The reins of government thus fell into Everett's hands. "The poor Grays! it's all over with them!" said the pitying world. And, indeed, the way in which the young man proceeded to arrange his father's affairs savored no less of the Visionary than had every action of his life theretofore. Captain Gray, who hastened home from his gay quarters in Dublin, on the disastrous news reaching him, found his brother already deeply engaged with lawyers, bills, and deeds.
"You know, Richard, there is but one thing to be done," he said, in his usual simple, earnest way; "we must cut off the entail, and sell the property to pay my father's debts. It is a hard thing to do,—to part with the old place; but it would be worse, bitterer pain and crueler shame, to hold it, with the money that, whatever the worldly code of morality may say, is notours. There must be no widows and orphans reduced to poverty through us. Thank God, there will be enough produced by the sale of the estate to clear off every liability,—to the last shilling. You feel with me in this matter?" he went on, confidently appealing to his brother; yet with a certain inflection of anxiety in his voice. It would have wounded Everett cruelly, had he been misunderstood or rebuffed in this. "You have your commission, and Uncle Everett's legacy, and the reversion of my mother's fortune, which will not be touched. This act of justice, therefore, can injure no one."
"Except yourself,—yourself, old fellow," said Richard, moved, in spite of his light nature. He grasped his brother's hand. "It's a noble thing to do; but have you considered how it will affect your future? You, with neither fortune nor profession,—how do you propose to live? And your marriage,—the Beauchamps will never consent to Rosa becoming the wife of a—a"——
"Not a beggar, Richard," Everett said, smiling, "if that was the word you hesitated about; no, I shall be no beggar. I have plans for my own future;—you shall know of them. Our marriage will, of course, be delayed. I must work, to win a home and position for my wife." He paused,—looked up bravely,—"It is no harder fate than falls to most men. And for Rosa,—true love, true woman as she is, she helps me, she encourages me in all I do and purpose."
Captain Gray shrugged his shoulders. "Two mad young people!" he thought to himself. "They never think of consequences, and it's of no use warning them, I suppose."
No. It would have been useless to "warn" or advise Everett against doing this thing, which he held to be simply his duty. And it was the characteristic of our Visionary, that, when he saw a Duty so placed before him, he knew no other course than straightly to pursue it, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, unprevented by obstacles, and fearless of consequences.
So in this case. His brother advised a temporizing course,—to mortgage the estate, for instance, and pay a moiety of the debts. It was surely all that could be expected from a man who had not actually incurred them. And then he might still be the nominal owner of Hazlewood,—he might still marry Rosa.
"While, if you do as you propose," argued the Captain, "(and you know, of course, old fellow, I fully appreciate your noble and honorable feeling in the matter,) you ruin your own hopes; and I can't see that a fellow is called upon to dothat, as a point of filial duty. What are you to do? that's the thing. It isn't as though you had anything to fall back upon, by Jove! It's a case of beggaring yourself"——
"Instead of beggaring other people," Everett said. "No, Richard,—I cannot see either the justice or the wisdom of what you propose. I will not cast the burden on other shoulders. As my father's representative, I must abide the penalty of his mistake,—and I only. I cannot rest while our name is as the catchword of ruin and misery to thousandsaround us, less able to bear both, perhaps, than I, who am young and strong,—able to work both with head and hands."
"But think of Rosa!" said his brother. "How do you get overthat? Isn't her happiness worth some consideration?"
"It has been my thought, night and day, ever since," Everett said, in a low voice. "It has come between me and what I felt to be the Right, more than once. You don't know what that thought has been, or you would not challenge it against me now."
"Well, well,—I only want you to look on all sides of what you are about to do, and to count the cost beforehand."
Everett smiled quietly. As if "the cost" were not already counted, felt, and suffered in that deep heart of his! But he said nothing.
"In the next place, what do you propose to do?" pursued his brother. "Will you enter a profession? Can't say you're much adapted for a lawyer; and perhaps you're too tender-hearted for a doctor, either. But I remember, as a boy, you always said you should like to be a clergyman. And, by Jove! when one comes to think of it, you've a good deal of the cut of the village priest about you. What do you say to that?"
"Nothing. I have other plans." And Everett proceeded briefly to tell him these. He had heard from Charles Barclay, now high in the confidence of one of the leading mercantile firms of Montreal; and through him, he had obtained the offer of an appointment in the same house.
Richard Gray listened to all this, with ill-concealed amusement twitching the corners of his mouth. He thought the idea of his brother's turning man-of-business one of the "richest" he had ever heard.
"With your hard head and shrewd notions, I should say you were likely to make a sensation in the mercantile world," he observed. "It's a hopeful scheme, altogether. Oh, hang it!" proceeding from sarcasm to remonstrance, "that'll never do, Everett! You'll be getting into some precious scrape or other. You're not the fellow for a merchant's office, trust me. Now something in the way of a government appointment is much more like it. A pleasant, poetical sort of sinecure,—there are lots of them to be had. You just trundle down for an hour or two every day, write letters, or poems, or whatever you like, with the official stationery, and receive your salary quarterly. Youcan'tdo any mischief in a place like that. Now that's the sort of thing for you,—if one could get hold of some of those fellows in power. Why!" brightening with the sudden dash of an idea, "there are the Beauchamps themselves! They've a legion of influential relatives. Couldn't they get you into a snug berth? Oh, the Devil!"—for Everett's look was not to be mistaken,—"if you bring your high-flown ideas of dignity and independence into this plain, practical question of subsistence, it's all up with you. Do you mean to tell me that you seriously think of this Canada scheme?"
Everett assented.
"Have you informed Lady Beauchamp of your intention of becoming a merchant's clerk? I should like to see her face when you tell her; she's such a shrewd old soul; and when a womandoestake to the sharp and worldly style of thing, it's the very deuse! Expect no indulgence in that quarter."
"I don't ask it. Rosa, of course, cannot become my wife till I am able to give her a worthy home. Her mother will not wish to cancel our engagement in the mean time."
"The deuse she won't! Trust her!" the consolatory brother rejoined. "Why, it will be her first natural step. The idea of her daughter betrothed to a merchant's clerk is preposterous on the face of it. You yourself must seethat."
"No, I don't," Everett said, smiling.
"Oh, I suppose you intend to make a large fortune in a twelvemonth, and then return and marry?"
"No,—but in ten years,—less thanthat, God helping me,—if I live, I will return and marry Rosa."
"You don't say so? And poor little Rosa is to wait patiently for you all that time! By Jove! a modest expectation of yours! It's a likely notion that Miss Beauchamp will remain unmarried for ten years, because you choose to go to Canada."
"She will never marry, if she does not marry me," Everett said, with simple gravity. "It is not alone the outward sacrament of marriage that sanctifies a union. The diviner and more vital consecration that binds us together, it is too late, now, to seek to undo."
"Oh, hang it! It's of no use talking poetry tome. I don't understand that sort of thing," Captain Gray frankly said. "I'll tell you what,—it'll never do to take those transcendental ideas with you into the world. All very well to poetize and maunder about in quiet Hazlewood; but, by Jove! you'll find it won't do in practical life. Take my word for it, if you go to Canada, long before the ten years are out, Rosa Beauchamp will be wooed and won over again. 'Tisn't in nature that it should be otherwise. In books, very likely, those sort of things happen often enough,—but not in real life, my dear fellow, I assure you. When you return, it will be to find her a thriving matron, doing the honors of one of the neighboring mansions. Make up your mind tothat. Foresee your future, before you decide."
