"Oh, my po yung missis, de man has dun und c.u.m to preach de funral; de gallus is dun und uprared in dis grate house, und de jedge hez dun und c.u.m to pull de trigger, und de werry fust one he axes fur is yu.
Good-bye, Miss Alice," she exclaimed, as she frantically clutched her dress and dropped upon her knees. "Und ef I nebber sees yu no mo in dis wurell tak care of yerself und meet me in de starry h.e.l.lyments whar dar aint gwine ter be no mo tribbylashun of sperets."
It was a full minute before Alice could calm her agitation, as tears from an excess of conflicting sensations ran down her cheeks. Regaining self-possession she said with a show of authority, "You must not act in this way Clarissa; what will the gentleman think of us if we do not render a proper excuse for your misconduct?"
"Miss Alice," said Clarissa, as she placed her arms akimbo, "Ef yu had seed dat dar man"s eyes when he sed he was de jedge yu"d er run too, und yu wudn"t er stopt running twell yit. My King! dem eyes was wusser dan shuting stors," she exclaimed, as she wiped the great beads of sweat from her face with her ap.r.o.n.
"You go to the door now, and very politely invite the gentleman into the parlor, be very careful Clarissa that you do not offend him."
As Clarissa, now rea.s.sured, was moving stealthily toward the door, her mistress overheard her say to herself,
"I aint agwine to fend him epcepts he fends me fust, den I"m agwine ter run agin, und I aint ergwine ter stop no mo twell I gits to de mashes."
Clarissa opened the door with a very polite bow, as she addressed the stranger patronizingly.
"Misses sed how dat you mout come in, being how dat it was yu. So c.u.m erlong rite back of me. Git outen de way Jube, er sc.r.a.pin quaintance wid dat stinguished white man, same as he was a low down n.i.g.g.e.r; fust ting you knose yu be shut up in de jail house widout ary moufful of wittles, er howlin same as er wildcat."
It is proper just here to remark that Clarissa had never been a correspondent or pupil of Lord Chesterfield. She had been emanc.i.p.ated from the slavvish drudgery of the corn-field, promoted as it were from the cabin to the mansion. Her manners were direct, pungent, self-a.s.sertive, and her gibberish and volubility were immensely amusing to the high official who was now adapting himself to conditions and experiences as they prevailed in the southland; and from time to time interrogating the negro as he or she appeared without the superficialities of reconstruction.
As Clarissa saw Judge Livingstone safely in the parlor she went back to her mistress, and with emphasis of speech and gesture told her what had been said and done, and returned with the commands of her mistress to the distinguished guest.
"You jes set rite whar yu is und mak yerself homelike, dar aint no foolishness erbout our white folks. Me und Miss Alice has been aworrying ourselves jamby to def ober de s.m.u.tty cook pots, und she says how dat yu must scuse her," and she wiped her black face again with her old ap.r.o.n.
The judge failing to comprehend the meaning of the negro in the crude vernacular of the plantation, a speech that under all circ.u.mstances with malice prepense slew the idioms of the English language, arose to retire, regretting as he said, "That he could not see her young mistress;" when Clarissa with great warmth expostulated.
"Hole on dar, Mars Jedge; Miss Alice is ergwine ter c.u.m jes ez soon ez she washes de s.m.u.t offen her face und slicks back her eyebrows. My king! duz yu speks er high quality lady lak my yung missis kin do eberyting in wun minit? She haint ergwine ter brake her neck kase a jedge c.u.ms heer a courtin her. My missis seed jedges fore ter-day; yu aint de onliest jedge she ever seed." And with this confusing declamation Clarissa shuffled out of the parlor with the parting remark, "Yu"s stay rite whar yu is twell she c.u.ms."
When the negro had gone the judge laughed immoderately. Indeed, he was laughing with wide-open mouth as Alice entered the parlor, and advanced to grasp her hand, confused and stammering.
"Ah, permit me," he said, "er, er, er, to felicitate myself that you have given me the pleasure of this interview."
Alice felt a suspicion that the old negress had been amusing the learned judge in her droll way, but she did not know to what extent she had been compromised by her oddities and ignorance, and to quiet her apprehensions as far as she could, she asked with seriousness:
"How long have you been in our county?"
