"Let the hangman lead these miscreants to the gibbet,And let the ravens of the airFatten upon their flesh until they pick each tainted carcass from the bones."
"Let the hangman lead these miscreants to the gibbet,And let the ravens of the airFatten upon their flesh until they pick each tainted carcass from the bones."
There were indictments also for capital felonies, and in the dock sat three hardened black criminals, and one aged white man of distinguished presence, who was whispering now and then to a beautiful maiden in tears, a maiden so radiant in personal attractions that she might have sat approvingly for the portrait of Beatrice Cenci that looks down upon the upturned faces in the Art Gallery in Florence. He was a veteran of the civil war; a hero at Malvern Hill; colonel commanding the regiment of cavalry that by an extra hazardous maneuver drove a Federal brigade into the death trap. By his side sat as his attorney a white-haired gentleman, who like a stately man of war, just going out of commission, was sighting his guns upon the enemy for the last time. This spectacle was so full of the pathos of human life that it deserves to be perpetuated in the memory, after the dry rot shall have utterly honey-combed the odious system of reconstruction. The arraignment of the prisoner was proceeded with; the negro solicitor presuming upon the hearty co-operation of the judge ventilated his spleen upon the unfortunate prisoner.
"Stand up, prisoner at the bar," he commanded as he fairly spat his venom like a jungle serpent into the face of the poor man. "Are you guilty or not guilty of the felony and murder with which you stand charged?" he cried.
"Not Guilty," answered the prisoner with a quiet dignity.
"By whom will you be tried," the officer inquired wrathfully.
"By God and my country," was the answer ofthis veteran of a hundred battles; this wise counsellor of the law.
Were the twelve black jurors in the box his country? had they ever given direction to his impulses as a patriot? had they ever nerved his arm to strike down the foe, that scourged his home into barrenness and peopled the city of the dead with his kindred? Had they like Joshua and Hur ever stayed the hand of the prisoner, when with drawn sword he guarded the portal of the temple? Great God! Shall these human chattels, without a single intellectual resource, without one ray of discernment, besotted and bedraggled by fanaticism, superstition and ignorance bring to this poor man in this extremity a safe deliverance? In conducting the prosecution, in the examination of the witnesses the same brutish treatment was observed by the solicitor for the state toward the aged prisoner, and with an offensive parade of authority he announced that the state had closed its case; thereupon the white-haired Governor arose to ask for the discharge of the prisoner for want of sufficient evidence to convict. Now came the first interruption upon the part of the judge, who up to this moment had observed a reticence quite noteworthy in a high judicial officer who was holding his first court where the negroes ruled.
"It is unnecessary Governor that I should hear you," he remarked with evident self-poise.
Turning to the solicitor he asked with deliberation,
"Can you tell me how the indictment against this old man found its way into this court?"
"I can, sir," the solicitor impudently replied, "and I propose," he exclaimed vehemently, "to make good the charge by convicting this assassin before this conscientious jury."
"Ah, indeed!" rejoined the judge quite complacently. "Are you quite sure of your premises?"
"Yes indeed!" replied the solicitor.
"Take your seat, sir," the judge commanded, with a frown upon his intelligent face. "I am informed," said he, addressing the negro solicitor, "that you have been perniciously active in the persecution of this feeble old man; that you have gone out of your way to harass and humiliate him in all possible situations; that you have advised and encouraged and rewarded placable agents and emissaries to render his life burdensome and his condition intolerable; that you have caused inquisitorial visits to be made to his home by ruffianly negroes in the dead hours of the night; that you have conspired and confederated with a loathsome being—a man, however, of controlling influence with the negroes—by the name of Laflin, to inflict upon him and his daughter every indignity your evil imagination could suggest; that acting under your devilish advice and inventions, lawless, brutish negroes have set at defiance every dictate of humanity, every precept of religion, and every commandment of the law, and have turned his home into a hell; that when a superficial examination into this case would have shown you that this negro, whom you say was murdered by this unfortunate prisoner gathered around him a bestial mob of the most despicable, offensive negroes, armed with guns and swords to take his life by force of insurrectionary combinations, you dare to clutch the ermine of this court with your defiled fingers! You have disgraced the position you occupy; your right to prosecute the criminal docket in this court is suspended. You will take your seat in the prisoner's dock until I can have you tried and sentenced to the penitentiary. This man is in your custody, Mr. Sheriff. Mr. Clerk, you will atonce issue a bench warrant for the arrest of Abram Laflin and the coroner, Jackson Thorp, and have them brought before me at once. Colonel Seymour," he continued, addressing the prisoner, and at the same time extending his hand, "you have my sympathy. I have observed with pain and indignation the alarming condition of affairs in your county. I am sitting upon this bench as a judge to discharge my duty in the fear of God. You are fully vindicated, sir, and may retire when you please."
A stampede of negroes who had thronged the court room swept away every obstruction, and within one hour after the arrest of the carpet-bagger and the coroner, mules, oxen, negroes, dogs and organs and monkeys were in precipitate flight through the town.
"Grate Jerusalem!" exclaimed an old negro who had fallen down the stairway in his flight, "de debbil has sho broke loose in dis hear town. Dat ar jedge is wusser dan a harrykane."
The scene that followed was intensely dramatic. Men who had never been demonstrative before, at the hour of recess, thronged the judge to thank him for his honesty and courage in this hour of trial. The Governor, Colonel Seymour and his beautiful daughter awaited the presence of the judge in the parlor of the public inn, and as the learned man entered the room greatly embarrassed, Alice thought he was the manliest man she ever saw—faultlessly handsome, with the poise of a patrician. The judge took her extended hand, and blushing deeply, looked down into the lustrous blue eyes that were laughing through tears and said, almost audibly, to himself, "Is it possible that this beauty will ever fade?" Could we introspect the great man's heart, we should find even then a little weaver picking up here and theregolden threads and cris-crossing them into entangling meshes; and perhaps a little archer was drawing back his bow to transfix two hearts and hold them up before him while he laughed and laughed again at his conquest.
"Miss Seymour," the judge exclaimed, quite compassionately, "I regret that your father has been so greatly outraged. I hope he will soon forget it and that his life will be happy. I am grateful to you for the pleasure of this visit. May I hope to see you at your home in the country?"
Alice replied, both weeping and smiling, that she could never repay the debt of gratitude.
"I feel that there is not now a cloud upon my little horizon—that your considerate judgment has dispelled the shadows that veiled in my life, and I shall live now for my father and his happiness."
"Ah, my dear miss!" replied the judge, somewhat confused, "do not thank me for doing my duty. You don't know how my heart yearned towards your helpless father in the hands of these barbarians." And all the while the little archer, now an imprisoned eaves-dropper, was peeping out of the curtains with his chubby hand to his tiny ear and whispering, "Love at first sight."