Everett smiled, sadly, but trustfully. His brother's arguments neither persuaded nor disturbed him. He stood very quiet and thoughtful. Visionary-like, he saw pictures of the future, indeed,—but very different from the one just drawn. He was not afraid.
And Captain Gray left him unconvinced and unmoved. It was not probable the two brothers would see this matter in the same light. They stood on different levels. They must be content to differ.
The next conference on the subject was between Everett and Lady Beauchamp; and the mother of Rosa was, it must be admitted, a rather formidable person to encounter in such wise. She was a busy, clever, worldly woman,—kind-hearted, too, and with both a strong will and strong affections. She was one of those people in whom even an astute observer might often be deceived, by failing to give her credit for certain good qualities which are commonly coexistent with worldliness,—especially in a woman. There was a spice of something better latent amid her shrewdness and hard-headed sagacity; the echo of more generous aspirations lingered through all the noise of this earth's Babel in her heart. And so, when she heard of Everett's resolve to pay his father's debts by parting with the property, her better and higher nature warmed to the young man; and though she protested against his Quixotism, and frowned, and talked of prudence, and so forth, her busy brain was, in fact, all the while setting itself to work for his benefit. She was, in a way, fond of the young man. No woman is quite insensible to that chivalrous deference which a Visionary like Everett always manifests to womanhood, collective and individual. And though she certainly held him to be rash, foolish, unfit to deal with the world, "poetical," (a capital crime in her eyes,) and dreamy, she yet liked him, and was glad to discover a plan whereby the objections to his marriage with her daughter, under the present adverse circumstances, might be smoothed away.
She was sitting at her big desk, strewn with accounts, in the sober-looking library where she always spent her mornings, and she rose to receive her prospective son-in-law, with an aspect serious and business-like, yet not stern.
"Well, my dear Everett, what is all this that I hear about you? A very, very sad affair, of course; but you must come and tell me how you intend to act. Yes, yes,—I've heard something about it; but I don't quite understand the state of the case. I want to have a talk with you."
And she leaned her comely face upon her plump, white hand, while gravely listening to Everett's brief statement of what he had already done, and what were his plans for the future.
"You will sell Hazlewood, pay your father's debts, and begin life on your own account, by going to Canada and becoming a merchant's clerk!" She then recapitulated his plans in a sharp, pitiless tone. "Very well! and we have only to bid you good-bye and wish you success. Is it so? For it appears to me that my daughter is left entirely out of your calculations, and very properly so. You cannot, as a merchant's clerk on a hundred a year, marry Rosa Beauchamp, I presume."
"No," Everett said, steadily, and holding her, as it were, with his earnest eyes, "I cannot have Rosa for my wife till I am able to give her a home worthy of her; but you will not refuse to sanction our engagement during the years in which I shall work for that home?"
Lady Beauchamp tapped the table with her fingers in an ominous manner.
"Long engagements are most unsatisfactory, silly, not to say dangerous things. They never end well. No man ought to wish so to bind a young girl, unless he has a reasonable chance of soon being in a position to marry her. Now I ask you, haveyousuch a chance? If you go to Canada, it may be years before you return. Just look at the thing in a common-sense light, and tell me, can you expect my daughter to wait an indefinite time, while you go to seek and make your fortune?"
She looked at him with an air of bland candor, while thus appealing to his "common sense." Everett's aspect remained unchanged, however, in its calm steadfastness.
"I would not bind her," he said, "unless she herself felt it would be a comfort and a help, in some sort, during the weary years of separation, so to be bound. And that she does feel it, you know, Lady Beauchamp."
"My dear Sir, you are not talking reasonably," she rejoined, impatiently. "A young girl like Rosa, in love for the first time, of course wishes to be bound, as you say, to the object of her first love. But it would be doing her a cruel injustice to take her at her word. Surely you feel that? It is very true, she might not forget you for six months, or more, perhaps. But, in the course of time, as she enters on life and sees more of the world and of people, it is simply impossible that she should remain constant to a dreamy attachment to some one thousands of miles away. She would inevitably wish to form other ties; and then the engagement that she desires to-day would be the blight and burden of her life. No. I say it is a cruel injustice to let young people decide for themselves on such a point. Half the misery in the world springs from these mistakes. Think over the matter coolly, and you will see it as I do."
"It is you who do Rosa injustice," Everett answered, and paused. "Were it to be as you wish," he added, "and we to separate utterly, with no outwardly acknowledged tie to link us, no letters to pass between us, no word or sign from one to the other during all the coming years,—suppose it so,—you would shadow our lives with much unnecessary misery; but you are mistaken, if you think you would really part us. You do not understand."
"Nonsense! You talk like a young man in love. Youmustbe reasonable."
Lady Beauchamp, by this time, had worked herself into the usual warmth with which she argued all questions, great and small, and forgot that her original intention in speaking to Everett had only been to set before him the disadvantages of his plans, in order that her own might come to the rescue with still greater brilliancy and effect.
"Youmustbe reasonable," she repeated. "You don't suppose I have not my child's happiness at heart in all I plan and purpose? Trust me, I have had more experience of life than either of you, and it is for me to interpose between you and the dangers you would blindlyrush upon. Some day you will both thank me for having done so, hard and cruel as you may think me now."
"No, I do not think you either hard or cruel. You aremistaken, simply. I believe you desire our happiness. I do not reproach or blame you, Lady Beauchamp," Everett said, sadly.
"Come, come," she cried, touched by his look and manner to an immediate unfolding of her scheme, "let us look at things again. Perhaps we shall not find them so hopeless as they look. If I am prudent, Everett, I am not mercenary. I only want to see Rosa happy. I don't care whether it is on hundreds a year, or thousands. And the fact is, I have not condemned your plans without having a more satisfactory one to offer to your choice. Listen to me."
And she proceeded, with a cleared brow, and the complacency of one who feels she is performing the part of a good genius, setting everything to rights, and making everybody comfortable, to unfold the planshehad devised, by which Everett's future was to be secured, and his marriage with Rosa looked to as something better than a misty uncertainty at the end of a vista of years.
Everett must go into the Church. That was, in fact, the profession most suited to him, and which most naturally offered itself for his acceptance. His education, his tastes, his habits, all suited him for such a career. By a happy coincidence, too, it was one in which Lady Beauchamp could most importantly assist him through her connections. Her eldest son, the young baronet, had preferment in his own gift, which was to say, in hers; and not only this, but her sister's husband, the uncle of Rosa, was a bishop, and one over whom she, Lady Beauchamp, had some influence. Once in orders, Everett's prosperity was assured. The present incumbent of Hollingsley was aged; by the time Everett was eligible, he might, in all probability, be inducted into that living, and Rosa might then become his wife. Five hundred a year, beside Miss Beauchamp's dowry, with such shining prospects of preferment to look forward to, was not an unwise commencement; for Rosa was no mere fine lady, the proud mother said,—she was sensible and prudent; she would adapt herself to circumstances. And though, of course, it was not such an establishment as she well might expect for her daughter, still, since the young people loved one another, and thought they could be happy under these reduced circumstances, she would not be too exacting. And Lady Beauchamp at last paused, and looked in Everett's face for some manifestation of his joy.
Well,—of his gratitude there could be no question. The tears stood in his earnest eyes, as he took Lady Beauchamp's hand and thanked her,—thanked her again and again.
