"Why—what in the world! Hesden, are you mad? You know that it is mine by the will of my father! Who or what could interfere with my right?"
"I sincerely hope that no one may," answered Hesden; "but I shall be able to tell you more about these matters after dinner, when I promise that you shall know all, without any reservation."
There had been a calm, almost sorrowful, demeanor about Hesden during this conversation, which had held the excited women unconsciously in check. They were so astonished at the coolness of his manner and the matter-of-fact sincerity of his tones that they were quite unable to express the indignation and abhorrence they both felt that his language merited. Now, however, as he moved toward the door, the younger lady was no longer able to restrain herself,
"I knew it was so!" she said. "That miserable nigger-teacher wasn't here for nothing! The mean, low hussy! I should think he would have been ashamed to bring her here anyhow—under his mother's very nose!"
Hesden had almost reached the door of the room when these words fell upon his ear. He turned and strode across the room until he stood face to face with his mother once more. There was no lack of excitement about him now. His face was pale as death, his eyes blazed, and his voice trembled.
"Mother," said he, "I have often told you that I would never bring to you a wife whom you did not approve. I hope never to do so; but I wish to say one thing: Miss Ainslie is a pure and lovely woman. None of us have ever known her superior. She is worthy of any man's devotion. I would not have said this but for what has been spoken here. But now I say, that if I ever hear that anyone having a single drop of our blood in her veins has spoken ill of her—ay, or if her name is linked with mine in any slighting manner, even by the breath of public rumor—I will make her my wife if she will accept my hand, whatever your wishes. And further, if any one speaks slightingly of her, I will resent it as if she were my wife, so help me God!"
He turned upon his heel, and strode out of the room.
He had not once looked or spoken to the lady whose words had given the offense. The mother and cousin were overwhelmed with astonishment at the intensity of the usually quiet and complaisant Hesden. Miss Hetty soon made excuses for returning to her home, and Mrs. Le Moyne waited in dull wonder for the revelation which the evening was to bring. It seemed to her as if the world had lost its bearings and everything must be afloat, now that Hesden had been so transformed as to speak thus harshly to the mother for whom his devotion had become proverbial all the country around.
When Hesden came to his mother's room that night, his countenance wore an unusually sad and thoughtful expression. His mother had not yet recovered from the shock of the morning's interview. The more she thought of it, the less she could understand either his language or his manner. That he would once think of allying himself in political thought with those who were trying to degrade and humiliate their people by putting them upon a level with the negro, she did not for a moment believe, despite what he had said. Neither did she imagine, even then, that he had any feeling for Mollie Ainslie other than mere gratitude for the service she had rendered, but supposed that his outburst was owing merely to anger at the slighting language used toward her by Cousin Hetty. Yet she felt a dim premonition of something dreadful about to happen, and was ill at ease during the evening meal. When it was over, the table cleared, and the servant had retired, Hesden sat quiet for a long time, and then said, slowly and tenderly:
"Mother, I am very sorry that all these sad things should come up at this time—so soon after our loss. I know your heart, as well as mine, is sore, and I wish you to be sure that I have not, and cannot have, one unkind thought of you. Do not cry," he added, as he saw the tears pouring down her face, which was turned to him with a look of helpless woe upon it—"do not cry, little mother, for we shall both of us have need of all our strength."
"Oh, Hesden," she moaned, "if you only would not—"
"Please do not interrupt me," he said, checking her with a motion of his hand; "I have a long story to tell, and after that we will speak of what now troubles you. But first, I wish to ask you some questions. Did you ever hear of such a person as Edna Richards?"
"Edna Richards—Edna Richards?" said Mrs. Le Moyne, wiping away her tears and speaking between her sobs. "It seems as if I had, but—I—I can't remember, my son. I am so weak and nervous."
"Calm yourself, little mother; perhaps it will come to your mind if I ask you some other questions. Our grandfather, James Richards, came here from Pennsylvania, did he not?"
"Certainly, from about Lancaster. He always promised to take me to see our relatives there, but he never did. You know, son, I was his youngest child, and he was well past fifty when I was born. So he was an old man when I was grown up, and could not travel very much. He took me to the North twice, but each time, before we got around to our Pennsylvania friends, he was so tired out that he had to come straight home."
"Did you ever know anything about his family there?"
"Not much—nothing except what he told me in his last days. He used to talk about them a great deal then, but there was something that seemed to grieve and trouble him so much that I always did all I could to draw his mind away from the subject. Especially was this the case after the boys, your uncles, died. They led rough lives, and it hurt him terribly."
"Do you know whether he ever corresponded with any of our relatives at the North?"
"I think not. I am sure he did not after I was grown. He often spoke of it, but I am afraid there was some family trouble or disagreement which kept him from doing so. I remember in his last years he used frequently to speak of a cousin to whom he seemed to have been very much attached. He had the same name as father, who used to call him 'Red Jim.'"
"Was he then alive?"
"I suppose so—at least when father last heard from him. I think he lived in Massachusetts. Let me see, what was the name of the town. I don't remember," after a pause.
"Was it Marblehead?" asked the son, with some eagerness.
"That's it, dear—Marblehead. How funny that you should strike upon the very name?"
"You think he never wrote?"
"Oh, I am sure not. He mourned about it, every now and then, to the very last."
"Was my grandfather a bachelor when he came here?"
"Of course, and quite an old bachelor, too. I think he was about thirty when he married your grandmother in 1794."
"She was a Lomax—Margaret Lomax, I believe?'
"Yes; that's how we come to be akin to all the Lomax connection."
"Just so. You are sure he had never married before?"
"Sure? Why, yes, certainly. How could he? Why, Hesden, whatdoyou mean? Why do you ask all these questions? You do not—you cannot—Oh, Hesden!" she exclaimed, leaning forward and trembling with apprehension.
"Be calm, mother. I am not asking these questions without good cause," he answered, very gravely.
After a moment, when she had recovered herself a little, he continued, holding toward her a slip of paper, as he asked:
"Did you ever see that signature before?"
His mother took the paper, and, having wiped her glasses, adjusted them carefully and glanced at the paper. As she did so a cry burst from her lips, and she said,
"Oh, Hesden, Hesden, where did you get it? Oh, dear! oh, dear!"
"Why, mother, what is it?" cried Hesden in alarm, springing up and going quickly to her side.
