The Memories of Fifty Years Part 22

"He did not. He was quite communicative; but your brother came and arrested his conversation." A shade fell upon the features of the beautiful creature as she turned away to send the squirrels to Toney.

"These are beautiful grounds, Miss Ann."

"Yes, sir; there has been great care bestowed upon them, and they make a fairy-land for my cousin who in fair weather is almost always found here in these walks and shady retreats afforded by these old oaks and pecans."

"There is something very beautiful, miss, in the attachment of Miss Alice to Uncle Toney. The devotion to her on his part almost amounts to adoration."

"My aunt, the mother of Alice, taught her this attachment. There is a little history connected with it, and indeed, sir, all the family remember his services to our grandfather in a most perilous moment; but you must ask its narration from the old man. He loves to tell it. My cousin's memory of her mother is the cherished of her heart. Indeed, sir, that is a strong, deep heart. You may never know it; but should you, you will remember that I told you there was but one Alice. In all her feelings she is intense; her love is a flame--her hate a thorn; the fragrance of the one is an incense--the piercing of the other is deep and agonizing. Shan't we go in, sir; I see the damp of the dew is on your boot-toe, and you have been ill. The absence of the sun is the hour for pestilence to ride the breeze in our climate, and you cannot claim to be fully acclimated."

The autumn progressed, and the rich harvests were being gathered and garnered. This season is the longest and the loveliest of the year in this beautiful country. During the months of September, October, and November, there ordinarily falls very little rain, and the temperature is but slightly different. The evolutions of nature are slow and beneficent, and it seems to be a period especially disposed so that the husbandman should reap in security the fruits of the year's labor. The days lag lazily; the atmosphere is serene, and the cerulean, without a cloud, is deeply blue. The foliage of the forest-trees, so gorgeous and abundant, gradually loses the intense green of summer, fading and yellowing so slowly as scarcely to be perceptible, and by such attenuated degrees accustoming the eye to the change, that none of the surprise or unpleasantness of sudden change is seen or experienced.

The fields grow golden; the redly-tinged leaves of the cotton-plant contrast with the chaste pure white of the lint in the bursting pods, now so abundantly yielding their wealth; the red ripe berries all over the woods, and the busy squirrels gathering and h.o.a.rding these and the richer forest-nuts; the cawing of the crows as they forage upon the ungathered corn, feeding and watching with the consciousness of thieves, and the fat cattle ruminating in the shade, make up a scene of beauty and loveliness not met with in a less fervid clime. The entranced rapture which filled my soul when first I looked upon this scene comes over me now with a freshness that brings back the delights of that day with all its cherished memories, though fifty years have gone and their sorrows have crushed out all but hope from the heart--and all the pleasures of the present are these memories kindly cl.u.s.tering about the soul. Perhaps their delights, and those who shared them, will revive in eternity. Perhaps not; perhaps all alike--the pleasant and the painful--are to be lost in an eternal, oblivious sleep. It is all speculation; yet hope and doubt go on to the grave, and thence none return to cheer the one or elucidate the other. But be it eternal life or eternal death, it is wise; for it is of G.o.d.

The autumn grew old and was threatening a frost--the great enemy of fever. The falling leaves and the fitful gusts of chill wind presaged the coming of winter. The ear caught the ring of sounds more distant and more distinct now that the languor of summer was gone, and all animal nature seemed more invigorated and more elastic. Health and her inhabitants were returning to the city, and the guests of the hospitable planters were thinning from the country. Business was reviving and commotion was everywhere.

The young stranger was preparing to leave; yet he lingered. Ann had gone; Alice grew more shy and timid, and his walks and rides were solitary, and but that he loved nature in her autumn robes would have been dull and uninteresting. The judge was absent at another plantation beyond the river, and his books and his gun were his only companions.

Sometimes he read, sometimes he rode, and sometimes he walked to visit Toney. It was on one of those peculiarly lonely afternoons which come in the last days of October when the stillness persuades to rest and meditation in the woods that, seated on a prostrate tree near the pathway which led down the little creek to the residence of Uncle Toney, the young guest of the judge was surprised by Alice with a small negro girl on their way to visit Uncle Toney. Both started; but in a moment were rea.s.sured, and slowly walked to the cabin of the good old negro.

