The Broken Sword.
by Dennison Worthington.
INTRODUCTION.
"I have considered the oppressions that are done under the sun, and on the side of the oppressor there is power."
In the enforcement of the policy of Reconstruction in the South, the evidences were from day to day becoming so c.u.mulative and decisive, that nothing but the discipline of an enraged party, coupled with the "spoils" principle, prevented the whole ma.s.s of the community from a universal expression of its desire to have it abandoned. Reasoning men everywhere felt that it must continue to multiply its mischiefs. "But,"
said its authors, "treason must be made odious, and the late insurrectionary States must feel that there is a higher law than that promulgated by their ordinances of secession."
The Spanish inquisition, now the abhorrence of all enlightened minds, was long sustained in many centuries by the tyrants" plea of necessity.
In the burning of a thousand heretics the religious zealot saw the hand of G.o.d; in the destruction of a thousand sorcerers, the fanatic discerned the commonweal of the people; so in the whipcords with which the people of the South were so mercilessly scourged, there was found an antiseptic for the gangrenous wounds inflicted by the civil war. All these cruelties were legalized, while bleeding humanity was sinking under the burden of oppression. In the collision of exasperated pa.s.sions, it is the temper of aggression that always strikes the first blow. The government of the South by carpet-baggers was essentially oppressive and inquisitorial. It was, in its practical operation, a pure and unadulterated despotism, superseding the protection guaranteed by the Federal Const.i.tution to each and every State. It was under the dominion of an organized anarchy, with legislatures and courts of justice, subordinated to a lawless a.s.semblage of unprincipled men calling themselves the representatives and judges of the people. Among its necessarily implied powers was that of confiscation; and numbered in its enumeration of brutalities, was a nameless crime that shocked the moral sense of mankind. Reconstruction came upon the South with fearful impulse.
Perhaps the "hour is on the wing," when a worthier hand will write the history of the inst.i.tutional age that was sandwiched between the slavery civilization ante-dating the sixties, and that which minimized the pernicious power of manhood suffrage at the close of the century; or perhaps when that remnant that still survives in the weakness of age to
"Weep o"er their wounds, o"er tales of sorrow done.
Shoulder their crutch and show how fields are won."
shall have "pa.s.sed over the river;" when the threnody of the "olden days" which to us is like the music of Carrol along the hills of Slimora, "pleasant, but mournful to the soul," shall be forgotten, some ambitious youth will uplift the veil; will take a glance of the whole horizon, and the south will unbosom her griefs that have been so long concealed. It will not do for a hand that drew the sword to guide the pen. By a law of our nature all pa.s.sive impressions impair our moral sensibilities. Contact with misery renders us callous to those experiences; a constant view of vice lessens its deformity. If any expression in this humble narrative shall appear ill-tempered, let me say in the language of Themistocles at the battle of Salamis, "Strike, but hear me." The whole country has long since repudiated the dogma that "all men are born free and equal" and endowed with certain imprescriptible and inalienable rights. This heresy of course found its highest expression in the post-bellum amendments to the const.i.tution, and the remedial statutes which made their efficiency complete. The war was the logical fulfillment of prophecies that had their forecast in the public councils before the nullification doctrine was forced upon the Senate by Mr. Calhoun. It sprang without extraneous aid from uninterpretable expressions in the organic law, which were finally explained away in the effusion of blood. Reconstruction, in the conception of men who provided the sinews of war, was the prolific aftermath; and in this harvest field, the gleaners plied their vocation with merciless activity, reinforced in their villainies by the freedmen, who, in an experimental way, were publicly evincing their unfitness for citizenship. The Civil war gendered this brood that filled the South with horror, and their disorders and tumults precipitated a crisis that plunged the Southland into a paroxysm from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. There was no refuge from an evil that was all-pervasive. The great war with its pageants and sacrifices, its banners and generals, its storming soldiery and reservoirs of human blood was almost thrust out of the memory as the patriots of the sixties stood face to face to the all-encompa.s.sing perils of reconstruction. They saw the flag of the Union--the almost lifeless emblem of the genius of their liberties--frown feebly at the promulgation of a law that disfranchised 300,000 American citizens. The old banner seemed to turn her eye to the eagle at her staff-head and ask him to lend her his wide-spreading pinions, that she might bend the wing and fly