Joshua was a unit in this compact mass of freedmen that squatted here and there upon rude benches and crowded the aisles in that great auditorium of negroes. There were snow-white dishevelled locks under primitive hats and bonnets; there were hollow cheeks and lack lustre eyes; there were hungry stomachs, limbs palsied and stiffened here in the very May day of reconstruction. The commissariat with its great reservoirs of fatness was ever so far away, and its approaches were guarded by armed freedmen who like bearded pards demanded money. "Old Glory" too, hung inert from the flag staff, blushing perhaps because the judge is sittingupon the bench to despatch business; because a Daniel has come to judge Laflin and to give him his pound of flesh without blood. As the colonel was assisting his daughter into the buggy, after the tumult was over, Joshua ambled up to him with his battered beaver in his hand with fulsome congratulations.
"I knowed all de time ole marser dat yu was agwine to get clar. I seed it in dat jedge's eyes when he heered dat ditement red. He got wexed dat ar minit, und shuck his hed und I knowed den dat de state had flung de fat in de farr, und I said to mysef, Joshaway, yu und ole marser is agwine home wid wun anuder dis werry nite und it cum out lak I spishuned."
"Uncle Joshua," interrupted Alice feelingly, "father and I are very grateful for your kindness and you shall never suffer as long as we live. Here is a dollar; buy Aunt Hannah what she needs, remember, you must not buy whiskey with it."
"Tank yu yung missis, tank yu a fousand times. I am gwine to lay dis out for Hannah. I aint agwine to tech narry cent of it, und when dat nigger sees me coming home with all my bundles she is agwine to jump clean clar outen her skin. I don't care ef I nebber sees dat kommissary no mo," and in the transport of joy the old negro tossed his old beaver high into the air while he lustily cried out, "free cheers for Miss Alice und ole marser."
There were many things that pre-occupied the minds of Alice and her father as they were driving home. The old man in a sentimental spirit felt like exclaiming with the sacred writer "These, and such as these are spots in our feasts of charity; clouds they are without water, trees whose fruit withereth; raging waves of the sea foaming outtheir own shame; wandering stars to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever."
As they neared the old homestead, Clarissa was standing in the gateway, jumping up and down automatically with arms tossing like the fans of a Dutch windmill, shouting frantically, "glory, glory, the dead has cum to life agin, blessed Lord de insurreckshun has done und riz agen. Jurusulum my happy home" and she threw her arms around her young mistress and in the excess of feeling hugged even the old hound. "Come in to de kitchen ole marser und Miss Alice fur de lans sake und see what a snipshus dinner I has got, barbecue, taters and chicken and homily und sich lak."
Joshua stood in the road to watch his ole marser fast disappearing in the distance; then taking the crisp note from the lining of his old hat, brandished it aloft as if it were 'old glory.' It was the first currency of the kind he had ever seen, for the coroner had refused to pay his per diem as a juror at the inquest, averring as an excuse therefor dat dat wote was agin de consecushon und hit jam nigh spiled de hole werdict. Joshua steadied himself against an empty whisky barrel and began to calculate as to the purchasing capacity of the dollar note.
"Now lem me count on de tip eend of the fingers scusing de fumb dat don't count," said he. "Hanner she wants a kote und a par of brogans, allus awanting mo dan de munny is agwine to fetch," he observed parenthetically, "und den dare is me, bleeged to have a weskote und gallusses, und dat will take every bit und grane; und how is I agwine to git eny bakker, und I'm bleeged to have a drap of sperrits. Now lem me count over gin und git dis ole fumb outen de way; de kote is fifty cents und de shoes is seventy five cents, dat won't do," he said as he scratched his head, "I'm gwine to leabe off dekote; den dere is de shoes seventy-five cents, und de weskote seventy-five cents; dat won't do nudder. I'm agwine to leabe off de shoes; den dare is de gallusses twenty-five cents, und de weskote seventy-five cents; den whar is de bakker? I'm agwine to lebe off de weskote; den dare is de gallusses twenty-five cents, und de bakker twenty-five cents, und de sperrits fifty cents; de munny haint ergwine to hole out no udder way I can fix it; now den de sperrits fust, und de bakker nex und gallusses las," and when the old negro had solved the problem he struck a bee line to the nearest groggery, saying to himself, "Ef Miss Alice had axed me not to buy no sperrits I'd a been kotched pine plank."
"Two years in the penitentiary," Joshua heard some one exclaim as he was passing the court house.
"Who dat boss gwine to de penitenshur?" he stopped to enquire.
"Abram Laflin," came the answer.
"Don't you heer dat!" exclaimed Joshua, "Fredum is sho gin out now. Ellic dun und gon und got hissef drounded, und on de tip eend of dat de boss is dun und got hissef in de penitenshur. Land sakes alive! Niggers got to walk perpendickkler now," and with that the old negro dodged into the tippling shop.
"Say boss?" Joshua said to the rum-seller, "Fill me a tickler rite full er rum; don't put narry drap of whiskey in hit, kase ef yu dus my creddick is dun und gon fur ebber. Now what dus I have to pay?" he asked as he put the bottle into his haversack.
"Seventy-five cents," sharply answered the salesman.
"My King!" ejaculated Joshua, "Den what is I gwine to do about dem gallusses?"
"Come old negro," the clerk crustily replied, "get out and let that man come to the counter."
As Joshua was moving suspiciously out of the dram shop he glanced savagely at the man and said to himself, "Dis heer low down white trash is a gwine to be de ruinashun ob dis kentry yit, agougging de werry eyeballs out ob yer hed, und yu are standin rite dare urseein dem do hit. I wishes dat dar jedge wud git holt ob dese speretual shops und squashes dem lak he dun dat ditement agin ole marser."
In the small hours of the night Joshua stumbled against the door of his cabin crying like a lunatic.
"Fer de lan sake Hanner, run out here und kill dese heer snakes, und fetch my muskit along wid yu."
And Hannah in her night robes ran out frantically crying, "Show me dem dar sarpents, whar is dey Joshaway?"
"Dar dey go," said he, and seizing the musket he banged away at the earth exclaiming, "Ef yu is sho naff snakes yu is in a bad fix und ef yu aint sho nuff snakes den I's in a wusser wun."
"Yu stracted fool," angrily shouted Hannah, "Yu is got de lerium tremenjous, dat's what ails yu."
The old master at Ingleside had been so greatly exasperated by intrusive visitors that Clarissa, who was now acting in the dual character of man and maid, had received express orders to admit no one into the mansion who could not give a good account of himself or herself; so when Judge Livingstone rang the door-bell, Clarissa who was sweeping the dust from the hall dropped the broom with the tart observation,
"I specks dat is ernudder dratted scalyhorg cum to tantylize ole mars Jon," and she crept dubiously to the door to peep, and perceiving that there was a white man in the verandah without a gun or other weapon of offensive war, she halloed loudly through the keyhole.
"Whos yu?" To which no answer was returned.
"Don't yu heer me axes yu whos yu? If yu don't answer white man I'm agwine to sick ole Jube on yu, und run yu outen dis plantashun. Whos yu I sez?" repeated the old negro.
