CHAPTER II.
An evening walk, an evening talk, and what followed.
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Rainsford did not enter his appearance at
the woodland festival; he had gone over to his
house, under pretence of making preparations
for his removal. Virginia, though she kept up
her spirits tolerably since their last interview,
felt a heavy weight on her heart, and fell into
that state of mind which inclines to lonely meditations.
One evening she wandered alone down
to the river-side, not to enjoy the opening
charms of spring and the rural beauties of the
scene, but to brood over past times and future
probabilities. The season and the prospect
which spread itself out before her were both
equally alluring. On the opposite shore of the
river the high and haughty precipices of dark-coloured
rocks threw their deep reflections upon
the bosom of the clear waters that here, in consequence
of their expansion, rested quietly in
their capacious basin. The upper line of these
everlasting walls, viewed from where she stood,
reared itself high in the air, and nothing was
seen beyond or above them but the pure blue
sky of evening. As the sun gradually sank to
the horizon, it appeared a blood-red ball of flame;
and when half hidden behind the massy barrier
of the stream, assumed the appearance of a
great signal fire, such as in ancient times gave
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token for the valleys and the hills of Old Scotland,
the land of cakes, the land of Burns and
of Walter Scott, to send forth their hardy denizens
to the dangers they loved to encounter.
The shore on that side where reposed the village
of Dangerfieldville was a low rich bottom,
as it is yclept in western phrase. A fellow with
some geology in his brain would call it alluvial;
but we confess we delight to speak to the
comprehension of ordinary readers, whom it is
our pleasure to please. It was such a little
paradise as whilom the shepherds haunted in
the pastorals once so admired, but now eschewed
as fantastic pictures of a state of society which
never had an existence. So much the worse,
so much the worse; for to us it seems that the
very beau ideal of human happiness would consist
in this imaginary union (if such a one were
possible) of all the simplicity of rural innocence,
all the mild excitements of rural scenes, rural
amusements, and rural occupations, with gentle
manners and intellectual refinement. It says
nothing in favour of the state of manners or
morals, when the human mind can only be excited
to feeling or enthusiasm by high-coloured
pictures of passion and guilt, or high-seasoned
temptations to folly and crime.
The general character of the scene we have
attempted to describe was that of silence and
repose. But ever and anon a boat would glide
down the stream, and the silence be interrupted
for a few moments by the laugh or song of the
boatmen, or the echoes roused by the most
touching of all music, in the proper scene and
season,—the windings of the mellow wooden
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trumpet, which those who have once heard, on
the lonely rivers of the south and west, will,
peradventure, never forget. No hunter's horn,
no inspiring bugle, no oaten reed of shepherd
piping among the fauns and dryads in Grecian
or Sicilian vale, ever sent forth such
mellow, melting sounds, as we have heard in
days of yore, rolling in fleecy volumes from the
simple wooden trumpet of a river Orpheus,
black as the petticoat of night, when not a star
watches in the dingy firmament.
Virginia's eyes were on the scene, but her
thoughts were far away. It is scarcely necessary
to say whither they were wandering, or
whether they were pleasant or painful. Such
as they were, they were suddenly interrupted
by the sound of footsteps, and the appearance
of a person she at once recognised as the identical
being who was at that moment in the entire
occupation of her mind. She started, and
was offended.
“Mr. Rainsford,” said she, “after what has
passed, I did not think—I did not wish ever
to see you again.” And she was proceeding
towards home with a hurried step.
“Virginia—Miss Dangerfield, forgive me for
wishing to see you once more. I am going
away to-morrow. I shall never return, and I—
I don't know whether I shall be more happy
or miserable for the indulgence, but I wished
to bid you farewell; and to part in peace with
one with whom I have lived till lately in
peace.”
“Well, sir, in peace let us part; though I
must be allowed to say, your intruding into our
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peaceful village, and accepting the hospitality of
my father; and, and—but of myself, I will
say nothing. I ask, if you think all this was
not, in the circumstances under which you
came here, dishonourable and infamous?”
“Yes, yes, it was so,—I confess, I know it
was so. I had no right, wretched being that I
am, I had no right to endeavour to make an
interest in the affections, or create an attachment
in the heart of any human being; living,
as I do, in the horrible anticipation, nay, the
horrible certainty of one day giving nothing but
pain to those who take an interest in my fate.”
“You should have thought of this before,
Mr. Rainsford.”