away from the polluted spot--from the embodied forms of evil and ruin. Almost every utterance of the complaining tongue that was syllabled into speech, was to this effect: "Will our country--our civilization--withstand the shock?" Our Southern characters had been enriched by an a.s.semblage of all the treasures which refined intellect could acc.u.mulate; we had wisely built upon foundations of public virtue; our inst.i.tutions had the permanency of age and respectability, and exhibited everywhere the fullest maturity of athletic vigor. The paroles of Southern soldiers amnestied them from arrest for past military offences, but the clothing which their poverty obliged them to wear marked the target at which the lawless and vicious shot at their will. Personal and State rights were abridged until nothing was left of the sovereignty of the barren commonwealths or the enthralled individual. There were no juries of the vicinage but negroes; and daily the broken-hearted people were unwittingly aggrandizing rapacious officials. To the most depraved of the negroes the carpet-baggers were constantly appealing with arguments that stirred their blood. This narrative will not in an historical sense deal with the subject of reconstruction; from its want of compactness and continuity it would prove inefficient as a lesson or a guide. We present, however, imperfect portraits of a few men and women who were unfortunately in the pathway of the storm that stripped the husbandman of the fruits of his labor, the Southron of his liberty, stifled the cries of the distressed, and rendered the tenures of property unstable and insecure. In no conjuncture in which this paroxysm of politics placed the former masters of slaves, did they abate their care and zeal for their betterment. Monuments of bra.s.s and sculptured stone are not sufficiently enduring to memorialize the virtues of the negroes of the old plantations of the South, who watched and waited for the avenging arm of Providence to right the wrongs of old master. May G.o.d"s mercy rest and abide upon this scattered remnant, that, like autumn"s leaves in the forest, have been blown hither and thither by the wraith of the tempest.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
THE BROKEN SWORD.
CHAPTER I.
LOOKING BACKWARD.
I have surrendered at discretion to vagrant thoughts. Just as the idle school-boy will pause beside the limpid stream to watch its eddying waters as they go on and on, "never hasting, never resting," so I sit to-night in the haze of the years that are dead, with the mind sadly reminiscent, and I watch the shadows as they seem to sketch upon the memory the familiar faces of our loved and lost, and I hear their laughter and songs--grateful echoes from the realm of the long ago. I am gazing again upon the sepulchre of the old South, after the plowshare of war and reconstruction had run the last furrow. In the garnering of the red harvest did our men and women of the sixties maintain themselves with a proper decorum? Were they less patriotic, less self-sacrificing, less ready with heart and hand to divert the destructive revolution of principle than their fathers of "76, who in the upbuilding of republican inst.i.tutions wavered not in their purpose; when the terror and ignominy of the scaffold were before them; when they knew their blood must cement the foundations of the structure they were rearing, and they themselves become the first sacrifice in the temple of liberty, which they were dedicating? In that epoch and since we have been making the grand experiment of self-government; not as Rome made it, when liberty there was only a name for licentiousness; not as Greece made it, when a demagogue swayed the deluded ma.s.ses and lacked only a throne to make him a king; but with a const.i.tution that should deserve the encomium of the people, for the unutterable blessings it should bestow; a const.i.tution impervious to unjust exactions and unpatriotic suggestions, we hoped for a policy dictated in a spirit of compromise; but as I look back upon the eventful past, the first adventure of Gil Blas occurs to me. He had been furnished by his uncle with a sorry mule and thirty or forty pistoles, and sent forth to seek his fortune. He set out accordingly, but had not proceeded far from home, when, sitting on his beast counting his pistoles with much satisfaction, into his hat, the mule suddenly raised its head and p.r.i.c.ked up its ears. Gil Blas looked around to see the cause of its alarm, and perceived an old hat upon the ground in the middle of the road, with a rosary of very large beads in it. At the same time he heard a voice addressing him in a very pathetic tone, "Good traveler, in the name of the merciful G.o.d, and of all the saints, do drop a few pistoles in the hat." Looking in the direction from which these words proceeded, he saw to his dismay the muzzle of a blunderbuss projecting through the hedge, and pointing directly at his head. Gil Blas, not much pleased with the looks of the pious mendicant, dropped a few pistoles in the hat and scampered away as fast as he could. This slight narrative presents to the mind of the writer the most perfect emblem of the pacific remedy of reconstruction in its beginning.