"It is my first visit, and I have greatly enjoyed it," replied the judge, with an effort to conceal his mirth. "The South has been an object lesson of great educational value to me."
"Ah! and who are your teachers?" asked Alice.
"Why, who can they be but the negroes?" replied the judge interrogatively.
"I am quite surprised!" exclaimed the young lady.
"Not so much so as I have been, I am sure," the judge replied. "I am a Northern man with a heart firmly set against what I believed to be the vagaries of Southern people: absorbing the sentiments and convictions of my home folks; but since I have been in your country I have discovered that the South has been outraged and scandalized beyond the point of endurance. Do you know," he continued argumentatively, "that I have never seen among my most intimate friends truer or n.o.bler men, and I have never seen in the jails and penitentiaries of the north a criminal cla.s.s more hardened and vicious than these wretches whom you call carpet-baggers."
"Yes, indeed," replied Alice reflectively, "they have given us a great deal of trouble, and we are so glad that you have punished the infamous wretch Laflin, who has incited the negroes to acts of violence and bloodshed."
"Yes," replied the judge, "I only regret that the law interposed a limit to the measure of punishment. I would have been glad to have sentenced the villain for life to the penitentiary at hard labor.
"By the way, Miss Seymour, the governor bade me say to your father that he would join us here to-day. Will you convey the message to him at your leisure?"
"Thank you, sir," said the girl. "Pray excuse me for a moment. My father will be delighted to receive the information; the governor is an old and dear friend."
The picture now presented to her distinguished guest, a man of clear discernment, as Colonel Seymour, leaning upon the arm of his lovely daughter--whose beautiful face was aglow with health--painfully walked into the parlor, was picturesque and pathetic; indeed, it was the deepening twilight and the blush of Aurora. Here were hard, rigid lines, corded and seamed by age, and here were the pencilings of the artist, whose handiwork is seen as well in the exquisite tintings of the morning iris. Here were palsied limbs, snow-white hair, accentuated by intimate contact with marvellous beauty and litheness of figure, that impressed the intellectual, discriminating judge.
Advancing with extended hand, he met the old man upon the threshold of the room with an affectionate refinement of manner that bespoke the thoroughness of the gentleman; the Colonel observing to his guest, as the latter conducted him to a chair, that the gout had made a cripple of him, but that in all other respects he was quite himself. It was all too evident to the far-sighted judge that an unseen hand had its grasp upon the lever and was running the home-stretch with accelerated momentum.
"Your coming," said the Colonel, "has been like the bearing of a flag of truce; it has given us hope--life; it has ungeared the harrow that crushed us so remorselessly."
"I thank you, my dear sir," most gratefully answered the judge with feeling. "I have endeavored to discharge my duty, and how could I do this, sir, in this country without using the scourge? You have a fine country and a magnanimous people--a people who love liberty and law--and it is a personal affliction to witness in how many ways you are insulted and oppressed."
At this juncture Clarissa knocked softly at the door to announce to her mistress "dat de guberment hez dun und riv," and Alice, excusing herself, retired, concealing her laughter as much as possible, which was provoked by the ludicrous deficiencies of the corn-field negro. It was a metaphor which the negro had ignorantly employed. The Governor was not the government, or any part thereof. Had he been, Ingleside would have been safeguarded by a sentinel utterly impervious to any sensation of fear, not so ignorant or cowardly as Clarissa.
The arrival of the Governor was formally announced by Alice and he was ushered into the parlor, and Alice withdrew to give some directions to Clarissa, whom she found sitting in her rickety chair in the kitchen humming
"My ole Kentucky home, fur away."
"Clarissa," the young lady asked as she approached her, "what do you suppose the judge thought of us this morning and of our maid of all work?"