"That—that horrid thing, Hesden! Wheredidyou get it? Do you know it was that which made that terrible quarrel between your grandfather and Uncle John, when he struck him that—that last night, before John's body was found in the river. He was drowned crossing the ford, you know. I don't know what it was all about; but there was a terrible quarrel, and John wrote that on a sheet of paper and held it before your grandfather's face and said something to him—I don't know what. I was only a little girl then, but, ah me! I remember it as if it was but yesterday. And then father struck him with his cane. John fell as if he were dead. I was looking in at the window, not thinking any harm, and saw it all. I thought he had killed John, and ran away, determined not to tell. I never breathed a lisp of it before, son, and nobody ever knew of that quarrel, only your grandfather and me. I know it troubled him greatly after John died. Oh, I can see that awful paper, as John held it up to the light, as plain as this one in my hand now."
The slip of paper which she held contained only the following apparently unintelligible scrawl:
"And you never saw it but once?" asked Hesden, thoughtfully.
"Never but once before to-night, dear."
"It was not Uncle John's usual signature, then?"
"No, indeed. Is it a signature? She glanced curiously at the paper while Hesden pointed out the letters,
"That is what I take it to be, at least," he said. "Sure enough," said Mrs. Le Moyne, "and that might stand for John Richards or James Richards. It might be Uncle John or your grandfather, either, child." "True, but grandfather always wrote his name plainly, J. RICHARDS. I have seen a thousand of his signatures, I reckon. Besides, Uncle John was not alive in 1790."
"Of course not. But what has that to do with the matter? What does it all mean anyhow? There must be some horrid secret about it, I am sure."
"I do not know what it means, mother, but I am determined to find out. That is what I have been at all day, and I will not stop until I know all about it."
"But how did you come to find it? What makes you think there is anything to be known about it?"
"This is the way it occurred, mother. The other day it became necessary to cut a door from the chamber over my room into the attic of the old kitchen, where I have been storing the tobacco. You know the part containing the dining-room was the original house, and was at first built of hewed logs. It was, in fact, two houses, with a double chimney in the middle. Afterward, the two parts were made into one, the rude stairs torn away, and the whole thing ceiled within and covered with thick pine siding without. In cutting through this, Charles found between two of the old logs and next to the chinking put in on each side to keep the wall flush and smooth, a pocketbook, carefully tied up in a piece of coarse linen, and containing a yellow, dingy paper, which, although creased and soiled, was still clearly legible. The writing was of that heavy round character which marked the legal hand of the old time, and the ink, though its color had somewhat changed by time, seemed to show by contrast with the dull hue of the page even more clearly than it could have done when first written. The paper proved to be a will, drawn up in legal form and signed with the peculiar scrawl of which you hold a tracing. It purported to have been made and published in December, 1789, at Lancaster, in the State of Pennsylvania, and to have been witnessed by James Adiger and Johan Welliker of that town."
"How very strange!" exclaimed Mrs. Le Moyne. "I suppose it must have been the will of your grandfather's father."
"That was what first occurred to me," answered Hesden, "but on closer inspection it proved to be the will of James Richards, as stated in the caption, of Marblehead, in the State of Massachusetts, giving and bequeathing all of his estate, both real and personal, after some slight bequests, to his beloved wife Edna, except—"
"Stop, my son," said Mrs. Le Moyne, quickly, "I remember now. Edna was the name of the wife of father's cousin James—"Red Jim," he called him. It was about writing toherhe was always talking toward the last. So I suppose he must have been dead."
"I had come to much the same conclusion," said Hesden, "though I never heard that grandfather had a cousin James until to-night. I should never have thought any more of the document, however, except as an old relic, if it had not gone on to bequeath particularly 'my estate in Carolina to my beloved daughter, Alice E., when she shall arrive at the age of eighteen years,' and to provide for the succession in case of her death prior to that time."
"That is strange," said Mrs. Le Moyne. "I never knew that we had any relatives in the State upon that side."
"That is what I thought," said the son. "I wondered where the estate was which had belonged to this James Richards, who was not our ancestor, and, looking further, I found it described with considerable particlarity. It was called Stillwater, and was said to be located on the waters of the Hyco, in Williams County."
"But the Hyco is not in Williams County," said his listener.
"No, mother, but it was then," he replied. "You know that county has been many times subdivided."
"Yes, I had forgotten that," she said. "But what then?"
"It went on," contined Hesden, "to say that he held this land by virtue of a grant from the State which was recorded in Registry of Deeds in Williams County, in Book A, page 391."
"It is an easy matter to find where it was, then, I suppose," said the mother.
"I have already done that," he replied, "and that is the strange and unpleasant part of what I had to tell you."
"I do hope," she said, smiling, "that you have not made us out cousins of any low-down family."
"As to that I cannot tell, mother; but I am afraid I have found something discreditable in our own family history."
"Oh, I hope not, Hesden," she said, plaintively. "It is so unpleasant to look back upon one's ancestors and not feel that they were strictly honorable. Don't tell me, please. I had rather not hear it."
"I wish you might not," said he; "but the fact which you referred to to-day—that you are, under the will of my grandfather, the owner of Mulberry Hill, makes it necessary that you should."
"Please, Hesden, don't mention that. I was angry then. Please forget it. What can that have to do with this horrid matter?"
"It has this to do with it, mother," he replied. "The boundaries of that grant, as shown by the record, are identical with the record of the grant under which our grandfather claimed the estate of which this is a part, and which is one of the first entered upon the records of Horsford County."
"What do you say, Hesden? I don't understand you," said his mother, anxiously.
"Simply that the land bequeathed in this will of J. Richards, is the same as that afterward claimed and held by my grandfather, James Richards, and in part now belonging to you."
"It cannot be, Hesden, it cannot be! There must be some mistake!" she exclaimed, impatiently.
"I wish there were," he answered, "but I fear there is not. The will names as executor, 'my beloved cousin James Richards, of the borough of Lancaster, in the State of Pennsylvania.' I presume this to have been my grandfather. I have had the records of both counties searched and find no record of any administration upon this will."
"You do not think a Richards could have been so dishonorable as to rob his cousin's orphans?"
"Alas! mother, I only know that we have always claimed title under that very grant. The grant itself is among your papers in my desk, and is dated in 1789. I have always understood that grandfather married soon after coming here."
