O lips that are so lonelyFor want of his caress;O heart that art too faithfulTo ever love him less;O eyes that find no sweetnessFor hunger of his face;O hands that long to feel him,Always, in every place!My spirit leans and listens,But only hears his name,And thought to thought leaps onwardAs flame leaps unto flame;And all kin to each otherAs any brood of flowers,Or these sweet winds of night, love,That fan the fainting hours!My spirit leans and listens,My heart stands up and cries,And only one sweet visionComes ever to my eyes.So near and yet so far, love,So dear, yet out of reach,So like some distant star, love,Unnamed in human speech!My spirit leans and listens,My heart goes out to him,Through all the long night watches,Until the dawning dim;My spirit leans and listens,What if, across the night,His strong heart send a messageTo flood me with delight?
O lips that are so lonelyFor want of his caress;O heart that art too faithfulTo ever love him less;O eyes that find no sweetnessFor hunger of his face;O hands that long to feel him,Always, in every place!
My spirit leans and listens,But only hears his name,And thought to thought leaps onwardAs flame leaps unto flame;And all kin to each otherAs any brood of flowers,Or these sweet winds of night, love,That fan the fainting hours!
My spirit leans and listens,My heart stands up and cries,And only one sweet visionComes ever to my eyes.So near and yet so far, love,So dear, yet out of reach,So like some distant star, love,Unnamed in human speech!
My spirit leans and listens,My heart goes out to him,Through all the long night watches,Until the dawning dim;My spirit leans and listens,What if, across the night,His strong heart send a messageTo flood me with delight?
Howard Glyndon.
I wonder that Wilson Flagg did not include the cow among his "Picturesque Animals," for that is where she belongs. She has not the classic beauty of the horse, but in picture-making qualities she is far ahead of him. Her shaggy, loose-jointed body, her irregular, sketchy outlines, like those of the landscape—the hollows and ridges, the slopes and prominences—her tossing horns, her bushy tail, her swinging gait, her tranquil, ruminating habits—all tend to make her an object upon which the artist eye loves to dwell. The artists are for ever putting her into pictures too. In rural landscape scenes she is an important feature. Behold her grazing in the pastures and on the hill sides, or along banks of streams, or ruminating under wide-spreading trees, or standing belly deep in the creek or pond, or lying upon the smooth places in the quiet summer afternoon, the day's grazing done, and waiting to be summoned home to be milked; and again in the twilight lying upon the level summit of the hill, or where the sward is thickest and softest; or in winter a herd of them filing along toward the spring to drink, or being "foddered" from the stack in the field upon the new snow—surely the cow is a picturesque animal, and all her goings and comings are pleasant to behold.
I looked into Hamerton's clever book on the domestic animals, also expecting to find my divinity duly celebrated, but he passes her by and contemplates the bovine qualities only as they appear in the ox and the bull.
Neither have the poets made much of the cow, but have rather dwelt upon the steer, or the ox yoked to the plough. I recall this touch from Emerson:
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm.
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm.
But the ear is charmed nevertheless, especially if it be not too near, and the air be still and dense, or hollow, as the farmer says. And again, if it be spring time and she task that powerful bellows of hers to its utmost capacity, how round the sound is, and how far it goes over the hills.
The cow has at least four tones or lows. First, there is her alarmed or distressed low, when deprived of her calf, or separated from her mates—her low of affection. Then there is her call of hunger, a petition for food, sometimes full of impatience, or her answer to the farmer's call, full of eagerness. Then there is that peculiar frenzied bawl she utters on smelling blood, which causes every member of the herd to lift its head and hasten to the spot—the native cry of the clan. When she is gored or in great danger she bawls also, but that is different. And lastly, there is the long, sonorous volley she lets off on the hills or in the yard, or along the highway, and which seems to be expressive of a kind of unrest and vague longing—the longing of the imprisoned Io for her lost identity. She sends her voice forth so that every god on Mount Olympus can hear her plaint. She makes this sound in the morning, especially in the spring, as she goes forth to graze.
One of our rural poets, Myron Benton, whose verse often has the flavor of sweet cream, has written some lines called "Rumination," in which the cow is the principal figure, and with which I am permitted to adorn my theme. The poet first gives his attention to a little brook that "breaks its shallow gossip" at his feet and "drowns the oriole's voice":
But moveth not that wise and ancient cow,Who chews her juicy cud so languid nowBeneath her favorite elm, whose drooping boughLulls all but inward vision, fast asleep:But still, her tireless tail a pendulum sweepMysterious clockwork guides, and some hid pulleyHer drowsy cud, each moment, raises duly.Of this great, wondrous world she has seen moreThan you, my little brook, and cropped its storeOf succulent grass on many a mead and lawn;And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn.And she has had some dark experienceOf graceless man's ingratitude; and henceHer ways have not been ways of pleasantness,Nor all her paths of peace. But her distressAnd grief she has lived past; your giddy roundDisturbs her not, for she is learned profoundIn deep brahminical philosophy.She chews the cud of sweetest reveryAbove your worldly prattle, brooklet merry,Oblivious of all things sublunary.
But moveth not that wise and ancient cow,Who chews her juicy cud so languid nowBeneath her favorite elm, whose drooping boughLulls all but inward vision, fast asleep:But still, her tireless tail a pendulum sweepMysterious clockwork guides, and some hid pulleyHer drowsy cud, each moment, raises duly.
Of this great, wondrous world she has seen moreThan you, my little brook, and cropped its storeOf succulent grass on many a mead and lawn;And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn.And she has had some dark experienceOf graceless man's ingratitude; and henceHer ways have not been ways of pleasantness,Nor all her paths of peace. But her distressAnd grief she has lived past; your giddy roundDisturbs her not, for she is learned profoundIn deep brahminical philosophy.She chews the cud of sweetest reveryAbove your worldly prattle, brooklet merry,Oblivious of all things sublunary.
The cow figures in Grecian mythology, and in the Oriental literature is treated as a sacred animal. "The clouds are cows and the rain milk." I remember what Herodotus says of the Egyptians' worship of heifers and steers; and in the traditions of the Celtic nations the cow is regarded as a divinity. In Norse mythology the milk of the cow Andhumbla afforded nourishment to the Frost giants, and it was she that licked into being and into shape a god, the father of Odin. If anything could lick a god into shape, certainly the cow could do it. You may see her perform this office for young Taurus any spring. She licks him out of the fogs and bewilderments and uncertainties in which he finds himself on first landing upon these shores, and up on to his feet in an incredibly short time. Indeed, that potent tongue of hers can almost make the dead alive any day, and the creative lick of the old Scandinavian mother cow is only a large-lettered rendering of the commonest facts.
