"Great Tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,For Goodnessdaresnot check thee!"
"Great Tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,For Goodnessdaresnot check thee!"
Shaler had not miscalculated so much as the result would seem to show: the opinion of the majority was perhaps with him; but the only voices raised were against him. The storm had already gatheredthick about him before he was aware of its approach. The first intimations were not violent. He was admonished that his course was disapproved,—was advised to let things slip back quietly into the old track, and that so his eccentricities would be forgotten. This mildness failing, he was told that he was endangering the welfare of the community,—and, lastly, that he would incur peril himself, if he persisted. He was not a man to be driven from his ground by threats, nor by loss or suffering which he was to bear alone. His cattle died; his horses fell lame; his barns and store-houses took fire. He ignored the cause of these disasters and kept quietly on, still hoping to overcome evil with good. His great strength and courage, with his known skill in the use of arms, deterred from personal violence. But there were surer means: his people were subjected to annoyance and injury,—and, moreover, were accused of every offence committed within a circuit of twenty miles. His duty as their protector obliged him to give way: he took the only course by which he could provide for their welfare.
"I have no quarrel with Shaler," said the Doctor, after he had heard the story, which I gave him much less at length than I have told it to you. "I have no quarrel with Shaler. He had a right to do what he would with his own. I only ask the sameliberty for my friend Harvey, and for those who, like him, accept their lot as it is given to them."
"Mr. Harvey is not happy," said Harry, seriously. "There are lines of pain on his face. I do not think he accepts his lot."
"Well, submits to it, then,—the next best thing."
"Hardly even submits. I think he begins to doubt himself."
"He is of the age for doubting himself. It is at twenty that we are infallible. To be sure, some happy men are so all their lives. Shaler, I dare say, wouldn't have a doubt of his own wisdom, if the whole hundred and seventy-three were starved or hanged. If there are marks of care on Harvey's face, reasons might be found for it without inventing for him an uneasy conscience."
"I think he envies Shaler, and would follow his example, if he had the resolution. It is strange to see a brave man under such a thraldom."
"If Frank Harvey wants courage, it is something new."
"There are men who have courage to face a foe, but not to stand up against a friend."
"Certainly, in such a project, he would have his wife's family to count with, to say nothing of his own children. I fancy he would hardly find a co-adjutor in Fred. You know Fred Harvey, Harry;he was at school with you in Paris. What sort of a fellow was he then?"
"I liked him."
"I was not ill-pleased with him, when I saw him in Paris four years ago. A fine-looking fellow; formed manners; modest enough, too. I thought he would fill his place in the world creditably. Did you see much of him, Harry, after you left school?"
"For a year I saw him constantly. We went to the same lectures at the Jardin des Plantes."
While this conversation was going on, a reminiscence had been waking in my mind.
"Did you ever take a journey with Frederic Harvey?" I asked Harry.
"Yes, into Brittany."
"Were you at a Trappist monastery with him?"
"At La Meilleraie. We passed a night there."
It was clear. I had been present once at a conversation between Frederic and his sister, in which he spoke of his companion on this journey into Brittany more warmly than I had ever heard him speak of any other man, and yet with a discrimination that individualized the praise, and made it seem not only sincere, but accurate. This conversation interested me very much at the time; but, as I had no expectation of seeing the person who was the subject of it, his name passed from me.
I was glad to hear Harry say he liked Frederic Harvey. It would have been hard, if he had not. And yet I am not sure that I like him very much myself. I am grateful for the preference he shows for my society; but I cannot meet as I would his evident desire for intimacy. How true is what South says:—"That heart shall surrender itself and its friendship to one man, at first view, which another has long been laying siege to in vain"!
Monday, April 8, 1844.
Those full days must still furnish these.—My walk with Harry was the first of last Monday's pleasures. Roaming over our fields with him, I found myself now in one, now in another European scene; and everywhere, hardly speaking of himself, he set his individual stamp on every object he called up before me. He had seen and felt with his own eyes and heart; and everywhere had been disclosed for him those special sympathies which Nature and the works of genius hold for each separate human soul.
Florence will always be dear to me among Italian cities because it was so dear to Harry. He has taught me to love, beside those greatest names in Art familiar to us all from infancy, and which we have chiefly in mind when we long forEurope, others less universally cherished, and for which I had before only a vague respect which I should have found it hard to justify.
Rome is no longer for me merely the Rome I have read of. With the distant historic interest is now mingled one near and familiar. Harry's favorite spots are already mine. I would walk on the green turf where the altar to Hercules stood, in thatoldest time when monuments were raised to benefactors, and not yet to oppressors. I would bring away an ivy-leaf from the ruined heap, the ever "recent" tomb of the young Marcellus. I would gather white daisies on the path along which Saint Agnes was borne to the grave, which was to become a shrine. I cannot, but you will for me. And you will find the little chapel on the Appian Way which marks the place consecrated in popular tradition as that where Peter, escaping, met Christ "going up to Rome to be crucified again," and turned back to meet his martyrdom. You will look up from the Ponte Molle to the beautiful blue Italian sky, where the symbol of suffering appeared as the sign of victory.