"Oh, yes, dear," was the reply, "I have heard mother tell of it a hundred times."
"And that was in 1794?"
"Yes, yes; but he might have been here before, child."
"That is true, and I hope it may all turn out to have been only a strange mistake."
"But if it does not, Hesden?" said his mother, after a moment's thought. "What do you mean to do?"
"I mean first to go to the bottom of this matter and discover the truth."
"And then—if—if there was—anything wrong?"
"Then the wrong must be righted."
"But that—why, Hesden, it might turn us out of doors! It might make us beggars!"
"We should at least be honest ones."
"But Hesden, think of me—think—" she began.
"So I will, little mother, of you and for you till the last hour of your life or of mine. But mother, I would rather you should leave all and suffer all, and that we should both die of starvation, than that we should live bounteously on the fruit of another's wrong." He bent over her and kissed her tenderly again and again. "Never fear, mother," he said, "we may lose all else by the acts of others, but we can only lose honor by our own. I would give my life for you or to save your honor."
She looked proudly upon him, and reached up her thin white hand to caress his face, as she said with overflowing eyes:
"You are right, my son! If others of our name have done wrong, there is all the more need that we should do right and atone for it."
Mollie Ainslie had made all her preparations to leave Red Wing. She had investigated the grounds of the suit brought by Winburn against Nimbus and others. Indeed, she found herself named among the "others," as well as all those who had purchased from Nimbus or were living on the tract by virtue of license from him. Captain Pardee had soon informed her that the title of Nimbus was, in fact, only a life-estate, which had fallen in by the death of the life tenant, while Winburn claimed to have bought up the interests of the reversioners. He intimated that it was possible that Winburn had done this while acting as the agent of Colonel Desmit, but this was probably not susceptible of proof, on account of the death of Desmit. He only stated it as a conjecture at best.
At the same time, he informed her that the small tract about the old ordinary, which had come to Nimbus by purchase, and which was all that she occupied, was not included in the life-estate, but was held in fee by Walter Greer. She had therefore instructed him to defend for her upon Nimbus's title, more for the sake of asserting his right than on account of the value of the premises. The suit was for possession and damages for detention and injury of the property, and an attachment had been taken out against Nimbus's property, on the claim for damages, as a non-resident debtor. As there seemed to be no good ground for defense on the part of those who had purchased under Nimbus, the attorney advised that resistance to the suit would be useless. Thus they lost at once the labor of their whole life of freedom, and were compelled to begin again where slavery had left them. This, taken in connection with the burning of the church, the breaking up of the school, and the absence of Eliab and Nimbus, had made the once happy and busy little village most desolate and forlorn.
The days which Mollie Ainslie had passed in the old hostel since she left Mulberry Hill had been days of sorrow. Tears and moans and tales of anxious fear had been in her ears continually. All over the county, the process of "redemption" was being carried on. The very air was full of horrors. Men with bleeding backs, women with scarred and mutilated forms, came to her to seek advice and consolation. Night after night, devoted men, who did not dare to sleep in their own homes, kept watch around her, in order that her slumbers might be undisturbed. It seemed as if all law had been forgotten, and only a secret Klan had power in the land. She did not dare, brave as she was, to ride alone outside of the little village. She did not really think she would be harmed, yet she trembled when the night came, and every crackling twig sent her heart into her mouth in fear lest the chivalric masqueraders should come to fulfil their vague threats against herself. But her heart bled for the people she had served, and whom she saw bowed down under the burden of a terrible, haunting fear.
If she failed to make due allowance for that savageness of nature which generations of slavery are sure to beget in the master, let us not blame her. She was only a woman, and saw only what was before her. She did not see how the past injected itself into the present, and gave it tone and color. She reasoned only from what met her sight. It is not strange that she felt bitterly toward those who had committed such seemingly vandal acts. No wonder she spoke bitterly, wrote hard things to her Northern friends, and denied the civilization and Christianity of those who could harry, oppress, and destroy the poor, the ignorant, and the weak. It is not surprising that she sneered at the "Southern Gentleman," or that she wrote him down in very black characters in the book and volume of her memory. She was not a philosopher nor a politician, and she had never speculated on the question as to how near of kin virtue and vice may be. She had never considered how narrow a space it is that very often divides the hero from the criminal, the patriot from the assassin, the gentleman from the ruffian, the Christian saint from the red-handed savage. Her heart was hot with wrath and her tongue was tipped with bitterness.
For the first time she blushed at the thought of her native land. That the great, free, unmatched Republic should permit these things, should shut its eyes and turn its back upon its helpless allies in their hour of peril, was a most astounding and benumbing fact to her mind. What she had loved with all that tenacity of devotion which every Northern heart has for the flag and the country, was covered with ignominy by these late events. She blushed with shame as she thought of the weak, vacillating nation which had given the promise of freedom to the ears of four millions of weak but trustful allies, and broken it to their hearts. She knew that the country had appealed to them in its hour of mortal agony, and they had answered with their blood. She knew that again it had appealed to them for aid to write the golden words of Freedom in its Constitution, words before unwritten, in order that they might not be continued in slavery, and they had heard and answered by their votes; and then, while the world still echoed with boastings of these achievements, it had taken away the protecting hand and said to those whose hearts were full of hate, "Stay not thine hand."
She thought, too, that the men who did these things—the midnight masqueraders—were rebels still in their hearts. She called them so in hers at least—enemies of the country, striving dishonorably to subvert its laws. She did not keep in mind that to every Southern man and woman, save those whom the national act brought forth to civil life, the Nation is a thing remote and secondary. To them the State is first, and always so far first as to make the country a dim, distant cloud, to be watched with suspicion or aversion as a something hostile to their State or section. The Northern mind thinks of the Nation first. The love of country centers there. His pride in his native State is as a part of the whole. As aNortherner, he has no feeling at all. He never speaks of his section except awkwardly, and when reference to it is made absolutely necessary by circumstances. He may be from the East or the West or the Middle, from Maine or Minnesota, but he is first of all things an American. Mollie thought that the result of the war—defeat and destruction—ought to have made the white people of the South just such Americans. In fact it never occurred to her simple heart but that they had always been such. In truth, she did not conceive that they could have been otherwise. She had never dreamed that there were any Americans with whom it was not the first and ever-present thought that theywereAmericans.
