For the Southern Literary Messenger.
From the Manuscripts of the late David Meade Randolph.
From the Manuscripts of the late David Meade Randolph.
The birth of party spirit has been variously conjectured: the result of the Richmond Convention for the adoption of the Federal Constitution, was one of its imputed parents. In the evening of the day of the final vote, General Meade and Mr. Cabell assembled thediscontentsin the old Senate Chamber; and after a partial organization of the party, a deputation was sent to Patrick Henry inviting him to take the chair. The venerated patriot accepted. Understanding that it was their purpose to concert a plan of resistance to the operations of the Federal Government, he addressed the meeting with his accustomed animation upon important occasions; observing, "he had done his duty strenuously, in opposing the Constitution, in theproper place,—and with all the powers he possessed. The question had been fully discussed and settled, and, that as true and faithful republicans, they had all better go home! They should cherish it, and give it fair play—support it too, in order that the federal administration might be left to the untrammelled and free exercise of its functions:" reproving, moreover, the half suppressed factious spirit which he perceived had well nigh broken out. The impressive arguments of Mr. Henry produced the gratifying effect he had hoped for.
The purity of Henry's republicanism was such, as when dining with his brother Col. John Syme, at the Rocky Mills, during a May session of the Circuit Court held by Judge Iredell in Richmond, the company, composed of very respectable characters of both parties—'THEPEOPLE' as the first toast, upon removing the cloth, was pronounced very audibly by the host. Mr. Henry pushing his old black wig aside, as was his custom when much excited;—and, withelbows akimbo!exclaimed, "What—brother, not drink GENERALWASHINGTON? as we used to do!—for shame brother, for shame;"—and filled up his glass with a bumper of Thomson's Madeira, announcing the name of WASHINGTON.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
L. L.
Winchester, Va.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
BY EDGAR A. POE.
BY EDGAR A. POE.
Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow! How is it that from Beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of Peace a simile of sorrow? But thus is it. And as, in ethics, Evil is a consequence of Good, so, in fact, out of Joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies whichare, have their origin in the ecstasies whichmight have been. I have a tale to tell in its own essence rife with horror—I would suppress it were it not a record more of feelings than of facts.
My baptismal name is Egæus—that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, grey, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries: and in many striking particulars—in the character of the family mansion—in the frescos of the chief saloon—in the tapestries of the dormitories—in the chiseling of some buttresses in the armory—but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings—in the fashion of the library chamber—and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes—of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before—that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it. Let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of ærial forms—of spiritual and meaning eyes—of sounds musical yet sad—a remembrance which will not be excluded: a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady—and like a shadow too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it, while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.
In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking, as it were, from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity at once into the very regions of fairy land—into a palace of imagination—into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition—it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye—that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie—but itissingular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers—it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life—wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my common thoughts. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence—but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
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Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls—Yet differently we grew. I ill of health and buried in gloom—she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy. Hers the ramble on the hill side—mine the studies of the cloister. I living within my own heart, and addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation—she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice!—I call upon her name—Berenice!—and from the grey ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh! Sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim!—Oh! Naiad among her fountains!—and then—then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease—a fatal disease—fell like the Simoom upon her frame, and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the very identity of her person! Alas! the destroyer came and went, and the victim—where was she? I knew her not—or knew her no longer as Berenice.
Among the numerous train of maladies, superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating intranceitself—trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was, in most instances, startingly abrupt. In the meantime my own disease—for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation—my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and, aggravated in its symptoms by the immoderate use of opium, assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form—hourly and momentarily gaining vigor—and at length obtaining over me the most singular and incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania—if I must so term it—consisted in a morbid irritability of the nerves immediately affecting those properties of the mind, in metaphysical science termed theattentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood—but I fear that it is indeed in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervousintensity of interestwith which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied, and, as it were, buried themselves in the contemplation of even the most common objects of the universe.