To the contemplative mind there is a melancholy pleasure in looking backward; as shadows will enter unbidden into the camera obscura, though every portal appears securely guarded; so memories will flit fantastically into the imagination when every approach seems closed against intrusion. I am looking backward, as it were, through a smoked gla.s.s, for a great sunburst is within the radius of vision, a sunburst that cheered our tired eyes with its thousand scintillant gleams in the hot days of August A. D. Nineteen Hundred.
Looking backward upon a picturesque civilization--upon the old homesteads and plantations of the South, with their hallowed a.s.sociations and ideals--with their impedimenta not of human chattels, but of compact ma.s.ses of freed slaves, the underpinning of that civilization in its concrete form.
I have asked the historian, the essayist, the chronicler, the clairvoyant, to aid me in the retrospection, but they answer dubiously.
There is no trodden path that I may pursue. No friendly hand that I may clasp as I stride across fens and brakes, and mora.s.ses: even the echoes of receding footsteps, like the laughter of happy voices are hushed and dead "lang syne." There are faded letters however that I may read; broken swords and battered shields hanging upon decaying walls; moth eaten uniforms in garret and closet, that will guide me backward. The line of vision is traversed by unwieldy throngs of dilapidated men, in tattered gray clothes, without a federal head, without intelligent momentum, breaking up and dissolving like icebergs drifting southward; they are coming back home where there is neither grain for the sickle, nor hope for the husbandman: coming back to little cottages where lights in the windows kept burning for dear papa flickered and spumed, then died down into the rustic candlesticks, when the little watchful eyes so tired and weary, closed upon the moonlight that shimmered within the humble chamber.
Looking back over grave yards, where we reverently laid away our jewels to be placed by the Great Lapidary in His Crown by and by, when we shall all rise from our sleep and shine in His emitted glory. Looking backward over a strange realm, without boundaries or capitals, where there are no soldiers and no battle fields, and where every thing is so fragrant and ethereal. Here we may fashion pictures and weave around them gossamer draperies as insubstantial as this golden twilight.