She might have known, if she had thought so far, that in that mystically-bounded region known as "the South," the people were first of all "Southerners;" next "Georgians," or "Virginians," or whatever it might be; and last and lowest in the scale of political being, "Americans." She might have known this had she but noted how the word "Southern" leaps into prominence as soon as the old "Mason and Dixon's line" is crossed. There are "Southern" hotels and "Southern" railroads, "Southern" steamboats, "Southern" stage-coaches, "Southern" express companies, "Southern" books, "Southern" newspapers, "Southern" patent-medicines, "Southern" churches, "Southern" manners, "Southern" gentlemen, "Southern" ladies, "Southern" restaurants, "Southern" bar-rooms, "Southern" whisky, "Southern" gambling-hells, "Southern" principles, "Southern"everything!Big or little, good or bad, everything that courts popularity, patronage or applause, makes haste to brand itself as distinctively and especially "Southern."
Then she might have remembered that in all the North—the great, busy, bustling, over-confident, giantly Great-heart of the continent—there is not to be found a single "Northern" hotel, steamer, railway, stage-coach, bar-room, restaurant, school, university, school-book, or any other "Northern" institution. The word "Northern" is no master-key to patronage or approval. There is no "Northern" clannishness, and no distinctive "Northern" sentiment that prides itself on being such. The "Northern" man may be "Eastern" or "Western." He may be "Knickerbocker," "Pennamite," "Buckeye," or "Hoosier;" but above all things, and first of all things in his allegiance and his citizenship, he is an American. The "Southern" man is proud of the Nation chiefly because it contains his section and State; the "Northern" man is proud of his section and State chiefly because it is a part of the Nation.
But Mollie Ainslie did not stop to think of these differences, or of the bias which habit gives to the noblest mind; and so her heart was full of wrath and much bitterness. She had forgiven coldness, neglect, and aspersion of herself, but she could not forgive brutality and violence toward the weak and helpless. She saw the futility of hope of aid from the Nation that had deserted its allies. She felt, on the other hand, the folly of expecting any change in a people steeped in intolerance and gloating in the triumph of lawless violence over obnoxious law. She thought she saw that there was but little hope for that people for whom she had toiled so faithfully to grow to the full stature of the free man in the region where they had been slaves. She was short-sighted and impatient, but she was earnest and intense. She had done much thinking in the sorrowful days just past, and had made up her mind that whatsoever others might do, she, Mollie Ainslie, would do her duty.
The path seemed plain to her. She had been, as it seemed to her, mysteriously led, step by step, along the way of life, always with blindfolded eyes and feet that sought not to go in the way they were constrained to take. Her father and mother dead, her brother's illness brought her to the South; there his wish detained her; a seeming chance brought her to Red Wing; duties and cares had multiplied with her capacity; the cup of love, after one sweet draught, had been dashed from her lips; desolation and destruction had come upon the scene of her labors, impoverishment and woe upon those with whom she had been associated, and a hopeless fate upon all the race to which they belonged in the land wherein they were born.
She did not propose to change these things. She did not aspire to set on foot any great movement or do any great deed, but she felt that she was able to succor a few of the oppressed race. Those who most needed help and best deserved it, among the denizens of Red Wing, she determined to aid in going to a region where thought at least was free. It seemed to her altogether providential that at this time she had still, altogether untouched, the few thousands which Oscar had given her of his army earnings, and also the little homestead on the Massachusetts hills, toward which a little town had been rapidly growing during the years of unwonted prosperity succeeding the war, until now its value was greatly increased from what it was but a few years before. She found she was quite an heiress when she came to take an inventory of her estate, and made up her mind that she would use this estate to carry out her new idea. She did not yet know the how or the where, but she had got it into her simple brain that somewhere and somehow this money might be invested so as to afford a harbor of refuge for these poor colored people, and still not leave herself unprovided for. She had not arranged the method, but she had fully determined on the undertaking.
This was the thought of Mollie Ainslie as she sat in her room at the old ordinary, one afternoon, nearly two weeks after her departure from the Le Moyne mansion. She had quite given up all thought of seeing Hesden again. She did not rave or moan over her disappointment. It had been a sharp and bitter experience when she waked out of the one sweet dream of her life. She saw that itwasbut a dream, foolish and wild; but she had no idea of dying of a broken heart. Indeed, she did not know that her heartwasbroken. She had loved a man whom she had fancied as brave and gentle as she could desire her other self to be. She had neither proffered her love to him nor concealed it. She was not ashamed that she loved nor ashamed that he should know it, as she believed he did. She thought he must have known it, even though she did not herself realize it at the time. If he had been that ideal man whom she loved, he would have come before, claimed her love, and declared his own. That man could never have let her go alone into desolation and danger without following at once to inquire after her. It was not that she needed his protection, but she had desired—nay, expected as a certainty—that he would come and proffer it. The ideal of her love would have done so. If Hesden Le Moyne had come then, she would have given her life into his keeping forever after, without the reservation of a thought. That he did not come only showed that he was not her ideal, not the one she had loved, but only the dim likeness of that one. It was so much the worse for Mr. Hesden Le Moyne, but none the worse for Mollie Ainslie. She still loved her ideal, but knew now that it was only an ideal.
Thus she mused, although less explicitly, as the autumn afternoon drew to its close. She watched the sun sinking to his rest, and reflected that she would see him set but once more over the pines that skirted Red Wing. There was but little more to be done—a few things to pack up, a few sad farewells to be said, and then she would turn her face towards the new life she had set her heart upon.
There was a step upon the path. She heard her own name spoken and heard the reply of the colored woman, who was sitting on the porch. Her heart stopped beating as the footsteps approached her door. She thought her face flushed burning red, but in reality it was of a hard, pallid gray as she looked up and saw Hesden Le Moyne standing in the doorway.
"How do you do, Miss Mollie?"
She caught her breath as she heard his ringing, tone and noted his expectant air. Oh, if he had only come before! If he had not left her to face alone—he knew not what peril! But he had done so, and she could not forget it. So she went forward, and, extending her hand, took his without a throb as she said, demurely,
"I am very well, Mr. Le Moyne. How are you, and how have you left all at home?"
She led the way back to the table and pointed to a chair opposite her own as she spoke.
