The Memories of Fifty Years Part 20

"Gosh!" said the venerable negro. "I mus shake his hand; but what hab you done wid your beard, your hair, and your huntin-shirt?"

"I have thrown them all into the fire, uncle. People among white people must not dress like Indians."

"Dat's a fac, young ma.s.sa; but I tell you Miss Alice was mity taken wid dem tings. She come here soon as she comed home, and told me all about 'em and all about you--how you could shoot de bow and how you could talk, and she said: 'O! what would I not give to see him again?'"

"Toney, if you don't shut up, I won't come to see you, or bring you any more good things. This young gentleman has come with us to see you, and wishes to hear you tell all about the Natchez, and to get you to show him the many things you have dug up on and around these mounds, and have you tell him all about the old people who came here first and made all these big plantations and built all these great houses."

"Well, Miss Alice, dis is Sunday, you know, and dem tings mus not be telled on Sunday, and den you and Miss Ann don't want ole n.i.g.g.e.r to talk. You go ride and talk wid de young gemman, and maybe to-morrow, or some week-day, young ma.s.sa can come down from de great house wid de gun to shoot de squirrels along de way, and when he tired, den he can come and rest, and I can tell him all. Yes, young ma.s.sa, I been live long time here. Me is mity old. All dem what was here when I comed wid ole ma.s.sa is dead long time. Yes, dare aint one on em livin now, and dare chillin is old."

"I shall be sure to come," said the young man, "and suppose I bring with me these ladies?"

"Neber you do dat, ma.s.sa. I knows young folks ways too well for dat.

Toney may talk, but dey neber will listen. Dey will talk wid one anoder, and Miss Alice been hear all de ole n.i.g.g.e.r's talk many a time, and she don't want to hear it ober and ober all de time; and beside dat, young ma.s.sa, sometimes when I tells bout de ole folks, she trimbles and cries. She's got a mity soft heart bout some tings, and she tells me I mus tell you eberyting."

"There now, Toney, you have said enough about me to make the gentleman think I am a very silly little girl."

"G.o.d bress my young missus!" he said as he tenderly patted her head. "I wouldn't hurt your feelins for noffin. You is too good, Miss Alice.

Toney lubed your mamma--Toney lubs you, and de day you is married and goes away, I want to go away too. I want to go yonder, Miss Alice, on de top ob dat mound, and lie down wid ole ma.s.sa and missus. He told your pa to put me dar; but your pa's gone. O Miss Alice! dey's all gone but you and me and your brodder, and he don't care for Toney, and maybe he will trow him out in de woods like a dog when he die." Tears stole down the black face of the venerable man, and the eyes of Alice filled--and then she laughed the shrill, fearful laugh, and rode rapidly away.

She was singing and walking hurriedly the gallery, when the stranger and her cousin came leisurely into the yard.

"Your cousin, Miss Ann, has a strange laugh."

"Indeed she has, sir; but we who know her understand it. She never laughs that unearthly laugh when her heart is at ease. I doubt if you have ever met such a person. I think the world has but one Alice. She is very young, very impressible, and some think very eccentric, very pa.s.sionate and romantic to frenzy. There is something which impels me to tell you--but no, I have no right to do so. But this I must tell you; for you cannot have been in the house here so long without observing it. There is no congeniality between herself and brother; indeed, very little between her and any of her family. She is alone.

She is one by herself; yes, one by herself in the midst of many; for the family is a large one. But remember, there is none like Alice. Be gentle to her and pity her; and pity her most when you hear that strange laugh."

There was music in the drawing-room, soft and gentle, and the accompanying voice was tremulous with suppressed emotion. Gradually it swells in volume until it fills the s.p.a.cious apartment, and the clear notes from the tender trill rose grandly in full, clear tones, full of pathetic melody, and now they almost shriek. They cease--and the laugh, hysterical and shrill, echoes through the entire house. The judge was silent; but a close observer might have seen a slight contraction of the lips, and a slighter closing of the eyes. A moment after Alice entered the room, and there was a glance exchanged between her brother and herself. There was in it a meaning only for themselves.

"You have been riding, sir," he said to his guest, "and my sister tells me to the mound at the White Apple village. To those curious in such legends as are connected with its history, it is an interesting spot.