The horse belongs to the fiery god Mars. He favors war, and is one of its oldest, most available, and most formidable engines. The steed is clothed with thunder, and smells the battle from afar; but the cattle upon a thousand hills denote that peace and plenty bear sway in the land. The neighing of the horse is a call to battle; but the lowing of old Brockleface in the valley brings the golden age again. The savage tribes are never without the horse; the Scythians are all mounted; but the cow would tame and humanize them. When the Indians will cultivate the cow, I shall think their civilization fairly begun. Recently, when the horses were sick with the epizoötic, and the oxen came to the city and helped to do their work, what an Arcadian air again filled the streets. But the dear old oxen—how awkward and distressed they looked! Juno wept in the face of every one of them. The horse is a true citizen, and is entirely at home in the paved streets; but the ox—what a complete embodiment of all rustic and rural things! Slow, deliberate, thick-skinned, powerful, hulky, ruminating, fragrant-breathed, when he came to town the spirit and suggestion of all Georgics and Bucolics came with him. Oh, citizen, was it only a plodding, unsightly brute that went by? Was there no chord in your bosom, long silent, that sweetly vibrated at the sight of that patient, Herculean couple? Did you smell no hay or cropped herbage, see no summer pastures with circles of cool shade, hear no voice of herds among the hills? They were very likely the only horses your grandfather ever had. Not much trouble to harness and unharness them. Not much vanity on the road in those days. They did all the work on the early pioneer farm. They were the gods whose rude strength first broke the soil. They could live where the moose and the deer could. If there was no clover or timothy to be had, then the twigs of the basswood and birch would do. Before there were yet fields given up to grass, they found ample pasturage in the woods. Their wide-spreading horns gleamed in the duskiness, and their paths and the paths of the cows became the future roads and highways, or even the streets of great cities.
All the descendants of Odin show a bovine trace, and cherish and cultivate the cow. What were those old Vikings but thick-hided bulls that delighted in nothing so much as goring each other? And has not the chargeof beefiness been brought much nearer home to us than that? But about all the northern races there is something that is kindred to cattle in the best sense—something in their art and literature that is essentially pastoral, sweet-breathed, continent, dispassionate, ruminating, wide-eyed, soft-voiced—a charm of kine, the virtue of brutes.
The cow belongs more especially to the northern peoples, to the region of the good, green grass. She is the truegrazinganimal. That broad, smooth, always dewy nose of hers is just the suggestion of green sward. She caresses the grass; she sweeps off the ends of the leaves; she reaps it with the soft sickle of her tongue. She crops close, but she does not bruise or devour the turf like the horse. She is the sward's best friend, and will make it thick and smooth as a carpet.
The turfy mountains where live the nibbling sheep
The turfy mountains where live the nibbling sheep
are not for her. Her muzzle is too blunt; then she does notbiteas do the sheep; she has not upper teeth; shecrops. But on the lower slopes, and margins, and rich bottoms, she is at home. Where the daisy and the buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her proper domain. The agriculture of no country can long thrive without her. Not only a large part of the real, but much of the potential wealth of the land is wrapped up in her.
What a variety of individualities a herd of cows presents when you have come to know them all, not only in form and color, but in manners and disposition. Some are timid and awkward and the butt of the whole herd. Some remind you of deer. Some have an expression in the face like certain persons you have known. A petted and well-fed cow has a benevolent and gracious look; an ill-used and poorly-fed one a pitiful and forlorn look. Some cows have a masculine or ox expression; others are extremely feminine. The latter are the ones for milk. Some cows will kick like a horse; some jump fences like deer. Every herd has its ringleader, its unruly spirit—one that plans all the mischief and leads the rest through the fences into the grain or into the orchard. This one is usually quite different from the master spirit, the "boss of the yard." The latter is generally the most peaceful and law-abiding cow in the lot, and the least bullying and quarrelsome. But she is not to be trifled with; her will is law; the whole herd give way before her, those that have crossed horns with her, and those that have not, but yielded their allegiance without crossing. I remember such a one among my father's milkers when I was a boy—a slender-horned, deep-shouldered, large-uddered, dewlapped old cow that we always put first in the long stable so she could not have a cow on each side of her to forage upon; for the master is yielded to no less in the stancheons than in the yard. She always had the first place anywhere. She had her choice of standing room in the milking yard, and when she wanted to lie down there or in the fields the best and softest spot was hers. When the herd were foddered from the stack or barn, or fed with pumpkins in the fall, she was always first served. Her demeanor was quiet but impressive. She never bullied or gored her mates, but literally ruled them with the breath of her nostrils. If any newcomer or ambitious younger cow, however, chafed under her supremacy, she was ever ready to make good her claims. And with what spirit she would fight when openly challenged! She was a whirlwind of pluck and valor; and not after one defeat or two defeats would she yield the championship. The boss cow, when overcome, seems to brood over her disgrace, and day after day will meet her rival in fierce combat.
A friend of mine, a pastoral philosopher, whom I have consulted in regard to the master cow, thinks it is seldom the case that one rules all the herd, if it number many, but that there is often one that will rule nearlyall. "Curiously enough," he says, "a case like this will often occur: No. 1 will whip No. 2; No. 2 whips No. 3; and No. 3 whips No. 1; so around in a circle. This is not a mistake; it is often the case. I remember," he continued, "we once had feeding out of a large bin in the centre of the yard six oxen who mastered right through in succession from No. 1 to No. 6;but No. 6 paid off the score by whipping No. 1. I often watched them when they were all trying to feed out of the box, and of course trying, dog-in-the-manger fashion, each to prevent any other he could. They would often get in the order to do it very systematically, since they could keep rotating about the box till the chain happened to get broken somewhere, when there would be confusion. Their mastership, you know, like that between nations, is constantly changing. But there are always Napoleons who hold their own through many vicissitudes; but the ordinary cow is continually liable to lose her foothold. Some cow she has always despised, and has often sent tossing across the yard at her horns' ends, some pleasant morning will return the compliment and pay off old scores."
But my own observation has been that in herds in which there have been no important changes for several years, the question of might gets pretty well settled, and some one cow becomes the acknowledged ruler.
The bully of the yard is never the master, but usually a second or third-rate pusher that never loses an opportunity to hook those beneath her, or to gore the masters if she can get them in a tight place. If such a one can get loose in the stable, she is quite certain to do mischief. She delights to pause in the open bars and turn and keep those at bay behind her till she sees a pair of threatening horns pressing toward her, when she quickly passes on. As one cow masters all, so there is one cow that is mastered by all. These are the two extremes of the herd, the head and the tail. Between them are all grades of authority, with none so poor but hath some poorer to do her reverence.
The cow has evidently come down to us from a wild or semi-wild state; perhaps is a descendant of those wild, shaggy cattle of which a small band still exists in the forests of Scotland. Cuvier seems to have been of this opinion. One of the ways in which her wild instincts still crop out is the disposition she shows in spring to hide her calf—a common practice among the wild herds. Her wild nature would be likely to come to the surface at this crisis if ever; and I have known cows that practised great secrecy in dropping their calves. As their time approached they grew restless, a wild and excited look was upon them, and if left free, they generally set out for the woods or for some other secluded spot. After the calf is several hours old, and has got upon its feet and had its first meal, the dam by some sign commands it to lie down and remain quiet while she goes forth to feed. If the calf is approached at such time, it plays "'possum," assumes to be dead or asleep, till on finding this ruse does not succeed, it mounts to its feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and charges desperately upon the intruder. But it recovers from this wild scare in a little while, and never shows signs of it again.