Hesden Le Moyne had grown to love Mollie Ainslie almost as unconsciously as she had given her heart to him. The loss of his son had been a sore affliction. While he had known no passionate love for his cousin-wife, he yet had had the utmost respect for her, and had never dreamed that there were in his heart deeper depths of love still unexplored. After her death, his mother and his child seemed easily and naturally to fill his heart. He had admired Mollie Ainslie from the first. His attention had been first particularly directed to her accomplishments and attractions by the casual conversation with Pardee in reference to her, and by the fact that the horse she rode was his old favorite. He had watched her at first critically, then admiringly, and finally with an unconscious yearning which he did not define.
The incident of the storm and the bright picture she made in his somewhat somber home had opened his eyes as to his real feelings. At the same time had come the knowledge that there was a wide gulf between them, but he would have bridged it long before now had it not been for his affliction, which, while it drew him nearer to the object of his devotion than he had ever been before, also raised an imperative barrier against words of love. Then the time of trial came. He found himself likely to be stripped of all hope of wealth, and he had been goaded into declaring to others his love for Mollie, although he had never whispered a word of it to her.
Since that time, however, despite his somewhat dismal prospects, he had allowed his fancy greater play. He had permitted himself to dream that some time and somehow he might be permitted to call Mollie Ainslie his wife. She seemed so near to him! There was such a calm in her presence!
He had never doubted that his passion was reciprocated. He thought that he had looked down into her heart through the soft, gray eyes, and seen himself. She had never manifested any consciousness of love, but in those dear days at the Hill she had seemed to come so close to him that he thought of her love as a matter of course, as much so as if it had been already plighted. He felt too that her instinct had been as keen as his own, and that she must have discovered the love he had taken no pains to conceal. But the events which had occurred since she went to Red Wing had to his mind forbidden any further expression of this feeling. For her sake as well as for his own honor it must be put aside. He had no wish to conceal or deny it. The fact that he must give her up was the hardest element of the sacrifice which the newly discovered will might require at his hands.
So he had come to tell her all, and he hoped that she would see where honor led him, and would hold him excused from saying, "I love you. Will you be my wife?" He believed that she would, and that they would part without distrust and with unabated esteem for each other. Never, until this moment, had he thought otherwise. Perhaps he was not without hope still, but it was not such as could be allowed to control his action. He could not say now why it was; he could not tell what was lacking, but somehow there seemed to have been a change. She was so far away—so intangible. It was the same lithe form, the same bright face, the same pleasant voice; but the life, the soul, seemed to have gone out of the familiar presence.
He sat and watched her keenly, wonderingly, as they chatted for a moment of his mother. Then he said:
"We have had strange happenings at Mulberry Hill since you left us, Miss Mollie."
"You don't tell me!" she said laughingly. "I cannot conceive such a thing possible. Dear me! How strange to think of anything out of the common happening there!"
The tone and the laugh hurt him.
"Indeed," said he, gravely, "except for that I should have made my appearance here long ago."
"You are very kind. And I assure you, I am grateful that you did not entirely forget me." Her tone was mocking, but her look was so guileless as almost to make him disbelieve his ears.
"I assure you, Miss Mollie," said he, earnestly, "you do me injustice. I was so closely engaged that I was not even aware of your departure until the second day afterward."
He meant this to show how serious were the matters which claimed his attention. To him it was the strongest possible proof of their urgency. But she remembered her exultant ride to Red Wing, and said to-herself, "And he did not think of me for two whole days!" As she listened to his voice, her heart had been growing soft despite her; but it was hard enough now. So she smiled artlessly, and said:
"Only two days? Why, Mr. Le Moyne, I thought it was two weeks. That was how I excused you. Charles said you were too busy to ride with me; your mother wrote that you were too busy to ask after me; and I supposed you had been too busy to think of me, ever since."
"Now, Miss Mollie," said he, in a tone of earnest remonstrance, "please do not speak in that way. Things of the utmost importance have occurred, and I came over this evening to tell you of them. You, perhaps, think that I have been neglectful."
"I had no right to demand anything from Mr. Le Moyne."
"Yes, you had, Miss Ainslie," said he, rising and going around the table until he stood close beside her. "You know that only the most pressing necessity could excuse me for allowing you to leave my house unattended."
"That is the way I went there," she interrupted, as she looked up at him, laughing saucily.
"But that was before you had, at my request, risked your life in behalf of my child. Let us not hide the truth, Miss Ainslie. We can never go back to the relation of mere acquaintanceship we held before that night. If you had gone away the next morning it might have been different, but every hour afterward increased my obligations to you. I came here to tell you why I had seemed to neglect them. Will you allow me to do so?"
"It is quite needless, because there is no obligation—none in the least—unless it be to you for generous hospitality and care and a pleasant respite from tedious duty."
"Why do you say that? You cannot think it is so," he said, impetuously. "You know it was my duty to have attended you hither, to have offered my services in that trying time, and by my presence and counsel saved you such annoyance as I might. You know that I could not have been unaware of this duty, and you dare not deny that you expected me to follow you very speedily after your departure."
"Mr. Le Moyne," she said, rising, with flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, "you have no right to address such language to me! It was bad enough to leave me to face danger and trouble and horror alone; but not so bad as to come here and say such things. But I am not ashamed to let you know that you are right. Ididexpect you, Hesden Le Moyne. As I came along the road and thought of the terrors which the night might bring, I said to myself that before the sun went down you would be here, and would counsel and protect the girl who had not shrunk from danger when you asked her to face it, and who had come to look upon you as the type of chivalry. Because I thought you better and braver and nobler than you are, I am not ashamed to confess what I expected. I know it was foolish. I might have known better. I might have known that the man who would fight for a cause he hated rather than be sneered at by his neighbors, would not care to face public scorn for the sake of a 'nigger-teacher'—no matter what his obligations to her."
She stood before him with quivering nostrils and flashing eyes. He staggered back, raising his hand to check the torrent of her wrath.
"Don't, Miss Ainslie, don't!" he said, in confused surprise.
