lazy motion another leafy limb.

There was music in the drawing room. It was suppressed and soft--so sweet that it melted into the heart in very stealth. Ah! it is gone.

"Home, sweet home!" Poor Paine! like you, wandering in the friendless streets of England's metropolis and listening to your own sweet song, breathed from t.i.tled lips in palatial Homes, the listener to-day was homeless. He thought of you and the convivial hours he had pa.s.sed with you, listening to the narrative of your vagrant life, and how happy you were in the poetry of your own thoughts when you were a stranger to every one, and your purse was empty, and you knew not where you were to find your dinner.

Genius, thou art a fatal gift! Ever creating, never realizing; living in a world of beauty etherialized in imagination's lens, and hating the material world as it is; buffeted by fortune and ridiculed by fools whose conceptions never rise above the dirt.

A little note, sweetly scented, is placed in his hand:

"Cousin and I propose a ride. Shall we have your company? You are aware it is the Sabbath. You must not, for us, do violence to your prejudices."

"Is this," thought he, "a delicate invitation to save my feelings, and is the latter clause meant as a hint that they do not want me? Well, the French always, when a compliment has as much bitter as sweet in it, take the sweet and leave the bitter unappropriated. It is a good example. I will follow it. Say to the ladies I will accompany them."

"The horses are all ready, sir; and the ladies bonneted wait in the drawing-room."

The sun was in the tree-tops and the shadows were long. There was a flirtation going on between the leaves and the breeze. The birds were flitting from branch to branch. A chill was on the air: it was bathing the cheek with its delicious touch, and animated life was rejoicing that evening had come.

Arriving at the great mound of the temple of the sun, with some difficulty they climb to its summit. So dense is the shade that it is almost dark. Here are two graves, in which sleep the remains of the grand-parents of these two beautiful and lovely women. All around are cultivated fields clothed with rich crops, luxuriant with the promise of abundance. At its base flows the little creek, gliding and gabbling along over pure white sand. Sweet Alice! How sad she seems! She stood at the grave's side, and, looking down, seemed lost in pious reverie.

Every feature spoke reverence for the dead. Her cousin, too, was silent; and if not reverent, was not gay. He, their gallant, was respectfully silent, when Alice said, without lifting her eyes:

"I wonder if La Salle ever stood here? This is holy ground. No spot on earth has a charm for me like this. I am in the temple. I see the attentive, watchful priest feeding there (as she pointed) the holy fire, and yonder, with upturned eyes, the great lawgiver worshipping his G.o.d, as he comes up from his sleep, bringing day, warmth, light, and life. Was not this worship pure? Was it not natural? The sun came in the spring and awoke everything to life. The gra.s.s sprang from the ground and the leaves clothed the trees; the birds chose their mates and the flowers gladdened the fields; everything was redolent of life, and everything rejoiced. He went away in the winter, and death filled the land. There were no leaves, no gra.s.s, no flowers. All nature was gloomy in death. Could any but a G.o.d effect so much? The sun was their G.o.d; his temple was the sky, and his holy fire burned on through all time. Beautiful conception! Who can say it is not the true faith?"

"To the unlettered mind, it was," answered the young gentleman; "because the imagination could only be aided by the material presented to the natural eye. Science opens the eye of faith. It teaches that the sun is only the instrument, and faith looks beyond for the Creator. To such the Indian's faith cannot be the true one. The ignorance of one sees G.o.d in the instrument, and his thoughts clothe him with the power of the Creator, and his heart worships G.o.d in sincerity, and to him it is the true faith. But to the educated, scientific man, who knows the offices of the sun, it appears as it is, only the creature of the unseen, unknown G.o.d, and to this G.o.d he lifts his adoration and prayers, and to him this is the true faith."

"So, my philosopher, you believe, whatever lifts the mind to worship G.o.d is the true faith?"

"You put it strongly, Miss, and I will answer by a question. If in sincerity we invoke G.o.d's mercy, can the means that prompt the heart's devotion, reliance, and love, be wrong? His magnitude and perfection are a mystery to the untutored savage: he knows only what he sees. The earth to him, (as it was to the founders and patriarchs of our own faith,) is all the world. He has no idea that it is only one, and a small one of a numerous family, and can conceive only that the sun rules his world; gives life and death to everything upon the earth--but this inspires love and reverence for G.o.d. The scientific man sees in the sun only an attractive centre, and sees s.p.a.ce filled with self-illuminating orbs, and reasoning from the known to the unknown, he believes these centres of attraction to planetary families, and the imagination stretches away through s.p.a.ce filled with centres and revolving worlds, and each centre with its dependents revolving around one great centre, and this great centre he believes is G.o.d. His idea is only one step beyond the Indian's, and has only the same effect: it leads the heart to depend on and worship G.o.d."

"You are a heretic, and must like a naughty boy be made to read your Bible and go to Sunday-school, and be lectured and taught the true faith. Fy! fy! shall the heathen go to heaven? Where is the provision for him in the Bible? What are we to do with missions? If this be true, there is no need that we should be sending good men and dear, pious women to convert the Chinese, the Feejees, and the poor Africans so benighted that their very color is black, and the Australians, and New Georgians, to be roasted and eaten by the cannibals there. If they worship G.o.d in sincerity, you say that is all?"