"My name is Mr. Livingtone, a friend of your young mistress, to whom I would be pleased to speak," came the reply.
"I kaint heer nary wurd yu sez, fur ole Jube." "Git outen de way dorg wid your whinin. You jes wait outen dar twell I axes Miss Alice mout yu cum in. What you sez your name is?" again cried the old negro.
"I am Judge Liv——"
"Oh, my Lord," interrupted Clarissa with ascream, and she ran back like a maniac wringing her hands and shouting,
"Oh, my po yung missis, de man has dun und cum to preach de funral; de gallus is dun und uprared in dis grate house, und de jedge hez dun und cum to pull de trigger, und de werry fust one he axes fur is yu. Good-bye, Miss Alice," she exclaimed, as she frantically clutched her dress and dropped upon her knees. "Und ef I nebber sees yu no mo in dis wurell tak care of yerself und meet me in de starry hellyments whar dar aint gwine ter be no mo tribbylashun of sperets."
It was a full minute before Alice could calm her agitation, as tears from an excess of conflicting sensations ran down her cheeks. Regaining self-possession she said with a show of authority, "You must not act in this way Clarissa; what will the gentleman think of us if we do not render a proper excuse for your misconduct?"
"Miss Alice," said Clarissa, as she placed her arms akimbo, "Ef yu had seed dat dar man's eyes when he sed he was de jedge yu'd er run too, und yu wudn't er stopt running twell yit. My King! dem eyes was wusser dan shuting stors," she exclaimed, as she wiped the great beads of sweat from her face with her apron.
"You go to the door now, and very politely invite the gentleman into the parlor, be very careful Clarissa that you do not offend him."
As Clarissa, now reassured, was moving stealthily toward the door, her mistress overheard her say to herself,
"I aint agwine to fend him epcepts he fends me fust, den I'm agwine ter run agin, und I aint ergwine ter stop no mo twell I gits to de mashes."
Clarissa opened the door with a very polite bow, as she addressed the stranger patronizingly.
"Misses sed how dat you mout come in, beinghow dat it was yu. So cum erlong rite back of me. Git outen de way Jube, er scrapin quaintance wid dat stinguished white man, same as he was a low down nigger; fust ting you knose yu be shut up in de jail house widout ary moufful of wittles, er howlin same as er wildcat."
It is proper just here to remark that Clarissa had never been a correspondent or pupil of Lord Chesterfield. She had been emancipated from the slavvish drudgery of the corn-field, promoted as it were from the cabin to the mansion. Her manners were direct, pungent, self-assertive, and her gibberish and volubility were immensely amusing to the high official who was now adapting himself to conditions and experiences as they prevailed in the southland; and from time to time interrogating the negro as he or she appeared without the superficialities of reconstruction.
As Clarissa saw Judge Livingstone safely in the parlor she went back to her mistress, and with emphasis of speech and gesture told her what had been said and done, and returned with the commands of her mistress to the distinguished guest.
"You jes set rite whar yu is und mak yerself homelike, dar aint no foolishness erbout our white folks. Me und Miss Alice has been aworrying ourselves jamby to def ober de smutty cook pots, und she says how dat yu must scuse her," and she wiped her black face again with her old apron. The judge failing to comprehend the meaning of the negro in the crude vernacular of the plantation, a speech that under all circumstances with malice prepense slew the idioms of the English language, arose to retire, regretting as he said, "That he could not see her young mistress;" when Clarissa with great warmth expostulated.
"Hole on dar, Mars Jedge; Miss Alice is ergwine ter cum jes ez soon ez she washes de smut offen herface und slicks back her eyebrows. My king! duz yu speks er high quality lady lak my yung missis kin do eberyting in wun minit? She haint ergwine ter brake her neck kase a jedge cums heer a courtin her. My missis seed jedges fore ter-day; yu aint de onliest jedge she ever seed." And with this confusing declamation Clarissa shuffled out of the parlor with the parting remark, "Yu's stay rite whar yu is twell she cums."
When the negro had gone the judge laughed immoderately. Indeed, he was laughing with wide-open mouth as Alice entered the parlor, and advanced to grasp her hand, confused and stammering.
"Ah, permit me," he said, "er, er, er, to felicitate myself that you have given me the pleasure of this interview."
Alice felt a suspicion that the old negress had been amusing the learned judge in her droll way, but she did not know to what extent she had been compromised by her oddities and ignorance, and to quiet her apprehensions as far as she could, she asked with seriousness:
"How long have you been in our county?"
"It is my first visit, and I have greatly enjoyed it," replied the judge, with an effort to conceal his mirth. "The South has been an object lesson of great educational value to me."
"Ah! and who are your teachers?" asked Alice.
"Why, who can they be but the negroes?" replied the judge interrogatively.
"I am quite surprised!" exclaimed the young lady.
"Not so much so as I have been, I am sure," the judge replied. "I am a Northern man with a heart firmly set against what I believed to be the vagaries of Southern people: absorbing the sentiments and convictions of my home folks; but since Ihave been in your country I have discovered that the South has been outraged and scandalized beyond the point of endurance. Do you know," he continued argumentatively, "that I have never seen among my most intimate friends truer or nobler men, and I have never seen in the jails and penitentiaries of the north a criminal class more hardened and vicious than these wretches whom you call carpet-baggers."
"Yes, indeed," replied Alice reflectively, "they have given us a great deal of trouble, and we are so glad that you have punished the infamous wretch Laflin, who has incited the negroes to acts of violence and bloodshed."
"Yes," replied the judge, "I only regret that the law interposed a limit to the measure of punishment. I would have been glad to have sentenced the villain for life to the penitentiary at hard labor.
"By the way, Miss Seymour, the governor bade me say to your father that he would join us here to-day. Will you convey the message to him at your leisure?"
"Thank you, sir," said the girl. "Pray excuse me for a moment. My father will be delighted to receive the information; the governor is an old and dear friend."
The picture now presented to her distinguished guest, a man of clear discernment, as Colonel Seymour, leaning upon the arm of his lovely daughter—whose beautiful face was aglow with health—painfully walked into the parlor, was picturesque and pathetic; indeed, it was the deepening twilight and the blush of Aurora. Here were hard, rigid lines, corded and seamed by age, and here were the pencilings of the artist, whose handiwork is seen as well in the exquisite tintings of the morning iris. Here were palsied limbs, snow-whitehair, accentuated by intimate contact with marvellous beauty and litheness of figure, that impressed the intellectual, discriminating judge.
Advancing with extended hand, he met the old man upon the threshold of the room with an affectionate refinement of manner that bespoke the thoroughness of the gentleman; the Colonel observing to his guest, as the latter conducted him to a chair, that the gout had made a cripple of him, but that in all other respects he was quite himself. It was all too evident to the far-sighted judge that an unseen hand had its grasp upon the lever and was running the home-stretch with accelerated momentum.