“I should—nay, I did. But think, Virginia,
when a man has no friends, no relatives, not a
soul that takes an interest in his fate; when
he has buried all he loves, all that love him;
when he loathes the sight, and shuns the society
of his early companions, and roves a
wretched wreck of body and mind, in the vast
solitude of the world, without rudder, or compass,
or haven of repose. Think, Virginia,
what must be the self-denial of that man who,
under such circumstances, could resist the kindness
of benevolent strangers. And yet, you
may remember I sought not your father's hospitality.”
“I know it—I know it. But, when you
knew that you had no claim, you ought not to
have accepted it,” replied Virginia, whom the
sad picture Rainsford had drawn of himself
softened almost into forgiveness. “But it is useless
to say more, or to prolong this interview.
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Whatever may have been your offences to me
and mine, I forgive them. You saved my life;
I cannot forget that. And may the great Being
you have offended so deeply, receive the gift of
life you bestowed on me as an atonement for
that of which you deprived another.
Rainsford looked aghast.
“Deprived another! What do you—what
can you mean, Virginia?”
“Your conscience will tell you what I cannot
utter.”
“Conscience! upon my soul I do not comprehend
you!” Yet Rainsford trembled all the
while with a secret consciousness.
“Must I speak? must I remind you of your
own confession?” cried she, impatiently.
“No, Virginia, there is no necessity for that, it
is never out of my mind for a moment, asleep or
awake. It haunts my very dreams, and makes
my nights ten thousand times more miserable
than my days! But still I cannot comprehend
what you said just now.”
“Hypocrite!—then if I must, I must. Answer
me,” turning full upon him, “answer me, Mr.
Rainsford; have you not confessed yourself a
murderer!” And she shuddered with loathing,
as she uttered that appalling word.
“Murderer! ha, ha, ha!” and he laughed
aloud. “No, no, thank Heaven, not yet, not
yet. Whatever I may be, in good time—”
“Wretched man!”
“Yes, I am wretched, but I am not a murderer.
Ha, ha, ha! what a high opinion you
have of me. Add thief and pickpocket, seducer—
madman to it, Virginia, to make up the
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sum total of my accomplishments; do, do, Virginia!”
Virginia shuddered, with mingled emotions
of disgust and horror, as he continued in a
more composed manner.
“Miss Dangerfield, what you have just said
convinces me of the propriety of my making
certain explanations which you declined to hear
once, but which I demand as an act of justice
you should listen to now. Come, come, you
must, you shall hear me. You shall hear what
never was and never will be disclosed by me
again to any human being voluntarily. Come,
sit down on this old gray rock, and listen to
what I shall say. It is worth the hearing, I
promise you.”
Virginia could no longer resist; she sat down,
trembling with emotion, and, leaning against a
huge tree that grew out of the side of the rock,
awaited what followed.
“Well, sir, go on, and let me hear it all.”
“Virginia, there is madness in my blood and
race!”
“Madness! Oh, God! Madness?”
“Be not alarmed; there is no danger yet
awhile at least. I will not harm you, dear,
kind, benevolent soul, though you did suspect
me of murder.”
“Did you not acknowledge it?”
“No, on my soul! But I now see into the
source of your mistake, and will remove it if
you will listen calmly to my story.
“I am the last of my family, and so much
the better, for when I am gone its name and
memory will be for ever buried in the rubbish
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of its own miserable ruins. Virginia! Virginia!
I have undertaken a task which I fear will accelerate
the catastrophe which haunts my imagination
every moment of my life.”
“Only assure me solemnly of your innocence,
and I will spare you the rest.”
“No, all shall be disclosed, now that I have
wrought myself to the task. I said I was the
last of my family; but that is the lot of thousands,—
a vulgar calamity not worth thinking or
talking of. All men die; all generations, names,
families, nations, the peopled millions of the
universe, all pass away; but to die as mine have
done, as I shall die,—there's the rub, Virginia,
there's the rub! My family was respectable
and rich, so rich that fortune seemed determined
to make all the amends she could for the
curse denounced upon them by fate—ay, fate,
Virginia! do you not believe in fate? It is but
another, a profane name for Providence. Ha!
ha! It is astonishing what a difference the
world makes in the same things called by different
names! But we were rich and well educated;
we had every outward means of enjoyment;
and yet, for almost fifty years never has
there existed a more wretched, hopeless race on
the face of the earth. The story goes—it may
be true, or it may be false—but the story goes—
and it has had an influence over our family
that while one of them remains alive will never
cease. It was said that our grandfather, who
was a loyalist in the revolutionary war, in some
battle, no matter where, encountered an old
gray-headed neighbour, a whig, who surrendered
him his sword, and cried out for quarter.