"Oh, yes!" she continued bitterly, "you no doubt feel very much surprised that a 'Yankee nigger-teacher' should dare to resent such conduct. You thought you could come to me, now that the danger and excitement have subsided, and resume the relations we held before. I know you and despise you, Hesden Le Moyne! I have more respect for one of those who made Red Wing a scene of horror and destruction than for you. Is that enough, sir? Do you understand me now?" "Oh, entirely, Miss Ainslie," said Hesden, in a quick, husky tone, taking his hat from the table as he spoke. "But in justice to myself I must be allowed to state some facts which, though perhaps not sufficient, in your opinion, to justify my conduct, will I hope show you that you have misjudged me in part. Will you hear me?"
"Oh, yes, I will hear anything," she said, as she sat down. "Though nothing can be said that will restore the past."
"Unfortunately, I am aware of that. There is one thing, however, that I prize even more than that, and that is my honor. Do not take the trouble to sneer. Say, what Icallmy honor, if it pleases you better, and I will not leave a stain upon that, even in your mind, if I can help it."
"Yes, I hear," she said, as he paused a moment. "Yourhonor,I believe you said."
"Yes, Miss Ainslie," he replied with dignity; "my honor requires that I should say to you now what I had felt forbidden to say before—that, however exalted the opinion you may have formed of me, it could not have equalled that which I cherished for you—not for what you did, but for what you were—and this feeling, whatever you may think, is still unchanged."
Mollie started with amazement. Her face, which had been pale, was all aflame as she glanced up at Hesden with a frightened look, while he went on.
"I do not believe that you would intentionally be unjust. So, if you will permit me, I will ask you one question. If you knew that on the day of your departure, and for several succeeding days, a human life was absolutely dependent upon my care and watchfulness, would you consider me excusable for failure to learn of your unannounced departure, or for not immediately following you hither on learning that fact?" He paused, evidently expecting a reply.
"Surely, Mr. Le Moyne," she said, looking up at him in wide-eyed wonder, "you know I would."
"And would you believe my word if I assured you that this was the fact?"
"Of course I would."
"I am very glad. Such was the case; and that alone prevented my following you and insisting on your immediate return."
"I did not know your mother had been so ill," she said, with some contrition in her voice.
"It was not my mother. I am sorry, but I cannot tell you now who it was. You will know all about it some time. And more than that," he continued, "on the fourth day after you had gone, one who had saved my life in battle came and asked me to acknowledge my debt by performing an important service for him, which has required nearly all my time since that."
"Oh, Mr. Le Moyne!" she said, as the tears came into her eyes, "please forgive my anger and injustice."
"I have nothing to forgive," he said. "You were not unjust—only ignorant of the facts, and your anger was but natural."
"Yet I should have known better. I should have trusted you more," said she, sobbing.
"Well, do not mind it," he said, soothingly. "But if my explanation is thus far sufficient, will you allow me to sit down while I tell you the rest? The story is a somewhat long one."
"Oh, pray do, Mr. Le Moyne. Excuse my rudeness as well as my anger.Please be seated and let me take your hat."
She took the hat and laid it on a table at the side of the room, and then returned and listened to his story. He told her all that he had told his mother the night before, explaining such things as he thought she might not fully understand. Then he showed her the pocket-book and the will, which he had brought with him for that purpose.
At first she listened to what he said with a constrained and embarrassed air. He had not proceeded far, however, before she began to manifest a lively interest in his words. She leaned forward and gazed into his face with an absorbed earnestness that awakened his surprise. Two or three times she reached out her hand, and her lips moved, as though she would interrupt him. He stopped; but, without speaking, she nodded for him to go on. When he handed her the pocket-book and the will, she took them with a trembling hand and examined them with the utmost care. The student-lamp had been lighted before his story was ended. Her face was in the soft light which came through the porcelain shade, but her hands were in the circle of bright light that escaped beneath it. He noticed that they trembled so that they could scarcely hold the paper she was trying to read. He asked if he should not read it for her. She handed him the will, but kept the pocketbook tightly clasped in both hands, with the rude scrawl,
in full view. She listened nervously to the reading, never once looking up. When he had finished, she said,
"And you say the land mentioned there is the plantation you now occupy?"
"It embraces my mother's plantation and much more. Indeed, this very plantation of Red Wing, except the little tract around the house here, is a part of it. The Red Wing Ordinary tract is mentioned as one of those which adjoins it upon the west. This is the west line, and the house at Mulberry Hill is very near the eastern edge. It is a narrow tract, running down on this side the river until it comes to the big bend near the ford, which it crosses, and keeps on to the eastward.
"It is a large belt, though I do not suppose it was then of any great value—perhaps not worth more than a shilling an acre. It is almost impossible to realize how cheap land was in this region at that time. A man of moderate wealth might have secured almost a county. Especially was that the case with men who bought up what was termed "Land Scrip" at depreciated rates, and then entered lands and paid for them with it at par."
"Was that the way this was bought?" she asked.
"I cannot tell," he replied. "I immediately employed Mr. Pardee to look the matter up, and it seems from the records that an entry had been made some time before, by one Paul Cresson, which was by him assigned to James Richards. I am inclined to think that it was a part of the Crown grant to Lord Granville, which had not been alienated before the Revolution, and of which the State claimed the fee afterward by reason of his adhesion to the Crown. The question of the right of such alien enemies to hold under Crown grants was not then determined, and I suppose the lands were rated very low by reason of this uncertainty in the title."
"Do you think—that—that this will is genuine?" she asked, with her white fingers knotted about the brown old pocket-book.
"I have no doubt about its proving to be genuine. That is evident upon its face. I hope there may be something to show that my grandfather did not act dishonorably," he replied.
"But suppose—suppose there should not be; what would be the effect?"
"Legally, Mr. Pardee says, there is little chance that any valid claim can be set up under it. The probabilities are, he says, that the lapse of time will bar any such claim. He also says that it is quite possible that the devisee may have died before coming of age to take under the will, and the widow, also, before that time; in which case, under the terms of the will, it would have fallen to my grandfather."
"You are not likely to lose by it then, in any event?"
"If it should prove that there are living heirs whose claims are not barred by time, then, of course, they will hold, not only our plantation, but also the whole tract. In that case, I shall make it the business of my life to acquire enough to reimburse those who have purchased of my grandfather, and who will lose by this discovery."
"But you are not bound to do that?" she asked, in surprise.
"Not legally. Neither are we bound to give up the plantation if the heir is legally estopped. But I think, and my mother agrees with me, that if heirs are found who cannot recover the land by reason of the lapse of time, even then, honor requires the surrender of what we hold."