"Your coming," said the Colonel, "has been like the bearing of a flag of truce; it has given us hope—life; it has ungeared the harrow that crushed us so remorselessly."
"I thank you, my dear sir," most gratefully answered the judge with feeling. "I have endeavored to discharge my duty, and how could I do this, sir, in this country without using the scourge? You have a fine country and a magnanimous people—a people who love liberty and law—and it is a personal affliction to witness in how many ways you are insulted and oppressed."
At this juncture Clarissa knocked softly at the door to announce to her mistress "dat de guberment hez dun und riv," and Alice, excusing herself, retired, concealing her laughter as much as possible, which was provoked by the ludicrous deficiencies of the corn-field negro. It was a metaphor which the negro had ignorantly employed. The Governor was not the government, or any part thereof. Had he been, Ingleside would have been safeguarded by a sentinel utterly impervious to any sensation of fear, not so ignorant or cowardly as Clarissa.
The arrival of the Governor was formally announced by Alice and he was ushered into the parlor, and Alice withdrew to give some directions to Clarissa, whom she found sitting in her rickety chair in the kitchen humming
"My ole Kentucky home, fur away."
"My ole Kentucky home, fur away."
"Clarissa," the young lady asked as she approached her, "what do you suppose the judge thought of us this morning and of our maid of all work?"
Clarissa looked up into the face of her young mistress with a stare almost of vacuity, and after a moment's reflection said, with her accustomed pertness,
"I kaint hep dat, Miss Alice, ole marser dun und gin me my orders, und I want agwine ter let nobody pass nur repass ef I knoed it. Ole marser he noes his bizness, und ef he tells me ter keep de kyarpet-sackers outen dis grate house I'm ergwine ter do it ef de good Lawd spares me. Don't fault me, Miss Alice, wid ole marser's doins, fur de lan's sake. How cum dat dar jedge outen here any how? Dar aint no kote ergwine on in dis heer grate house dat I noes of. Specks dar is ergwine ter be wun do, und don't specks nuffin else but sumbodv is ergwine ter git conwicted und sont clean erway frum heer," and the old negro laughed boisterously. "Dat dar jedge is er portly man, but my king! dem dar eyes, ugh-h-h! cuts froo yu same ez er razor."
Alice laughed again and again at the old negro, and after awhile coyishly remarked, "Never mind, Clarissa, never mind."
Clarissa turned her old head to one side as she replied with great earnestness.
"Taint wurf while to say neber mind Clarsy, neber mind, I seed fo now what was agwine to be de upshot of dis bisniss. I knowed pine plankwhich er way de cat wuz er gwine to jump. Ole missus allus sed dat yu was ergwine to marry er jedge er a lyar er a mefodis slidin elder er a sircus rider und I hopes und prays dat yu may, kase ef yu don't youse ergwine ter be er lone lorn orfin creetur arter ole marser's hed dun und layed low."
The conversation of the distinguished gentleman naturally drifted into channels that had been cut very deep by the sharp edged tools of reconstruction; the judge deferentially yielding to his seniors who had witnessed the workmanship of unskilled hands, and what he ventured to say from time to time was in the way of suggestions or mild expostulations.
The Governor when discussing reconstruction was opinionated and emphatic. Every paragraph was punctuated with a sneer, gesture or frown.
"Had the suggestions of president Lincoln prevailed," he began, "the South would have been God's country; but wicked counsels predominated. There was not a statute enacted by a legislature, nor an order made by a general, nor a proclamation issued by a governor, nor a requisition made by the head of a department that did not whet the sword with which they were prodding into the bowels of the South, after the final capitulation. These atrocious policies were conceptions of men who swore in their wrath that not a blade of grass should spring where their hellish coursers planted hoof; that in the realigning of the federal union, strong black lines should be drawn with a savage vengeance over the face of the South. Reconstruction was the act of self-destruction, and the suicides deserve to be buried without the shedding of a tear, without christian sepulture in outlawed graves. They made the thorn to spring up where the fir-tree had flourished, and the bramble instead of the myrtle tree. In these abominable acts there is death;death enough to satisfy the grave. Before the ink was dry upon the parchment, before the funereal bake-meats were cold, they contract an unnatural covenant of marriage with four million slaves, disbanded outlaws from the army, and put upon them the mask of freedom to conceal the horrid front of tyranny. Sirs, we rebel against the outrage. When the Philistines are upon us shall we not rise and shake ourselves, or shall we lay our heads in the lap of Delilah, to be shorn of our power; to be bound in chains, until we shall pray God to avenge our wrongs in the common destruction of ourselves and our enemies. No sirs, they shall find that when we are prostrated, that like Antæus we shall rise with renewed vigor from our shame. Why this glozing title "Reconstruction?" Who shall declare its generation? What holy font was polluted by its baptism? Whence its bastard origin? Plots, the vile brood of malice have been hatched under fanatical incubation and piloted southward, like flocks of harpies, that by their uncleanness they might defile our civilization. Every blight of calumny from ultra partisan—press and pulpit, has been blown upon southern character. Their speeches are filled with fields scourged down to barrenness, and negroes multiplied and worked up to the very tragedy of indiscriminate assassinations. We will not propitiate the black devils by heaping their altars with sacrifices; black fiends who, like the great dragon in the Apocalypse, are sweeping after them into the abysm, filled with slaughter, one third of the stars in our political heaven. Which of these stars are to be fixed, or which are to be planetary in this black firmament of eternal night; which primary, and which central, which wandering stars and which satellites, are matters for their savage taste. For my state may God in his infinite mercy decree that the laws ofposition and movement may be ascertained and established, before it, once so beautiful and bright, shall go down and down forever below a horizon of blood. They may like wrestlers in the arena bring us to our knees, but never sir, shall they lay us on our backs. Let us alone, and the dews and the rains and the sunshine of heaven, (the only creatures of God left by them in friendship with us) shall give to our blood-stained fields moisture and fertility, and time and labor and God's blessing shall cover the land with verdure, with cottonfields and gardens, pastures and meadows. They promised us peace, and it came with the mutterings of a tornado. In our vain efforts to compromise the situation we turned our backs upon the past, hallowed as were its memories. We had ceased to remember the execrations of fanatics, even the 'league with the devil, and the covenant with hell.'