To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention rivetted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book—to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the floor—to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire—to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower—to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind—to lose all sense of motion or physical existence in a state of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in—Such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to any thing like analysis or explanation.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, intense, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. By no means. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usuallynotfrivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day-dreamoften replete with luxury, he finds theincitamentumor first cause of his musings utterly vanished and forgotten. In my case the primary object wasinvariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions—if any—were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in, so to speak, upon the original object as a centre. The meditations wereneverpleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said before, theattentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, thespeculative.
My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative, and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian Coelius Secundus Curio "de amplitudine beati regni Dei"—St. Austin's great work the "City of God"—and Tertullian "de Carne Christi," in which the unintelligible sentence "Mortuus est Dei filius; credibile est quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est" occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the fearful alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in themoralcondition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and morbid meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not by any means the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity indeed gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fail to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in thephysicalframe of Berenice, and in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.
During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings, with me,had never beenof the heart, and my passionsalways wereof the mind. Through the grey of the early morning—among the trellissed shadows of the forest at noon-day—and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her—not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream—not as a being of the earth—earthly—but as the abstraction of such a being—not as a thing to admire, but to analyze—not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. Andnow—now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet, bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I knew that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.
And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon,1I sat, and sat, as I thought alone, in the inner apartment of the library. But uplifting my eyes Berenice stood before me.
1For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon.—Simonides.
Was it my own excited imagination—or the misty influence of the atmosphere—or the uncertain twilight of the chamber—or the grey draperies which fell around her figure—that caused it to loom up in so unnatural a degree? I could not tell. Perhaps she had grown taller since her malady. She spoke, however, no word, and I—not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and, sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless, and motionless, and with my eyes rivetted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon her face.
The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once golden hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with ringlets now black as the raven's ring, and jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and I shrunk involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted: and, in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!
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The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastlyspectrumof the teeth. Not a speck upon their surface—not a shade on their enamel—not a line in their configuration—not an indenture in their edges—but what that brief period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw themnoweven more unequivocally than I beheld themthen. The teeth!—the teeth!—they were here, and there, and every where, and visibly, and palpably before me, long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of mymonomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They—they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light—I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics—I dwelt upon their peculiarities—I pondered upon their conformation—I mused upon the alteration in their nature—and shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mad'selle Sallé it has been said, "que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments," and of Berenice I more seriously believedque tous ses dents etaient des idées.
And the evening closed in upon me thus—and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went—and the day again dawned—and the mists of a second night were now gathering around—and still I sat motionless in that solitary room, and still I sat buried in meditation, and still thephantasmaof the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid and hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke forcibly in upon my dreams a wild cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow, or of pain. I arose hurriedly from my seat, and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, there stood out in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears, and she told me that Berenice was—no more. Seized with an epileptic fit she had fallen dead in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed.
With a heart full of grief, yet reluctantly, and oppressed with awe, I made my way to the bed-chamber of the departed. The room was large, and very dark, and at every step within its gloomy precincts I encountered the paraphernalia of the grave. The coffin, so a menial told me, lay surrounded by the curtains of yonder bed, and in that coffin, he whisperingly assured me, was all that remained of Berenice. Who was it asked me would I not look upon the corpse? I had seen the lips of no one move, yet the question had been demanded, and the echo of the syllables still lingered in the room. It was impossible to refuse; and with a sense of suffocation I dragged myself to the side of the bed. Gently I uplifted the sable draperies of the curtains.
As I let them fall they descended upon my shoulders, and shutting me thus out from the living, enclosed me in the strictest communion with the deceased.
The very atmosphere was redolent of death. The peculiar smell of the coffin sickened me; and I fancied a deleterious odor was already exhaling from the body. I would have given worlds to escape—to fly from the pernicious influence of mortality—to breathe once again the pure air of the eternal heavens. But I had no longer the power to move—my knees tottered beneath me—and I remained rooted to the spot, and gazing upon the frightful length of the rigid body as it lay outstretched in the dark coffin without a lid.