Clarissa looked up into the face of her young mistress with a stare almost of vacuity, and after a moment"s reflection said, with her accustomed pertness,
"I kaint hep dat, Miss Alice, ole ma.r.s.er dun und gin me my orders, und I want agwine ter let n.o.body pa.s.s nur repa.s.s ef I knoed it. Ole ma.r.s.er he noes his bizness, und ef he tells me ter keep de kyarpet-sackers outen dis grate house I"m ergwine ter do it ef de good Lawd spares me. Don"t fault me, Miss Alice, wid ole ma.r.s.er"s doins, fur de lan"s sake. How c.u.m dat dar jedge outen here any how? Dar aint no kote ergwine on in dis heer grate house dat I noes of. Specks dar is ergwine ter be wun do, und don"t specks nuffin else but sumbodv is ergwine ter git conwicted und sont clean erway frum heer," and the old negro laughed boisterously.
"Dat dar jedge is er portly man, but my king! dem dar eyes, ugh-h-h!
cuts froo yu same ez er razor."
Alice laughed again and again at the old negro, and after awhile coyishly remarked, "Never mind, Clarissa, never mind."
Clarissa turned her old head to one side as she replied with great earnestness.
"Taint wurf while to say neber mind Clarsy, neber mind, I seed fo now what was agwine to be de upshot of dis bisniss. I knowed pine plank which er way de cat wuz er gwine to jump. Ole missus allus sed dat yu was ergwine to marry er jedge er a lyar er a mefodis slidin elder er a sircus rider und I hopes und prays dat yu may, kase ef yu don"t youse ergwine ter be er lone lorn orfin creetur arter ole ma.r.s.er"s hed dun und layed low."
The conversation of the distinguished gentleman naturally drifted into channels that had been cut very deep by the sharp edged tools of reconstruction; the judge deferentially yielding to his seniors who had witnessed the workmanship of unskilled hands, and what he ventured to say from time to time was in the way of suggestions or mild expostulations.
The Governor when discussing reconstruction was opinionated and emphatic. Every paragraph was punctuated with a sneer, gesture or frown.
"Had the suggestions of president Lincoln prevailed," he began, "the South would have been G.o.d"s country; but wicked counsels predominated.
There was not a statute enacted by a legislature, nor an order made by a general, nor a proclamation issued by a governor, nor a requisition made by the head of a department that did not whet the sword with which they were prodding into the bowels of the South, after the final capitulation. These atrocious policies were conceptions of men who swore in their wrath that not a blade of gra.s.s should spring where their h.e.l.lish coursers planted hoof; that in the realigning of the federal union, strong black lines should be drawn with a savage vengeance over the face of the South. Reconstruction was the act of self-destruction, and the suicides deserve to be buried without the shedding of a tear, without christian sepulture in outlawed graves. They made the thorn to spring up where the fir-tree had flourished, and the bramble instead of the myrtle tree. In these abominable acts there is death; death enough to satisfy the grave. Before the ink was dry upon the parchment, before the funereal bake-meats were cold, they contract an unnatural covenant of marriage with four million slaves, disbanded outlaws from the army, and put upon them the mask of freedom to conceal the horrid front of tyranny. Sirs, we rebel against the outrage. When the Philistines are upon us shall we not rise and shake ourselves, or shall we lay our heads in the lap of Delilah, to be shorn of our power; to be bound in chains, until we shall pray G.o.d to avenge our wrongs in the common destruction of ourselves and our enemies. No sirs, they shall find that when we are prostrated, that like Antaeus we shall rise with renewed vigor from our shame. Why this glozing t.i.tle "Reconstruction?" Who shall declare its generation? What holy font was polluted by its baptism? Whence its b.a.s.t.a.r.d origin? Plots, the vile brood of malice have been hatched under fanatical incubation and piloted southward, like flocks of harpies, that by their uncleanness they might defile our civilization. Every blight of calumny from ultra partisan--press and pulpit, has been blown upon southern character. Their speeches are filled with fields scourged down to barrenness, and negroes multiplied and worked up to the very tragedy of indiscriminate a.s.sa.s.sinations. We will not propitiate the black devils by heaping their altars with sacrifices; black fiends who, like the great dragon in the Apocalypse, are sweeping after them into the abysm, filled with slaughter, one third of the stars in our political heaven. Which of these stars are to be fixed, or which are to be planetary in this black firmament of eternal night; which primary, and which central, which wandering stars and which satellites, are matters for their savage taste. For my state may G.o.d in his infinite mercy decree that the laws of position and movement may be ascertained and established, before it, once so beautiful and bright, shall go down and down forever below a horizon of blood. They may like wrestlers in the arena bring us to our knees, but never sir, shall they lay us on our backs. Let us alone, and the dews and the rains and the sunshine of heaven, (the only creatures of G.o.d left by them in friendship with us) shall give to our blood-stained fields moisture and fertility, and time and labor and G.o.d"s blessing shall cover the land with verdure, with cottonfields and gardens, pastures and meadows. They promised us peace, and it came with the mutterings of a tornado. In our vain efforts to compromise the situation we turned our backs upon the past, hallowed as were its memories. We had ceased to remember the execrations of fanatics, even the "league with the devil, and the covenant with h.e.l.l."