The habit of the cow, also, in eating the placenta, looks to me like a vestige of her former wild instincts—the instinct to remove everything that would give the wild beasts a clue or a scent, and so attract them to her helpless young.
How wise and sagacious the cows become that run upon the street, or pick their living along the highway. The mystery of gates and bars is at last solved to them. They ponder over them by night, they lurk about them by day, till they acquire a new sense—till they becomeen rapportwith them and know when they are open and unguarded. The garden gate, if it open into the highway at anypoint, is never out of the mind of these roadsters, or out of their calculations. They calculate upon the chances of its being left open a certain number of times in the season; and if it be but once and only for five minutes, your cabbage and sweet corn suffer. What villager, or countryman either, has not been awakened at night by the squeaking and crunching of those piratical jaws under the window or in the direction of the vegetable patch? I have had the cows, after they had eaten up my garden, break into the stable where my own milcher was tied, and gore her and devour her meal. Yes, life presents but one absorbing problem to the street cow, and that is how to get into your garden. She catches glimpses of it over the fence or through the pickets, and her imagination or epigastrium is inflamed. When the spot is surrounded by a high board fence, I think I have seen her peeping at the cabbages through a knot-hole. At last she learns to open the gate. It is a great triumph of bovine wit. She does it with her horn or her nose, or may be with her ever ready tongue. I doubt if she has ever yet penetrated the mystery of the newer patent fastenings; but the old-fashioned thumb-latch she can see through, give her time enough.
A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than half suspected she was turned in by some one; so one day I watched. Presently I heard the gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the old buffalo. On seeing me she turned and ran like a horse. I then fastened the gate on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding place, when the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she was trespassing, and she had learned that there were usually some swift penalties attached to this pastime.
I have owned but three cows and loved but one. That was the first one, Chloe, a bright red, curly-pated, golden-skinned Devonshire cow, that an ocean steamer landed for me upon the banks of the Potomac one bright May day many clover summers ago. She came from the north, from the pastoral regions of the Catskills, to graze upon the broad commons of the national capital. I was then the fortunate and happy lessee of an old place with an acre of ground attached, almost within the shadow of the dome of the capitol. Behind a high but aged and decrepit board fence I indulged my rural and unclerical tastes. I could look up from my homely tasks and cast a potato almost in the midst of that cataract of marble steps that flows out of the north wing of the patriotic pile. Ah, when that creaking and sagging back gate closed behind me in the evening, I was happy; and when it opened for my egress thence in the morning, I was not happy. Inside that gate was a miniature farm redolent of homely, primitive life, a tumble-down house and stables and implements of agriculture and horticulture, broods of chickens, and growing pumpkins, and a thousand antidotes to the weariness of an artificial life. Outside of it were the marble and iron palaces, the paved and blistering streets, and the high, vacant, mahogany desk of a government clerk. In that ancient enclosure I took an earth bath twice a day. I planted myself as deep in the soil as I could to restore the normal tone and freshness of my system, impaired by the above mentioned government mahogany. I have found there is nothing like the earth to draw the various social distempers out of one. The blue devils take flight at once if they see you mean to bury them and make compost of them.Emerson intimates that the scholar had better not try to have two gardens; but I could never spend an hour hoeing up dock and red-root and twitch grass without in some way getting rid of many weeds and fungus, unwholesome growths that a petty, in-doors life was for ever fostering in my own moral and intellectual nature.
But the finishing touch was not given till Chloe came. She was the jewel for which this homely setting waited. My agriculture had some object then. The old gate never opened with such alacrity as when she paused before it. How we waited for her coming! Should I send Drewer, the colored patriarch, for her? No; the master of the house himself should receive Juno at the capital.
"One cask for you," said the clerk, referring to the steamer bill of lading.
"Then I hope it's a cask of milk," I said. "I expected a cow."
"One cask it says here."
"Well, let's see it; I'll warrant it has horns and is tied by a rope"; which proved to be the case, for there stood the only object that bore my name, chewing its cud, on the forward deck. How she liked the voyage I could not find out; but she seemed to relish so much the feeling of solid ground beneath her feet once more that she led me a lively step all the way home. She cut capers in front of the White House, and tried twice to wind me up in the rope as we passed the Treasury. She kicked up her heels on the broad avenue and became very coltish as she came under the walls of the capitol. But that night the long-vacant stall in the old stable was filled, and the next morning the coffee had met with a change of heart. I had to go out twice with the lantern and survey my treasure before I went to bed. Did she not come from the delectable mountains, and did I not have a sort of filial regard for her as toward my foster mother?
This was during the Arcadian age at the capital, before the easy-going southern ways had gone out and the prim new northern ways had come in, and when the domestic animals were treated with distinguished consideration and granted the freedom of the city. There was a charm of cattle in the streets and upon the commons: goats cropped your rose bushes through the pickets, and nooned upon your front porch, and pigs dreamed Arcadian dreams under your garden fence or languidly frescoed it with pigments from the nearest pool. It was a time of peace; it was the poor man's golden age. Your cow, or your goat, or your pig led a vagrant, wandering life, and picked up a subsistence wherever they could, like the bees, which was almost everywhere. Your cow went forth in the morning and came home fraught with milk at night, and you never troubled yourself where she went or how far she roamed.
Chloe took very naturally to this kind of life. At first I had to go with her a few times and pilot her to the nearest commons, and then left her to her own wit, which never failed her. What adventures she had, what acquaintances she made, how far she wandered, I never knew. I never came across her in my walks or rambles. Indeed, on several occasions I thought I would look her up and see her feeding in the national pastures, but I never could find her. There were plenty of cows, but they were all strangers. But punctually, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, her white horns would be seen tossing above the gate and her impatient low be heard. Sometimes, when I turned her forth in the morning, she would pause and apparently consider which way she would go. Should she go toward Kendall Green to-day, or follow the Tiber, or over by the Big Spring, or out around Lincoln Hospital? She seldom reached a conclusion till she had stretched forth her neck and blown a blast on her trumpet that awoke the echoes in the very lantern on the dome of the capitol. Then, after one or two licks, she would disappear around the corner. Later inthe season, when the grass was parched or poor on the commons, and the corn and cabbage tempting in the garden, Chloe was loth to depart in the morning, and her deliberations were longer than ever, and very often I had to aid her in coming to a decision.
For two summers she was a well-spring of pleasure and profit in my farm of one acre, when in an evil moment I resolved to part with her and try another. In an evil moment I say, for from that time my luck in cattle left me. Juno never forgave me the execution of that rash and cruel resolve.
The day is indellibly stamped on my memory when I exposed my Chloe for sale in the public market place. It was in November, a bright, dreamy, Indian summer day. A sadness oppressed me, not unmixed with guilt and remorse. An old Irish woman came to the market also with her pets to sell, a sow and five pigs, and took up a position next me. We condoled with each other; we bewailed the fate of our darlings together; we berated in chorus the white-aproned but bloodstained fraternity who prowled about us. When she went away for a moment I minded the pigs, and when I strolled about she minded my cow. How shy the innocent beast was of those carnal market men. How she would shrink away from them. When they put out a hand to feel her condition she would "scrooch" down her back, or bend this way or that, as if the hand were a branding iron. So long as I stood by her head she felt safe—deluded creature—and chewed the cud of sweet content; but the moment I left her side she seemed filled with apprehension, and followed me with her eyes, lowing softly and entreatingly till I returned.