God of heaven!—is it possible? Is it my brain that reels—or was it indeed the finger of the enshrouded dead that stirred in the white cerement that bound it? Frozen with unutterable awe I slowly raised my eyes to the countenance of the corpse. There had been a band around the jaws, but, I know not how, it was broken asunder. The livid lips were wreathed into a species of smile, and, through the enveloping gloom, once again there glared upon me in too palpable reality, the white and glistening, and ghastly teeth of Berenice. I sprang convulsively from the bed, and, uttering no word, rushed forth a maniac from that apartment of triple horror, and mystery, and death.
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I found myself again sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which had intervened I had no positive, at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was rife with horror—horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record of my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain—while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed—what was it? And the echoes of the chamber answered me "what was it?"
On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box of ebony. It was a box of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, it being the property of the family physician; but how came itthereupon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These were things in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular, but simple words of the poet Ebn Zaiat. "Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicæ visitarem curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas."2Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body congeal within my veins?
2My companions told me I might find some little alleviation of my misery, in visiting the grave of my beloved.
There came a light tap at the library door, and, pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he?—some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry heard in the silence of the night—of the gathering together of the household—of a search in the direction of the sound—and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave—of a disfigured body discovered upon its margin—a body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!
He pointed to my garments—they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand—but it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall—I looked at it for some minutes—it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the ebony box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open, and in my tremor it slipped from out my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces, and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with many white and glistening substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
"I presume," said I, "that having so long resided in Kentucky, you must have had some acquaintance with Indian warfare."
"I had no occasion," he replied, "to come to Kentucky to learn that. I may say, that I have had something to do with it all my life, and it had to do with me before I was born."
The speaker was a tall, handsome man, uncommonly stout, with an appearance of great strength, perfect health, and a quiet good humor, which disposed him to be communicative, merely by way of obliging. Though by no means garrulous, I had discovered that he was ready to tell whatever another might be desirous of hearing. He spoke with that strong accent, and deliberate tone, which characterize the Scotch Irish race, and which always, to my ear, conveys a promise that what is said will be said distinctly and clearly.
Here then was the very man I wanted. I had left the peaceful scenes of the Atlantic coast, expecting, not indeed to "roam through anters vast and deserts wild," in my western tour, (for my maps and gazetteer had taught me better,) but to find some traces of the scenes, which but a few years before, had made it dangerous for a white man to set his foot where we now rode along securely. My eye had eagerly scanned every object which afforded promise of food to my young and eager imagination; but as yet I had found none. The soft beauty and exuberant fertility of the country, need only the touch of civilization to take from it every appearance of wildness, and I could hardly bring myself to believe that it had been so lately the haunt of the prowling savage. My enthusiasm was consequently much damped; but it was not extinguished, and these last words of my companion blew it into a flame. A well directed question soon drew him out.
"I was born," said he, "among the mountains of Virginia. I never saw my father. He was killed at the battle of Point Pleasant, just before I came into the world. That is the reason why I said that Indian fighting had to do with me before I was born. But that was not all; many years before that, the Indians made a break on our settlement, and carried off my oldest brother, and kept him."
"Did you never see him again?"
"I suppose I have, but I did not know it at the time." As he said this, a gloom came over his countenance, which checked my inquisitiveness, and he rode on, perhaps a mile, in moody silence. At length his brow cleared, and he again spoke, but in a somewhat saddened tone.
"It is something strange; I am not superstitious, and yet it seems to me, as if at times, when people are in great distress of mind, they are apt to say things that turn out almost like a prophecy. It was a great grief to my mother, the loss of her child, and the longer she lived the more she mourned after him. He was quite small when they took him; and they carried him away over the lakes, so far, that they never heard where he was, until he was almost grown up, a perfect wild man. My mother was a religious woman; and the thought of his being brought up among savages, where the word of God could never reach him, went to her heart. She said, it was always borne upon her mind that he was not dead, and that he would grow up among those vile wretches, to be the death of his own father, and perhaps to die at last by the hand of one of his own brothers. When they raised a party to follow the Indians, shewouldgo with them, and all the way, she said, she looked and looked, in hopes to see where they had dashed out her poor child's brains against a tree. It was the only comfort she hoped for, and that was denied her.