"And you would give up your home?"
"I should gladly do so, if I might thereby right a wrong committed by an ancestor."
"But your mother, Hesden, what of her?"
"She would rather die than do a dishonorable thing."
"Yes—yes; but—you know—"
"Yes, I know that she is old and an invalid, and that I am young and—and unfortunate; but I will find a way to maintain her without keeping what we had never any right to hold."
"You have never known the hardship of self-support!" she said.
"I shall soon learn," he answered, with a shrug.
She sprang up and walked quickly across the room. Her hands were clasped in front of her, the backs upward and the nails digging into the white flesh. Hesden wondered a little at her excitement.
"Thank God! thank God!" she exclaimed at last, as she sank again into her chair, and pressed her clasped hands over her eyes.
"Why do you say that?" he asked, curiously.
"Because you—because I—I hardly know," she stammered.
She looked at him a moment, her face flushing and paling by turns, and stretching out her hand to him suddenly across the table, she said, looking him squarely in the face:
"Hesden Le Moyne, you are a brave man!"
He took the hand in his own and pressed it to his lips, which trembled as they touched it.
"Miss Mollie," he said, tenderly, "will you forgive my not coming before?"
"If you will pardon my lack of faith in you."
"You see," he said, "that my duty for the present is to my mother and the name I bear.
"And mine," she answered, "is to the poor people whose wrongs I have witnessed."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean that I will give myself to the task of finding a refuge for those who have suffered such terrible evils as we have witnessed here at Red Wing."
"You will leave here, then?"
"In a day or two."
"To return—when?"
"Never."
Their hands were still clasped across the narrow table. He looked into her eyes, and saw only calm, unflinching resolution. It piqued his self-love that she should be so unmoved. Warmly as he really loved her, self-sacrificing as he felt himself to be in giving her up, he could not yet rid himself of the thought of her Northern birth, and felt annoyed that she should excel him in the gentle quality of self control. He had no idea that he would ever meet her again. He had made up his mind to leave her out of his life forever, though he could not cast her out of his heart. And yet, although he had no right to expect it, he somehow felt disappointed that she showed no more regret. He had not quite looked for her to be so calm, and he was almost annoyed by it; so dropping her hand, he said, weakly,
"Shall I never see you again?"
"Perhaps"—quietly.
"When?"
"When you are willing to acknowledge yourself proud of me because of the work in which I have been engaged! Hesden Le Moyne," she continued, rising, and standing before him, "you are a brave man and a proud one. You are so brave that you would not hesitate to acknowledge your regard for me, despite the fact that I am a 'nigger-teacher.' It is a noble act, and I honor you for it. But I am as proud as you, and have good reason to be, as you will know some day; and I say to you that I would not prize any man's esteem which coupled itself with an apology for the work in which I have been engaged. I count that work my highest honor, and am more jealous of its renown than of even my own good name. When you can say to me, 'I am as proud of your work as of my own honor—so proud that I wish it to be known of all men, and that all men should know that I approve,' then you may come to me. Till then, farewell!"
She held out her hand. He pressed it an instant, took his hat from the table, and went out into the night, dazed and blinded by the brightness he had left behind.
Two days afterward, Mollie Ainslie took the train for the North, accompanied by Lugena and her children. At the same time went Captain Pardee, under instructions from Hesden Le Moyne to verify the will, discover who the testator really was, and then ascertain whether he had any living heirs.
To Mollie Ainslie the departure was a sad farewell to a life which she had entered upon so full of abounding hope and charity, so full of love for God and man, that she could not believe that all her bright hopes had withered and only ashes remained. The way was dark. The path was hedged up. The South was "redeemed."
The poor, ignorant white man had been unable to perceive that liberty for the slave meant elevation to him also. The poor, ignorant colored man had shown himself, as might well have been anticipated, unable to cope with intelligence, wealth, and the subtle power of the best trained political intellects of the nation; and it was not strange. They were all alone, and their allies were either as poor and weak as themselves, or were handicapped with the brand of Northern birth. These were their allies—not from choice, but from necessity. Few, indeed, were there of the highest and the best of those who had fought the nation in war as they had fought against the tide of liberty before the war began—who would accept the terms on which the nation gave re-established and greatly-increased power to the States of the South.
So there were ignorance and poverty and a hated race upon one side, and, upon the other, intelligence, wealth, and pride. The formeroutnumberedthe latter; but the latter, as compared with the former, were a Grecian phalanx matched against a scattered horde of Scythian bowmen. The Nation gave the jewel of liberty into the hands of the former, armed them with the weapons of self-government, and said: "Ye are many; protect what ye have received." Then it took away its hand, turned away its eyes, closed its ears to every cry of protest or of agony, and said: "We will not aid you nor protect you. Though you are ignorant, from you will we demand the works of wisdom. Though you are weak, great things shall be required at your hands." Like the ancient taskmaster, the Nation said: "There shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks."
But, alas! they were weak and inept. The weapon they had received was two-edged. Sometimes they cut themselves; again they caught it by the blade, and those with whom they fought seized the hilt and made terrible slaughter. Then, too, they were not always wise—which was a sore fault, but not their own. Nor were they always brave, or true—which was another grievous fault; but was it to be believed that one hour of liberty would efface the scars of generations of slavery? Ah! well might they cry unto the Nation, as did Israel unto Pharaoh: "Theree is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us, 'Make brick': and behold thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own people." They had simply demonstrated that in the years of Grace of the nineteenth century liberty could not be maintained nor prosperity achieved by ignorance and poverty, any more than in the days of Moses adobe bricks could be made without straw. The Nation gave the power of the South into the hands of ignorance and poverty and inexperience, and then demanded of them the fruit of intelligence, the strength of riches, and the skill of experience. It put before a keen-eyed and unscrupulous minority—a minority proud, aggressive, turbulent, arrogant, and scornful of all things save their own will and pleasure—the temptation to enhance their power by seizing that held by the trembling hands of simple-minded and unskilled guardians. What wonder that it was ravished from their care?
Mollie Ainslie thought of these things with some bitterness. She did not doubt the outcome. Her faith in truth and liberty, and her proud confidence in the ultimate destiny of the grand Nation whose past she had worshiped from childhood, were too strong to permit that. She believed that some time in the future light would come out of the darkness; but between then and the present was a great gulf, whose depth of horror no man knew, in which the people to serve whom she had given herself must sink and suffer—she could not tell how long. For them there was no hope.