"No, miss, faith without works is a futile reliance for heaven. It is the first necessity, and perhaps the next and greatest, is, to 'Do unto all what you would have all do unto you.' These are the words of the great Chinese philosopher, Confucius, and were taught four and a half centuries before Christ, yet we see Him teaching the same. This, as Confucius said, was the great cardinal duty of man, and all else was but a commentary upon this. This I fancy is all, at least it is very comprehensive. You tell me the traditions of the people who worshipped here say that this was a cardinal law unto them?"

"You, sir, have lived too long among the heathen, if you are not one already. You are like an August peach in July: you are turning, and in a little while will be ripe. You talk, as Uncle Toney says, like a book, and to me, like a new book, for yours are new thoughts to me.

Cousin, does he not astonish you?"

"By no means; true, they are new thoughts; but they are natural thoughts, and I do not fear to listen to them--on the contrary, I could listen to them all day, and, Alice, I have often, very often, heard from you something like this."

"Nonsense, cousin, nonsense; I am orthodox, you know, and a good girl and love to go to church, especially when I have a becoming new dress."

"Here are the bones of our ancestors, if they were once animated with souls; and I guess they were, particularly the old man, for I have heard many stories from old Toney, that convince me that he was a pretty hard one. How do we know that their spirits are not here by us now? Why is it deemed that there shall be no communication between the living and the dead? O! how I want to ask all about the spirit-land.

Wake up and reclothe thy bones and become again animated dust, and tell me thou, my great progenitor, the mysteries of the grave, of heaven and h.e.l.l. How quiet is the grave? No response, and it is impious to ask what I have. O! what is life which animates and harmonizes the elements of this mysterious creation, man! Life how imperious, and yet how kind; it unites and controls these antagonistic elements, and they do not quarrel on his watch. Mingling and communing they go on through time, regardless of the invitation of those from which they came to return.

But when life is weary of his trust and guardianship, and throws up his commission, they declare war at once--dissolve, and each returns to his original. Death and corruption do their work, and life returns no more, and death is eternal, and the soul--answer ye dumb graves--did the soul come here? or went it with life to the great first cause? or is here the end of all; here, this little tenement? I shudder--is it the flesh, the instinct of life; or is it the soul which shrinks with horror from this little portal through which it must pa.s.s to eternal bliss, or eternal--horrible! a.s.sist me to my horse, if you please. Come cousin, let us go and see old Uncle Toney--and, sir, he will teach you more philosophy than you ever dreamed of."

"Who is Uncle Toney? miss," asked the stranger of the visiting cousin when he returned to aid her descent of the mound.

"He is a very aged African, brought to this country from Carolina by our grandfather, in 1775, or earlier; he says there were remnants of the Natchez in the country at that time, and the old man has many stories of these, and many more very strange ones of the doings of the whites who first came and settled the country. He retains pretty well his faculties, and, like most old people, is garrulous and loves a listener. He will be delighted with our visit."

"Miss Alice, do you frequently visit Uncle Toney?"

"Very nearly every day. I have in my basket, here, something for the old man. Turn there, if you please--yonder by that lightning-scared old oak and those top-heavy pecans is his cabin and has been for more than sixty years. Here was the local of my grand-father's house; here was born my mother; but all the buildings have long been gone save Uncle Toney's cabin. Think of the hopes, the aspirations, the blisses, the sorrows, the little world that once was here--all gone except Uncle Toney. In my childhood I used to come here and go with him to the graves where we have been to-day, and have sat by them for hours listening to the stories he delights to tell of my grandfather and mother, until their very appearance seems familiar to my vision. I know that my grandfather was a small man, and a pa.s.sionate man, and Toney sometimes tells me I am like him. His eye was gray--so is mine; his face sharper than round--so is mine, and sometimes my temper is terrible--so was his;" and she laughed again that same wild thrilling laugh as she gallopped up to the cabin and leaped down to greet the old man, who was seated at the door of his hut beneath the shade of a catalpa, the trunk of which was worn smooth from his long leaning against it. He was very black and very fat. His wool was white as snow, and but for the seams in both cheeks, cut by the knife in observance of some ridiculous rite in his native land, would have been really fine-looking for one of his age. He arose and shook hands with the cousin, but did not approach the gentleman. He was evidently not pleased with his presence and was chary of his talk.

"Ah! young missus," he said, when he received the basket, "you bring old Toney sometin good. You is my young missus, too; but dis one is de las one. Dey is all married and gone but dis one." (This conversation was addressed to the cousin.) "All gone away but dis one, and when she marry dare will be n.o.body to fetch dis ole n.i.g.g.e.r good tings and talk to de ole man."

"Uncle Toney, I don't intend to marry."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the old man, "berry well, berry well! I hear dat from ebery one ob my young misses, and where is dey now? All done married and gone. You gwine to do jus as all on em hab done, byne by when de right one come. Ah! may be he come now."

"You old sinner, I have a great mind to pull your ears for you."

"O no, missus, I don't know! I see fine young man dare; but maybe he come wid Miss Ann, and maybe he belong to her."

"Uncle Toney, don't you remember I told you of a wild man away from the mountains, all clothed in skins, with a long, curly beard and hair over his shoulders as black as a stormy night? This is he."