"As I told you, they never heard of him till he was near or quite a man; and that was just before Dunmore's war. There was no chance to do any thing towards getting him home at that time, for it was dangerous to go near the Ohio. Indeed, all they knew was, that there was a white man of about his age among the Indians, who answered to his name. It was not until after the peace that we knew certainly all about him.
"Well! he was at the battle of the Point, fighting among the Shawanees; and there my father was killed. When my mother heard that he had been there, you may be sure her own words came back to her. No body knew who killed my father. But why not he as well as another? Flesh and blood could not have made her believe that it was not he.
"Just after that I was born, and then again my mother took it into her head that I had come into the world to revenge my father's death. There was no great comfort in that thought, you may be sure; so as soon as the war was over, they tried all they could to get my brother back. He was told that my father was dead, and had left a good estate; and that he was the heir at law; (for you know that my father died under the old law,) but it all would not do. He was a complete Indian, and had an Indian wife and children that he would not leave. But he had kind feelings for us all, and sent us word to take the estate; for he wanted nothing but his rifle.
"Well! my mother died; and I and a brother a little older than me, sold out and went to Kentucky. Where we settled was a dangerous frontier near the Ohio, and the Indians once or twice every year, would come over and strike at us. Then we would raise a party, and follow them away almost to the lakes; and after we got strong enough, we commonly kept a smart company ranging about on that side of the river. Sometimes we volunteered; sometimes we were drafted; sometimes one went; sometimes another. One year my brother went, and had a fight with the Indians. Afterwards we heard that our wild brother was in that fight, and was badly wounded. The next year I went out, and we had a fight, and my poor brother was there again, andhe was killed."
He ceased speaking, and again sunk into a gloomy silence, which none of us were disposed to interrupt. At length he said, in a softened voice, "Thank God! I was spared one thing. I never think of it, that it does not make the cold chills run over me. It was the night before the battle. We had been following hard upon the trail all day, and just before night we came up with them. But we did not let them see us, and lay back till they had camped for the night. We knew we could find them in the dark by their fires. Sure enough we soon saw the light, and crawled towards it. The word was to attack at day light. In the meantime every man was to keep his eye skinned, and his gun in his hand, and not to fire on any account till the word was given. But in this sort of business every man fights, more or less, on his own hook; and if a fellow only kills an Indian, they never blame him. There they were, all dead asleep, around their fire; and we standing looking at them, almost near enough to hear them snore. You may be sure we did not breathe loud. Well! while I was standing off on one flank, watching them with all my eyes, up gets one, and stands right between me and the light. Up came my rifle to my face. It was against orders, but I never had shot at an Indian, and how could I stand it? My hand was on the trigger, when the figure turned, and I saw the breasts of a woman. You may be sure I did not shoot. It was my brother's daughter, as I afterwards learned."
This story required no comment. It admitted of none. The ideas it suggested was such as reason could neither condemn nor justify. We could only muse on it in silence. At length, the other stranger, who, like myself, had listened attentively, said, "I too was once within an ace of shooting a woman."
I started at this, and turned to reconsider the speaker. I had already scrutinized him pretty closely, and had formed a judgment concerning him, which these words quite unsettled. The idea that he had been familiar with scenes, where every man must make his hand guard his head, had never entered my mind. He was indeed formidably armed, carrying a brace of pistols in his belt, and another in his holsters. The handle of a dirk peeped through the ruffle of his shirt, and a rifle on his shoulder completed his armament. I had been of course struck with an equipment so warlike, but attributed it to excess of caution. The mildness and elegance of his manners had fixed him in my mind, as one bred up in the scenes of peaceful and polished life, where, in youth, he had heard so much of the perils of the country he was now traversing, as to suppose it unsafe to visit it without this load of weapons. I certainly had never seen a man of more courteous and gentlemanlike demeanor; and though his countenance gave no token of one "acquainted with cold fear," I had nevertheless, emphatically marked him as a man of peace. He was the oldest man in company, but deferential to all, accommodating, obliging, and, on all occasions, modestly postponing himself, even to such a boy as I was. He seemed now to have spoken from a wish to divert the painful thoughts of our companion, and, in answer to an inquiring look from me, went on with his story.