"There, there, you foolish boy! I don't want thanks," cried she, coloring with pleasure though, as she spoke. "My only wish is to see you two children happy. Iamfond of you, Everett; I shall like to see you my son," she said. "I have tried to smooth the way for you, as far as I can, over the many difficulties that obstruct it; and I fancy I have succeeded. What do you say to my plan? When can you be ordained?"
Everett sighed, as he released her hand, and looked at her face, now flushed with generous, kindly warmth. Well he knew the bitter change that would come over that face,—the passion of disappointment and displeasure which would follow his answer to that question.
He could never enter the Church. Sorrowfully, but firmly, he said it,—with that calm, steady voice and look, of which all who knew him knew the significance. He could not take orders.
Lady Beauchamp, at first utterly overwhelmed and dumfounded, stood staring at him in blank silence. Then she icily uttered a few words. His reasons,—might she ask?
They were many, Everett said. Even if no other hindrance existed, in his own mind and opinions, his reverence for so sacred an office would not permit himto embrace it as a mere matter of worldly advantage to himself.
"Grant me patience, young man! Do you mean to tell me you would decline this career because it promises to put an end to your difficulties? Are youquitea fool?" the lady burst out, astonishment and anger quite startling her from all control.
"Bear with what may at first seem to you only folly," Everett answered her, gently. "I don't think your calmer judgment can call it so. Would you have me take upon myself obligations that I feel to be most solemn and most vital, feeling myself unfitted, nay, unable, rightly to fulfil them? Would you have me commit the treachery to God and man of swearing that I felt called to that special service, when my heart protested against my profession?"
"Romantic nonsense! A mere matter of modest scruples! You underrate yourself, Everett. You are the very man for a clergyman, trust me."
But Everett went on to explain, that it was no question of under-estimation of himself.
"You do not know, perhaps," he proceeded, while Lady Beauchamp, sorely tried, tapped her fingers on the table, and her foot upon the floor,—"you do not know, that, when I was a boy, and until two or three years ago, my desire and ambition were to be a minister of the Church of England."
"Well, Sir,—what has made you so much better, or so much worse, since then, as to alter your opinion of the calling?"
"The reasons which made me abandon the idea three years since, and which render it impossible for me to consider it now, have nothing to do with my mental and moral worthiness or unworthiness. The fact is simply, I cannot become a minister of a Church with many of whose doctrines I cannot agree, and to which, indeed, I can no longer say I belong. In your sense of the word, I am far from being a Churchman."
"Do you mean to say you have become a Dissenter?" cried Lady Beauchamp; and, as if arrived at the climax of endurance, she stood transfixed, regarding the young man with a species of sublime horror.
"Again, not in your sense of the term," Everett said, smiling; "for I have joined no sect, attached myself to no recognized body of believers."
"You belong to nothing, then? You believe in nothing, I suppose?" she said, with the instinctive logic of her class. "Oh, Everett!" real distress for the moment overpowering her indignation, "it is those visionary notions of yours that have brought you to this. It was to be expected. You poets and dreamers go on refining your ideas, forsooth, till even the religion of the ordinary world isn't good enough for you."
Everett waited patiently till this first gust had passed by. Then, with that steady, calm lucidity which, strange to say, was characteristic of this Visionary's mind and intellect, he explained, so far as he could, his views and his reasons. It could not be expected that his listener should comprehend or enter into what he said. At first, indeed, she appeared to derive some small consolation from the fact that at least Everett had not "turned Dissenter." She hated Methodists, she declared,—intending thus to include with sweeping liberality all denominations in the ban of her disapproval. She would have deemed it an unpardonable crime, had the young man deserted the Church of his fathers in order to join the Congregation, some ranting conventicle. But if her respectability was shocked at the idea of his becoming a Methodist, her better feelings were outraged when she found, as she said, that he "belonged to nothing." She viewed with dislike and distrust all forms of religion that differed from her own; but she could not believe in the possibility of a religion that had no external form at all. She was dismayed and perplexed, poor lady! and even paused midway in her wrathful remonstrance to the misguided young man, to lament anew over his fatal errors. She could not understand, she said, trulyenough, what in the world he meant. His notions were perfectly extraordinary and incomprehensible. She was deeply, deeply shocked, and grieved for him, and for every one connected with him.
In fact, the very earnestness and sincerity in their own opinions of a certain calibre of minds make them incapable of understanding such a state of things. That a man should believe differently from all they have been taught to believe appears to them as simply preposterous as that he should breathe differently. And so it is that only the highest order of belief can afford to be tolerant; and, as extremes meet, it requires a very perfect Faith to be able to sympathize and bear patiently with Doubt.
There was no chance of Lady Beauchamp's "comprehending" Everett in this matter. There was something almost pathetic in her mingled anger, perplexity, and disappointment. She could only look on him as a headstrong young man, suicidally bent on his own ruin,—turning obstinately from every offered aid, and putting the last climax of wretchedness to his isolated and fallen position by "turning from the faith of his fathers," as she rather imaginatively described his secession from Orthodoxy.
And, as may be concluded, the mother of Rosa was inexorable, as regarded the engagement between the young people. It must at once be cancelled. She could not for one moment suffer the idea of her daughter's remaining betrothed to the mere adventurer she considered Everett Gray had now become. If, poor as he was, he had thought fit to embrace a profession worthy of a gentleman, the case would have been different. But if his romantic notions led him to pursue such an out-of-the-way course as he had laid out for himself, he must excuse her, if she forbade her child from sharing it. Under present circumstances, his alliance could but be declined by the Beauchamp family, she said, with her stateliest air. And the next minute, as Everett held her hand, and said good-bye, she melted again from that frigid dignity, and, looking into the frank, manly, yet gentle face of the young man, cried,—
"Are youquitedecided, Everett? Will you take time to consider? Will you talk to Rosa about it, first?"
"No, dear Lady Beauchamp. I know already what she would say. I have quite decided. Thank you for all your purposed kindness. Believe that I am not ungrateful, even if I seem so."
"Oh, Everett,—Everett Gray! I am very sorry for you, and for your mother, and for all connected with you. It is a most unhappy business. It gives me great pain thus to part with you," said Lady Beauchamp, with real feeling.
And so the interview ended, and so ended the engagement.
Nothing else could have been expected, every one said who heard the state of the case, and knew what Lady Beauchamp had wished and Everett had declined. There were no words to describe how foolishly and weakly he had acted. "Everybody" quite gave him up now. With his romantic, transcendental notions, whatwouldbecome of him, when he had his own way to make in the world?
But Everett had consolation and help through it all; for Rosa, the woman he loved, his mother, and his sister believed in him, and gloried in what other people called his want of common sense. Ay, though the horrible wrench of parting was suffered by Rosa every minute of every day, and the shadow of that dreadful, unnatural separation began to blacken her life even before it actually fell upon her,—through it all, she never wavered. When he first told her that he must go, that it was the one thing he held it wise and right to do, she shrunk back affrighted, trembling at the coming blankness of a life without him. But after a while, seeing the misery that came intohisface reflected from hers, she rose bravely above the terrible woe, and then, with her arms round him and her eyes looking steadfastly into his, she said, "I love you better than the life you are to me. So I can bear that you should go."
And he said, "There can be no real severance between those who love as we do. God, in His mercy and tenderness, will help us to feel that truth, every hour and every day."