All I know in relation to these, I acquired from a dreamy and solitary man employed by my father to fit myself and brother for college. He read French, and was fond of tracing all he could find in the writings of the historians of the first settlement of Louisiana and Mississippi, and of the history, habits, and customs of the aborigines of the country. He knew something of the adventures of De Soto and La Salle, and something of the traditions of the Natchez. He was a melancholy man, and perished by his own hand in the chamber that you occupy. My sister is curious in such matters, and from her researches in some old musty volumes she has found in the possession of an old European family, she has made quite a history of the Natchez, and from the old servants much of that of the first white or English occupants of this section. For myself, I have little curiosity in that way. My business forbids much reading of that kind, and indeed much of anything else, and I am glad that my tastes and my business accord. I would not exchange one crop of cotton grown on the village-field, for a perfect knowledge of the history of every Indian tribe upon the continent."

"I am no antiquarian, sir. A life on a plantation I suppose must be most irksome and monotonous to a young lady, unless she should have some resource besides her rural employments."

"Our only amus.e.m.e.nts, sir," said Alice, "are reading, riding, and music, with an occasional visit to a neighbor. I ride through the old forest and consult the great patriarchal trees, and they tell me many strange stories. When the ruthless axe has prostrated one of these forest monarchs, my good palfrey waits for me, and I count the concentric circles and learn his age. Some I have seen which have yielded to man's use or cupidity who have looked over the younger scions of the woods, and upon the waters of the mighty river a thousand years."

"Indeed, miss," replied the guest, "I had not supposed the natural life of any of our forest trees extended beyond three, or at most four centuries."

"The tulip or poplar-tree and the red-oak in the rich loam of these hills live long and attain to giant proportions. The vines which cling in such profusion to many of these are commensurate with them in time.

They spring up at their bases and grow with them: the tree performing the kindly office of nurse, lifting them in her arms and carrying them until their summits, with united leaves, seem to kiss the clouds. They live and cling together through tempests and time until worn out with length of days, when they tumble and fall to the earth together, and together die. We all, Flora and Fauna, go down to the bosom of our common mother to rest in death. I love the companionship of the forest.

There is an elevation of soul in this communion with incorruptible nature: there is sincerity and truth in the hills and valleys--in the trees and vines, and music--grand orchestral music--in the moaning of the limbs and leaves, played upon by the hurrying winds. I have prayed to be a savage, and to live in the woods."

"You are as usual, sister, very romantic to-night."

"By and by, brother, I shall forget it I presume. I am human, and shall soon die, or live on till time hardens my nature, or sordid pursuits plough from my heart all its sympathies, and old age finds me gloating over the gains of laborious care and penurious meanness.

"'To such vile uses we must come at last.'"

"You draw a sad picture, miss, for old age. Do not the gentler virtues of our nature ever ripen with time? Is it the alchemist who always turns the sweets of youth to the sours of age? There are many examples in every community to refute your position. I would instance the venerable negro we visited to-day. He wept as he placed his trembling hand upon your head. There was surely nothing ascetic or sordid in his feelings."

"Uncle Toney is an exception, sir. The affectionate memories he has of our family, and especially of my mother and father, redeems him from the obloquy of his race. His heart is as tender as his conduct is void of offense. He was a slave. G.o.d had ordained him for his situation. He had not the capacity to aspire beyond his lot, or to contrast it with his master's. Contented to render his service, and satisfied with the supply of his wants from the hands of him he served--he had a home, and all the comforts his nature required. He has it still; but I know he is not as contented as when he was my father's slave. G.o.d bless the old man! He shall never want while I have anything, and should I see him die, he shall sleep where he wished to-day."

"By our grandfather, I suppose, Alice?"

"Yes, my brother, by our grand-parents. They told him it should be so.

Ah! there are no distinctions in the grave; white skin and black skin alike return to dust, and the marl of the earth is composed alike of the bones of all races, and their properties seem to be the same. I, too, wish to sleep there. It is a romantically beautiful spot, and its grand old traditions make it holy ground. How its a.s.sociations hallow it! Imagination peoples it with those bold old red men who a.s.sembled in the temple to worship the holy fire--emblematic of their faith--humbling their fierce natures and supplicating for mercy. I go there and I feel in the touch of the air that it is peopled with the spirits of the mighty dead, surrounding and blessing me for my memory of, and love for, their extinct race."

"Bravo, sister! What an enthusiast! You, sir, have some knowledge of the Indians. Do they stir the romance of your nature as that of my baby sister?"

The glance from her eye was full of scorn: it flashed with almost malignant hate as she rose from her seat, and taking the arm of her cousin she swept from the room, audibly whispering "baby sister" in sneering accents.