When you are in Europe, old Europe, do not carry about with you among the monuments of its past all the superiorities of the nineteenth century. Respect the legend. Our age does not produce it, but it is the part of our inheritance we could least do without. Be reverent before the monuments of the early Christian martyrs: they are true shrines. With the people they have not yet lost their sacredness, and have not yet lost their use. Faith in something stronger than violence and nobler than rank is kept alive by the homage paid to the courageous defiers of older usurpations and oppressions.
When we came in, we found the Doctor in excellent spirits and in excellent humor. He had not been idle that morning. He had been at work over his pressed flowers, and, owing to the dry weather of the last two days, had had no trouble with them. I proposed to take him, after breakfast, to a piece of marsh land where I thought he might find something to interest him.
Harry again left the table first. He had made an engagement with Karl and Fritz. We were to find him at the place where they were at work, which was almost on our way. The Doctor wanted an hour or two more for his flowers. While he was busy with them, I occupied myself with the books which Harry had brought me.
We set off for the marshes. We walked the first part of the way in silence, or nearly so, only exchanging now and then an observation on the weather or scenery, not very earnest. "How we miss Harry Dudley!" I was just saying within myself, when the Doctor made the same exclamation aloud. I wanted nothing better than to hear him talk of Harry again. I saw he was ready, and turned to him with a look of expectation which he understood.
"I told you I had known Harry all his life; and so I have. But our friendship began when he was about five years old. The time before that hasleft me only a general remembrance of his singular beauty and a certain charming gayety that seemed to lighten the air all about him. But I went one day to his father's house in the country with some friends I wanted to introduce there,—strangers. There was no one at home, the man who answered our knock said, except—— He stepped back, and there came forward this lovely child, who received us in due form, regretted his father's absence, conducted us in, ordered refreshments for us, and, in short, did the honors of the house with the ease and courtesy of a man of society, and, at the same time, with a sweet, infantile grace not to be described. I was content with Young America that day. Harry and I have been intimates ever since then. We had our little differences from the first, just as we have now. I thought my twenty years' advantage in experience gave me a right to have my judgments accepted without being examined; but he took a different view of my claims. When I went out to his father's, I always used to look the little fellow up,—in the garden, or in the barn, or wherever he might be. As soon as I appeared, his eyes took a merry sparkle, as if he knew there was good sport ahead: and so there was, for both of us. He maintained his side with an originality and quaint humor that made a debate with him a very entertaining exercise. Some of his childish sayingshave stayed in my mind, though many wiser things have passed out of it."
The Doctor enjoyed his thoughts a little while; and then, with a graver, and something of a confidential tone,—
"If Harry should talk to you about his future, do not encourage that little vein of Quixotism that runs in his blood."
"The enterprise of the Pilgrim Fathers was somewhat Quixotic,—was it not?"
"Certainly it was; you would not have found me among them."
Again a silence, which I left the Doctor to break.
"At any rate, I need not begin to disturb myself already. He will not enter upon active life before he has prepared himself well. That I know. And preparation, as he understands it, involves long work and hard. But I sometimes almost think in good earnest that he has come into the world in the wrong age. He is made for great times, and he has fallen on very little ones. These are the days of the supple and the winding, not of the strong and the straightforward."
"Since he has been sent to these times," I answered, "without doubt his part in them has been marked out for him."
Dr. Borrow's brow lowered. It seemed he had a misgiving that the part allotted to Harry mightnot be that which he himself would have assigned to him.
Here some flowers at a little distance caught the Doctor's eye, and he ran off to examine them. They were not to his purpose, and were left to nod and wave away their life unconscious that a great danger and a great honor had been near them. When he came back, the cloud had passed. He began talking pleasantly, and still on the subject on which I most wished to hear him talk.
Harry has not always been an only son. He had once a brother, to whom he was fondly, even passionately, attached. After his brother's death, a deeper thoughtfulness was seen in him. He was not changed, but matured and strengthened.
"You still see the fun look out of his eyes at times," said the Doctor, "and his laugh has a quality that refreshes and refines for us again the meaning of the good old word 'hearty'; but mirthfulness is no longer so marked a characteristic in him as it once was."
When we came in sight of the little plantation prophetically known as "The Grove," I could not help calling the Doctor's attention to it. He took a much more flattering interest in it than you did, I must tell you. He turned his steps towards it immediately, commended the spaces which made full allowance for growth, and, seating himself onone of the benches,—according to you, such premature constructions,—gave me a dissertation on soils, very entertaining and very profitable. When he had finished, I would gladly have carried him back to the subject from which the sight of my trees had diverted us, but I felt that this required a little skill: I had known him repelled by a question of too incautious directness from a topic on which he would have been eloquent, if he had led the way to it himself. However, as soon as we were once walking forward on our former path again, his thoughts, too, returned to the old track. Our intimacy had ripened fast on the common ground of sympathy we had found in the grove. He was more expansive than before, and revealed a latent gentleness I had begun to suspect in him. He went on to tell of Harry's infancy and childhood, and to relate instances of his early daring, self-reliance, and generosity of heart,—smiling, indeed, a little at himself as he did so, and casting now and then towards me a glance of inquiry, almost of apology, like one who is conscious of being indiscreet, but who cannot resolve to refrain. I could not but observe that the anecdotes related with most pleasure illustrated that very side of Harry's character which gave the Doctor uneasiness.