For they believed thus,—these two young Visionaries,—and lived upon that belief, perhaps, when the time of parting came. And it may be that the thought of each was very constantly, very intimately present to the other, during the many years that followed. It may be that this species of mental atmosphere, so surrounding and commingling with all other things more visibly and palpably about them,didcause these dreamers to be happier in their love than many externally united ones, whose lot appears to us most fair and smooth and blissful. Time and distance, leagues of ocean and years of suspense, are not the most terrible things that can come between two people who love one another.
And so Everett Gray, his mother, and his sister, went to Canada. A year after, Agnes was married to Charles Barclay, then a thriving merchant in Montreal. When the people at home heard of this, they very wisely acknowledged "how much good there had been in that young man, in spite of his rashness and folly in early days. No fear about such a man's getting on in life, when once he gave his mind to it," and so forth.
Meanwhile, our Visionary——But what need is there to trace him, step by step, in the new life he doubtless found fully as arduous as he had anticipated? That it was a very struggling, difficult, and uncongenial life to him can be well understood. These reminiscences of Everett Gray relate to a long past time. We can look on his life now as almost complete and finished, and regard his past as those in the valley look up to the hill that has nothing between it and heaven.
Many years he remained in Canada, working hard. Tidings occasionally reached England of his progress. Rosa, perhaps, heard such at rare intervals,—though somewhat distorted, it may be, from their original tenor, before they reached her. But it appeared certain that he was "getting on." In defiance and utter contradiction of all the sapient predictions there anent, it seemed that this dreamy, poetizing Everett Gray was absolutely successful in his new vocation of man-of-business.
The news that he had become a partner in the firm he had entered as a clerk was communicated in a letter from himself to Lady Beauchamp. In it he, for the first time since his departure, spoke of Rosa; but he spoke of her as if they had parted but yesterday; and, in asking her mother's sanction to their betrothalnow, urged, as from them both, their claim to have that boon granted at last.
Lady Beauchamp hastily questioned her daughter.
"You must have been corresponding with the young man all this time?" she said.
But Rosa's denial was not to be mistaken.
"He has heard of you, then, through some one," the practical lady went on; "or, for anything he knows, you may be married, or going to be married, instead of waiting for him, as he seems to take it for granted you have been all this time."
"He was right, mother," Rosa only said.
"Right, you foolish girl? You haven't half the spirit I had at your age. I would have scorned that it should have been said ofmethat I 'waited' for any man."
"But if you loved him?"
"Well, if he lovedyou, he should have taken more care than to leave you on such a Quixotic search for independence as his."
"He thought it right to go, and he trusted me; we had faith in one another," Rosa said; and she wound her arms round her mother, and looked into her face with eyes lustrous with happy tears. For, from that lady's tone and manner, despite her harsh words, she knew thatthe opposition was withdrawn, and that Everett's petition was granted.
They were married. It is years ago, now, since their wedding-bells rung out from the church-tower of Hazlewood, blending with the sweet spring-air and sunshine of a joyous May-day. The first few years of their married life were spent in Canada. Then they returned to England, and Everett Gray put the climax to the astonishment of all who knew him by purchasing back a great part of Hazlewood with the fruits of his commercial labors in the other country.
At Hazlewood they settled, therefore. And there, when he grew to be an old man, Everett Gray lived, at last, the peaceful, happy life most natural and most dear to him. No one would venture to call the successful merchant a Visionary; and even his brother owns that "the old fellow has got more brains, after all, by Jove! than he ever gave him credit for." Yet, as the same critic, and others of his calibre, often say of him, "He has some remarkably queer notions. There's no making him out,—he is so different from other people."
Which he is. There is no denying this fact, which is equally evident in his daily life, his education of his children, his conduct to his servants and dependants, his employment of time, his favorite aims in life, and in everything he does or says, in brief. And of course there are plenty who cavil at his peculiar views, and who cannot at all understand his unconventional ways, and his apparent want of all worldly wisdom in the general conduct of his affairs. And yet, somehow, these affairs prosper. Although he declined a valuable appointment for his son, and preferred that he should make his own way in the profession he had chosen, bound by no obligation, and unfettered by the trammels of any party,—although he did this, to the astonishment of all who didnotknow him, yet is it not a fact that the young barrister's career has been, and is, as brilliant and successful as though he had had a dozen influential personages to advance him? And though he permitted his daughter to marry, not the rich squire's son, nor the baronet, who each sought her hand, but a man comparatively poor and unknown, who loved her, and whom she loved, did it not turn out to be one of those marriages that we can recognize to have been "made in heaven," and even the worldly-wise see to be happy and prosperous?
But our Everett is growing old. His hair is silver-white, and his tall figure has learned to droop somewhat as he walks. Under the great beech-trees at Hazlewood you may have seen him sitting summer evenings, or sauntering in spring and autumn days, sometimes with his grandchildren playing about him, but always withonefigure near him, bent and bowed yet more than his own, with a still sweet and lovely face looking placidly forth from between its bands of soft, white hair.
How they have loved, and do love one another, even to this their old age! All the best and truest light of that which we call Romance shines steadily about them yet. No sight so dear to Everett's eyes as that quiet figure,—no sound so welcome to his ears as her voice. She is all to him that she ever was,—the sweetest, dearest, best portion of that which we call his life.
Yes, I speak advisedly, and say heis, theyare. It is strange that this Visionary, who was wont to be reproached with the unpracticality of all he did or purposed, the unreality of whose life was a byword, should yet impress himself and his existence so vividly on those about him that even now we cannot speak of him as one that isno more. He seems still to be of us, though we do not see him, and his place is empty in the world.
His wife went first. She died in her sleep, while he was watching her, holding her hand fast in his. He laid the last kisses on her eyes, her mouth, and those cold hands.
After that, he seemedto wait. They who saw him sittingaloneunder the beech-trees, day by day, found somethingvery strangely moving in the patient serenity of his look. He never seemed sad or lonely through all that time,—only patiently hopeful, placidly expectant. So the autumn twilights often came to him as he stood, his face towards the west, looking out from their old favorite spot.
One evening, when his daughter and her husband came out to him, he did not linger, as was usual with him, but turned and went forward to meet them, with a bright smile, brighter than the sunset glow behind him, on his face. He leaned rather heavily on their supporting arms, as they went in. At the door, the little ones came running about him, as they loved to do. Perhaps the very lustre of his face awed them, or the sight of their mother's tears; for a sort of hush came over them, even to the youngest, as he kissed and blessed them all.
And then, when they had left the room, he laid his head upon his daughter's breast, and uttered a few low words. He had been so happy, he said, and he thanked God for all,—even to this, the end. It had been so good to live!—it was so happy to die! Then he paused awhile, and closed his eyes.
"In the silence, I can hear your mother's voice," he murmured, and he clasped his hands. "O thou most merciful Father, who givest this last, great blessing, of the new Home, where she waits for me!—and God's love is over all His worlds!"
He looked up once again, with the same bright, assured smile. That smile never faded from the dead face; it was the last look which they who loved him bore forever in their memory.
And so passed our Visionary from that which we call Life.