"I have come, Uncle Toney," said the youth, "to see you for the last time. I am going away to-morrow and, as soon as I can, going back to the distant home I so foolishly left."

"I am sorry you tell me so; won't you be sorry, Miss Alice?" asked Toney. Alice bit her lip, and the flush upon her cheek was less ruddy than usual.

"You no find dis country good like yourn, young ma.s.sa?"

"Yes, Toney, this is a good country, and there is no country more beautiful. But, uncle, it requires more than a beautiful country to make us happy; we must have with us those we love, and who love us; and the scenes of our childhood--our fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters who are glad with us and who sorrow with us, and the companions of our school-days, to make us happy. I am here without any of these--not a relation within a thousand miles; with no one to care for me or to love me." There was something plaintively melancholly in his words and tones. He looked at Alice, her eyes were swimming in tears and she turned away from his gaze.

"You been mity sick, here, young ma.s.sa, didn't Miss Alice be good to you? Aunt Ann tell me so. If Miss Alice had not nuss you, you die."

Alice stepped into the cabin taking with her the basket the little negro had borne, and placing its contents away, came out and handing it to Rose, bid her run home. "I am coming," she said as she adjusted her bonnet-strings, "the bugaboos won't catch you."

"Yes, Uncle Toney, I am very grateful to Miss Alice. I shall never forget her."

How often that word is thoughtlessly spoken? Never to forget, is a long time to remember. Our lives are a constant change: the present drives out the past, and one memory usurps the place of another. Yet there are some memories which are always green. These fasten themselves upon us in agony. The pleasant are evanescent and pa.s.s away as a smile, but the bitter live in sighs, recurring eternally.

Both were silent, both were thoughtful. "Good-by, Uncle Toney," said Alice.

"May I join you in your walk home, miss?" There was something in the tone of this request, which caused Alice to look up into his face and pause a moment before replying, when she said, very timidly, "If you please, sir."

The sun was drooping to the horizon and the shadows made giants as thy grew along the sward. "Farewell, Uncle Toney," said the gentleman, shaking hands with the old negro. Alice had walked on.

"O! you needn't say farewell so sorry, you'll come back. I sees him.

You'll come back. Eberybody who comes to dis country if he does go way he's sure to come back, ticlar when he once find putty gall like Miss Alice, ya! ya!" laughed the old man. "You'll come back. I knows it."

In a few moments he was by the side of Alice. They lounged lazily along through the beautiful forest a few paces behind Rose, who was too much afraid of bugaboos to allow herself to get far away from her mistress.

There was a chill in the atmosphere and now and then a fitful gust of icy wind from the northwest. Winter was coming: these avant-couriers whispered of it; and overhead, swooped high up in the blue, a host of whooping cranes, marching in chase of the sun now cheering the Antarctic just waking from his winter's sleep.

"I believe, sir," said Alice, "that the ancients watched the flight of birds and predicated their predictions or prophecies upon them."

"Yes, the untutored of every age and country observe more closely the operations of nature than the educated. It is their only means of learning. They see certain movements in the beasts and the birds before certain atmospheric changes, and their superst.i.tions influence a belief, that sentient and invisible beings cause this by communicating the changes going on. The more sagacious and observant, and I may add the less scrupulous, lay hold upon this knowledge, to practice for their own pleasure or profit upon the credulity of the ma.s.ses. There are very many superst.i.tions, miss, which are endowed with a character so holy, that he who would expose them is hunted down as a wretch, unworthy of life. The older and the more ridiculous these, the more holy, and the more sacredly cherished."

"Are you not afraid thus to speak--is there nothing too holy to be profanely a.s.saulted?"

"Nothing which contravenes man's reason. Truth courts investigation--the more disrobed, the more beautiful. Science reveals, that there is no mystery in truth. Its simplicity is often disfigured with unnatural and ridiculous superst.i.tions, and these sometimes are so prominent as to conceal it. They certainly, with many, bring it into disrepute. The more intellectual pluck these off and cast them away.

They see and know the truth. Yonder birds obey an instinct: the chill to their more sensitive natures warns them that the winter, or the tempest, or the rain-storm is upon them; they obey this instinct and fly from it. Yet it in due time follows these--the more observant know it, and predict it. Those, with the ancients, were sooth-sayers or prophets; with us, they are the same with the ignorant negroes; with the whites, not quite so ignorant, they are--but, miss, I will not say.