Karl and Fritz were employed that day in clearing a piece of ground overgrown with brushwood. We had found them at their work in our morning walk, and Harry had promised to come back and take a hand in it. It was an animated scene that the Doctor and I came upon. Before we reached it, we heard a pleasant clamor of voices and laughter. My German boys are faithful workers, and generally cheerful ones; but now they carried on their task with an ardor and an hilarity which doubled their strength, and gave them an alertness which I had thought was not of their race.
"Will you let me finish my stint?" Harry cried, as soon as we were near enough to answer him. The merry light in his eye and the gleeful earnestness of his manner brought up to me the little boy of whom the Doctor had been talking to me. He was taking the lead. He could not have been practised in the work; but the strong sweep of his arm, his sure strokes, did not speak the novice. He directed and encouraged his assistants in familiar and idiomatic German, which made me feel that my carefully composed sentences must be somewhat stilted to their native ears.
Old Hans found himself there, too, drawn by I don't know what attraction,—for a share in this work did not belong to his day's plan. He was not taking a principal part in it; he had a hatchet in his hand and chopped a little now and then in a careless and fitful way, but he was chiefly occupied in observing the amateur, whose movements he followed with an admiration a little shaded by incredulity. He stood like the rustic spectator of an exhibition of legerdemain, his applause restrained by the displeasure of feeling himself the subject of an illusion.
But over the boys Harry's ascendancy was already complete: not only did their bush-scythes keep time with his, but their voices, when they answered him, and even when they spoke to each other, were more gently modulated,—their very laugh had caught something of the refinement of his. When afterwards in my talks with him he unfolded, among his plans for the future, a favorite one of leading a colony to some yet unsettled region, I felt, remembering this scene, that he was the man for it.
Hans was won over before we left him. When we arrived, he had searched my face with a look which, at the same time that it asked my opinion of the stranger, gave me to understand that he himself was not one to be dazzled by outward show. As we were going, his eye caught mine again: he gave me a nod of satisfaction, which said that he had at last made up his mind, and that it was one with my own. Perhaps he had been aided in coming to a decision by the care with which Harry delivered up to him the tools he had been using, and by the frank pleasure with which the volunteer woodman received the words of approbation which the veteran could not withhold.
I cannot write you the whole of last Monday's journal to-night. I came in late. The weather is fine again, and I took a long day in the field to make up for lost time.
Tuesday, April 9, 1844.
We were on our way from the thicket to the marshes.
The Doctor had a successful morning. The tin case was always opening and closing for some new treasure. Noon found him in high good-humor. I did not propose to go home for dinner. It had been arranged with Tabitha that we should take it on the little knoll known in our level region as Prospect Hill. We found two baskets in the shade of its two trees. Harry and I unpacked them, the Doctor superintending and signifying coöperation by now and then putting his thumb and finger to the edge of a dish or plate on its way to the turfy table. Harry filled our bottle from the cool spring that bubbles up at the foot of the mound. There was a log under one of the trees, affording seats for three, but we left it to the Doctor, and took our places on the ground, fronting him, on either side of the outspread banquet.
We talked of plans for the coming week. I told over our few objects of modest interest, and the names of such of our neighbors as could lay claim to the honor of a visit from Dr. Borrow, or could inany degree appreciate his society. The nearest of these was Westlake.
"We have been at Westlake's," said the Doctor; "we passed a day and night with him. He pressed us to stay longer, and I was very well amused there; but Harry looked so plainly his eagerness to be on, and his fear lest I should allow myself to be persuaded, that I put your hospitable neighbor off with a promise to give him another day, if we had time, after we had been here. Harry has all along wanted to secure the visit here as soon as possible, for fear something or other should interfere with it. I believe, if I had proposed it, he would even have put off going to the Harveys, old friends as they are. You must know that you have been his load-star from the first."
Very much pleased, yet surprised, I looked at Harry. His color deepened a little as he answered, "I have heard Selden speak of you; but it was after we met Mr. Shaler that I had so great a desire to know you."