At last the money was counted out for her, and her rope surrendered to the hand of another. How that last look of alarm and incredulity, which I caught as I turned for a parting glance, went to my heart!
Her stall was soon filled, or partly filled, and this time with a native—a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed of Virginia: a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and hungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a family trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the native blooded cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of corn stalks, in the open air, during those bleak and windy winters, and roaming over those parched fields in summer, has come to have some marked features. For one thing, her pedal extremities seemed lengthened; for another, her udder does not impede her travelling; for a third, her backbone inclines strongly to the curve; then, she despiseth hay. This last is a sure test. Offer a thorough-bred Virginia cow hay, and she will laugh in your face; but rattle the husks or shucks, and she knows you to be her friend.
The new comer even declined corn meal at first. She eyed it furtively, then sniffed it suspiciously, but finally discovered that it bore some relation to her native "shucks," when she fell to eagerly.
I cherish the memory of this cow, however, as the most affectionate brute I ever knew. Being deprived of her calf, she transferred her affections to her master, and would fain have made a calf of him, lowing in the most piteous and inconsolable manner when he was out of her sight, hardly forgetting her grief long enough to eat her meal, and entirely neglecting her beloved husks. Often in the middle of the night she would set up that sonorous lamentation and continue it till sleep was chased from every eye in the household. This generally had the effect of bringing the object of her affection before her, but in a mood anything but filial or comforting. Still, at such times a kick seemed a comfort to her, and she would gladly have kissed the rod that was the instrument of my midnight wrath.
But her tender star was destined soon to a fatal eclipse. Being tied with too long a rope on one occasion during my temporary absence, she got her head into the meal barrel, and stopped not till she had devoured nearly half a bushel of dry meal. The singularly placid and benevolent look that beamed from the meal-besmeared face when I discovered her was something to be remembered. For the first time also her spinal column came near assuming a horizontal line.
But the grist proved too much for her frail mill, and her demise took place on the third day, not of course without some attempt to relieve her on my part. I gave her, as is usual in such emergencies, everything I "could think of" and everything my neighbors could think of, besides some fearful prescriptions which I obtained from a German veterinary surgeon, but to no purpose. I imagined her poor maw distended and inflamed with the baking sodden mass which no physic could penetrate or enliven.
Thus ended my second venture in live stock. My third, which followed sharp upon the heels of this disaster, was scarcely more of a success. This time I led to the altar a buffalo cow, as they call the "mully" down south—a large, spotted, creamy-skinned cow, with a fine udder, that I persuaded a Jew drover to part with for ninety dollars. "Pag like a dish rack (rag)," said he, pointing to her udder after she had been milked. "You vill come pack and gif me the udder ten tollars" (for he had demanded an even hundred), he continued, "after you have had her a gouple of days." True I felt like returning to him after a "gouple of days," but not to pay the other ten dollars. The cow proved to be as blind as a bat, though capable of counterfeiting the act of seeing to perfection. For did she not lift up her head and follow with her eyes a dog that scaled the fence and ran through the other end of the lot, and the next moment dash my hopes thus raised by trying to walk over a locust tree thirty feet high? And when I set the bucket before her containing her first mess of meal, she missed it by several inches, and her nose brought up against the ground. Was it a kind of far-sightedness and near blindness? That was it, I think; she had genius, but not talent; she could see the man in the moon, but was quite oblivious to the man immediately in her front. Her eyes were telescopic and required a long range.
As long as I kept her in the stall, or confined to the enclosure, this strange eclipse of her sight was of little consequence. But when spring came, and it was time for her to go forth and seek her livelihood in the city's waste places, I was embarrassed. Into what remote corners or into whatterra incognitamight she not wander! There was little doubt but she would drift around home in the course of the summer, or perhaps as often as every week or two; but could she be trusted to find her way back every night? Perhaps she could be taught. Perhaps her other senses were acute enough to in a measure compensate her for her defective vision. So I gave her lessons in the topography of the country. I led her forth to graze for a few hours each day and led her home again. Then I left her to come home alone, which feat she accomplished very encouragingly. She came feeling her way along, stepping very high, but apparently a most diligent and interested sightseer. But she was not sure of the right house when she got to it, though she stared at it very hard.
Again I turned her forth, and again she came back, her telescopic eyes apparently of some service to her. On the third day there was a fierce thunderstorm late in the afternoon, and old buffalo did not come home. It had evidently scattered and bewildered what little wit she had. Being barely able to navigate those straits on a calm day, what could she be expected to do in a tempest?
After the storm had passed, and near sundown, I set out in quest of her, but could get no clue. I heard that twocows had been struck by lightning about a mile out on the commons. My conscience instantly told me that one of them was mine. It would be a fit closing of the third act of this pastoral drama. Thitherward I bent my steps, and there upon the smooth plain I beheld the scorched and swollen forms of two cows slain by thunderbolts, but neither of them had ever been mine.
The next day I continued the search, and the next, and the next. Finally I hoisted an umbrella over my head, for the weather had become hot, and set out deliberately and systematically to explore every foot of open common on Capitol hill. I tramped many miles, and found every man's cow but my own—some twelve or fifteen hundred, I should think. I saw many vagrant boys and Irish and colored women, nearly all of whom had seen a buffalo cow that very day that answered exactly to my description, but in such diverse and widely separate places that I knew it was no cow of mine. And it was astonishing how many times I was myself deceived; how many rumps or heads, or liver backs or white flanks I saw peeping over knolls or from behind fences or other objects that could belong to no cow but mine!
Finally I gave up the search, concluded the cow had been stolen, and advertised her, offering a reward. But days passed, and no tidings were obtained. Hope began to burn pretty low—was indeed on the point of going out altogether, when one afternoon, as I was strolling over the commons (for in my walks I still hovered about the scenes of my lost milcher), I saw the rump of a cow, over a grassy knoll, that looked familiar. Coming nearer, the beast lifted up her head; and, behold! it was she! only a few squares from home, where doubtless she had been most of the time. I had overshot the mark in my search. I had ransacked the far-off, and had neglected the near-at-hand, as we are so apt to do. But she was ruined as a milcher, and her history thenceforward was brief and touching!
John Burroughs.
Who will tell him? Who will teach him?Have you voices, merry birds?Then be voice for me, and reach himWith a thousand pleading words.Sing my secret, east and west,Till his answer be confessed!Roses, when you see him coming,Light of heart and strong of limb,Make your lover-bees stop humming;Turn your blushes round to him—Blush, dear flowers, that he may learn,How a woman's heart can burn!Wind—oh, wind—you happy rover!Oh that I were half as free—Leave your honey-bells and clover,Go and seek my love for me.Find, kiss, clasp him, make him knowIt isIwho love him so!