"We did all this and more, after we had passed fire-scathed through an ordeal whose voice was storm and whose movement was earthquake, which swept from us every visible substance; so that in our last and extremest agony we were forced to cry aloud, like Francis at Pavia, "All is lost save honor." We gave the government our parole; we hammered our swords into plow-shares and pruning-hooks; we pitched our tents upon the fire-blasted lands where once had been our homes, and with axe and mattock and blade and plow began to cut away brambles and bushes and cultivate our fields; and when we believed that we were secure in the enjoyment of our rights of persons and property, the authors of reconstruction swept down upon the beleaguered South like Hyder Ali upon the Carnatic, and left scarcely a vestige upon which to hope, or from which to rebuild, except our worn-out lands and our own splendid manhood andwomanhood. States were despoiled of their resources, towns and cities were battered and burned; the angel of death had crossed every threshhold, and three hundred thousand of the flower and chivalry of the land were lying in soldiers' graves. Our public institutions were languishing unto death; from centre to circumference there were outlawries, assassinations, conflagrations; and our people looked into the faces of each other and in their helplessness asked what other calamities are reserved for us and our children. They seized upon four million slaves and hurled them like immense projectiles against our civilization. And to conclude, sir, for I find I am getting excited, in this catastrophe our hopes were stayed upon the honest men of the North, like you, sir, and our noble, patriotic women, like you, my dear miss," bowing with boyish gallantry to Alice. "The women of the sixties are more than heroines in the storm-swept crisis—they are a revelation in the flesh. What Arria was to Pætus, what Natalia was to Adrian, what Gertrude was to Rudolph, what Helen, the Jennie Dean of the 'Heart of Midlothian,' was to Tibbie, what Prascovia was to the Russian exile, our self-sacrificing women are to us. There has never been an occasion when the habit of instantaneous obedience to the voice of love and country has produced more affecting and constant instances of devotion and loyalty upon the part of the women, than in the gleaning of the aftermath by hands saturated with all the crimes of the calendar.
"And now, gentlemen," (the Governor bowed), "if I have given offence by any intemperate expression, will you please forgive me, for my wrath waxes warm when concentrated upon the subject of reconstruction. Perhaps, sir," he continued, addressing His Honor, "you are not in sympathywith the views I may have inconsiderately expressed?"
"Why, my dear sir," the judge replied, "I have never been in sympathy with a policy which you have so eloquently denounced, and which the patriotic people of the North sincerely deprecate, and I quite agree with you that reconstruction has unlocked a Pandora box of evils whose fledgelings are hovering over this land."
The sun was now setting with an iridescent aureole of gold and carmine and purple as the judge remarked apologetically, "I have been struggling with myself between inclination and duty; indeed I find it embarrassingly difficult to tear myself from so charming a circle. I have only a few minutes to catch the train, and you don't know how much I grieve to say good-bye. I shall be in your town again within the next month, and may I indulge the hope that I shall be once more welcomed at Ingleside?"
"We shall only be too glad to be similarly honored," replied Colonel Seymour with deference.
Clarissa, who was standing near the door with her arms folded and grinning like a blackamoor, gave the judge the parting bow, as he placed into her hand a dollar note, and putting her apron to her face, so she might whisper the better, with a negroish curtsy, said,
"Yu mus sho cum ergin mars jedge, our fokses laks yu mazing, und I'm ergwine ter tell yu de nex time what Miss Alice dun und sed erbout yu; I knose dats ergwine ter fotch yu back."
The Governor remained at Ingleside throughout the night and like a gladiator in the arena was fighting, with the broad sword of invective, a duel in dialectics with the parliamentarians of reconstruction; the Colonel the meanwhile reinforcing the athlete as a reserve. Alice at a late hour retiredwith her head filled with fantastic notions, and Clarissa too stretched her aching bones upon her bed wondering in her pragmatic way, "Ef dat shiny eyed judge was agwine ter hold his sho nuff kote in de grate house, und ef she was agwine ter be de juror und Miss Alice de konwick."
Old Joshua like an overripe sheaf of barley was now to lay his head in the dust. The swift horses were harnessed and cantering toward his door.
"Son of man behold I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke, yet neither shalt thou mourn, neither shalt thy tears run down." Four score and two years were the days of the years of his pilgrimage; many and evil had the days of his years been. Would there be mourners at the burial? Will 'old glory' hang its head again as it did at the assizes, when an outraged commonwealth was proceeding to judgment against Laflin for enumerated transgressions? Three score and ten years are the complement of life, within which the balance sheet is prepared; repenting against sinning; undoing against doing; dying against living; accounts and contra-accounts, all fairly computed, and the quotient announced by Him who breathes into man's nostrils the breath of life. Four score and two years! What changes in the theories and forms of governments; what contrarieties in the pursuits and ambitions of man. The messenger came without the rattling of wheels, without knocking at the door, came on unsandaled feet.
"Hannah, I'm agwine home, good-bye," was the hurried parting, as the messenger thrust him into his chariot. Side by side he sat with the voiceless ambassador, while the stars were twinkling in the midnight sky; a fast disappearing type of the picturesque civilization of the sixties. His tracks around the old commissariat are now faded intonothingness, and old glory will wave on and on "froo de trees," just as proudly as that day when he stood at its staff and patriotically saluted the stars and stripes with uncovered head, proclaiming his loyalty in the grateful expression, "I node when I seed yu a sea-sawing in de air dat dar was a stummick full of good wittles some whays."
In the true representative outlines of the old South there is a number dropped from the rolls, that is all. In its new birth of constitutional liberty, postponed until patriots shall have tired of a government inefficient and venal, the memory of Joshua, laden with fragrance, will cling to hearts that now deplore his death. Good bye, Uncle Joshua until we meet upon the golden strand! Until we see you again without your staff, with your face radiant with a celestial gleam, in a fleecy robe, with golden sandals; until we hear you say so contentedly, "Brederin, dere is kommissaries all erroun in dis butiful country, und yu kin buy widout munny und widout price."
Alice felt that she could see a new light come into the window, into the old home, into her soul; that a peace had come visibly into the shadowed mansion, now that Aleck and Ephraim and the negro constable were dead in the mud of the river; now that the Federal head had been removed by the battle-axe of the fearless judge. She began to hope again, perhaps to love again, who shall say? There was, it may be, a tiny sunbeam coquetting with the old shadows that had so long overlaid every approach to her young heart, and perhaps a little be-jewelled goldsmith was tinkering and hammering upon a tiny arrow pointed with a ruby, and feathered with tiny pinions of some diminutive bird, that nested among fragrant mangoes far away in the isles of the sea, with which he was to shoot down those unsightly idols that had long pre-empted her heart. The days were loitering, she thought, in their flight, and the little brownie who had been counting the numerals of time in their flight had fallen asleep, and the old clock in the great hall ticked languidly as if it were tired to death with its unvarying round of toil.