I must exercise a little prudence to avoid the wrath of the ignorant--they are mult.i.tudinous and very powerful."

"Kind sir, tell me, have you no superst.i.tions? Has nothing ever occurred to you, your reason could not account for? Have no predictions, to be revealed in the coming future, come to you as foretold?"

"Do not press me on that point, if you please, I might astonish and offend you."

"I am not in the least afraid of your offending me, sir. I could not look in your face and feel its inspirations, and believe you capable of offending me."

"Thank you for the generous confidence, thank you. I am going and shall remember this so long as I live, and when in my native land, will think of it as too sacred for the keeping of any but myself."

"Are you really going to leave us, and so soon? I--I--would--but--"

"Miss Alice, I have trespa.s.sed too long already upon your brother's hospitality; beside, Miss Alice, I begin to feel that his welcome is worn out. Your brother, for some days, has seemed less cordial than was his wont during the first weeks of my stay here."

"My brother, sir, is a strange being--a creature of whims and caprices.

There is nothing fixed or settled in his opinions or conduct. His inviting you to spend the summer with us was a whim: one that has astonished several who have not hesitated to express it. It is as likely on his return from his river place, that he will devour you with kindness as that he will meet you with the coldness he has manifested for some days. Do not let your conduct be influenced by his whims."

"Miss Alice, I am suspicious, perhaps, by nature. I have thought that you have avoided me lately. I have been very lonesome at times."

Alice lifted her bonnet from her head, and was swinging it by the strings as she walked along for a few steps, when she stopped, and, turning to her companion, said with a firm though timid voice: "I cannot be deceitful. You have properly guessed: I have avoided you. It was on your account as well as my own. My self-respect is in conflict with my respect for you. I need not tell you why I avoided you; but I will--conscious that I am speaking to a gentleman who will appreciate my motives and preserve inviolate my communications. You saw my cousin hurry away from here. She came to remain some weeks. The cause of her going was my brother. From some strange, unaccountable cause he became offended with her, and charged her with giving bad advice to me. What she has said to me as advice since she came was in the privacy of my bedroom, and in such tones that had he or another been in the chamber they could not have overheard it. I know, sir, and in shame do I speak it, that I am under the surveillance of the servants, who report to my brother and my sister my every act and every word; and I know, too, my brother's imagination supplies in many instances these reports. Why I am thus watched I know not.

"My brother is my guardian, and nature and duty, it would seem, should prompt him to guard my happiness as well as my interest; but I know in the one instance he fails, and I fear in the other I am suffering. All my family fear him, and none of them love me. I am my parents' youngest child. Oh, sir! England is not the only country where it is a curse to be a younger child. My father died when I was an infant. My mother was affectionate and indulgent; my sisters were harsh and tyrannical, and in very early girlhood taught me to hate them. My mother was made miserable by their treatment of me; and my brother, too, quarrelled with her because she would not subject me to the servility of the discipline he prescribed. This quarrel ripened into hate, and he never came to the house or spoke to my mother for years.

"The day before she died, and when her recovery was thought to be impossible, he came with a prepared will and witnesses, which in their presence he almost forced her to sign: in this will I was greatly wronged, and this brother has tauntingly told me the cause of this was my being the means of prejudicing our mother against him.

"He married a coa.r.s.e, vulgar Kentucky woman, and brought her into the house. She was insolent and disrespectful toward my mother, and I resented it. She left the house, and died a few months after. Since that day, though I was almost a child, my life has been one of constant persecution on the part of my brother and sisters. I am compelled to endure it, but do so under protest; if not in words, I do in manner, and this I am persuaded you have on more than one occasion observed.

Please do not consider me impertinent, nor let it influence you in your opinion of me, when I tell you my brother has rudely said to me that I was too forward in my intercourse with you. It is humiliating to say this to you; but I must, for it explains my conduct, which save in this regard has been motiveless.