Raze these long blocks of brick and stone,These huge mill-monsters overgrown;Blot out the humbler piles as well,Where, moved like living shuttles, dwellThe weaving genii of the bell;Tear from the wild Cocheco's trackThe dams that hold its torrents back;And let the loud-rejoicing fallPlunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;And let the Indian's paddle playOn the unbridged Piscataqua!Wide over hill and valley spreadOnce more the forest, dusk and dread,With here and there a clearing cutFrom the walled shadows round it shut;Each with its farm-house builded rude,By English yeoman squared and hewed,And the grim, flankered blockhouse, boundWith bristling palisades around.So, haply, shall before thine eyesThe dusty veil of centuries rise,The old, strange scenery overlayThe tamer pictures of to-day,While, like the actors in a play,Pass in their ancient guise alongThe figures of my border song:What time beside Cocheco's floodThe white man and the red man stood,With words of peace and brotherhood;When passed the sacred calumetFrom lip to lip with fire-draught wet,And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smokeThrough the gray beard of Waldron broke,And Squando's voice, in suppliant pleaFor mercy, struck the haughty keyOf one who held in any fateHis native pride inviolate!* * * *"Let your ears be opened wide!He who speaks has never lied.Waldron of Piscataqua,Hear what Squando has to say!"Squando shuts his eyes and sees,Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.In his wigwam, still as stone,Sits a woman all alone,"Wampum beads and birchen strandsDropping from her careless hands,Listening ever for the fleetPatter of a dead child's feet!"When the moon a year agoTold the flowers the time to blow,In that lonely wigwam smiledMenewee, our little child."Ere that moon grew thin and old,He was lying still and cold;Sent before us, weak and small,When the Master did not call!"On his little grave I lay;Three times went and came the day;Thrice above me blazed the noon,Thrice upon me wept the moon."In the third night-watch I heard,Far and low, a spirit-bird;Very mournful, very wild,Sang the totem of my child."'Menewee, poor Menewee,Walks a path he cannot see:Let the white man's wigwam lightWith its blaze his steps aright."'All-uncalled, he dares not showEmpty hands to Manito:Better gifts he cannot bearThan the scalps his slayers wear.'"All the while the totem sang,Lightning blazed and thunder rang;And a black cloud, reaching high,Pulled the white moon from the sky."I, the medicine-man, whose earAll that spirits hear can hear,—I, whose eyes are wide to seeAll the things that are to be,—"Well I knew the dreadful signsIn the whispers of the pines,In the river roaring loud,In the mutter of the cloud."At the breaking of the day,From the grave I passed away;Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad,But my heart was hot and mad."There is rust on Squando's knifeFrom the warm red springs of life;On the funeral hemlock-treesMany a scalp the totem sees."Blood for blood! But evermoreSquando's heart is sad and sore;And his poor squaw waits at homeFor the feet that never come!"Waldron of Cocheco, hear!Squando speaks, who laughs at fear:Take the captives he has ta'en;Let the land have peace again!"As the words died on his tongue,Wide apart his warriors swung;Parted, at the sign he gave,Right and left, like Egypt's wave.And, like Israel passing freeThrough the prophet-charmèd sea,Captive mother, wife, and childThrough the dusky terror filed.One alone, a little maid,Middleway her steps delayed,Glancing, with quick, troubled sight,Round about from red to white.Then his hand the Indian laidOn the little maiden's head,Lightly from her forehead fairSmoothing back her yellow hair."Gift or favor ask I none;What I have is all my own:Never yet the birds have sung,'Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'"Yet, for her who waits at homeFor the dead who cannot come,Let the little Gold-hair beIn the place of Menewee!"Mishanock, my little star!Come to Saco's pines afar!Where the sad one waits at home,Wequashim, my moonlight, come!""What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a childChristian-born to heathens wild?As God lives, from Satan's handI will pluck her as a brand!""Hear me, white man!" Squando cried,"Let the little one decide.Wequashim, my moonlight, say,Wilt thou go with me, or stay?"Slowly, sadly, half-afraid,Half-regretfully, the maidOwned the ties of blood and race,Turned from Squando's pleading face.Not a word the Indian spoke,But his wampum chain he broke,And the beaded wonder hungOn that neck so fair and young.Silence-shod, as phantoms seemIn the marches of a dream,Single-filed, the grim arrayThrough the pine-trees wound away.Doubting, trembling, sore amazed,Through her tears the young child gazed."God preserve her!" Waldron said;"Satan hath bewitched the maid!"* * * *Years went and came. At close of daySinging came a child from play,Tossing from her loose-locked headGold in sunshine, brown in shade.Pride was in the mother's look,But her head she gravely shook,And with lips that fondly smiledFeigned to chide her truant child.Unabashed the maid began:"Up and down the brook I ran,Where, beneath the bank so steep,Lie the spotted trout asleep."'Chip!' went squirrel on the wall,After me I heard him call,And the cat-bird on the treeTried his best to mimic me."Where the hemlocks grew so dark,That I stopped to look and hark,On a log, with feather-hat,By the path, an Indian sat."Then I cried, and ran away;But he called and bade me stay;And his voice was good and mildAs my mother's to her child."And he took my wampum chain,Looked and looked it o'er again;Gave me berries, and, beside,On my neck a plaything tied."Straight the mother stooped to seeWhat the Indian's gift might be.On the braid of wampum hung,Lo! a cross of silver swung.Well she knew its graven sign,Squando's bird and totem pine;And, a mirage of the brain,Flowed her childhood back again.Flashed the roof the sunshine through,Into space the walls outgrew,On the Indian's wigwam matBlossom-crowned again she sat.Cool she felt the west wind blow,In her ear the pines sang low,And, like links from out a chain,Dropped the years of care and pain.From the outward toil and din,From the griefs that gnaw within,To the freedom of the woodsCalled the birds and winds and floods.Well, O painful minister,Watch thy flock, but blame not her,If her ear grew sharp to hearAll their voices whispering near.Blame her not, as to her soulAll the desert's glamour stole,That a tear for childhood's lossDropped upon the Indian's cross.When, that night, the Book was read,And she bowed her widowed head,And a prayer for each loved nameRose like incense from a flame,To the listening ear of Heaven,Lo! another name was given:"Father! give the Indian rest!Bless him! for his love has blest!"
Raze these long blocks of brick and stone,These huge mill-monsters overgrown;Blot out the humbler piles as well,Where, moved like living shuttles, dwellThe weaving genii of the bell;Tear from the wild Cocheco's trackThe dams that hold its torrents back;And let the loud-rejoicing fallPlunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;And let the Indian's paddle playOn the unbridged Piscataqua!Wide over hill and valley spreadOnce more the forest, dusk and dread,With here and there a clearing cutFrom the walled shadows round it shut;Each with its farm-house builded rude,By English yeoman squared and hewed,And the grim, flankered blockhouse, boundWith bristling palisades around.
So, haply, shall before thine eyesThe dusty veil of centuries rise,The old, strange scenery overlayThe tamer pictures of to-day,While, like the actors in a play,Pass in their ancient guise alongThe figures of my border song:What time beside Cocheco's floodThe white man and the red man stood,With words of peace and brotherhood;When passed the sacred calumetFrom lip to lip with fire-draught wet,And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smokeThrough the gray beard of Waldron broke,And Squando's voice, in suppliant pleaFor mercy, struck the haughty keyOf one who held in any fateHis native pride inviolate!
* * * *
"Let your ears be opened wide!He who speaks has never lied.Waldron of Piscataqua,Hear what Squando has to say!
"Squando shuts his eyes and sees,Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.In his wigwam, still as stone,Sits a woman all alone,
"Wampum beads and birchen strandsDropping from her careless hands,Listening ever for the fleetPatter of a dead child's feet!
"When the moon a year agoTold the flowers the time to blow,In that lonely wigwam smiledMenewee, our little child.
"Ere that moon grew thin and old,He was lying still and cold;Sent before us, weak and small,When the Master did not call!