In this awakening to the brighter possibilities whom should she clasp to her heart but her old friend, Charles Dickens? The Dickens of Dombey, of Bleakhouse, of David Copperfield. She remembered how this marvellous story-teller, so familiar to all young readers, who had so many children of his own, the offspring of an overflowing fancy, one bleak day had passed up and downWestminster Hall, clasping to his heart the magazine that contained his first effusions, with eyes dimmed with pride and joy, as he dropped stealthily, at twilight, a suspicious package into a dark letter box down a dark alley. How many times the narrative had woven golden filaments here and there through the warp of reconstruction! What a bright filagree into the shadows that were unceasingly coming and going! How many happy hours she had whiled away with Mr. Pickwick and his admiring friends! How delightfully she had been entertained by the wit of Samuel Weller, the eloquence of Sergeant Buzfuz, of Captain Bunsby! Many a hypochondriac had laughed immoderately at the ludicrous exercises of Crummles and the infant phenomenon! What a charming companion is Dick Swiveller, the inimitable! Dear old Dick; reeling now and then from excess of wine, but great hearted withal. Who does not even now occasionally inhale the fragrant odors of the delicious punches compounded by that blighted being, Mr. Wilkins Micawber, as he listens to Sairy Gamp and laughs at Mrs. Harriss? Where is the tender-hearted Christian who would shout for a policeman, while they are ducking Shepherd, or pommelling Squeers, or cudgelling Pecksniff, or inflicting divers and deserved assaults upon Uriah Heep? With what a motley crowd of living characters Dickens has peopled our literature? What children were ever like his children? What homes were ever like their homes? There is little Pip and honest old Joe Gargery, who pauses for a moment at his anvil to observe with animation, "Which I mean ter say, that if you come into my place bull baiting and badgering me, come out! Which I mean ter say, as sech, if yu're a man, come on! which I mean to say that what I mean ter say, I mean to say and stand or fall by;" and Mrs. Joeover watchful and over masterful always, who in the alembic of nature had discovered no better way of bringing little Pip up than "by hand." Then there is little Oliver Twist, a poor little waif, always hungry, licking the platter and now and then, embarrassingly asking "for more;" and poor Smikes is more terribly tragic, for he lived longer; and little Nell the heart child of unnumbered thousands, tramping along the roads, footsore and ever so weary, a poor little wanderer without home, until the good Lord looks down into her tearful eyes and says one day, "Little Nell your little hands and your little feet and your little heart are so tired, will you not come with me, child?" And little Paul Dombey lying wearily in the trundle bed, within sound of the manifold voices of the sea, turns languidly to his sister Florence and asks with the natural inquisitiveness of a child, "What are the wild waves saying?" And Joe All Jones moves almost heedlessly on to death through more streets than those of London; and Tom Pinch, Betsy Trotwood and faithful old Peggotty and Ham, whose very oddities and deficiencies are turned into a crown of glory; and the sneering melodramatic villains and scape-graces, Monck and Quilp, and the blind man in Barnaby Rudge, and the Jew Fagan and Murdstone and Carker; and the high spirited Steerforth and Nickleby and Creakle, and Stiggins and Chadband and Sampson Brass and Snawley; and poor little idiotic Barnaby, as on the way to the gallows he points to the stars, and says to Hugh of the Maypole, "I guess we shall know who made the stars now;" and last of all, but not least, Pecksniff, the masterpiece of them all. From boot to hat he is all over and all under, Pecksniff; drunk or sober he is Pecksniff. He is the virtuous Pecksniff all the time, and altogether. He hugs himself to his own heart as the embodiment of all thevirtues of the decalogue and the beatitudes. No matter into what rascality he may be plunging, his serene self conscious virtue never forsakes him. The child wife, too, passes by us into the spirit land, and there is the beautiful, dreamy eyed Agnes, who quite charms us with her love and trust, and the sad, calm face of Florence looks timidly upon us; and Mrs. Jellyby tells us to look out for Borioboola Gha; and poor Micawber informs us that nothing has turned up yet, and hinting darkly about laudanum and razors. What a marvellous characterization! Will the world ever tire of this man and his children, that he has materialized out of ideals so unpromising; whom he has reared up in the slums of London, many of them upon garbage?
The blessed Sabbath day was passing uneventfully. There were no alarms from any source. Old Hannah in her gloom was moving in and out of the office and the "ole master" who had retired to his bed chamber was weakening as the days would come and go. Alice, with the acumen of an experienced physician, was noting the changes from time to time, and realized that the final change would come some day and perhaps at an hour least expected. The sad life of little Nell had wrought upon her womanly feelings and she began to think of herself, her situation, of her loneliness should her father be taken from her, and she thought of the crude inelegant suggestion of old Clarissa.
"De crowsfoot is ergwine to cum into yer lubly face, und kurlykus and frowns under yer eyes, und what wud you do in dis grate big grate house, und dis great big plantashun by yer lone lorn self."
The contemplation of such a situation could only harrow her heart more and more, but there was the gallant Arthur lying over in Virginia, and shehad plighted her troth to him that day, that she reviewed the cavalry parade, when he stood by her side so handsome, so happy, in his Confederate uniform, with the nodding plumes in his hat, when he said to her, "Sweet Alice, will you be true to me until I return from the war?" And she promised him with a kiss that she would; "and if dear Arthur you shall never return, Alice will still be true to you."
Is there no limitation to such a contract; are not its conditions already performed? She asked herself. Assuredly there are no marriages in Heaven. She remembered that the Saviour of the world had said to the Sadducees, "Ye do err not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in Heaven." "Arthur knew that I loved him—that I loved him from our childhood, and I am sure that our friends as they enter the gates, are greeted by our friends up there, and that they ask with so much interest and affection about their loved ones in this sad, lonely terrene.
If Arthur could speak to me now, and could know that ere long I shall be bereft of the last of my kindred, I am sure he would say to me with a smile, "Sweet Alice, your loving heart has been my own all these sad years, but we cannot marry here, though we may be sweethearts. You require a manly heart in which you may place your burdens, and a manly bosom upon which you may recline your tired, wearied head; strong arms that shall shield you from every peril. Think of me at the nuptial hour and know that I shall give you away at the altar with my blessing and smile."
Thus ran the current of her meditation. Thus in her fancy she was scattering over the flagstones, in the nave of the old church, a sheen as of puregold. Tired out with these thoughts she fell asleep in her chair, and her dreams were sweet and refreshing until she was awakened by a gentle rap upon the door which announced the presence of her father.
Ned had now been installed as the butler at Ingleside. Clarissa observing as he assumed his untried office, "Dat Ned was more spryer und cud fend fur hesef bettern oman fokses. What cud wun lone lorn oman do ef de carpet-sackers shud come back sho nuff. Old marser ort to fort ob dis fo now."
The valuable estate of Burnbrae, an adjoining plantation, had fallen under the auctioneer's hammer for unpaid taxes and an overdue mortgage. The old owner had struggled with adverse fate to preserve it for his children, in the same plight it had descended to him from his ancestors; saving and excepting reasonable wear and tear and other unavoidable casualties. This large estate of more than two thousand acres had been purchased by Judge Bonham with its impedimenta of freed slaves that had been dumped into its cellars like offal by the Freedman's Bureau.