"It was nearly thirty years ago," said he, "I was travelling from Virginia through the wilderness of Kentucky, then much infested by Indians. I had one companion, an active, spirited young man, and we were both well mounted and well armed. Vigilance alone was necessary to our safety, and as we had both served a regular apprenticeship to Indian warfare, we were not deficient in that. We soon overtook a company of moving families, who had united for safety. The convenience of the axes of the men, in making fires, and of the women in cooking, determined us to join them. We camped together every night; and as we derived great advantage from the association, we tried to requite it by our activity and diligence as scouts and flankers. We commonly rode some distance ahead, so as to give them time to prepare in case of attack; depending on our own diligence and skill to guard against surprise.
"Riding thus one day, a mile or two in advance, we were suddenly startled by an outcry from behind, which was not to be mistaken. We immediately drew up, and presently saw our party hurrying towards us, in great confusion and alarm, whipping up their teams, and only stopping long enough to say that they were pursued. The rear was therefore now our post, and, waiting till they had all passed, we dismounted,—hid our horses, took trees, and awaited the enemy. I did not wait long, until I saw the head and shoulders of a figure above the undergrowth, rushing at full speed towards me. My rifle was at my cheek, and a steady aim at the advancing figure made me sure of my mark, when an opening in the brushwood showed me the dress of a female. She was the wife of one of the wretches who had just passed us, completely spent and sinking with fatigue. Had there been Indians she must have perished. As it was, her appearance showed the alarm to be false; so I took her up behind me, and we went quietly on, in pursuit of her dastard husband, to whoseprotectionI restored her."
In speaking these last words, the face of the speaker underwent, for a moment, a change, which told more than his story. The tone of scornful irony too, which accompanied the wordprotection, gave a new face to his character. As I marked the slight flush of his pale and somewhat withered cheek, the flash of his light blue eye, the curl of his lip, and a peculiar clashing of his eye-teeth as he spoke; I thought I had rarely seen a man, with whom it might not be as safe to trifle.
The day was now far spent; and as the sun descended, we had the satisfaction to observe that he sank behind a grove, that marked the course of a small branch of the Wabash, on the bank of which stood the house where we expected to find food and rest.
None but a western traveller can understand the entire satisfaction with which the daintiest child of luxury learns to look forward to the rude bed and homely fare, which await him, at the end of a hard day's ride, in the infant settlements. There is commonly a cabin of rough unhewn logs, containing one large room, where all the culinary operations of the family are performed, at the huge chimney around which the guests are ranged. The fastidious, who never wait to be hungry, may turn up their noses at the thought of being, for an hour before hand, regaled with the steam of their future meal. But to the weary and sharp set, there is something highly refreshing to the spirits and stimulating to the appetite. The dutch oven, well filled with biscuit, is no sooner discharged of them, than their place is occupied by sundry slices of bacon, which are immediately followed by eggs, broken into the hissing lard. In the mean time, a pot of strong coffee is boiling on a corner of the hearth; the table is covered with a coarse clean cloth; the butter and cream and honey are on it; and supper is ready.
"Then horn for horn they stretch and strive."
"Then horn for horn they stretch and strive."
It makes me hungry now to think of it; and I am tempted to take back my word and eat something, having just told my wife I wanted no supper. But it will not do. I have not rode fifty miles to-day, and my table is so trim and my room so snug that I have no appetite.