"Woman's nature is a strange study, my young friend. I have several sisters and they are all strange, each in her peculiar way. They are remarkable for the love they bear their husbands, and yet they all have a pleasure in tormenting them, and are never so unhappy, as when they see these happy. This younger sister has a nature all her own. I do not think she shares a trait with another living being. Wild, yet gentle; the eagle to some, to some the dove. Quick as the lightning in her temper--as fervid, too; a heart to hate intensely, and yet to melt in love and worship its object; but would slay it, if she felt it had deceived her. Always searching into the history of the past, and always careless of the future."

"You have drawn something of the character of a Spanish woman. Their love and their hate is equally fierce; and both easily excited, they are devoted in all their pa.s.sions. I have thought that this grew from the secluded life they live. Ardency is natural to the race, and this restrained makes their lives one long romance. Their world is all of imagination. The contacts of real life they never meet outside of their prison-homes, and the influence of experience is never known. They are seen through bars, are sought through bars, they love through bars--and the struggle is, to escape from these restraints; and the moral of the act or means for its accomplishment, or the object to be attained, never enters the mind. Such natures properly reared to know the world, to see it, hear it, and suffer it, tunes all the attributes of the mind and heart to make sweet music. Nothing mellows the heart like sorrow; nothing so softens the obduracy of our natures as experience. None, sir, man or woman, are fitted for the world without the experiences its contact brings. These experiences are teachings, and the bitter ones the best. To be happy, we must have been miserable; it is the idiosyncracy of the mind, to judge by comparison; and the eternal absence of grief leaves the mind unappreciative of the incidents and excitements which bring to him or her who have suffered, such exquisite enjoyment. The rue of life is scarcely misery to those who have never tasted its ambrosia."

"You are young, sir, thus to philosophize, and must have seen and experienced more than your years would indicate."

"Some, sir, in an incident see all of its characters that the world in a lifetime may present. They suffer, and they enjoy with an acuteness unknown to most natures; and in youth gain the experiences and knowledge they impart, while most of the world forget the pain and the pleasure of an incident with its evanescence. With such, experience teaches nothing. These progress in the world blindly and are always stumbling and falling."

"The ladies have retired--shall we imitate their example, sir? This will light you to your chamber; good night."

Alone, and kindly shielded with the darkness, the adventurer lay thoughtful and sleepless. Here are two strange beings. There is in the one angelic beauty animated with a soul of giant proportions, large in love, large in hate, and grandly large in its aspirations; and yet it is chained to a rock with fetters that chafe at every motion. The other cold, emotionless, with a reserved severity of manner, which is the offspring of a heart as malignant and sinister as Satan himself may boast of. They hate each other, but how different that hatred! The one is an emotion fierce and fiery but without malice; the other malicious and revengeful. One is the hatred of the recipient of an injury who can forgive; the other the hatred of one who has inflicted an injury with calculation. Such never forgive. And this I am sure is the relation of this brother and sister. Deprived when yet young of the fostering care of a mother, scarcely remembering her father, she has been the ward of this cold, hard being, whose pleasure it has been to thwart every wish of this lovely being: to hate her because she is lovely, and to aggravate into fury her resentments, and to sour every generous impulse of her extraordinary nature. What a curse to have so sensitive a being subjected to the training of so cold and malignant a one!

There is no natural affection. The heart is born a waste: its loves, its hates are of education and a.s.sociation; and the responsibility for the future of a child rests altogether with those intrusted with its rearing and training. The susceptibilities only are born with the heart, and these may be cultivated to good or evil, as imperceptibly as the light permeates the atmosphere. These capacities or susceptibilities are acute or obtuse as the cranium's form will indicate, and require a system suited to each. Attention soon teaches this: the one grows and expands beautifully with the slightest attention; the other is a fat soil, and will run to weeds, without constant, close, and deep cultivation, and its production of good fruit is in exact proportion with its fertility and care. It gives the most trouble but it yields the greatest product. And here in that warm, impulsive heart is the fat soil. O! for the hand to weed away all that is noxious now rooting there. That look, that whispered bitterness was the fruit of wicked wrong--I know it; the very nature prompting there would give the sweetest return to justice, kindness, and love.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE ROMANCE CONTINUED.

FATHER CONFESSOR--OPEN CONFESSION--THE UNREAD WILL--OLD TONEY'S NARRATIVE--SQUIRREL SHOOTING--THE FAREWELL UNSAID--BROTHERS-IN-LAW-- FAREWELL INDEED.