Who will tell him? Who will teach him?Have you voices, merry birds?Then be voice for me, and reach himWith a thousand pleading words.Sing my secret, east and west,Till his answer be confessed!
Roses, when you see him coming,Light of heart and strong of limb,Make your lover-bees stop humming;Turn your blushes round to him—Blush, dear flowers, that he may learn,How a woman's heart can burn!
Wind—oh, wind—you happy rover!Oh that I were half as free—Leave your honey-bells and clover,Go and seek my love for me.Find, kiss, clasp him, make him knowIt isIwho love him so!
Mary Ainge De Vere.
One of the most curious cases that ever came under my notice in a long course of criminal practice was not brought into any court, and, as I believe, has never been published until now. The details of the affair came under my personal cognizance in the following manner:
In 1858 I went down into the Shenandoah valley to spend my summer vacation among the innumerable Pages, Marshalls, and Cookes who all hailed me as cousin, by right of traditional intermarriages generations back. My first visit was to the house of McCormack Beardsley, a kinsman and school-fellow whom I had not seen since we parted at the university twenty years before.
We were both gray-haired old fellows now, but I had grown thin and sharp in the courts of Baltimore and Washington, while he had lived quietly on his plantation, more fat and jovial and genial with every year.
Beardsley possessed large means then, and maintained the unlimited hospitality usual among large Virginia planters before the war. The house was crowded during my stay with my old friends from the valley and southern countries. His daughter, too, was not only a beauty, but a favorite among the young people, and brought many attractive, well-bred girls about her, and young men who were not so attractive or well bred. Lack of occupation and a definite career had reduced the sons of too many Virginia families at that time to cards and horses as their sole pursuits; the war, while it left them penniless, was in one sense their salvation.
One evening, sitting on the verandah with Beardsley, smoking, and looking in the open windows of the parlor, I noticed a woman who sat a little apart, and who, as I fancied, was avoided by the younger girls. In a Virginia country party there are always two or three unmarried women, past their first youth, with merry blue eyes, brown hair, and delicate features—women "with a history," but who are none the less good dancers, riders, and able to put all their cleverness into the making of a pie or a match for their cousins. This woman was blue-eyed and brown-haired, but she had none of the neat, wide-awake self-possession of her class. She had a more childish expression, and spoke with a more timid uncertainty, than even Lotty Beardsley, who was still in the schoolroom. I called my host's attention to her and asked who she was.
"It is the daughter of my cousin, General George Waring. You remember him surely—of the Henrico branch of Warings?"
"Certainly. But he had only one child—Louisa; and I remember receiving an invitation to her wedding years ago."
"Yes. This is Louisa. The wedding never took place. It's an odd story," he said, after a pause, "and the truth is, Floyd, I brought the girl here while you were with us in the hope that you, with your legal acumen, could solve the mystery that surrounds her. I'll give the facts to you to-morrow—it's impossible to do it now. But tell me, in the mean time, how she impresses you, looking at her as a lawyer would at a client, or a—a prisoner on trial. Do you observe anything peculiar in her face or manner?"
"I observed a very peculiar manner in all those about her—an effort at cordiality in which they did not succeed; a certain constraint in look and tone while speaking to her. I even saw it in yourself just now as soon as you mentioned her name."
"You did? I'm sorry for that—exceedingly sorry!" anxiously. "I believe in Louisa Waring's innocence as I do in that of my own child; and if I thought she was hurt or neglected in this house—— But there's a cloud on the girl, Floyd—that's a fact. It don't amount even to suspicion. If it did, one could argue it down. But——Well, what do you make of her—her face now?"
"It is not an especially clever face, nor one that indicates power of any kind; not the face of a woman who of her own will would be the heroine of any remarkable story. I should judge her to have been a few years ago one of the sensible, light-hearted, sweet-tempered girls of whom there are so many in Virginia; a nice housekeeper, and one who would have made a tender wife and mother."
"Well, well? Nothing more?"
"Yes. She has not matured into womanhood as such girls do. She looks as if her growth in every-day experiences had stopped years ago; that while her body grew older her mind had halted, immature, incomplete. A great grief might have had that effect, or the absorption of all her faculties by one sudden, mastering idea."
"You are a little too metaphysical for me," said Beardsley. "Poor Lou isn't shrewd by any means, and always gives me the feeling that she needs care and protection more than most women, if that is what you mean."
"There is a singular expression in her face at times," I resumed.
"Ah! Now you have it!" he muttered.
"Sitting there in your parlor, where there is certainly nothing to dread, she has glanced behind and about her again and again, as though she heard a sound that frightened her. I observe, too, that when any man speaks to her she fixes on him a keen, suspicious look. She does not have it with women. It passes quickly, but it is there. It is precisely the expression of an insane person, or a guilty one dreading arrest."
"You are a close observer, Floyd. I told my wife that we could not do better than submit the whole case to your judgment. We are all Lou's friends in the neighborhood; but we cannot look at the matter with your legal experience and unprejudiced eyes. Come, let us go into supper now."
The next morning I was summoned to Beardsley's "study" (so called probably from the total absence of either book or newspaper), and found himself and his wife awaiting me, and also a Doctor Scheffer, whom I had previously noticed among the guests—a gaunt, hectic young man, apparently on the high road to death, the victim of an incurable consumption.
"I asked William Scheffer to meet us here," said Mr. Beardsley, "as Louisa Waring was an inmate of his father's house at the time of the occurrence. She and William were children and playmates together. I believe I am right, William. You knew all the circumstances of that terrible night?"
The young man's heavy face changed painfully. "Yes; as much as was known to any one but Louisa, and—the guilty man, whoever he was. But why are you dragging out that wretched affair?" turning angrily on Mrs. Beardsley. "Surely any friend of Miss Waring's would try to bury the past for her!"
"No," said the lady calmly. "It has been buried quite too long, in my opinion; for she has carried her burden for six years. It is time now that we should try to lift it for her. You are sitting in a draught, William. Sit on this sofa."
Scheffer, coughing frightfully, and complaining with all the testiness of a long-humored invalid, was disposed of at last, and Beardsley began:
"The story is briefly this. Louisa, before her father's death, was engaged to be married to Colonel Paul Merrick (Merricks of Clarke county, you know). The wedding was postponed for a year when General Waring died, and Louisa went to her uncle's—your father, William—to live during that time. When the year was over, every preparation was made for the marriage: invitations were sent to all the kinsfolk on both sides (and that included three or four counties on a rough guess), and we—the immediate family—were assembled at Major Scheffer's preparing for the grand event, when——" Beardsley became now excessively hot and flurried, and getting up, thumped heavily up and down the room.
"After all, there is nothing to tell. Why should we bring in a famous lawyer to sit in judgment on her as if the girl were a criminal? She only did, Floyd, what women have done since the beginning—changed her mind without reason. Paul Merrick was as clever and lovable a young fellow as you would find in the State, and Louisa was faithful to him—she's faithful to him yet; but on the night before the wedding she refused to marry him, and has persisted in the refusal ever since, without assigning a cause."
"Is that all of the story?" I asked.
Beardsley was silent.