"On his little grave I lay;Three times went and came the day;Thrice above me blazed the noon,Thrice upon me wept the moon.
"In the third night-watch I heard,Far and low, a spirit-bird;Very mournful, very wild,Sang the totem of my child.
"'Menewee, poor Menewee,Walks a path he cannot see:Let the white man's wigwam lightWith its blaze his steps aright.
"'All-uncalled, he dares not showEmpty hands to Manito:Better gifts he cannot bearThan the scalps his slayers wear.'
"All the while the totem sang,Lightning blazed and thunder rang;And a black cloud, reaching high,Pulled the white moon from the sky.
"I, the medicine-man, whose earAll that spirits hear can hear,—I, whose eyes are wide to seeAll the things that are to be,—
"Well I knew the dreadful signsIn the whispers of the pines,In the river roaring loud,In the mutter of the cloud.
"At the breaking of the day,From the grave I passed away;Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad,But my heart was hot and mad.
"There is rust on Squando's knifeFrom the warm red springs of life;On the funeral hemlock-treesMany a scalp the totem sees.
"Blood for blood! But evermoreSquando's heart is sad and sore;And his poor squaw waits at homeFor the feet that never come!
"Waldron of Cocheco, hear!Squando speaks, who laughs at fear:Take the captives he has ta'en;Let the land have peace again!"
As the words died on his tongue,Wide apart his warriors swung;Parted, at the sign he gave,Right and left, like Egypt's wave.
And, like Israel passing freeThrough the prophet-charmèd sea,Captive mother, wife, and childThrough the dusky terror filed.
One alone, a little maid,Middleway her steps delayed,Glancing, with quick, troubled sight,Round about from red to white.
Then his hand the Indian laidOn the little maiden's head,Lightly from her forehead fairSmoothing back her yellow hair.
"Gift or favor ask I none;What I have is all my own:Never yet the birds have sung,'Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'
"Yet, for her who waits at homeFor the dead who cannot come,Let the little Gold-hair beIn the place of Menewee!
"Mishanock, my little star!Come to Saco's pines afar!Where the sad one waits at home,Wequashim, my moonlight, come!"
"What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a childChristian-born to heathens wild?As God lives, from Satan's handI will pluck her as a brand!"
"Hear me, white man!" Squando cried,"Let the little one decide.Wequashim, my moonlight, say,Wilt thou go with me, or stay?"
Slowly, sadly, half-afraid,Half-regretfully, the maidOwned the ties of blood and race,Turned from Squando's pleading face.
Not a word the Indian spoke,But his wampum chain he broke,And the beaded wonder hungOn that neck so fair and young.
Silence-shod, as phantoms seemIn the marches of a dream,Single-filed, the grim arrayThrough the pine-trees wound away.
Doubting, trembling, sore amazed,Through her tears the young child gazed."God preserve her!" Waldron said;"Satan hath bewitched the maid!"
* * * *
Years went and came. At close of daySinging came a child from play,Tossing from her loose-locked headGold in sunshine, brown in shade.
Pride was in the mother's look,But her head she gravely shook,And with lips that fondly smiledFeigned to chide her truant child.
Unabashed the maid began:"Up and down the brook I ran,Where, beneath the bank so steep,Lie the spotted trout asleep.
"'Chip!' went squirrel on the wall,After me I heard him call,And the cat-bird on the treeTried his best to mimic me.
"Where the hemlocks grew so dark,That I stopped to look and hark,On a log, with feather-hat,By the path, an Indian sat.
"Then I cried, and ran away;But he called and bade me stay;And his voice was good and mildAs my mother's to her child.
"And he took my wampum chain,Looked and looked it o'er again;Gave me berries, and, beside,On my neck a plaything tied."
Straight the mother stooped to seeWhat the Indian's gift might be.On the braid of wampum hung,Lo! a cross of silver swung.
Well she knew its graven sign,Squando's bird and totem pine;And, a mirage of the brain,Flowed her childhood back again.
Flashed the roof the sunshine through,Into space the walls outgrew,On the Indian's wigwam matBlossom-crowned again she sat.
Cool she felt the west wind blow,In her ear the pines sang low,And, like links from out a chain,Dropped the years of care and pain.
From the outward toil and din,From the griefs that gnaw within,To the freedom of the woodsCalled the birds and winds and floods.
Well, O painful minister,Watch thy flock, but blame not her,If her ear grew sharp to hearAll their voices whispering near.
Blame her not, as to her soulAll the desert's glamour stole,That a tear for childhood's lossDropped upon the Indian's cross.
When, that night, the Book was read,And she bowed her widowed head,And a prayer for each loved nameRose like incense from a flame,
To the listening ear of Heaven,Lo! another name was given:"Father! give the Indian rest!Bless him! for his love has blest!"
The Maroons! it was a word of peril once; and terror spread along the skirts of the blue mountains of Jamaica, when some fresh foray of those unconquered guerrillas swept down upon the outlying plantations, startled the Assembly from its order, General Williamson from his billiards, and Lord Balcarres from his diplomatic ease,—endangering, according to the official statement, "public credit," "civil rights," and "the prosperity, if not the very existence of the country," until they were "persuaded to make peace" at last. They were the Circassians of the New World; but they were black, instead of white; and as the Circassians refused to be transferred from the Sultan to the Czar, so the Maroons refused to be transferred from Spanish dominion to English, and thus their revolt began. The difference is, that, while the white mountaineers numbered fourhundred thousand, and only defied Nicholas, the black mountaineers numbered less than two thousand, and defied Cromwell; and while the Circassians, after thirty years of revolt, seem now at last subdued, the Maroons, on the other hand, who rebelled in 1655, were never conquered, but only made a compromise of allegiance, and exist as a separate race to-day.
When Admirals Penn and Venables landed in Jamaica, in 1655, there was not a remnant left of the sixty thousand natives whom the Spaniards had found there a century and a half before. Their pitiful tale is told only by those caves, still known among the mountains, where thousands of human skeletons strew the ground. In their place dwelt two foreign races,—an effeminate, ignorant, indolent white community of fifteen hundred, with a black slave population quite as large and infinitely more hardy and energetic. The Spaniards were readily subdued by the English,—the negroes remained unsubdued; the slaveholders were banished from the island,—the slaves only banished themselves to the mountains: thence the English could not dislodge them, nor the buccaneers, whom the English employed. And when Jamaica subsided into a British colony, and peace was made with Spain, and the children of Cromwell's Puritan soldiers were beginning to grow rich by importing slaves for Roman Catholic Spaniards, the Maroons still held their own wild empire in the mountains, and, being sturdy heathens every one, practised Obeah rites in approved pagan fashion.
The word Maroon is derived, according to one etymology, from the Spanish wordMarrano, a wild-boar,—these fugitives being all boar-hunters,—according to another, fromMarony, a river separating French and Dutch Guiana, where a colony of them dwelt and still dwells; and by another still, fromCimarron, a word meaning untamable, and used alike for apes and runaway slaves. But whether these rebel-marauders were regarded as monkeys or men, they made themselves equally formidable. As early as 1663, the Governor and Council of Jamaica offered to each Maroon, who should surrender, his freedom and twenty acres of land; but not one accepted the terms. During forty years, forty-four acts of Assembly were passed in respect to them, and at least a quarter of a million pounds sterling were expended in the warfare against them. In 1733, the force employed against them consisted of two regiments of regular troops and the whole militia of the island, and the Assembly said that "the Maroons had within a few years greatly increased, notwithstanding all the measures that had been concerted for their suppression," "to the great terror of his Majesty's subjects," and "to the manifest weakening and preventing the further increase of the strength and inhabitants of the island."