"We did all this and more, after we had pa.s.sed fire-scathed through an ordeal whose voice was storm and whose movement was earthquake, which swept from us every visible substance; so that in our last and extremest agony we were forced to cry aloud, like Francis at Pavia, "All is lost save honor." We gave the government our parole; we hammered our swords into plow-shares and pruning-hooks; we pitched our tents upon the fire-blasted lands where once had been our homes, and with axe and mattock and blade and plow began to cut away brambles and bushes and cultivate our fields; and when we believed that we were secure in the enjoyment of our rights of persons and property, the authors of reconstruction swept down upon the beleaguered South like Hyder Ali upon the Carnatic, and left scarcely a vestige upon which to hope, or from which to rebuild, except our worn-out lands and our own splendid manhood and womanhood. States were despoiled of their resources, towns and cities were battered and burned; the angel of death had crossed every threshhold, and three hundred thousand of the flower and chivalry of the land were lying in soldiers" graves. Our public inst.i.tutions were languishing unto death; from centre to circ.u.mference there were outlawries, a.s.sa.s.sinations, conflagrations; and our people looked into the faces of each other and in their helplessness asked what other calamities are reserved for us and our children. They seized upon four million slaves and hurled them like immense projectiles against our civilization. And to conclude, sir, for I find I am getting excited, in this catastrophe our hopes were stayed upon the honest men of the North, like you, sir, and our n.o.ble, patriotic women, like you, my dear miss,"
bowing with boyish gallantry to Alice. "The women of the sixties are more than heroines in the storm-swept crisis--they are a revelation in the flesh. What Arria was to Paetus, what Natalia was to Adrian, what Gertrude was to Rudolph, what Helen, the Jennie Dean of the "Heart of Midlothian," was to Tibbie, what Prascovia was to the Russian exile, our self-sacrificing women are to us. There has never been an occasion when the habit of instantaneous obedience to the voice of love and country has produced more affecting and constant instances of devotion and loyalty upon the part of the women, than in the gleaning of the aftermath by hands saturated with all the crimes of the calendar.
"And now, gentlemen," (the Governor bowed), "if I have given offence by any intemperate expression, will you please forgive me, for my wrath waxes warm when concentrated upon the subject of reconstruction.
Perhaps, sir," he continued, addressing His Honor, "you are not in sympathy with the views I may have inconsiderately expressed?"
"Why, my dear sir," the judge replied, "I have never been in sympathy with a policy which you have so eloquently denounced, and which the patriotic people of the North sincerely deprecate, and I quite agree with you that reconstruction has unlocked a Pandora box of evils whose fledgelings are hovering over this land."
The sun was now setting with an iridescent aureole of gold and carmine and purple as the judge remarked apologetically, "I have been struggling with myself between inclination and duty; indeed I find it embarra.s.singly difficult to tear myself from so charming a circle. I have only a few minutes to catch the train, and you don"t know how much I grieve to say good-bye. I shall be in your town again within the next month, and may I indulge the hope that I shall be once more welcomed at Ingleside?"
"We shall only be too glad to be similarly honored," replied Colonel Seymour with deference.
Clarissa, who was standing near the door with her arms folded and grinning like a blackamoor, gave the judge the parting bow, as he placed into her hand a dollar note, and putting her ap.r.o.n to her face, so she might whisper the better, with a negroish curtsy, said,