But it is only in the first stage of a settlement, that these things are found. By and by, mine host, having opened a larger farm, builds him a house, of frame-work or brick, the masonry and carpentry of which show the rude handy-work of himself and his sons. He now employs several hands, and the leavings of their dinner will do for the supper of any chance travellers in the evening. A round deep earthen dish, in which a bit of fat pork or lean salt beef, crowns a small mound of cold greens or turnips, with loaf bread baked a month ago, and a tin can of skimmed milk now form the travellers supper. It is vain to expostulate. Our host has no fear of competition. He has now located the whole point of wood land crossed by the road, and no one can come nearer to him, on either hand, than ten miles. Besides, he is now the "squire" of the neighborhood, with "eyes severe," and "fair round belly withfat baconlined;" and why should not the daily food of a man of his consequence be good enough for a hungry traveller?
It was to a house of this latter description that we now came. No one came out to receive us. Why should they? We took off our own baggage, and found our way into the house as we might.
On entering, I was struck with the appearance of the party, as their figures glimmered through the mingled lights of a dull window and a dim fire. Each individual, though seated, (and no man moved or bad us welcome) wore his hat, of shadowy dimensions; a sort of family resemblance, both in cut and color, ran through the dresses of all; and a like resemblance in complexion and cast of countenance marked all but one. This one, as we afterwards found, was the master of the mansion, a man of massive frame, and fat withal, but whose full cheeks, instead of the ruddy glow of health, were overcast with an ashy, dusky, money-loving hue. In the appearance of all the rest there was something ascetic and mortified. But landlord and guest wore all one common expression of ostentatious humility and ill-disguised self-complacency, which so often characterizes those new sects, that think they have just made some important discoveries in religion. Mine host was, as it proved, the Gaius of such a church, and his guests were preachers of the same denomination. I have forgotten the name; but they were not Quakers. I have been since reminded of them, on reading the description of the company Julian Peveril found at Bridgnorth's.
When we entered, our landlord was talking in a dull, plodding strain, and in a sort of solemn protecting tone, to his respectfully attentive guests. Our appearance made no interruption in his discourse; and he went on, addressing himself mainly to a raw looking youth, whose wrists and ankles seemed to have grown out of his sleeves and pantaloons since they were made. Where the light, which this young man was now thought worthy to diffuse, had broken in upon his own mind, I did not learn, but I presently discovered that he came from "a little east of sunrise," and had a curiosity as lively as my own, concerning the legends of the country.
"I guess brother P——," said he, "you have been so long in these parts, that it must have been right scary times when you first came here."
"Well! I cannot say," replied the other, "that there has been much danger in this country, since I came here. But if there was, it was nothing new to me. I was used to all that in Old Kentuck, thirty years ago."
"I should like," said the youth, "to hear something of your early adventures. I marvel that we should find any satisfaction in turning from the contemplation of God's peace, to listen to tales of blood and slaughter. But so it is. The old Adam will have a hankering after the things of this world."
"Well!" replied our host, "I have nothing very particular to tell. The scalping of three Indians, is all I have to brag of. And as to danger; except having the bark knocked off of my tree into my eyes, by a bullet, I do not know that I was ever in any mighty danger, but once."
"And when was that?"
"Well! It was when we were moving out along the wilderness road. You see it was mighty ticklish times; so a dozen families of us started together, and we had regular guards, and scouts, and flankers, just like an army. The second day after we left Cumberland river, a couple of young fellows joined us, one by the name of Jones, and I do not remember the other's name. I suppose they had been living somewhere in Old Virginia, where they had plenty of slaves to wait on them; and it went hard with them to make their own fires, and cook their own victuals; so they were glad enough to fall in with us, and have us and our women to work and cook for them. But a man was a cash article there; and they both had fine horses and good guns; and, to hear them talk, (especially that fellow Jones,) you would have thought, two or three Indians before breakfast, would not have been a mouthful to them. We did not think much of them, but we told them, if they would take their turn in scouting and guarding, they were welcome to join us."
At this moment, our landlady, who was busy in a sort of shed, which adjoined the room we sat in, and served as a kitchen, entered, and stopping for a moment, heard what was passing. She was a good-looking woman, of about forty-five, with a meek subdued and broken hearted cast of countenance. I saw her look at her husband, and as she listened, her face assumed an expression of timid expostulation, mixed with that sort of wonderment, with which we regard a thing utterly unaccountable, but which use has rendered familiar.