This incident alone was a sad commentary upon the times. From affluence to penury the descent had been sheer and without the fault of Mr. Baring the owner. Judge Bonham said to him however that he should not want, and that he might remain where he was at least for the present. The purchasing of this property was the occasion of a visit from that distinguished proprietor to Colonel Seymour at Ingleside. Judge Bonham had been a distinguished lawyer and jurist, and in the very best of times had highly dignified his profession by a seat upon the Superior Court bench. He was, however, confronted now by a condition and not a theory. He had interviewed from time to time theauthors of his text books, digests and reports, but from their dead lips came no satisfactory response to the question, "What shall be done with these poor negroes?" Thrust out of their home nests like unfledged eaglets, their very sustenance precarious and their condition the most pitiable and squalid. Idlers and vagrants, watching like a shipwrecked crew hopelessly for succor, when there is none to come.
It happened that the judge and the Colonel were in confidential communication for more than an hour, and doubtless the subject was exhaustively examined and reviewed, as if it were under a microscope. The judge, had been a widower for a few years, was a man of quite dignified presence, and perhaps fifty-five years of age. He had seen Alice but once before, at the Memorial exercises at the cemetery, and to-day he contemplated the southern beauty as if he were looking upon the face of Beatrice Cenci as it smiles upon the throngs from the gallery at Florence. Her exquisite grace, her extraordinary beauty, rekindled instantly the fire that had burned down into dead ashes so many years ago.
He asked himself the question, "Can I be in love? Have I been ensnared by the pretty fowler, enmeshed by the witcheries, the fascinations of this royal and unsophisticated beauty?" And all this done and accomplished without the movement of a finger upon her part.
"You, Livy Bonham, almost in the sere leaf, a veteran of fifty-four years, striking the flag to a feebly manned battery of bewitching blue eyes before it has opened fire! Impossible! Impossible!" This exclamation was just loud enough for the Colonel to overhear, who enquired of the judge, "what it was that was impossible?"
"Ah, I was thinking if I couldn't persuade the negroes to vacate my premises, that was all."
"Perhaps I may find it necessary to consult you further, say to morrow. You know I am living at Burnbrae now, and the distance between us is very short, and I am sure we shall become very intimate."
When the judge left the mansion the old man, accompanied by Alice sought rest in the parlor upon one of the mahogany sofas.
"And now my daughter you will please take up your book again and read to me. What are you reading," he continued.
"I was reading just then my dear father," the girl replied, "about the death of little Paul Dombey. I never weary of sentiments so heart pervading that I find running like golden threads through all of Dickens' works. You remember little Paul, father?"
"Yes, oh yes," replied the old man, "Read it all over again."
And Alice in her sweet, musical voice read so soothingly to her father that he sank to sleep.
Closing the door softly behind her she went out into the verandah and sang quite plaintively one or more old songs, it might have been for the little birds that were piping their notes too in the tree boughs above her.
Shall we slip away from Alice for a moment to invade the privacy of the judge?
If the judge had knowledge of our unbidden presence, would he not say in the law latin that we had committed a trespass, "quare clausum fregit?" Oh, no, it would flatter him immensely to suspect that he was in love, and that with the beauty of Ingleside. He was stupidly ignorant after propounding the question a score of times to himself,his answer, dubiously made, was always, "Well, we shall see perhaps."
Burnbrae, the home of the Barings, with its productive acres fringed by vine-clad vales and hills, had by an irrevocable event passed irredeemably out of the possession of its embarrassed owner, and heart-broken the old man yielded his tenure to the new master. The mortgage debt and taxes, like omniverous caterpillars, began to eat away at its four corners at one and the same time. Mr. Baring could only await the inevitable hour with the saddest apprehensions. For himself it was a matter of little consequence, for like the sea-tossed sailor, he could discern within the length of a cable the ultimate haven, land-locked and tranquil; but for his two daughters who would survive him the stroke was almost heart-crushing.
The forced sales of beautiful homesteads like Burnbrae, in the days of reconstruction were not much of an incident; when there was no halting by that unbrigaded army that was laying waste field and plantation, and scourging the land into nakedness; when by the extra judicial processes of assimilation and absorption the spoils system was budding into a vigorous life and the spoilsmen were animated, remorseless and persevering.
Around this home there were memories dear and tender, trellissed in the affections of the Barings;incense came forth from chambers and bowers, and out yonder where the smooth white stones glisten in the moonlight like platoons of white-gowned maidens, the Baring generations lay in unbroken files.
It is a sad thing to see a home, like a worthless chattel, under the hammer of a callous-hearted auctioneer; to hear him cry going, going, going, with as much delight as if he were parting company with a pestilence; but alas! with the owner it is like a judgment of outlawry to pass the keys, the symbolical title, to the purchaser, who is animated by no kind sentiment; who sees no tears and hears no sighs. "Going, going, going!" There slips out of the master's control the nursery where infancy was cradled, swathed in the manifolding of love and tenderness.
I see in retrospection a beautiful young mother, with a redundance of soft black hair as velvety as the wing of a raven, with her foot upon the rocker smiling so sweetly upon the sleepy-eyed child, who arouses her little tired self only long enough to whisper dreamily,
"Sing please, again, mama; sing Dix—" and falls asleep. And then there is the old conservatory just under mother's window, aromatic with memories. Mother called it her "Flowery kingdom," because every morning and every evening she entered her throne-room there with its dais of japonicas and camelias; and there were her little maids of honor in russet and gold and carmine glistening in dewy diamonds and pearls; and they would thrust back their silky night-caps and their little eyes would be bright, as they peeped out of tiny hoods of blue and purple, red and white. Ah, this was a royal realm of the queen mother, and those little star rayed princesses were so loyal in their beauty and fragrance. And this, too, like a beautiful pantomime,was passing away, leaving only shadows that, like some horrid dream, were darkening the soul. Oh, the charm, the aroma of the vine-clad conservatory, dear mother's "Flowery kingdom" and her little royal maids?
And there is the old drawing-room with a bountiful bouquet of memories. This hallowed chamber was so often refreshed in the golden twilight by mother's presence, by mother's devotions, by mother's voice as it blended softly with the harmonies of the old harpsichord; and it seems as if there were sweet chimes out of doors in the stilly air, and perhaps the stars were re-enforcing the old songs with whispering symphonies.