Hard-hitting, rough-riding moss-troopers rode over the subjugated domains of the bewildered South, with swords that flashed and turned every way like Alaric"s; rode hither to obliterate the past, its monuments, its shrines, its traditions; to scarify the old south with harrows and bayonets; its altars, its homes, its civilization, and to fetter with chains a great warlike people, with a purpose as fatuous as ever animated the swart maid of Philistia. Against this senseless vengeance, the South rebelled again with the same old defiance, the same old manhood. You may prod the wounded lion with pikes and sabres, but you cannot tread upon it with iron heels without hearing its roar and feeling its fangs. To these marauders, the old South was but a moor fowl to be plucked and eaten. To us she was dynastic, like Hapsburg, Plantagenet or Hohenzollern. To them the South was a huge incubator, out of which was hatched "Stratagems and treasons:" To us she was a Queen, still wearing the purple, still grasping the sceptre, as in past evolutions and crises. She was Our Queen when a full century ago, and before there was a cabin upon her plantations she pleaded for the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves and was insultingly asked to withdraw her pet.i.tion by the Merchant Marine of Ma.s.sachusetts. She was Our Queen when envenomed abolitionists were gathering the aftermath of the "Higher law proclamation;" she was Our Queen when Ossawattomie Brown unleashed his bloodhounds upon a fresher trail at Harper"s Ferry; she was Our Queen when Sumpter ran up a flag that had never before fluttered in a gale, never before greeted a young nation with its maiden blushes, followed by the hopes, the prayers, the aspirations, faith and loyalty of ten million men, women and children; Our Queen when "old Traveler"
was stripped of his dust covered housings and led ever so weary back into Old Mars. Bob"s stables; Our Queen when the last cavalier wiped the blood from his sabre and scabbarded it forever. G.o.d grant she may always be Our Queen that we may be her liegemen, leal and right trusty in all catastrophes! Hence we go back to think of her, to write of her, though a widow bereaved of her husband, and a mother who has buried her first born. There is no sword now to gleam like a flash of light over the plumes of charging squadrons: there is no guidon to mark the line of direction through defile and mountain pa.s.s: no call of the bugle "to saddle and away," no thanksgiving like that of Jackson; "G.o.d crowned our arms with Victory at McDowell yesterday;" No smile like that of Lee as the Army of the Potomac with trailing banners was double quicking back to Washington. Ah! no, but the old South through her blinding tears is smiling still; her dear old face re-lighted by a fresher inspiration.
A trifling dash of time between 1860 and 1870, but events have been packed away within that decade, that would overlap the four corners of any other century in the calendar. Within those years were compounded somewhere in laboratories all the combustible elements of war and pillage; the casting the projectiles that would destroy a hemisphere.
Broken hearts--crushed hopes--desolated homes, an enslaved country, wrongs, indignities, outrages, oppressions, all, all wrought by the cruel instrumentalities of great masters of tragedy. Here is an old mansion with turrets and esplanades and terraces long neglected and sadly out of repair. Here are great oaks of a century"s growth planted and pruned by hands that have long since forgotten their cunning. Here are lapping waters singing in low sweet octaves as they did when poured out of the hollow of His Hand. Here is the old rookery out of which are ricochetting birds almost of every voice and plume. Here are cattle, red and dappled, cropping the meadow gra.s.s. Here are vast expanses clad in the refreshing drapery of nature, upheaving their gra.s.sy billows. Here are the crumbling cabins of the old slaves, in silent platoons that flank the old mansion, the earmarks of a picturesque civilization abused and denounced. Slaves, many of whom like the paintings of t.i.tian and Murillo and Correggio in the great mullioned halls have come down from former generations. In yonder clump of soughing pines stood the little meeting house of the "cullud folks" on "Old Marsa"s plantation." Here for decades they worshipped. In the little brook that glides along so cheerily singing as it goes, they had baptized adult "bredrin and sisterin." Here many of them had felt the touch of the Master upon the emanc.i.p.ated souls, and heard His voice in their spiritual uplifting, tenderly calling, and there when the gnarled and knotted hands had ceased their toil "Ole Marsa and Ole Misses" had laid them crosswise upon rigid, lifeless bosoms, that heaved not again with the pangs of suffering; and out yonder under the maples, hard by the little babbling brook, reverent and tender hands white and black had lowered the rude coffin and covered it up in "G.o.d"s acre," and here around the little altar ole Marster, and Miss Alice and Mars Harry worshipped with them.