"No," said his wife gently; "that is not all. I thought McCormack's courage would fail before he gave you the facts. I shall try and tell you——"
"Only the facts, if you please, without any inferences or opinions of others."
The old lady paused for a moment, and then began: "A couple of days before the wedding we went over to Major Scheffer's to help prepare for it. You know we have no restaurateurs nor confectioners to depend upon, and such occasions are busy seasons. The gentlemen played whist, rode about the plantation, or tried the Major's wines, while indoors we, all of us—married ladies and girls and a dozen old aunties—were at work with cakes, creams, and pastry. I recollect I took over our cook, Prue, because Lou fancied nobody could make such wine jelly as hers. Then Lou's trousseau was a very rich one, and she wanted to try on all of her pretty dresses, that we might see how——"
"My dear!" interrupted Mr. Beardsley, "this really appears irrelevant to the matter——"
"Not at all. I wish Mr. Floyd to gain an idea of Louisa's temper and mood at that time. The truth is, she was passionately fond of her lover, and very happy that her marriage was so near; and being a modest little thing, she hid her feeling under an incessant, merry chatter about dresses and jellies. Don't you agree with me, William?"
The sick man turned on the sofa with a laugh, which looked ghastly enough on his haggard face. "I submit, Aunt Sophie, that it is hardly fair to call me in as a witness in this case. I waited on Lou for two or three years, Mr. Floyd, and she threw me over for Merrick. It is not likely that I was an unprejudiced observer of her moods just then."
"Nonsense, William. I knew that was but the idlest flirtation between you, or I should not have brought you here now," said his aunt. "Well, Mr. Floyd, the preparations all were completed on the afternoon before the wedding. Some of the young people had gathered in the library—Paul Merrick and his sisters and—you were there, William?"
"Yes, I was there."
"And they persuaded Lou to put on her wedding dress and veil to give them a glimpse of the bride. I think it was Paul who wished it. He was a hot, eager young fellow, and he was impatient to taste his happiness by anticipation. It was a dull, gusty afternoon in October. I remember the contrast she made to the gray, cold day as she came in, shy and blushing, and her eyes sparkling, in her haze of white, and stood in front of the window. She was so lovely and pure that we were all silent. It seemed as if she belonged then to her lover alone, and none of us had a right to utter a word. He went up to her, but no one heard what he said, and then took her by the hand and led her reverently to the door. Presently I met her comingout of her chamber in a cloak and hat. Her maid Abby was inside, folding the white dress and veil. 'I am going down to Aunty Huldah's,' Lou said to me. 'I promised her to come again before I was married and tell her the arrangements all over once more.' Huldah was an old colored woman, Lou's nurse, who lived down on the creek bank and had long been bedridden. I remember that I said to Louisa that the walk would be long and lonely, and told her to call Paul to accompany her. She hesitated a moment, and then turned to the door, saying Huldah would probably be in one of her most funereal moods, and that she would not have Paul troubled on the eve of his wedding day. She started, running and looking back with a laugh, down the hill." Mrs. Beardsley faltered and stopped.
"Go on," said Dr. Scheffer. "The incidents which follow are all that really affect Louisa's guilt or innocence."
"Go on, mother," said Beardsley hastily. "Louisa's innocence is not called in question. Remember that. Tell everything you know without scruple."
The old lady began again in a lower voice: "We expected an arrival that afternoon—Houston Simms, a distant kinsman of Major Scheffer's. He was from Kentucky—a large owner of blooded stock—and was on his way home from New York, where his horses had just won the prizes at the fall races. He had promised to stop for the wedding, and the carriage had been sent to the station to meet him. The station, as you know, is five miles up the road. By some mistake the carriage was late, and Houston started, with his valise in his hand, to walk to the house, making a short cut through the woods. When the carriage came back empty, and the driver told this to us, some of the young men started down to meet the old gentleman. It was then about four o'clock, and growing dark rapidly. The wind, I recollect, blew sharply, and a cold rain set in. I came out on the long porch, and walked up and down, feeling uneasy and annoyed at Louisa's prolonged absence. Colonel Merrick, who had been looking for her all through the house, had just learned from me where she had gone, and was starting with umbrellas to meet her, when she came suddenly up to us, crossing the ploughed field, not from the direction of Huldah's cabin, but from the road. We both hurried toward her; but when she caught sight of Colonel Merrick she stopped short, putting out her hands with a look of terror and misery quite indescribable. 'Take me away from him! Oh, for God's sake!' she cried. I saw she had suffered some great shock, and taking her in my arms, led her in, motioning him to keep back. She was so weak as to fall, but did not faint, nor lose consciousness for a single moment. All night she lay, her eyes wandering from side to side as in momentary expectancy of the appearance of some one. No anodyne had any effect upon her—every nerve seemed strained to its utmost tension. But she did not speak a word except at the sound of Colonel Merrick's voice or step, when she would beg piteously that he should be kept away from her. Toward morning she fell into a kind of stupor, and when she awoke appeared to be calmer. She beckoned to me, and asked that her uncle Scheffer and Judge Grove, her other guardian, should be sent for. She received them standing, apparently quite grave and composed. She asked that several other persons should be called in, desiring, she said, to have as many witnesses as possible to what she was about to make known. 'You all know,' she said, 'that to-morrow was to have been my wedding day. I wish you now to bear witness that I refuse to-day or at any future time to marry Paul Merrick, and that no argument or persuasion will induce me to do so. And I wish,' raising her hand, to keep silence—'I wish to say publicly that it is no fault or ill doing ofColonel Merrick's that has driven me to this resolve. I say this as in the sight of Almighty God.' Nobody argued, or scarcely, indeed, spoke to her. Every one saw that she was physically a very ill woman; and it was commonly believed that she had received some sudden shock which had unhinged her mind. An hour afterward the searching party came in (for the young men, not finding Houston Simms, had gone out again to search for him). They had found his dead body concealed in the woods by Mill's spring. You know the place. There was a pistol shot through the head, and a leathern pocketbook, which had apparently contained money, was found empty a few feet away. That was the end of it all, Mr. Floyd."
"You mean that Simms's murderer was never found?"
"Never," said Beardsley, "though detectives were brought down from Richmond and set on the track. Their theory—a plausible one enough too—was that Simms had been followed from New York by men who knew the large sum he earned from the races, and that they had robbed and murdered him, and readily escaped through the swamps."
"It never was my belief," said Dr. Scheffer, "that he was murdered at all. It was hinted that he had stopped in a gambling house in New York, and there lost whatever sum he had won at the races; and that rather than meet his family in debt and penniless, he blew out his brains in the first lonely place to which he came. That explanation was plain enough."
"What was the end of the story so far as Miss Waring was concerned?" I asked.
"Unfortunately, it never has had an end," said Mrs. Beardsley. "The mystery remains. She was ill afterward; indeed, it was years before she regained her bodily strength as before. But her mind had never been unhinged, as Paul Merrick thought. He waited patiently, thinking that some day her reason would return, and she would come back to him. But Louisa Waring was perfectly sane even in the midst of her agony on that night. From that day until now she has never by word or look given any clue by which the reason of her refusal to marry him could be discovered. Of course the murder and her strange conduct produced a great excitement in this quiet neighborhood. But you can imagine all that. I simply have given you the facts which bear on the case."