Here the Doctor took up the word again:—
"We met Shaler in a great forlorn tavern at Mantonville, quite by chance. We hadn't been in the house half an hour before Harry and he found each other out. I had just had time to give some orders up-stairs for making my room a little habitable,—for we were going to pass a day or twothere,—and came down to look about me below. There I find Harry walking up and down the breezy entry with a stately stranger, engaged in earnest and intimate conversation. Presently he comes to ask me if it would be agreeable to me to have our seats at the table taken near Mr. Charles Shaler's, who, it seemed, was by two days more at home than we were. Of course it was agreeable to me in that populous No Man's Land to sit near any one who had a name to be called by. And the name was not a new one. I had never seen Charles Shaler,—Colonel Shaler, as he is called,—of Metapora; but I had heard a great deal of him, for he is own cousin to the Harveys. I felt sure that this was the man. His appearance agreed perfectly with the description given me, and then Harry's foregathering with him so instinctively was a proof in itself. I found him very agreeable that day at dinner, though, and continued to find him so, except when he mounted his hobby; then he was insupportable. There's no arguing with enthusiasts. They are lifted up into a sphere entirely above that of reason. And when they have persuaded themselves that the matter they have run wild upon is a religious one, they're wrapped in such a panoply of self-righteousness that there's no hitting them anywhere. You maydemonstrateto such a man as Shaler the absurdity, the impracticability, of hisschemes: he seems to think he's done his part in laying them before you; he doesn't even show you the attention to be ruffled by your refutation, but listens with a complacent politeness that is half-way to an affront. However, I had my little occupations, and he and Harry used to found Utopias together to their own complete satisfaction, whatever good the world may derive from their visions.—Does Shaler ever come here now?"
"From time to time he appears, unlocks the old house, and walks through the empty rooms."
"I hear that his plantation is going to ruin."
"Yes; it is a melancholy sight."
"We passed by it on our way here from Westlake's. But we saw only the fine trees on the border. We did not enter. Why doesn't he sell it, let it, have it occupied by some one who might get a support from it? Or does he carry his respect for liberty so far that he thinks it a sin for a man to compel the earth to supply his needs?"
"He is, as you say, an enthusiast. He regards the culture of the earth as a religious work, and thinks it sacrilege to carry it on in the frantic pursuit of exorbitant gain, watering the innocent soil with tears and the painful sweat of unrewarded labor. But he has not given up the hope of returning."
"What! does he repent his rashness already?"
"No; but he loves his native State, and believes in it."
"Nobody interferes with Harvey; nobody objects to his reforms," said the Doctor, after a little silence.
"Because they lead to nothing," answered Harry.
"They have led to giving him a splendid income, and to giving his people as much comfort as they can appreciate, and as much instruction as they can profit by. Harvey is really a religious man. He regards his relation to his slaves as a providential one, and does not believe he has a right to break it off violently, as Shaler has done."
I had all along tried, in these discussions, to maintain an impartial tone, confining myself to a simple statement of facts, and leaving the controversy to the Doctor and Harry; but I had been gradually losing my coolness, and found myself more and more drawn to take a side. The repetition of this reflection upon Shaler was more than I could bear.
"There is certainly," I said, "a wide difference between Shaler's view of the relation of the master to his laborers and Harvey's. Shaler believed that these dependent beings were a charge intrusted to him by their Maker and his. As unto him more had been given than unto them, of him, he knew, more would be required. Harvey supposes thatthese inferior creatures have been given to him for his use. His part is to supply them with sustenance, and to show them so much of kindness and indulgence as is consistent with keeping them in the condition to which they have been called; theirs is to serve him with all their soul and all their strength, to render him an unqualified obedience, to subordinate even the most sacred ties of nature to their attachment to him. Here is, indeed, no danger to slavery. Ameliorations, under such conditions, fortify instead of undermining it. The sight of an apparent well-being in this state pacifies uneasy consciences in the master-class; while the slave, subjugated by ideas instilled from infancy, not less than by the inexorable material force which incloses him, finds even his own conscience enlisted in his oppressor's service, steeled and armed against himself."
"You wrong Frank Harvey, if you suppose he allows his slaves a mere animal support; he has them taught what is needful for them to know."
"He has them taught just so much as shall increase their usefulness to him, without giving them a dangerous self-reliance."
"Precisely, so far as secular knowledge is concerned. And it is possible he may be right in view of their interests as well as of his own. But he allows them religious instruction to any extent,—takes care that they have it."
"The religious instruction allowed by Harvey, and by other humane slaveholders who maintain the lawfulness of slavery, inculcates the service of the earthly master as the fulfilment of the practical service of God on earth. For the rest, the slaves are allowed to look forward to another world, to which this life is a sorrowful passage,—whose toils, pains, and privations, however unnecessary and resultless, are, if only passively accepted, to be compensated by proportionate enjoyments."
"This constitutes, then, the whole of the much talked-of religion of your negro Christians?"
"Of too many; but the promise, 'Ask, and ye shall receive,' was made to them as to all. Even to the slave-cabin has been sent the Comforter who teacheth all things. But we were speaking not so much of the religion of the slaves as of the religious instruction given or allowed them by their masters. It is necessarily circumscribed, as I have told you."
"What was the creed inculcated upon Colonel Shaler's protégés?"
"They were taught that life, even earthly life, is a sacred and precious gift, for which they were to show themselves grateful by keeping it pure and noble and by filling it with useful work. They were taught that duty to God consists not in mere acquiescence, but in active obedience. They weretaught that there are earthly duties which no human being can lay down; that on the relation of husband and wife, of parent and child, all other human relations are founded. In short, Shaler recognized men in his slaves. He attributed to them the natural rights of men, and the responsibilities of civilized and Christian men."
"And his neighbors unreasonably took umbrage! Mind, I am no upholder of slavery. I am merely speaking of what is, not of what ought to be. A slaveholder, meaning to remain one, can yield nothing in principle, let him be as indulgent as he will in practice. What becomes of his title in the slave-family, if the slave-father has one that he is religiously bound to maintain and the rest of the world to respect? The master is the owner no longer. The property has died a natural death."