No master, no mistress, no slave in this consecrated ground; no black, no white, in the invisible Presence; no hard times to come again; no t.i.thing men, nor tax gatherers; no snarling, snapping wolf to s.n.a.t.c.h the gnawed bone from the hungry wife and her starving child. If the larder were empty the "great house" had an exhaustless supply. If clothes were rent there was "allus stuff in de loom;" If the clouds gathered for snow "ole marsa" would put on his great coat and knock at the doors and ask, "Boys, have you got plenty of good wood for the storm"?" If Joshua had the "rheumatics" or Melinda the "shaking ager," or little Jeff the hives, there were ointments and liquids, pills and lotions; and what physician was so kind; whose hands so soft and tender, whose voice so comforting and sympathetic as "ole missis"s and young missis"s?" There was the garden from which the negroes would market their vegetables; there was the little "water million" patch where little Jeff and Susan Ann would run out at midday, and thump and thump and thump and would as often run back with their mouths wide-open like a rift in a black cloud, "Mammy, oh! Mammy, dat great big water million is mo"est ripe--be ripe by Sunday sho," and their little black feet would knock off a jig on the bare floor; then there was the pig sty where Sukey the "sa.s.sy poker," in its sleekness and fatness, would grunt and frisk and cavort all the day long. Then there was "Ole Boatswain," the c.o.o.n dog, lazily napping in the door--barking at the treed c.o.o.n in his sleep; then there were the "tater ridges" and the pumpkins and the cotton patches; then there were the cackling hens and the pullets, the ducks and geese and guinea-fowls; the eggs that Hannah and Clarissa and Melinda had counted a score of times, and knew to a four pence a" penny how much they would fetch in the town; and "dere was de wagin wid ole Bob an" ole Pete wid pinted yeares, chawin" de bit same as it were fodder, ready to dash off fore dey wus ready;" and there were the inventoried a.s.sets in trade, "free forfs Hanna"s and two forfs Melinda"s and seben forfs Clarissy"s," all tumbled in disorder, live stock and dead stock. And then "dere was Melinda and Judy a settin" a middle ships into de wagin, all agwine to de town." And when the heavy wheels would rattle with its human freight over the hard ground of Ingleside, as the moon was dipping its nether horn below the line of vision, and Clara Bell and Melinda "a singin" de ole ship of Zion," "ole Marster an" Missis an" Miss Alice would run outen de great house jes to see if Ned had fotched us all back safe an"
sound. An" den when Christmas would come, de ole turkey gobbler would be turnin" an" twistin" roun" and roun" fore de fire drappin" gravy in de dish, and de barbeku would be brownin" and de la.s.ses a stewin out de taters in great big ubbens, fo de flambergasted cookin" stobes c.u.m about to pester folkes. And den dere would be ole Caesar a shufflin" towards ole Ma.r.s.er"s room, and little Jeff a sneakin" on tip-toe to ketch ole Ma.r.s.er"s Christmas gift fore he seed em, an" Mary an" Polly creepin"
like cats in Miss Alice"s chamber, to get their stockins that Santy Claus had stuffed from top to toe; and den de clatter in de great dinin"
room, when wid bowls of cream, and flagons of mellow ole rye, Clarissa and Melindv would be makin" egg-nog fur de fokeses, white and cullud, on de plantation."
Oh! this golden prime!
There were no black soldiers in greasy uniforms a hep, hep, hepping about the plantation; no firing of guns by riotous negroes on the roadside; no drunken, revelling wretches to slash and deface portraits, walls and corridors; no lecherous villains to accost and abuse defenceless and inoffensive women; no vigils to keep for fear of murders, burglaries and conflagrations; no angry forces and energies to quicken and compound; no wife to say to her husband, "Have you fotched any wittles back from the conwenshun? "Fore G.o.d de chillun haint had narry moufful o" nuffin to eat dis blessed day, nor me nuther."
Ah, no! the blessing that was vouchsafed unto Israel, despite its rebellion, was all bountiful in this land. "I will give thee peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and there shall be none to make thee afraid."
Then war came with its unutterable horrors and tumults. The old tallow candles were snuffed out, and there were fears and alarms in the mansion and the cabin; the thoroughbred was brought out of the stable with yellow housings on, like the gelding of a knight errant, and the young soldier, dressed all in gray with buff revers, rushed out of the house and vaulted into the saddle. There were kisses and good byes--lost echoes now--as the cavalier, young and happy and handsome, rode away.
Yes, rode away in the descending shadows, over the hills, through the glades, to Mana.s.sas and to death. Yes, rode away to the death wrestle--to where the guns were spitting fire.