Her lord and master caught the look, and bending his shaggy brow, said, "I guess the men will want their supper, by the time they get it."
She understood the hint, and stole away rebuked; uttering unconsciously, in a loud sigh, the long hoarded breath which she had held all the time she listened. Her manner was not intended to attract notice; but there was something in it, which disposed me to receive her husband's tale with some grains of allowance. He went on thus:
"The day we expected to get to the crab-orchard, it was their turn to bring up the rear. By good rights, they ought to have been a quarter of a mile or so behind us; and I suppose they were; when, all of a sudden, we heard the crack of a rifle, and here they come, right through us, and away they went. I looked round for my woman and I could not see her. The poor creature was a little behind, and thought there was no danger, because we all depended on them two fire eaters in the rear, to take care of stragglers. But when they ran off, you see, there was nobody between her and the Indians; and the first thing I saw, was her, running for dear life, and they after her. I set my triggers, and fixed myself to stop one of them; and just then, her foot caught in a grape vine, and down she came. I let drive at the foremost, and dropped him; but the other one ran right on. My gun was empty; and I had no chance but to put in, and try the butt of it. But I was not quite fast enough. He was upon her, and had his hand in her hair; and it was a mercy of God, he did not tomahawk her at once. He had plenty of time for that;—but he was too keen after the scalp; and, just as he was getting hold of his knife, I fetched him a clip that settled him. Just then, I heard a crack or two, and a ball whistled mighty near me; but, by this time, some of our party had rallied, and took trees; and that brought the Indians to a stand. So I put my wife behind a tree, and got one more crack at them; and then they broke and run. That was the only time I ever thought myself in anyrealdanger, and that was all along of that Jones and the other fellow. But they made tracks for the settlement."
"Have you never seen Jones since?" said the mild voice of the courteous gentleman I have mentioned.
"No; I never have; and it's well for him; though, bless the Lord! I hope I could find in my heartnowto forgive him. But if I had ever come across him, before I met with you, brother B——;" (addressing a grave senior of the party who received the compliment with impenetrable gravity;) "I guess it would not have been so well for him."
"Do you think you would know him again, if you were to see him?" said my companion.
"It's a long time ago," said he, "but I think I should. He was a mighty fierce little fellow, and had a monstrous blustering way of talking."
"Was he any thing like me?" said the stranger, in a low but hissing tone.
The man started, and so did we all, and gazed on the querist. In my life, I never saw such a change in any human face. The pale cheek was flushed, the calm eye glowed with intolerable fierceness, and every feature worked with loathing. But he commanded his voice, though the curl of his lip disclosed the full length of one eye tooth, and he again said, "look at me. Am not I the man?"
"I do not know that you are," replied the other doggedly, and trying in vain to lift his eye to that which glared upon him. "I do not know that you are?" muttered he.
"Where is he? where is he," screamed a female voice; "letmesee him.I'llknow him, bless his heart!I'llknow him any where in the world."
Saying this, our landlady rushed into the circle, and stood among us, while we all rose to our feet. She looked eagerly around. Her eye rested a moment on the stranger's face; and in the next instant her arms were about his neck, and her head on his bosom, where she shed a torrent of tears.
I need not add, that the subject of the Landlord's tale, was the very incident which my companion had related on the road. He soon made his escape, cowed and chop-fallen; and the poor woman bustled about, to give us the best the house afforded, occasionally wiping her eyes, or stopping for a moment to gaze mutely and sadly on the generous stranger, who had protected her when deserted by him who lay in her bosom.
The grave brethren looked, as became them, quite scandalized, at this strange scene. It was therefore promptly explained to them; but the explanation dissipated nothing of the gloom of their countenances. Their manner to the poor woman was still cold and displeased, and they seemed to forget her husband's fault, in their horror at having seen her throw herself into the arms of a stranger. For my part, I thought the case of the good Samaritan in point, and could not help believing, that he who had decided that, would pronounce that her grateful affection had been bestowed where it was due.