So slavery dies before Christianity without formal sentence.
"But," the Doctor began, in a different tone, passing lightly from a train of argument which might have led him where he had not meant to go, "I should never have taken Shaler to be the lowly-minded man you represent him. I cannot imagine his people addressing him with the familiarity that even Harvey permits; still less can I think of him as treating them with the good-natured roughness of your neighbor Westlake."
"I have never seen him followed about his place by a crowd of begging children, nor throwing down coppers or sugar-plums to be scrambled and squabbled for."
"Nor tweaking their ears, I suppose," broke in the Doctor, laughing, "nor pulling their hair to make them squeal and rub their heads, and grin gratefully under the flattering pain of master's condescension. I have witnessed these little urbanities. I have not met with a case of the hailing with sugar-plums; but I have known Westlake pelt his people with some pretty heavy oaths, which were as acceptable, to judge by the bobbings and duckings and mowings with which they were received. He is very fond of his people, he tells me, and especially of a distinguished old crone who was his nurse, and who is to be gratified with a majestic funeral. She was impartially graced with his emphatic compliments, and did her utmost to make an adequate return in 'nods and becks and wreathèd smiles.' So I suppose it was understood that he was expressing himself in the accepted terms of patrician endearment. Probably Shaler's affection for his wards was not so demonstrative?"
"There was in his manner to them a considerate kindness,—not familiar, yet intimate; in theirs to him an affectionate reverence. He was well fitted to be the chief of a primitive people."
"He would have been sure of election in the days when being taller by the head and shoulders than the common crowd was a qualification."
"He had the qualification of the ordained as well as that of the popular leader: 'A comely person, andthe Lord is with him.' This last is the mark of the true rulers by divine right,—of the men who seem framed to be the conductors of higher influences. The less finely organized
"'Know them, as soon as seen, to be their lords,And reverence the secret God in them.'"
"'Know them, as soon as seen, to be their lords,And reverence the secret God in them.'"
Harry's beautiful face was wonderfully illuminated. Strange, this unconscious consciousness of the elect!
"The relation of master and slave," I went on,—for the Doctor did not offer to speak,—"is, in Shaler's opinion, a most perverted and unnatural one; but he believes in that of protector and protected. The love of power, the instinct of dominion, is strong in him. Perhaps it must be so in those who are to be called to its exercise. 'I know thy pride,' David's elder brother said to him, when the boy left the charge of his few sheep to offer himself as the champion of a nation. But Shaler's ambition was directed by the precept, 'Let him who would be greatest among you be your servant';—whether deliberately, or by the spontaneous flow of his large, generous nature, I do not know. Whatever superiority he possessed, whether of position, education, or natural endowment, he employed for the advantage of the people under his care. All the proceeds of the estate were spent upon it. The land was brought into a high state of cultivation. Its productiveness was not only maintained, but increased. Nor was beauty neglected. Groves were planted, marshes drained, ponds formed. The old cabins gave place to new and pretty cottages. The owners and builders were encouraged to employ their own invention on them; thus there was great variety in the architecture. Vines planted about them, by favor of our kind climate, soon draped them luxuriantly, harmonizing the whole, and giving even to eccentricities of form a beauty of their own. While he took care that ability and energy should enjoy their just return of prosperity, the inferior, whether in body, mind, or soul, were not Pariahs. As Shaler believed the exercise of beneficent power to be the greatest privilege accorded to mortals, he made it one of the chief rewards of exertion."
"Was the privilege appreciated?" asked the Doctor.
"The slave of a tyrannical master is too often the most brutal of oppressors; but disinterestedness and tenderness have a sympathetic force, no less, surely, than rapacity and cruelty. Besides, with arace in which sense of honor is so leading a characteristic as in the African, the glory of being the doer and the giver, the shame of being the mere idle recipient, are very potent. Shaler was not too wise and good for dealing with ordinary human nature; he was considerate of innocent weaknesses, even of those with which his nature least enabled him to sympathize. He found, for example, that his people did not like to see the 'great house' on their estate surpassed in furniture and decoration by the mansions of neighboring planters. He respected their simple pride. He understood that his house was their palace, their state-house,—that their wish to embellish it was, in fact, a form of public spirit. He indulged them in what was no indulgence to himself."
"Harvey has rather the advantage of him there: he can please himself and his people at the same time. How long have you known the Harvey plantation,—Land's End, as Judge Harvey called it, when he first came to settle here?"
Wednesday, April 10, 1844.
"How long have you known the Harvey plantation?" Dr. Borrow had just asked me.
"Ten years," I answered. "I was there for the first time about three years after Mr. Frank Harvey came back from Europe."