The special affair in progress, at the time of these statements, was called Cudjoe's War. Cudjoe was a gentleman of extreme brevity and blackness, whose full-length portrait can hardly be said to adorn Dallas's History; but he was as formidable a guerrilla as Marion. Under his leadership, the various bodies of fugitives were consolidated into one force and thoroughly organized. Cudjoe, like Schamyl, was religious as well as military head of his people; by Obeah influence he established a thorough freemasonry among both slaves and insurgents; no party could be sent forth by the government but he knew it in time to lay an ambush, or descend with fire and sword on the region left unprotected. He was thus always supplied with arms and ammunition; and as his men were perfect marksmen, never wasted a shot and never risked a battle, his forces naturally increased while those of his opponents were decimated. His men were never captured, and never took a prisoner; it was impossible to tell when they were defeated; in dealing with them, as Pelissier said of the Arabs, "peace was not purchased by victory"; and the only men who could obtain the slightest advantage against them were the imported MosquitoIndians, or the "Black Shot," a company of government negroes. For nine full years this particular war continued unchecked, General Williamson ruling Jamaica by day and Cudjoe by night.
The rebels had every topographical advantage, for they held possession of the "Cockpits." Those highlands are furrowed through and through, as by an earthquake, with a series of gaps or ravines, resembling the California cañons, or those similar fissures in various parts of the Atlantic States, known to local fame either poetically as ice-glens, or symbolically as purgatories. These chasms vary from two hundred yards to a mile in length; the rocky walls are fifty or a hundred feet high, and often absolutely inaccessible, while the passes at each end admit but one man at a time. They are thickly wooded, wherever trees can grow; water flows within them; and they often communicate with one another, forming a series of traps for an invading force. Tired and thirsty with climbing, the weary soldiers toil on, in single file, without seeing or hearing an enemy; up the steep and winding path they traverse one "cockpit," then enter another. Suddenly a shot is fired from the dense and sloping forest on the right, then another and another, each dropping its man; the startled troops face hastily in that direction, when a more murderous volley is poured from the other side; the heights above flash with musketry, while the precipitous path by which they came seems to close in fire behind them. By the time the troops have formed in some attempt at military order, the woods around them are empty, and their agile and noiseless foes have settled themselves into ambush again, farther up the defile, ready for a second attack, if needed. But one is usually sufficient;—disordered, exhausted, bearing their wounded with them, the soldiers retreat in panic, if permitted to escape at all, and carry fresh dismay to the barracks, the plantations, and the Government House.
It is not strange, then, that high military authorities, at that period, should have pronounced the subjugation of the Maroons a thing more difficult than to obtain a victory over any army in Europe. Moreover, these people were fighting for their liberty, with which aim no form of warfare could be unjustifiable; and the description given by Lafayette of the American Revolution was true of this one,—"the grandest of causes, won by contests of sentinels and outposts." The utmost hope of a British officer, ordered against the Maroons, was to lay waste a provision-ground or cut them off from water. But there was little satisfaction in this; the wild pine-leaves and the grapevine-withes supplied the rebels with water, and their plantation-grounds were the wild pine-apple and the plantain groves, and the forests, where the wild-boars harbored and the ringdoves were as easily shot as if they were militia-men. Nothing but sheer weariness of fighting seems to have brought about a truce at last, and then a treaty, between those high contracting parties, Cudjoe and General Williamson.
But how to execute a treaty between these wild Children of the Mist and respectable diplomatic Englishmen? To establish any official relations without the medium of a preliminary bullet required some ingenuity of manœuvring. Cudjoe was willing, but inconveniently cautious; he would not come half-way to meet any one; nothing would content him but an interview in his own chosen cockpit. So he selected one of the most difficult passes, posting in the forests a series of outlying parties, to signal with their horns, one by one, the approach of the plenipotentiaries, and then to retire on the main body. Through this line of perilous signals, therefore, Colonel Guthrie and his handful of men bravely advanced; horn after horn they heard sounded, but there was no other human noise in the woods, and they had advanced till they saw the smoke of the Maroon huts before they caught a glimpse of a human form.
A conversation was at last openedwith the invisible rebels. On their promise of safety, Dr. Russell advanced alone to treat with them, then several Maroons appeared, and finally Cudjoe himself. The formidable chief was not highly military in appearance, being short, fat, humpbacked, dressed in a tattered blue coat without skirts or sleeves, and an old felt hat without a rim. But if he had blazed with regimental scarlet, he could not have been treated with more distinguished consideration; indeed, in that case, "the exchange of hats" with which Dr. Russell finally volunteered, in Maroon fashion, to ratify negotiations, would have been a less severe test of good fellowship. This fine stroke of diplomacy had its effect, therefore; the rebel captains agreed to a formal interview with Colonel Guthrie and Captain Sadler, and a treaty was at last executed with all due solemnity, under a large cotton-tree at the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. This treaty recognized the military rank of Captain Cudjoe, Captain Accompong, and the rest; gave assurance that the Maroons should be "forever hereafter in a perfect state of freedom and liberty"; ceded to them fifteen hundred acres of land; and stipulated only that they should keep the peace, should harbor no fugitive from justice or from slavery, and should allow two white commissioners to remain among them, simply to represent the British government.
During the following year a separate treaty was made with another large body of insurgents, called the Windward Maroons. This was not effected, however, until after an unsuccessful military attempt, in which the mountaineers gained a signal triumph. By artful devices,—a few fires left burning, with old women to watch them,—a few provision-grounds exposed by clearing away the bushes,—they lured the troops far up among the mountains, and then surprised them by an ambush. The militia all fled, and the regulars took refuge under a large cliff in a stream, where they remained four hours up to their waists in water, until finally they forded the river, under full fire, with terrible loss. Three months after this, however, the Maroons consented to an amicable interview, exchanging hostages first. The position of the white hostage, at least, was not the most agreeable; he complained that he was beset by the women and children, with indignant cries of "Buckra, Buckra," while the little boys pointed their fingers at him as if stabbing him, and that with evident relish. However, Captain Quao, like Captain Cudjoe, made a treaty at last, and hats were interchanged instead of hostages.
Independence being thus won and acknowledged, there was a suspension of hostilities for some years. Among the wild mountains of Jamaica, the Maroons dwelt in a savage freedom. So healthful and beautiful was the situation of their chief town, that the English government has erected barracks there of late years, as being the most salubrious situation on the island. They breathed an air ten degrees cooler than that inhaled by the white population below, and they lived on a daintier diet, so that the English epicures used to go up among them for good living. The mountaineers caught the strange land-crabs, plodding in companies of millions their sidelong path from mountain to ocean, and from ocean to mountain again. They hunted the wild-boars, and prepared the flesh by salting and smoking it in layers of aromatic leaves, the delicious "jerked hog" of Buccaneer annals. They reared cattle and poultry, cultivated corn and yams, plantains and cocoas, guavas and papaws and mameys and avocados and all luxurious West Indian fruits; the very weeds of their orchards had tropical luxuriance in their fragrance and in their names; and from the doors of their little thatched huts they looked across these gardens of delight to the magnificent lowland forests, and over those again to the faint line of far-off beach, the fainter ocean-horizon, and the illimitable sky.