When the morrow came, the clouds were weeping and the damp was dripping from every leaf, and gloomy rifts of spongy vapor floated lazily upon the breeze, promising a wet and very unpleasant day. These misty periods rarely endure many hours in the autumn, but sometimes they continue for days. The atmosphere seems half water, and its warm damp compels close-housing, to avoid the clammy, sickly feeling met beyond the portals. At such times, time hangs heavily, and every resource sometimes fails to dispel the gloom and ennui consequent upon the weather; conversation will pall; music cease to delight, and reading weary. To stand and watch the rain through the window-panes, to lounge from the drawing-room to your chamber, to drum with your fingers upon the table--to beat your brain for a thought which you vainly seek to weave into rhyme in praise of your inamorata--all is unavailing. The rain is slow but ceaseless, and the hours are days to the unemployed mind. We hum a tune and whistle to hurry time, but the indicating fingers of the tediously ticking clock seems stationary, and time waits for fair weather. The ladies love their chambers, and sleeping away the laggard hours, do not feel the oppression of a slow, continuous, lazy rain.

The morning has well-nigh pa.s.sed, and the drawing-room is still untenanted. The judge was busy in his office, looking over papers and accounts, seemingly unconscious of the murky day; perhaps he had purposely left this work for such a day--wise judge--a solitary man, unloving, and unloved; hospitable by freaks, sordid by habit, and mean by nature. Yet he was wise in his way; devoid of sentiment or sympathy as a grind-stone, his wit was as sharp as his heart was cold. Absorbed in himself, the outside world was nothing to him. He had work, gainful work for all weathers, and therefore no feeling for those who suffered from the weather or the world, if it cost him nothing in pence. He was the guardian of his baby sister; but all of her he had in his heart was a care that she should not marry, before he was ready to settle her estate. The interest he felt in her, was his commissions for administering her property with a legitimate gain earned in the use of her money.

The guest of this strange man was restless, he knew not why; there were books in abundance, and their authors' names were read over and over again as he rummaged the book-cases he knew not for what. First one and then another was pulled out from its companions, the t.i.tle-page read and replaced again, only to take another. Idly he was turning the pages of one, when a voice surprised him and sweetly inquired at his elbow if he found amus.e.m.e.nt or edification in his employment. "I must apologize for my rudely leaving you last night. I hope I am incapable of deceit or unnecessary concealments. I was hurt and angry, and I went away in a pa.s.sion. Yours is a gentle nature, you do not suffer your feelings to torture and master you. I should not, but I am incapable of the effort necessary to their control. It is best with me that they burn out, but their very ashes lie heavily upon my heart. Our clime is a furnace, and her children are flame, at least, strange sir, some of them are a self-consuming flame. I feel that is my nature. Is not this an honest confession? I could explain further in extenuation of my strange nature. It was not my nature until it was burned into my very soul. I am very young, but the bitterness of my experiences makes me old, at least in feeling. But you are not my father confessor--then why do I talk to you as to one long known? Because--perhaps--but never mind the reason. I know my cousin has whispered something to you of me; my situation, my nature--is it not so?"

"Ah! you would be _my_ father confessor. You must not interrogate, but if you would know, ask your cousin."

"O! no, I could not. Is it not strange that woman will confide to the strange man, what she will not to the kindred woman? Woman will not sympathize with woman; she goes not to her for comfort, for sympathy, for relief. Is this natural? Men lean on one another, women only on man. Is this natural? Is it instinctive? or an acquired faculty? Do not laugh at me, I am very foolish and very sad; such a day should sadden every one. But my cousin is very cheerful, twitters and flits about like an uncaged canary, and is as cheerful when it rains all day, as when the sun in her glory gladdens all the earth and everything thereon. I am almost a Natchez, for I worship the sun. How I am running on! You are gentle and kind, are you not? You are quick, perceptive--you have seen that I am not happy--sympathize, but do not pity me. That is a terrible struggle between prudence and inclination.

There, now I am done--don't you think me very foolish?"

"Miss Alice--(will you allow me this familiarity?)"

"Yes, when we are alone; not before cousin or my _man_ brother." (She almost choked with the word.) "Not before strangers--we are not strangers when alone. You read my nature, as I do yours, and we are not strangers when alone. It is not long acquaintance which makes familiar friends. The mesmeric spark will do more than years of intercommunication, where there is no congeniality--and do it in a little precious moment. The b.l.o.o.d.y arrow we held in common was an electric chain. I learned you at the plucking of that arrow from the cotton bale--in your strange, wild garb; but never mind--what were you going to say?"