"I was there nearly twenty-three years ago. Frank and I had just left Harvard. We were both going to finish our studies abroad. We were to sail together. Frank must go home for a visit first, and asked me to go with him. I saw slavery then for the first time. I had heard enough about it before. We had just been through the Missouri storm. I did not find it, as it showed itself on Judge Harvey's place, 'the sum of all villanies'; though, perhaps, looking back, I may think it was the sum of all absurdities. I did not reason or moralize about it then. I was hardly eighteen, and took things as they came. But to judge of what has been done on that plantation, you should have seen it as I saw it in '21. Sans Souci would have been the right name for it. Not that I liked it the less. I made none of these wise observations then. On the contrary, I was fresh from the study of dead antiquity, and was charmed to find that itwasn't dead at all. It must be admitted, there is a certain dignity in the leisurely ease of primitive peoples, past and present. They seem to think that what they are doing is just as important as what they may be going to do. We moderns and civilized talk a good deal about immortality; but those simple folks have a more vital sense of it: they seem to be conscious that there will be time enough for all they shall ever have to do in it. Old Judge Harvey was a sort of pristine man,—about as easy and indolent as the negroes themselves."
"He was, indeed, of the old type. Formerly, I believe, planters—at least the well-born and well-reputed—were content, if their estates yielded them the means of living generously and hospitably, without display or excessive luxury. They took life easily, and let their people do the same. I have heard that Judge Harvey moved off here, from one of the older Slave States, when the money-making mania came in, hoping to keep up for himself and his people the primitive régime they had grown up under. I believe he was no advocate of slavery."
"The only forcible thing about him was his dislike of it. He had the greatest compassion for the slave of any man I ever saw, and with the best reason, for he was one himself. He was as much the property of his worshippers as the Grand Lama.He always entertained the intention of emancipating himself. But there were legal forms to be gone through with. To encounter them required an immense moral force. His hundred tyrants were, of course, all as happy as clams, and had as little thought of a change of domicile. So there was nothing to stir him up, and there was never any more reason for acting to-day than there had been yesterday. I must do him the justice, however, to say that he made provision for his son's living in freedom, in case he should choose it. In spite of the loose way in which the estate was managed, it yielded, as of its own free will, a pretty fair income. The old man spent little, and so put by really a respectable sum, half of which was to be employed in securing an independence to his son, and the other half in compensating his natural proprietors for the loss of his valuable services. Shaler was not original: the scheme he carried out in the end was old Judge Harvey's exactly,—if, indeed, it was his, and not his daughter's. I always suspected that it originated in the head of that little girl. You know Shaler and she were own cousins. The abolition vein, they say, came down from a grandmother. At any rate, Judge Harvey's plan, as he detailed it to me, was to colonize his blacks in a Free State, each with a pretty little sum in his pocket for a nest egg. He had taken into his confidence—— No,there was no confidence about it; the Judge was as liberal of his thoughts as of everything else; there was not an urchin on the place that might not have known what was planning, for the fatigue of listening; but the gentle flow of the Judge's words was heard as the notes of the birds and the frogs were,—with a little more respect, perhaps, but with no more inquiry after meaning. He had taken, not as the confidant, then, but as the partner of his day-dreams, a man who governed his estate for him,—as far as it was governed,—one of the blackest negroes I ever saw, and one of the cleverest, by name Jasper."
"Jasper!" exclaimed Harry.
"He has fallen from his high estate,—a Belisarius, only not quite blind. It is really almost touching to see him feebly fussing round doing little odd jobs of work about the grounds where he was once monarch of all he surveyed. At the time I speak of he was in his glory. It was worth while to see him holding audience,—according or discarding petitions,—deciding between litigating parties,—pronouncing sentence on offenders, or bestowing public commendation on the performer of some praiseworthy act. He carried on the farm in a loose, Oriental sort of way,—letting the people eat, drink, and be merry, in the first place, and work as much as they found good for them, in the second. Withall this, he made the estate do more than pay for itself. It was he who carried the surplus up to Danesville to be invested. He was like the eldest servant in Abraham's house, who ruled over all that he had. Frank treated him with as much respect as, I dare say, Isaac did Eliezer. And I ought to mention that Jasper kept his master's son very handsomely supplied,—paid off his college debts too, without a wry look, though it must have come hard to subtract anything from the hoard. Our Jasper missed it in not having their schemes carried into effect when he might. He could have prevailed, as he did in regard to some other matters, by getting his master embarked in the preliminaries, and then persuading him that 'returning were as tedious as go o'er.' But possibly Jasper himself, having got the habit of power, did not like to lay it down; or perhaps he thought he must always have the store yet a little larger, seeing what Frank's wants were likely to be. And then it probably never occurred to him that a daughter could die before her father. At any rate, it was decided that the Judge should arrange the matter by will, things remaining as they were during his life. He never made a will, any more than he ever did anything else he meant to do. Did you know him?"
"I remember him only as a pale, exhausted oldman, drawn about in a garden-chair by Jasper, who was almost as sad and humble-looking then as he is now."
"It was already over with his reign and his projects. All was at an end when Constance died. Her father broke down at once and forever. She was his very soul. When I was there she was only thirteen, but she was art and part in all her father's plans,—if, indeed, they were not hers. If she had lived, they would have been carried out;—though, as far as that is concerned, I believe things are better as they are. But her brother was as much her subject as her father was. There was a force about that gentle, generous creature! It was a force like that of sunshine,—it subdued by delighting. You did not know Constance Harvey?"