"A lady born to the inheritance of fortune is very unpleasantly situated, both toward her family and to the world. These seem solicitous to take greater interest in her pecuniary affairs than in her personal happiness, and are always careful to warn her that her money is more sought than herself--distracting her mind and feelings, and keeping her constantly miserable. Since my school-days I have been companionless. If I have gone into society, I have been under the guard of one or the other of my sisters. These are cold, austere, and repulsive, and especially toward those who would most likely seek my society, and with whom I would most naturally be pleased. I must be retired, cold, and never to seem pleased, but always remarkably silent and dignified. I must be a G.o.ddess to be wors.h.i.+pped, and not an equal to be approached and my society courted companionably. In fine, I was to be miserable, and make all who came to me partic.i.p.ate in this misery. It was more agreeable to remain at home among my flowers and shrubs, my books, and my visits to Uncle Toney. Do you wonder, sir, that I seem eccentric? You know how the young love companions.h.i.+p--how they crave the amus.e.m.e.nts which lend zest to life. I enjoy none of this, and I am sometimes, I believe, nearly crazy. I fear you think me so, now. I want to love my brother, but he will not permit me to do so.

I fear he has a nature so unlovable that such a feeling toward him animates no heart. My sisters and a drunken sot of a brother-in-law pretend to love him--but they measure their affection by the hope of gain. They reside in Louisiana, and I am glad they are not here during your stay--for you would certainly be insulted, especially if they saw the slightest evidence of esteem for you on brother's part, or kindness on mine."

"Oh! sir, how true is the Scripture, 'Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh.' Out of my heart's fulness have I spoken, and, I fear you will think, out of my heart's folly, too; and in my heart's sincerity I tell you I do not know why I have done so to you--for I have never said anything of these things to any one but cousin Ann, before. Perhaps it is because I know you are going away and you will not come to rebuke me with your presence any more; for indeed, sir, I do not know how I could meet you and not blush at the memory of this evening's walk."

"Miss Alice, I have a memory, or it may be a fancy, that in the delirium of my fever, some weeks since, I saw you like a spirit of light flitting about my bed and ministering to my wants; and I am sure, when all supposed me _in extremis_, you came, and on my brow placed your soft hand, and pressed it gently above my burning brain. My every nerve thrilled beneath that touch; my dead extremities trembled and were alive again. The brain resumed her functions, and the nervous fluid flashed through my entire system, and departing life came back again. You saved my life. Were the records of time and events opened to my inspection and I could read it there, I could not more believe this than I now do. Then what is due from me to you? This new evidence of confidence adds nothing to the obligation--it was full without it. But it is an inspiration I had not before. We are here, Miss Alice, within a few steps of the threshold of the house in which you were born. I am far from the land of my nativity--our meeting was strange, and this second meeting not the less so."

"Ah! you have almost confessed that you are superst.i.tious. You need not have acknowledged that you are romantic; your young life has proven this."

"Stay, Miss Alice: you asked me but now if there had never been the realization of previous predictions. You said you knew I would not offend you. I would not, but may. Now listen to me, here under the shade of this old oak. When I was a child, my nurse was an aged African woman; like all her race, she was full of superst.i.tion, and she would converse with me of mysteries, and spells, and wonderful revelations, until my mind was filled as her own with strange superst.i.tions and presentiments. On one occasion, on the Sabbath day, I found her in the orchard, seated beneath a great pear-tree, and went to her--for though I was no longer her ward to nurse, I liked to be with her and hear her talk. It was a beautiful day, the fruit-trees were in bloom, and the spring-feeling in the suns.h.i.+ne was kindling life into activity through all nature. She asked me to let her see my hand and she would tell me my fortune. She pretended sagely to view every line, and here and there to press her index finger sharply down. At length she began to speak.

"'You will not stay with your people,' she said, 'but will be a great traveller; and when in some far-away country, you will be sick--mighty sick; and a beautiful woman will find you, and she will nurse you, and you will love that beautiful woman, and she will love you, and she will marry you, and you will not come to reside with your people any more.'

Now, Miss Alice, I have wandered far away from my home, have been sick, very sick, and a beautiful woman has nursed me until I am well, and oh!

from my heart I do love that beautiful woman. So far all of this wild prediction has been verified; and it remains with you, my dear Alice, to say if the latter portion shall be. You are too candid to delay reply, and too sincere to speak equivocally."

She trembled as she looked up into his face and read it for a moment.

"You are too much of a gentleman to speak as you have, unless it came from your heart. O my G.o.d! is this reality, or am I dreaming?" She drooped her head upon his shoulder, and said: "'Whither thou goest I will go; thy house shall be my house, and thy G.o.d my G.o.d.'"