"Bress yo souls, fokeses," said Uncle Ned one day, as he leaned upon his staff like a sheik of the desert, "I looks back now und den, und peers lak I kin see ole missis way back yander in de war times, when de kannon was a plowin" froo de trees ober at Mana.s.sy, same as a sho nuff harrykin, und killin" a million of our federick soldiers at wun time. I seed her und Miss Alice c.u.m outen de grate house, a fairly toting Mars Harry dat rainy day he rid off to de war, und Mars Harry he looked same as a gineral in all dem stripes und fedders, und Nelly she wuz jest a chompin" de bit und er pawin" de yurth lak she wuz moes afeerd de war want er gwine to hole out twell she und Mars Harry got dar; und den ole missis looked up in Mars Harry"s face, und I seed her laf, do she wuz crying tu, und den I heerd hur say, "My brave boy, how kin I ever giv yu up! Will yer git er furlow und c.u.m home arter de battle? Und den Mars Harry he larfed too, und den I heerd him say, "Oh mother don"t be childish, I"m jest er gwine off fer my helth. I"m gwine to bring yer a yankee sord when we whups em and drives um tuther side o" de Pokomuc river." Und den ole missis she put her pendence in every word Mars Harry tole her, kase when he rid off I heerd her tell Miss Alice dat her boy want agwine to be gone long, and dat de yankeys was agwine to give up fore dey fit ary battle; but bimeby, when ole missus seed dat Mars Harry mout not git a furlow, she jest gin herself up to die. All de day long pore old missis would walk up und down de piazzy a peekin" froo de trees und axin" me ef I spishioned he was gwine to git kilt, und den when she heerd dat our fokeses had fit de battle of Mana.s.sy, me und ole missis sot up all night long, jes a watchin" fer Mars Harry to ride back lak he rid off; but no Mars Harry neber didn"t come back twell one rainy, grizzly night me und ole missis heerd a clatter down de road, und den we heerd somebody say, "Wo! und den a pa.s.sel ov soldiers c.u.m up to missis easy like, and axed her if Mr. Seymo" lived dere; und when ole missis heerd dat word und seed de kivered wagin, she jes drapped down into de road dead. Pore ole missis! De soldiers took her up in dere arms und toted her into de "grate house," und dere was her and pore Miss Alice in hysteriks, and ole ma.r.s.er not a sayin" ary wurd but a chokin "mos to def; und den de soldiers went back to de kivered wagin", and I heered "em a draggin" outen it a great big box, and I seed dem totin it to de "grate house" jes as easy and slow, wid dere milinterry hats offen dere heds in de rain, und den I node it was Mars Harry. When ole missis c.u.m to, she made de soldiers take de led offen de coffin, und dere was Mars Harry a lyin" dere wid his eyes shot right tight, a smilin de butifullest all to hissef. Ole missis sot dere all dat nite lak a grate big statu, a runnin her fingers fru his hair an" a talkin" to him jes de same as if Mars Harry had rid back frum de war lak he rid off. An" den ole marsa he c.u.m in und looked at Mars Harry a smilin" to hissef, an" I could see ole marsa shake an" shake, but he didn"t say narry a wurd, an"
he tuck Mars Harry"s sord out of de coffin; den bimeby I heerd him say he was agwine to venge his death. Ole missis soon pined erway, cause Mars Harry was her eyeb.a.l.l.s. I tells ye fokeses, dat was de most solemcholly site I ever seed in my born days. Poor ole missis didn"t stay long arter Mars Harry died; she dun gon home too, an" I specks Mars Harry dun tole ole missis all erbout de battle of Mana.s.sy, an" how he fit an" how he got kilt; und erbout dat yankey sord he nebber didn"t fotch back."
To a paternal ancestor of Colonel John Walter Seymour has been ascribed this prayer in battle, "Oh Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me." Then rising, he gave the command, "Forward, march! On, my lads!"