"I have seen her at Colonel Shaler's."
"She recognized what her father did not,—the necessity of some preparation for freedom. The law against letters did not exist then, I believe; I remember them, the great and little, painted on boards and put up round a pretty arbor she called her school-house. I don't know whether her pupils ever mastered them or not; but what certainly did prosper was the class for singing, and that for recitation. I had not seen much of men and things then, and had not learned to distinguish the desirable and the practicable. Even I came under the illusionof the hour, and dreamed liberty, equality, and perfectibility with the best. Not that Constance talked about these fine things, but she had an innate faith in them of the sort that makes mole-hills of mountains. Even now, looking back on that diligent, confident child, I seem to feel the 'almost thou persuadest me.' Poor Constance! She died, at twenty-two, of overwork. She wore herself out in efforts to bring her poor barbarians up to the standard her imagination had set for them."
Constance Harvey had a spirit strong enough to have sustained a slighter frame than hers through all the fatigues necessary to the attainment of a great end. She died, not of her work, but of its frustration. She had all power with her father, except to overcome his inertness. To this, as years went on, other hindrances were added. Her brother married a fashionable woman and lived in Paris. His demands forbade the increase of the reserved fund, and soon began to encroach upon it. She urged her brother's return. He replied, that the delicacy of his wife's health made the climate of France necessary to her. His expenses increased, instead of lessening. Constance saw, coming nearer and nearer, a danger far more terrible to her than mere pecuniary embarrassment. She saw that her father must either exercise a courage that she had little hope of, or break his faith with Jasper,—withthe faithful people who had worked for them, or rather, as she viewed it, with them, for the accomplishment of a common object. One half of the fund she regarded as a deposit,—as a sacred trust. Until her brother's claims had exhausted the portion always intended to be his, she combated her anxieties, and kept up hope and effort. Through her genius and energy the income of the estate was increased, the expenses diminished, and yet the comforts of the work-people not curtailed. Jasper seconded her bravely. But the hour of dishonor came at last,—came hopeless, irretrievable. She struggled on a little while for her poor father's sake, and Jasper exerted himself strenuously for hers, stimulating the people to renewed industry by his warm appeals. Before, he had roused them with the hope of freedom and independent wealth; now, he urged them to rescue from ruin the generous master who had meant them so much good. But the demands from Paris increased as the means of supplying them diminished. Debt came, and in its train all the varied anguish which debt involves, where human souls are a marketable commodity. Let Dr. Borrow give you the outside of this story, now that you have the key to it.
"Frank and I were not much together after we got to Paris. Our worlds were different. Frank was going from ball to ball and from watering-placeto watering-place after Flora Westlake, until they were married, and then they followed the same round together. His father wrote to them to come home and live with him, so Frank told me, and I believe that was what he had expected to do; but Madame Harvey naturally preferred Paris to the World's End; so there they stayed,—Frank always meaning to go home the next year, for eight years. Their establishment, by the way, did Jasper great credit. Then he heard of his sister's death: they could not go home then; it would be too sad. But soon followed news of his father's illness: that started them. On the voyage to New York, he met with this Lenox, liked him, and engaged him for the place he has filled so satisfactorily. He judged wisely: Frank has an excellent head for organizing, but no faculty for administration. Once at home, he devoted himself to his plantation as his sister had done. I believe her example has had a great influence with him. But he has respected her practice more than her theories. He is content to take his people as they are, and to make them useful to themselves and to him. His father lived a few years, but did not meddle with anything. Frank has shown an ability and an energy that nobody expected of a man of leisure and of pleasure like him. Except a short visit to Europe, two summers ago, here he has been steady at his post for twelveyears through. His life here is not an hilarious one, for a man of his tastes; but, if doing one's duty is a reason for being happy, Frank Harvey has a right to be so. You think he looks sad, Harry. He does,—and older than his age; but I am afraid there is a nearer cause than you have found for it."
The Doctor sat silent for a few moments with contracted brows; then, throwing off his vexation with an effort, began again,—
"Frederic is expected home in a week or two. Perhaps we shall fall in with him somewhere on our road. I should like to see you together and hear you have a talk about slavery. He is as great a fanatic on one side as you are on the other."
"He was very far from upholding slavery when I knew him. At school he used to be indignant with Northern boys who defended it. He used to tell me terrible things he had himself known. The first thing I ever heard of Fred made me like him. A New-York boy, who made the passage to France with him, told me that there was on board the steamer a little mulatto whom some of the other boys teased and laughed at. Fred took his part, used to walk up and down the deck with him, and, when they landed, went up with him to the school he was going to in Havre."
"You were not on board?"
"No."
"Lucky for the mulatto, and for Fred Harvey, too, if he values your good opinion,—and he values everybody's. If you had taken the boy up, Fred would have put him down."
"I think not, then. I have heard that he has changed since I knew him."
"He has changed, if he ever admitted anything against slavery. When you see him, you can serve up to him some of his own stories."
"I would not do that; but, if he introduces the subject, I shall say what I think of slavery as plainly as ever I did."