They had senses like those of our Indians, tracked each other by the smell of the smoke of fires in the air, and calledto each other by horns, using a special note to designate each of their comrades, and distinguishing it beyond the range of ordinary hearing. They spoke English diluted with Spanish and African words, and practised Obeah rites quite undiluted with Christianity. Of course they associated largely with the slaves, without any very precise regard to treaty stipulations; sometimes brought in fugitives, and sometimes concealed them; left their towns and settled on the planters' lands, when they preferred them, but were quite orderly and luxuriously happy. During the formidable insurrection of the Koromantyn slaves, in 1760, they played a dubious part: when left to go on their own way, they did something towards suppressing it,—but when placed under the guns of the troops and ordered to fire on those of their own color, they threw themselves on the ground without discharging a shot. Nevertheless, they gradually came up into rather reputable standing; they grew more and more industrious and steady; and after they had joined very heartily in resisting D'Estaing's threatened invasion of the island in 1779, it became the fashion to speak of "our faithful and affectionate Maroons."
In 1795, their position was as follows:—Their numbers had not materially increased, for many had strayed off and settled on the outskirts of plantations,—nor materially diminished, for many runaway slaves had joined them,—while there were also separate settlements of fugitives, who had maintained their freedom for twenty years. The white superintendents had lived with the Maroons in perfect harmony, without the slightest official authority, but with a great deal of actual influence. But there was an "irrepressible conflict" behind all this apparent peace, and the slightest occasion might at any moment revive all the Old terror. That occasion was close at hand.
Captain Cudjoe and Captain Accompong and the other founders of Maroon independence had passed away, and "Old Montagu" reigned in their stead, in Trelawney Town. Old Montagu had all the pomp and circumstance of Maroon majesty; he wore a laced red coat, and a hat superb with gold-lace and plumes; none but captains could sit in his presence; he was helped first at meals, and no woman could eat beside him; he presided at councils as magnificently as at table, though with less appetite;—and possessed, meanwhile, not an atom of the love or reverence of any human being. The real power lay entirely with Major James, the white superintendent, who had been brought up among the Maroons by his father (and predecessor), and who was the idol of this wild race. In an evil hour, the government removed him, and put a certain unpopular Captain Craskell in his place; and as there happened to be, about the same time, a great excitement concerning a hopeful pair of young Maroons who had been seized and publicly whipped, on a charge of hog-stealing, their kindred refused to allow the new superintendent to remain in the town. A few attempts at negotiation only brought them to a higher pitch of wrath, which ended in their despatching the following remarkable diplomatic note to the Earl of Balcarres:—"The Maroons wishes nothing else from the country but battle, and they desires not to see Mr. Craskell up here at all. So they are waiting every moment for the above on Monday. Mr. David Schaw will see you on Sunday morning for an answer. They will wait till Monday, nine o'clock, and if they don't come up, they will come down themselves." Signed, "Colonel Montagu and all the rest."
It turned out, at last, that only two or three of the Maroons were concerned in this remarkable defiance; but meanwhile it had its effect. Several ambassadors were sent among the insurgents, and were so favorably impressed by their reception as to make up a subscription of money for their hosts, on departing; only the "gallant Colonel Gallimore," a Jamaica Camillus, gave iron instead of gold, by throwing some bullets into the contribution-box. And it was probably in accordance with his view of the subject, that,when the Maroons sent ambassadors in return, they were at once imprisoned, most injudiciously and unjustly; and when Old Montagu himself and thirty-seven others, following, were seized and imprisoned also, it is not strange that the Maroons, joined by many slaves, were soon in open insurrection.
Martial law was instantly proclaimed throughout the island. The fighting-men among the insurgents were not, perhaps, more than five hundred; against whom the government could bring nearly fifteen hundred regular troops and several thousand militia-men. Lord Balcarres himself took the command, and, eager to crush the affair, promptly marched a large force up to Trelawney Town, and was glad to march back again as expeditiously as possible. In his very first attack, he was miserably defeated, and had to fly for his life, amid a perfect panic of the troops, in which some forty or fifty were killed,—including Colonel Sandford, commanding the regulars, and the bullet-loving Colonel Gallimore, in command of the militia,—while not a single Maroon was even wounded, so far as could be ascertained.
After this a good deal of bush-fighting took place. The troops gradually got possession of several Maroon villages, but not till every hut had been burnt by its owner. It was in the height of the rainy season, and, between fire and water, the discomfort of the soldiers was enormous. Meanwhile the Maroons hovered close around them in the woods, heard all their orders, picked off their sentinels, and, penetrating through their lines at night, burned houses and destroyed plantations, far below. The only man who could cope with their peculiar tactics was Major James, the superintendent just removed by government,—and his services were not employed, as he was not trusted. On one occasion, however, he led a volunteer party farther into the mountains than any of the assailants had yet penetrated, guided by tracks known to himself only, and by the smell of the smoke of Maroon fires. After a very exhausting march, including a climb of a hundred and fifty feet up the face of a precipice, he brought them just within the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. "So far," said he, pointing to the entrance, "you may pursue, but no farther; no force can enter here; no white man except myself, or some soldier of the Maroon establishment, has ever gone beyond this. With the greatest difficulty I have penetrated four miles farther, and not ten Maroons have gone so far as that. There are two other ways of getting into the defile, practicable for the Maroons, but not for any one of you. In neither of them can I ascend or descend with my arms, which must be handed to me, step by step, as practised by the Maroons themselves. One of the ways lies to the eastward, and the other to the westward; and they will take care to have both guarded, if they suspect that I am with you; which, from the route you have come to-day, they will. They now see you, and if you advance fifty paces more, they will convince you of it." At this moment a Maroon horn sounded the notes indicating his name, and, as he made no answer, a voice was heard, inquiring if he were among them. "If he is," said the voice, "let him go back, we do not wish to hurt him; but as for the rest of you, come on and try battle, if you choose." But the gentlemen did not choose.
In September the House of Assembly met. Things were looking worse and worse. For five months a handful of negroes and mulattoes had defied the whole force of the island; and they were defending their liberty by precisely the same tactics through which their ancestors had won it. Half a million pounds sterling had been spent within this time, besides the enormous loss incurred by the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men from their regular employments. "Cultivation was suspended," says an eye-witness; "the courts of law had long been shut up; and the island at large seemed more like a garrison under the power of law-martial, than a country of agriculture and commerce,of civil judicature, industry, and prosperity." Hundreds of the militia had died of fatigue, large numbers had been shot down, the most daring of the British officers had fallen, while the insurgents had been invariably successful, and not one of them was known to have been killed. Captain Craskell, the banished superintendent, gave it to the Assembly as his opinion, that the whole slave population of the island was in sympathy with the Maroons, and would soon be beyond control. More alarming still, there were rumors of French emissaries behind the scenes; and though these were explained away, the vague terror remained. Indeed, the Lieutenant-Governor announced in his message that he had satisfactory evidence that the French Convention was concerned in the revolt. A French prisoner named Murenson had testified that the French agent at Philadelphia (Fauchet) had secretly sent a hundred and fifty emissaries to the island, and threatened to land fifteen hundred negroes. And though Murenson took it all back at last, yet the Assembly was moved to make a new offer of three hundred dollars for killing or taking a Trelawney Maroon, and a hundred and fifty dollars for killing or taking any fugitive slave who had joined them. They also voted five hundred pounds as a gratuity to the Accompong tribe of Maroons, who had thus far kept out of the insurrection; and various prizes and gratuities were also offered by the different parishes, with the same object of self-protection.