At eight o"clock on the morning of the 23rd of October, King Charles was riding along the ridge of Edgehill, and looking down into the valley of the Red Horse, a beautiful meadow, broken here and there by hedges and copses, he could see with his gla.s.ses the parliamentary army as they marched out of the town of Kleinton and aligned their forces in battle array.
"I never saw the rebels in a body before," said the king. "I will give them battle here." There were hot words around the royal standard.
Rupert, a dashing young general, who had seen the swift, fiery charges of the fierce troopers in the thirty years war, was backed up by Patrick Lord Ruthven and Sir Walter Seymour, among the many Scots who had won renown under the great Augustus Adolphus and opposed fiercely by Lord Lindsey, an old comrade of the Earl of Ess.e.x, commander-in-chief of the rebel forces, who swore by all the saints in the calendar that he would not serve again in an army under a boy, referring to Prince Rupert, who was a.s.signed by the king to command the army at Edge Hill that day.
It was to this circ.u.mstance that the country was indebted for the prayer aforesaid. The brave soldier, unyielding in his loyalty to the king, resigned his command as a general to command his company, and in so doing gave affront to Lord Lindsay and the king; but subsequently, at Scone, the king said to him, "You shall accompany me to London as a privy counsellor."
It was from this doughty ancestor of blessed memory that John Walter Seymour lineally descended. I have seen the old corselets, shackbolts, shields and trefoils of that chivalric era that belonged to the old baronet. Colonel Seymour had interested himself greatly in the literature of that inst.i.tutional era that had so close a connection with the pomp and power of the Feudal system. He spoke learnedly too of the ideal purity of the social and moral code of the age.
The Colonel himself was no ign.o.ble scion of so n.o.ble an ancestor. He had won his spurs and stars at Malvern Hill, and at the disbanding of the army he had covered the faded stars upon his collar with his pocket handkerchief until un.o.bserved he could pluck them one by one and trample them underfoot. His haughty spirit could not brook the shame that overlaid him like a shroud when his sword pa.s.sed out of his hands hilt foremost at Appomattox. He had taken the beautiful Alice Glendower from a neighboring estate as his wife twenty-six years ago, and now in the year 186-, though a shadow darkening and deepening lay athwart heart and home, the old man was still muttering curses long, loud and deep. He had fully a.s.similated the indignant spirit of Coriola.n.u.s. "I would they were barbarians (as they are though in Rome littered), not Romans as they are not though calved in the porch of the capitol." His only surviving child Alice was now in her twenty-third year. Harry, a princely fellow, a young lieutenant of cavalry, had fallen at the battle of Mana.s.sas and ever since that day the mother had steadily declined until now the end had almost come. The likeness of the dead boy was photographed vividly upon her heart and every tender chord was ceaselessly vibrating from the presence of a grief, that recreated fancies and memories that brought back to her the vanished idol. G.o.d"s peace had settled upon the old home and its hearth stones, one beautiful Sabbath morning, as the Colonel, his daughter and old Clarissa had a.s.sembled in Mrs. Seymours"s bed chamber. The light of the morning sun shimmered through open windows, and the shadows of the tree boughs like imprisoned fairies danced in cotilion upon the polished floor. "The birds are singing so sweetly to-day," observed the sick lady.
"Yes indeed, they are," replied her husband.
"My dear," she said as she turned her face to him, "I have been greatly troubled by a horrid dream."
"Land sakes alive ole missis," interrupted Clarissa, "don"t yu pester yoursef to def erbout dreams these outlandish times. Dey is bad enuff goodness nose widout dreaming dreams. Ned he jumped clean outen de bed tother nite hollering for his ole muskit lak he was agwine to war--his eyes fairly a sot in his head lak a craw-fish and a tarryfying me to def and hollering "fire! fire!" and a foaming at the mouf lak a mad dog, und duz yu know what I dun ole missis? when dat drotted n.i.g.g.e.r hollered fire! fire! I jes retched ober de table an" got de pale of water an" I put out dat fire fore Ned skovered whay hit war. Dat fool n.i.g.g.e.r walks perpendikler, now yu heers my racket." She laughed again and again as she continued: "And Ned he wanted to fight; he was most drounded."