"The first suspicion, I suppose, rested on Merrick?" I said.
"Yes. The natural explanation of her conduct was that she had witnessed an encounter in the woods between Simms and her lover, in which the old man was killed. Fortunately, however, Paul Merrick had not left the house once during the afternoon until he went out with me to meet her."
"And then Miss Waring was selected as the guilty party?"
No one answered for a moment. Young Scheffer lay with his arm over his face, which had grown so worn and haggard as the story was told that I doubted whether his affection for the girl had been the slight matter which he chose to represent it.
"No," said Beardsley; "she never was openly accused, nor even subjected to any public interrogation. She came to the house in the opposite direction from the spot where the murder took place. And there was no rational proof that she had any cognizance of it. But there were not wanting busybodies to suggest that she had met Simms in the woods, and at some proffered insult from him had fired the fatal shot."
His wife's fair old face flushed. "How can you repeat such absurdity, McCormack?" she said. "Louisa Waring was as likely to go about armed as—as I!" knitting vehemently at a woollen stocking she had held idly until now.
"I know it was absurd, my dear. But you know as well as I that though it was but the mere breath of suspicion, it has always clung to the girl and set her apart as it were from other women."
"What effect did that report have on Merrick?" I asked.
"The effect it would have on any man deserving the name," said Beardsley. "If he loved her passionately before, she has been, I believe, doubly dear to him since. But she has never allowed him to meet her since that night."
"You think her feeling is unchanged for him?"
"I have no doubt of it," Mrs. Beardsley said. "There is nothing in Lou's nature out of which you could make a heroine of tragedy. After the first shock of that night was over she was just the commonplace little body she was before, and could not help showing how fond she was of her old lover. But she quietly refused to ever see him again."
"Merrick went abroad three years ago," interposed her husband. "I'll let you into a secret, Floyd. I've determined there shall be an end of this folly. I have heard from him that he will be at home next week, and is as firm as ever in his resolve to marry Miss Waring. I brought her here so that she could not avoid meeting him. Now if you, Floyd, could only manage—could look into this matter before the meeting, and set it to rights, clear the poor child of this wretched suspicion that hangs about her? Well, now you know why I have told you the story."
"You have certainly a sublime faith in Mr. Floyd's skill," said Scheffer with a disagreeable laugh. "I wish him success." He rose with difficulty, and wrapping his shawl about him, went feebly out of the room.
"William is soured through his long illness," Beardsley hastened to say apologetically. "And he cared more for Lou than I supposed. We were wrong to bring him in this morning"; and he hurried out to help him up the stairs. Mrs. Beardsley laid down her knitting, and glanced cautiously about her. I saw that the vital point of her testimony had been omitted until now.
"I think it but right to tell you—nobody has ever heard it before"—coming close to me, her old face quite pale. "When I undressed Louisa that night her shoes and stockings were stained, and a long reddish hair clung to her sleeve.She had trodden over the bloody ground and handled the murdered man."
Every professional man will understand me when I say I was glad to hear this. Hitherto the girl's whim and the murder appeared to me two events connected only by the accident of occurrence on the same day. Now there was but one mystery to solve.
Whatever success I have had in my practice has been due to my habit of boldly basing my theories upon the known character of the parties implicated, and not upon more palpable accidental circumstances. Left to myself now, I speedily resolved this case into a few suppositions, positive to me as facts. The girl had been present at the murder. She was not naturally reticent: was instead an exceptionally confiding, credulous woman. Her motive for silence, therefore, must have been a force brought to bear on her at the time of the murder stronger than her love for Merrick, and which was still existing and active. Her refusal to meet her lover I readily interpreted to be a fear of her own weakness—dread lest she should betray this secret to him. Might not her refusal to marry him be caused by the same fear? some crushing disgrace or misery which threatened her through the murder, and which she feared to bring upon her husband? The motive I had guessed to be strong as her love: what if it were her love? Having stepped from surmise to surmise so far, I paused to strengthen my position by the facts. There were but two ways in which this murder could have prevented her marriage—through Merrick's guilt or her own. His innocence was proven; hers I did notdoubt after I had again carefully studied her face. Concealed guilt leaves its secret signature upon the mouth and eye in lines never to be mistaken by a man who has once learned to read them.
Were there but these two ways? There was a third, more probable than either—fear. At the first presentation of this key to the riddle the whole case mapped itself out before me. The murderer had sealed her lips by some threat. He was still living, and she was in daily expectation of meeting him. She had never seen his face, but had reason to believe him of her own class. (This supposition I based on her quick, terrified inspection of every man's face who approached her.) Now what threat could have been strong enough to keep a weak girl silent for years, and to separate her from her lover on their wedding day? I knew women well enough to say, none against herself; the threat I believed hung over Merrick's head, and would be fulfilled if she betrayed the secret or married him, which, with a weak, loving woman, was equivalent, as any man would know, to betrayal.
I cannot attempt to make the breaks in this reasoning solid ground for my readers; it was solid ground for me.
The next morning Beardsley met me on leaving the breakfast table. He held a letter open in his hand, and looked annoyed and anxious.
"Here's a note from Merrick. He sailed a week sooner than he expected—has left New York, and will be here to-night. If I had only put the case in your hands earlier! I had a hope that you could clear the little girl. But it's too late. She'll take flight as soon as she hears he is coming. Scheffer says it's a miserable, bloody muddle, and that I was wrong to stir it up."
"I do not agree with Dr. Scheffer," I said quietly. "I am going now to the library. In half an hour send Miss Waring to me."
"You have not yet been presented to her?"
"So much the better. I wish her to regard me as a lawyer simply. State to her as formally as you choose who I am, and that I desire to see her on business."
I seated myself in the library; placed pen and ink, and some legal-looking documents, selected at random, before me. Red tape and the formal pomp of law constitute half its force with women and men of Louisa's calibre. I had hardly arranged myself and my materials when the door slowly opened, and she entered. She was alarmed, yet wary. To see a naturally hearty, merry little body subjected for years to this nervous strain, with a tragic idea forced into a brain meant to be busied only with dress, cookery, or babies, appeared to me a pitiful thing.
"Miss Waring?" reducing the ordinary courtesies to a curt, grave nod. "Be seated, if you please." I turned over my papers slowly, and then looked up at her. I had, I saw, none of the common feminine shrewdness to deal with; need expect no subtle devices of concealment; no clever doublings; nothing but the sheer obstinacy which is an unintellectual woman's one resource. I would ignore it and her—boldly assume full possession of the ground at the first word.
"My errand to this house, Miss Waring, is in part the investigation of a murder in 1854, of which you were the sole witness—that of Houston Simms——"
I stopped. The change in her face appalled me. She had evidently not expected so direct an attack. In fact, Beardsley told me afterward that it was the first time the subject had been broached to her in plain words. However, she made no reply, and I proceeded in the same formal tone:
"I shall place before you the facts which are in my possession, and require your assent to such as are within your knowledge. On the afternoon of Tuesday, October 5, 1854, Houston Simms left the Pine Valley station, carrying a valise containing a large sum of money. You——"
She had been sitting on the other side of the table, looking steadily at me. She rose now. She wore a blue morning dress, with lace ruffles and other little fooleries in which women delight, and I remember being shocked with the strange contrast between this frippery and the speechless dread and misery of her face. She gained control of her voice with difficulty.