"He certainly will introduce it. And he would not be at all embarrassed, if you were to cast up his old self to him. He would admit freely that in his green age he entertained crude opinions which time and experience have modified. You must be prepared to be overwhelmed with his learning, though. He is a great political economist,—as they all are, for that matter, down here. He almost stifled me with his citations, the last time I was in his company. When he was in Boston, about eight months ago, I asked him to dine. He exerted himself so powerfully to prove to me that slavery is the most satisfactory condition for ordinary human nature, and to persuade me in general of the wisdom, humanity, and Christian tendencies of 'Southern institutions,' that I determined not to invite himtoo often, for fear he should make an abolitionist of me.
"However, I gave half the blame to Shaler. His conduct was really a reflection upon his cousin Harvey, who had been something of a celebrity. The Harvey plantation was one of the sights of the State. Fred knew that his father's humanity made a part of his own prestige in Northern society. His filial piety took alarm. If Shaler's style of benevolence became the fashion, Harvey's would be obsolete. He must either follow the lead of another, and so take a secondary place, or count as one behind the times. Fred appreciated the position: it was a question of condemning or being condemned; of course there was no question. But all has gone to heart's wish. Shaler has passed out of mind, and Harvey's is still the model plantation."
"I should be glad to have nothing to find fault with in Fred but his dogmatism and his pedantry," the Doctor began again, lowering his voice. "After you left Paris, Harry, he fell in with intimates not so safe. He gives his father anxiety,—has, I very much fear, even embarrassed him by his extravagance."
Harry looked pained, but made no reply. The Doctor expected one, but having waited for it a moment in vain, went back to the dinner which had left so unfavorable an impression. He gave someexamples of Frederic's strain of argument, rather shallow, certainly, and, for so young a man, rather cold-blooded.
"I thought," Harry exclaimed at last, with emotion, "that I had always hated slavery as much as I could hate it; but, when I see what it has done to men whom I like,—whom I want to like,—when I see what it has done"——
"When you see what it has done to women?" asked the Doctor, as Harry hesitated to finish his sentence. "Ah, I understand. You are thinking of that garden scene."
The Doctor turned from Harry and addressed himself to me, taking up his narrative tone.
"You know we ought to have been here three days earlier. The delay was owing to that Orpheus escapade I told you of. It took us back to Omocqua, and, once there, we determined to give a day or two to Egerton, which we had missed before. The cave was no great affair, after those we had seen; and the wonderful flowers that grow there turned out a humbug, as I knew they would. However, Egerton proved to be something of a place, and who should be there but my friend Harvey himself, to whose plantation we were bound. He had his carriage, and proposed to take us down there with him. We accepted, excusing to ourselves the breach of our rule, in consideration of the gratuitoustramp we had taken between Omocqua and Tenpinville. We didn't start until afternoon, so it was rather late when we arrived. However, Madame received us charmingly, and we had a pleasant hour or two talking over the old times at Paris and Dieppe. Nobody else appeared that evening, and I didn't inquire after anybody: I knew Fred was away, and the other childrenwerechildren when I last heard of them.
"I had a room that looked on the garden. Harry was in early in the morning,—not too early for me. I was already some time dressed, had unscrewed my press, and was beginning to release my flowers, prizes of the day before. Harry knew better than to interrupt me, and I sat working away comfortably and leisurely while he stood at the open window. Without, not far off, an old man was dressing a border. The click, click, of his strokes, not very rapid and not very strong, made a pleasant accompaniment to the other pleasant sounds,—such as those of the birds, of the insects, and of a little unseen human swarm whose hum rose and fell at intervals. Suddenly, notes before which everything else seemed stilled to listen,—those of a clear, rich voice,—a woman's voice. It chanted a morning hymn. Every word was distinctly heard. The precision and purity of the tones told of careful training, and the simplicity of the delivery showed eitherhigh breeding or a fine artistic sense. Was the charm received through the ear to be heightened or dissolved by the eye? To judge whether there was anything worth getting up for, I looked at Harry. He had an expression—awe-struck shall I call it? Yes, but with a soft, delightful awe. I took my place beside him where he stood looking down into the garden, as James of Scotland looked down from the Tower, upon the fair vision flitting among the flowers, and wondered what name could be sweet enough to call it by,—only Harry was not wondering. It was I. 'Margarita!' he said, under his breath, and quickly, to prevent my question. And Margarita it ought to have been! All in white, soft white; fresh and cool as if a sea-shell had just opened to give her passage; her face of that lovely pallor which makes Northern roses seem rude. What two years could do, if this were little Maggie Harvey! The song was broken off abruptly, just when, recounting the blessings of the season, it had come to the opening flowers. The theme was continued, but the tone was changed. The poor old man, in spite of an immense pair of iron spectacles, with half a glass remaining in one of the eye-holes, had failed to distinguish a plant of price from the plebeian crowd that had shot up about it. There it lay on the ignoble heap, its wilted flowers witnessing against him! Behold our Maggie a Megæra!If half the promises she made the old offender were fulfilled, he never sinned again. But I don't believe they were:—