There was little of sentiment and less of diplomacy in the character of Colonel Seymour; though he was exceedingly tolerant toward Clarissa with her little vagaries and superst.i.tions. What the dream of the good lady was has never been known--the narrative was rudely broken off by the interruption of Clarissa.
Would you know sweet Alice more intimately? I cannot portray her as she deserves; her heart was like so many little cells into which were unceasingly dropping the honey of blue thistle blossoms of charity. In every den of wretchedness; in every hovel where squalor and disease disputed all other dominions, she was a beam of sunshine, giving warmth and cheer and joy. The little star-eyed daisies in the meadow would turn up their tiny faces to greet her with smiles as she would pa.s.s them day after day with the little basket upon her arm; G.o.d had put her here among these poor people--among the deluded negroes as his missionary, and I am quite sure He was pleased with her work. I cannot describe her beauty and grace of person better than in the natural and characteristic language of Clarissa "Miss Alice," she would say, "Yu is the most butifullest white gal I ever seed in de wurrel; yer cheek is jes lak mellow wine-sop apples, und yer eyes is blu und bright lak agate marbles, und yer teeth as white as de dribben snow, und when yer laffs, pen pon it, even de birds in de trees stops to lisen; und yu is jes as suple und spry as de clown in de show."
Golden tresses like a nimbus of glory adorned her queenly head. Eyes of blue graduated to the softest tint; cheeks that transfered the deep blush from tender spring blossoms. Something in her there was that set you to thinking of those "strange back-grounds of Raphael--that hectic and deep brief twilight in which Southern suns fall asleep." With Alice in her presence, Clarissa felt no evil; when the storm came with blinding fire, its fierce thunders, her refuge was by her side. She was her inspiration, her providence. The gentle hand upon the hot brow and there came relief; an old fashioned lullaby from her sweet lips and the fevered pickaninny in the cradle would turn upon his side and fall into a grateful slumber. A prayer spoken out of a heart touched by pity or sorrow, and instantly another heart would be uplifted in thanksgiving.
She exercised too a power over the freed slaves that made captive to her will almost all the stubborn and rebellious negroes. Old Ned would have plucked out his eyes for her and cast them at her feet; so would Clarissa, so would Clarabel; so would old Caesar and Hannah and Joshua.
Only these rebelled against her influence, to wit: Aleck, Miles and Ephraim. Clarissa would say to her young mistress so inquisitively, "Miss Alice, why don"t yu git married? Peers like child yer is too sweet and pretty to live allus by yer lone, lorn self. Yer aint allers gwine to be "ticin an butiful like yer is now. By and by de crow"s foot is agwine to c.u.m into yer lubly face and dere is gwine to be kurlikus and frowns in yo eyes jes lak yo mammy"s; she used to be pretty und lubly jes" lak you, and whar is she now? De boys aint gwine to brak their necks over you when yer gets ole an" ugly, nuther. Now dey is lak a pa.s.sel ov yallow jackets a swarmin" a-roun my house, and axin me dis ting an" tuther ting about dare sweetheart, and bress yo dear life I has to keep a patchin" up de fence whar dey climbs ober to keep de horgs an"
cattle beastes out o de c.r.a.p. Dey is afraid to c.u.m to de "grate house;"
skeert of yu an" ole ma.r.s.er. Ole Mars John aint gwine to be here allus, nuther; see how cranksided he is gettin" an" so ill an" contrawy that we das"nt projec" wid him no mo; an" whar wud yu be chile in dis grate, big house und dis grate big plantashun wid de cussed n.i.g.g.e.rs a marchin"
an" a beatin" drums an" a shootin" guns lak ole Sherman"s army, treadin"