"Who has said that I was a witness of the murder?" she gasped. "I always explained that I was in another part of the wood. I went to aunty Huldah——"
"Pray do not interrupt me, Miss Waring. I am aware that you were the witness—the sole witness—in this matter." (She did not contradict me. I was right in my first guess—she had been alone with the murderer.) "On returning from your nurse's cabin you left the direct path and followed the sound of angry voices to the gorge by Mill's spring——"
"I did not go to play the spy. He lied when he said that," she cried feebly. "I heard the steps, and thought Colonel Merrick had come to search for me."
"That matters nothing. You saw the deed done. The old man was killed, and then robbed, in your sight"—I came toward her, and lowered my voice to a stern, judicial whisper, while the poor girl shrank back as though I were law itself uttering judgment upon her. If she had known what stagy guesswork it all was! "When you were discovered, the murderer would have shot you to insure your silence."
"I wish he had! It was Thad who would have done that. The white man's way was more cruel—oh, God knows it was more cruel!"
(There were two then.) I was very sorry for the girl, but I had a keen pleasure in the slow unfolding of the secret, just as I suppose the physician takes delight in the study of a new disease, even if it kills the patient.
"Yes," I said with emphasis. "I believe that it would have been less suffering for you, Miss Waring, to have died then than to have lived, forced as you were to renounce your lover, and to carry about with you the dread of the threat made by those men."
"I have not said there was a threat made. I have betrayed nothing." She had seated herself some time before by the table. There was a large bronze inkstand before her, and as she listened she arranged a half dozen pens evenly on the rest. The words she heard and spoke mattered more to her than life or death; her features were livid as those of a corpse, yet her hands went on with their mechanical work—one pen did not project a hair's breadth beyond the other. We lawyers know how common such puerile, commonplace actions are in the supreme moments of life, and how seldom men wring their hands, or use tragic gesture, or indeed words.
"No, you have betrayed nothing," I said calmly. "Your self-control has been remarkable, even when we remember that you believed your confession would be followed by speedy vengeance, not on your head, but Colonel Merrick's."
She looked up not able to speak for a minute. "You—you know all?"
"Not all, but enough to assure you that your time of suffering is over. You can speak freely, unharmed."
Her head dropped on the table. She was crying, and, I think, praying.
"You saw Houston Simms killed by two men, one of whom, the negro Thad, you knew. The white man's face was covered. You did not recognize him. But he knew you, and the surest way to compel you to silence. I wish you now to state to me all the details of this man's appearance, voice, and manner, to show me any letters which you have received from him since" (a random guess, which I saw hit the mark)—"in short, every circumstance which you can recall about him."
She did not reply.
"My dear Miss Waring, you need have no fear on Colonel Merrick's account. The law has taken this matter out of your hands. Colonel Merrick is protected by the law."
"Oh! I did not understand," meekly.
To be brief, she told me the whole story. When she reached the spring she had found the old man bleeding and still breathing. He died in her arms. The men, who had gone back into the laurel to open the valise, came back upon her. The negro was a desperate character, well known in the county. He had died two years later. The other man was masked and thoroughly disguised. He had stopped the negro when he would have killed her, and after a few minutes' consultation had whispered to him the terms upon which she was allowed to escape.
"You did not hear the white man's voice?"
"Not once."
"Bring me the letters you have received from him."
She brought two miserably spelled and written scrawls on soiled bits of paper. It was the writing of an educated man, poorly disguised. He threatened to meet her speedily, warned her that he had spies constantly about her.
"That is all the evidence you can give me?"
"All." She rose to go. I held the door open for her, when she hesitated.
"There was something more—a mere trifle."
"Yes. But most likely the one thing that I want."
"I returned to the spring again and again for months afterward. People thought I was mad. I may have been; but I found there one day a bit of reddish glass with a curious mark on it."
"You have it here?"
She brought it to me. It was a fragment of engraved sardonyx, apparently part of a seal; the upper part of a head was cut upon it; the short hairs curving forward on the low forehead showed that the head was that of Hercules.
Some old recollection rose in my brain, beginning, as I may say, to gnaw uncertainly. I went to my room for a few minutes to collect myself, and then sought Beardsley.
He was pacing up and down the walk to the stables, agitated as though he had been the murderer.
"Well, Floyd, well! What chance is there? What have you discovered?"
"Everything. One moment. I have a question or two to ask you. About ten years ago you commissioned me to buy for you in New York a seal—an intaglio of great value—a head of Hercules, as I remember. What did you do with it?"
"Gave it to Job Scheffer, William's father. Will has it now, though I think it is broken."
"Very well. What have Dr. Scheffer's habits been, by the way? Was he as fond of turning the cards as the other young fellows?"
"Oh, yes, poor boy! There was a rumor some years ago that he was frightfully involved in Baltimore—that it would ruin the old man, in fact, to clear off his debts of honor. But it died out. I suppose William found some way of straightening them out."
"Probably. Where is Dr. Scheffer now? I have a message for him."
"In his room. But this matter of Louisa Waring——"
"Presently. Have patience."
I went up to the young man's room. After all, the poor wretch was dying, and to compel him to blast his own honorable name seemed but brutal cruelty. I had to remember the poor girl's wasted face and hopeless eyes before I could summon courage to open the door after I had knocked. I think he expected me, and knew all that I had to say. A man in health would soon have known that I was acting on surmise, and defied me to the proof. Scheffer, I fancied, had been creeping through life for years with death in two shapes pursuing him, step by step. He yielded, cowed submissive at the first touch, and only pleaded feebly for mercy.
The negro had been his body servant—knew his desperate straits, anddragged him into the crime. Then, he had loved Louisa: he was maddened by her approaching marriage. The scheme of ensuring her silence and driving Merrick away was the inspiration of a moment, and had succeeded. He only asked for mercy. His time was short. He could not live beyond a few weeks. I would not bring him to the gallows.
I was merciful, and I think was right to be so. His deposition was taken before his uncle, Mr. Beardsley, who was a magistrate, and two other men of position and weight in the community. It was to be kept secret until after his death, and then made public. He was removed at once to his father's house.
On Colonel Merrick's arrival that evening, this deposition was formally read to him. I do not think it impressed him very much. He was resolved to marry Miss Waring in spite of every obstacle.
"But I never would have married you unless the truth had been discovered—never," she said to him that evening as they stood near me in the drawing-room. Her cheeks were warm, and her dark eyes full of tender light. I thought her a very lovely woman.
"Then I owe you to Mr. Floyd after all?" he said, looking down at her fondly.
"Oh, I suppose so," with a shrug. "But he is a very disagreeable person! Cast-iron, you know. I am so thankfulyouare not a lawyer, Paul."
James M. Floyd.