Then there was the chamber just next to mother's, embowered in columbine and the trailing arbutus where there are treasured still old letters, books and shoes and articles of vertu that belonged to Walter; just where he placed them before he enlisted in the Confederate cavalry; before he died and was rudely buried without a winding sheet, under the clods of the Shenandoah valley, that day that Stonewall Jackson unfurled the star barred banner in the streets of Winchester; to rest, aye, to rest until the bugler of the skies shall pipe the reveille. Going, going, going. It is the knell of happy days; the dirge of hearts crushed by sacrifices, sorrows; it is the thud of the cold clay upon the coffin of hope; the shroud that a remorseless destiny has flung around our idols as they fall one by one from their pedestals. "Going, going, going," the echo is thrust back upon the bruised heart from the white cold stones out yonder under the Mulberry. Perhaps Mr. Baring's daughters, who planted about these sacred mounds the star eyed daisies and the lily white violets, never thought of the dance that should go on and on to the fascination of lute and harp in the resounding halls, when the strangershould occupy in his right dear old Burnbrae. So bewildering are the changes in this life. It seems to them but yesterday that their lovely sister, a maiden of sixteen years, was laid away by the side of their mother, to arise one day transfigured and glorified; and now they were going to tell the old home with its cherished memorials good-bye; and the old graveyard and mother's vine clad "Flowery kingdom" too. Ah, every footfall is like an echo from some deserted shrine; and there is no kind voice to bid them "come again." The little twittering birds are piping the refrain of the sad, sad song of the auctioneer. Others enter now with the keys of a lawful dominion; they unlock the dead chambers, but the fragrance of happy lives is gone like the breath exhaled from the nostril. The stranger never heard the old harpsichord with its responsive chords, as they were swept by mother's lily white hands and almost syllabled her angel voice. They were never charmed by that sweet sunny voice that in so many twilights has been singing vespers in heaven; they know naught of the dead white ashes that lay in the unlighted furnaces of the poor souls, who are saying now so tenderly, so tearfully, to their old home and its memorials, its idols, "Good-bye, good-bye!"
Judge Bonham, the purchaser, had been highly distinguished in the civic and military employments of the country. Like his old friend, Colonel Seymour, he was with Lee at Spottsylvania, Gettysburg and Appommattox, and like his colleague in the humiliations of the hour he had declined to "bend the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift may follow fawning." To say that under all circumstances he maintained a perpendicular, from which there was no swerving backwards or forwards or to the right, or the left would be a falsification of biography. He, like all other mortalsupon this terrene had his passions, when his temper, despite curbs and restraints, almost overmastered him. Judicial experiences had affected his manners, so that he appeared austere and unfriendly; but he had a kind heart, open-handed to a fault, true to his convictions, his friends, his God.
There were curves and lines in the physical man here and there that appeared misplaced and misshapen. His long stringy hair or what there was left of it, was of a carrotty color, his nose was aquiline with unnatural projections, and his mouth though a little rigid in outline displayed, when animated, a beautiful set of teeth.
He was a very scholarly man; a religious man too, and entertained throughout his life strong Calvinistic convictions. It was strange indeed that a gentleman so exemplary in life, should sometimes run the hazard of being suspected as a rogue by those who were ignorant of the infirmity that harassed him all of his years. When meditating upon this playfulness of nature he would observe confidentially, that in any community where he was not known he would be oftener in the State's prison than without it.
"Better a Bedouin in the trackless desert than a man who is forever running the gauntlet at such a risk," he said embarrassingly.
There was the gossip of the town in which he lived as biting as the hoar frost, revamped and magnified to his hurt. When the gossipping spinsters heard that the judge was reinforcing his natural attractiveness by the glossiest and finest of raiment, coming out of the wardrobe like the butterfly out of the chrysalis, they hurried to and fro among the neighbors, like magpies chattering and twittering, and they laid the poor fellow under the power of an anodyne upon the cold marble slab, and with scalpels scarified him horribly,as some women only can do. "Did you ever! Did you ever!" came a refrain from puckered lips.
"Who would have believed it!" exclaimed Miss Jerusha Timpkins, as she rolled up her dancing eyes and clasped her bony hands as if in expostulation.
"The idea! The idea!" ejaculated Miss Narcissa Scoggins.
"That man going to marry!" they all exclaimed in chorus. "My, my, my!"
"And pray who told you so?" asked Miss Jemima Livesay with a biting expression.
"Why, where have you been, Jemima, all these months, you ain't heard it? It is the town talk. Why, Amarylla Hedgepeth she heard it straight from the knitting society. Squire Jiggetts told old Deacon Bobbett that the judge had spoken to him to marry him to the beautiful Alice Seymour, and Deacon Bobbett told his wife, and Mrs. Bobbett told Sarah Marlow, and Sarah Marlow told Polly Ann Midgett, and Polly Ann ups and tells Martha Gallop, and that's how the news gets to us strait."
"Well sir!" exclaimed Miss Serepta Hightower, forgetting she was speaking to old maids who had a loathing for any expression that suggested a man or the name or the memory of a man, except the man they were prodding and scarifying. "I wouldn't believe it if the news came pine blank from the clouds; that I wouldn't!" and she gave emphasis to the utterance by the malicious and vehement stroking of one skinny fist against the other.
"Why, that man?" she exclaimed with horror, "Why, he would forget his marriage vows before he ever made them. Why when he led Malindy Hartsease a blushing bride to the altar thirty years ago; why, don't you all remember that he sauntered out of the church by his lone lorn self, and the preacher had to go to his house in the dead of nightin the rain and tell him that he had left his bride in the church crying her very eyeballs out?"
"The monster! the monster!" all exclaimed and skinny hands and skinny arms and skinny necks were tossing and swaying automatically.
"Of course I warnt there myself (nor I either, came interruptions from all the spinsters) but I heard my mother,poor soul, say that she was right there and that she never felt so sorry for a poor human being in all her life as she did for poor Malindy; but she has gone to her rest now, thank the Lord!" and a dozen handkerchiefs instantly gravitated toward a dozen hysterical faces.
"I pity any poor soul that ties herself to such a man as that from the bottom of my heart," said Miss Anastasia Perkins in great sympathy. "Why she won't know whether she is married or not, neither will he; just as likely as not he will go courting somebody else with his poor wife a sitting back in the chimney corner in the ashes."
"And there is another pint I haint ever said anything about, but I think it ought to be known here betwixt ourselves and not to go any further" said, Miss Martha Gallop "but the way he treated his poor wife Malindy was a purified scandal. Now I aint a telling you this as coming from me, for the good Lord knows when that thing happened,I was a little teensy weensy tot, (with a coquettish toss of her antique head) but old aunt Mehetibel Parsley knows all about it, and I've heard her say over and over again that when Judge Bonham and Malindy would be riding in their carriage to meeting that he would forget where he was going and would fetch up right against the poor house three miles or more in the other direction, and that poor mournful woman would be a sitting back in the carriage with eyes as red as a gander's, and a lookingpine plank like she was coming from a funeral."
"Oh the cruel, cruel monster!" came another refrain, and skinny fists would double up and strike against ancient knees like resounding boards, and the spinsters would all heave great, tumultuous sighs, and corkscrew curls, like spiral springs, would dance up and down mechanically upon their well oiled pivots.
Judge Bonham was quite nervously gravitating toward a situation that required great force of character; a situation always extra hazardous and demanding the exercise of every resource.
This phlegmatic man was running the biblical parallel, dreaming dreams and seeing visions; not the distorted creations of the night-mare, but beautiful little crayons of love, swinging like tiny acrobats from blue ribbons on the walls, and descending like vagrant sunbeams upon the vermillion carpet; composite faces, too, with bright golden hair and brighter blue eyes.
The old gentleman sat back in his easy chair, thinking of the captivating beauty over at Ingleside, and there were ecstatic little chimes ringing in his ears, and their chorus always was this,