She did not, indeed, look for a continuance of the horrors which then prevailed. She knew that when the incentive was removed the acts would cease. There would be peace, because there would no longer be any need for violence. But she was sure there would be no real freedom, no equality of right, no certainty of justice. She did not care who ruled, but she knew that this people—she felt almost like calling them her people—needed the incentive of liberty, the inspiriting rivalry of open and fair competition, to enable them to rise. Ay, to prevent them from sinking lower and lower. She greatly feared that the words of a journal which gloried in all that had been done toward abbreviating and annulling the powers, rights, and opportunities of the recent slaves might yet become verities if these people were deprived of such incentives. She remembered how deeply-rooted in the Southern mind was the idea that slavery was a social necessity. She did not believe, as so many had insisted, that it was founded merely in greed. She believed that it was with sincere conviction that a leading journal had declared: "The evils of free society are insufferable. Free society must fail and give way to aclass society—a social system old as the world, universal as man."
She knew that the leader of a would-be nation had declared: "A thousand must die as slaves or paupers in order that one gentleman may live. Yet they are cheap to any nation, even at that price."
So she feared that the victors in thepost-bellumstrife which was raging around her would succeed, for a time at least, in establishing this ideal "class society." While the Nation slumbered in indifference, she feared that these men, still full of the spirit of slavery, in the very name of law and order, under the pretense of decency and justice, would re-bind those whose feet had just begun to tread the path of liberty with shackles only less onerous than those which had been dashed from their limbs by red-handed war. As she thought of these things she read the following words from the pen of one who had carefully watched the process of "redemption," and had noted its results and tendency—not bitterly and angrily, as she had done, but coolly and approvingly:
"We would like to engrave a prophecy on stone, to be read of generations in the future. The Negro, in these [the Southern] States, will be slave again or cease to be. His sole refuge from extinction will be in slavery to the white man." [Footnote: Out of the numerous declarations of this conviction which have been made by the Southern press every year since the war, I have selected one from theMeridian (Miss.) Mercuryof July 31st, 1880. I have done this simply to show that the sentiment is not yet dead.]
She remembered to have heard a great man say, on a memorable occasion, that "the forms of law have always been the graves of buried liberties." She feared that, under the "forms" ofsubvertedlaws, the liberties of a helpless people would indeed be buried. She had little care for the Nation. It was of those she had served and whose future she regarded with such engrossing interest that she thought. She did not dream of remedying the evil. That was beyond her power. She only thought she might save some from its scath. To that she devoted herself.
The day before, she had visited the cemetery where her brother's ashes reposed. She had long ago put a neat monument over his grave, and had herself supplemented the national appropriation for its care. It was a beautiful inclosure, walled with stone, verdant with soft turf, and ornamented with rare shrubbery. Across it ran a little stream, with green banks sloping either way. A single great elm drooped over its bubbling waters. A pleasant drive ran with easy grade and graceful curves down one low hill and up another. The iron gate opened upon a dusty highway. Beside it stood the keeper's neat brick lodge. In front, and a little to the right, lay a sleepy Southern town half hidden in embowering trees. Across the little ravine within the cemetery, upon the level plateau, were the graves, marked, in some cases, by little square white monuments of polished marble, on which was but the single word, "Unknown." A few bore the names of those who slept below. But on one side there were five long mounds, stretching away, side by side, as wide as the graves were long, and as long as four score graves. Smoothly rounded from end to end, without a break or a sign, they seemed a fit emblem of silence. Where they began, a granite pillar rose high, decked with symbols of glory interspersed with emblems of mourning. Cannon, battered and grim, the worn-out dogs of war, gaped with silent jaws up at the silent sky. No name was carved on base or capital, nor on the marble shield upon the shaft. Only, "Sacred to the memory of the unknown heroes who died—."
How quick the memory fills out the rest! There had been a military prison of the Confederacy just over the hill yonder, where the corn now grew so rank and thick. Twelve thousand men died there and were thrown into those long trenches where are now heaped-up mounds that look like giants' graves—not buried one by one, with coffin, shroud, and funeral rite, but one upon another heaped and piled, until the yawning pit would hold no more. No name was kept, no grave was marked, but in each trench was heaped one undistinguishable mass of dead humanity!
Mollie Ainslie, when she had bidden farewell to her brother's grave, looked on these piled-up trenches, scanned the silent shaft, and going into the keeper's office just at hand, read for herself the mournful record:
Known 94Unknown 12,032———Total 12,126Died in Prison 11,700
As she wandered back to the town, she gleaned from what she had seen a lesson of charity for the people toward whom her heart had been full of hardness.
"It was thus," she said to herself, "that they treated brave foemen of their own race and people, who died, not on the battle-field, but of lingering disease in crowded prison pens, in the midst of pleasant homes and within hearing of the Sabbath chimes. None cared enough to give to each a grave, put up a simple board to mark the spot where love might come and weep—nay, not enough even to make entry of the name of the dead some heart must mourn. And if they did this to their dead foemen and kinsmen, their equals, why should we wonder that they manifest equal barbarity toward the living freedman—their recent slave, now suddenly exalted.It is the lesson and the fruitage of slavery!"
And so she made excuse both for the barbarity of war and the savagery which followed it by tracing both to their origin. She did not believe that human nature changed in an hour, but that centuries past bore fruit in centuries to come. She thought that the former master must be healed by the slow medicament of time before he could be able to recognize in all men the sanctity of manhood; as well as that the freedman must be taught to know and to defend his rights.
When she left the cemetery, she mounted Midnight for a farewell ride. The next morning, before he arose, Hesden Le Moyne heard the neigh of his old war-horse, and, springing from his bed, he ran out and found him hitched at his gate. A note was tied with a blue ribbon to his jetty forelock. He removed it, and read:
"I return your noble horse with many thanks for the long loan. MayI hope that he will be known henceforth only as Midnight?
He thought he recognized the ribbon as one which he had often seen encircling the neck of the writer, and foolishly treasured it upon his heart as a keepsake.
The train bore away the teacher, and with her the wife and children who fled, not knowing their father's fate, and the lawyer who sought an owner for an estate whose heir was too honorable to hold it wrongfully.