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My grandfather was in that state of bloodthirsty
excitement which is so often felt in the heat of
battle, and, without listening to his entreaties,
cut him across the head till he sank to the
ground. `I know you, squire,' cried he, as he
fell. Some years after, when he was settled on
his estate, which he received with his wife, and
had a family around him, it chanced that an old
beggar came up the avenue, and asked charity
in an incoherent manner, which indicated derangement
of mind. He was somewhat insolent,
and my grandfather roughly ordered him
away.
“`You are a kind-hearted gentleman,' said
the old man; `what might your name be?'
“`It's of no consequence to you; go away,
old man.'
“`Yes, but it is. I like to know the names
of my benefactors, that I may pray for them.'
“My grandfather ordered him away; but before
he left the court-yard he learned from a
servant his name, and returned, and stood right
before him; he lifted up his old ragged hat, and
displayed a head seamed with scars, ill concealed
by a few white hairs.
“`Do you see this old head, major? and how
it is marked, as if the plough had been over it?
You don't remember me; but I do you. Do
you know whose sword it was that made these
gashes?”
“My grandfather was about going away,
when he cried out,—
“`Stop, major; it's impolite to turn your
back on an old acquaintance. Don't you remember
a gray-headed soldier who asked you
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for quarter, and you cut him down like an old
rotten cabbage? My name is Rockwell—Amos
Rockwell; we were neighbours once, before
you removed to these parts.'
“My grandfather remembered the man and
the circumstance, and immediately offered him
all the reparation in his power, a home for the
rest of his life. But his mind began to wander,
and he no longer understood what was said to
him.
“`A tory, a tory is a highway robber, and I'll
prove it,' and he fell into incoherent nonsense.
Before he departed, however, he came close up
to my grandfather, and said,
“`Do you know, major, I'm a fortune-teller?
I get my bread by it now. I'll tell yours for a
shilling; I would not be in your place for all
you are worth and ten times more. I'm pretty
mad sometimes, they say, but you'll be ten times
worse before you die; you'll be a mad family
among you, and I could find in my heart to
pity you, if it wasn't that you cut open my
head when I asked for quarter, and let in so
much air that it has been like a bladder ever
since. Good-by, I shall be this way again one
of these days to see if you're mad, and if you
are we'll have a merry time of it.'
“He left my grandfather somewhat struck
with this strange medley of sense and nonsense,
for he was a man of nervous temperament, and
subject to fits of low spirits. It passed away,
however, or only occurred at long intervals,
when accident or association would bring the
incident of the old beggar to his mind. About
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the same time next year he returned again, and
on encountering my grandfather, exclaimed,
“`What, not mad yet? well, you've got only
two years more to run, and then we'll have our
frolic out.'
“This second visit had a sensible effect, as I
have heard, on my grandfather, who had in the
interim lost one of his two children. But when
he again returned the third time, my grandfather
was seriously shocked.
“`You've one more year of grace,' said he,
`and then, if I live, you and I will set out on
our travels together to see the world, and knock
our noddles together, for yours will be as empty
as mine soon, or I can't see into a millstone.'
“It was foredoomed that the thing should
happen, and the beggar was only the instrument
of fate in giving the warning. It was a sort of
retributive justice that he should be permitted
to become the messenger of Providence, as well
as the agent in assisting to bring about what
was to come to pass at all events. My grandfather
brooded over these warnings until he
could think of nothing else, and his nervous
predisposition received new force by the sudden
death of his wife, which calamity left him with
no other solace than a little weakly son about
four years old. The neighbourhood was solitary;
no one lived within less than two or three
miles; the nearest building was an old halfruined
church, which had the reputation of
being haunted, and whose moss-grown tombstones
stood as thick as the trees of the forest.
By day it was sufficiently cheerful; but the
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stillness of the night, interrupted only by the
drowsy hum of insects, the croaking of frogs,
and the occasional night music of the owl and
whip-poor-will, presented a sort of void for the
imagination to people with spectres of its own
creation.
“My grandfather gradually grew visionary
and melancholy. He became a devotee; he
became a fanatic; he—he ran mad, and raised
his hand against that life to which he himself
had given being! He was confined in a cell,
and dashed—”
Here the young man paused, panting, wiping
his forehead, down which the big drops rolled
their way, and exhibiting the intensity of mental
suffering. Virginia could not speak; wonder,
doubt, superstition for the first time overwhelmed
her imagination, and she shuddered
at the anticipation of unknown inscrutable
horrors. After a few moments he went on.
“My father grew up an intelligent, well-principled,
virtuous man; married; was blessed—
ah! luckily for him he did not live to see two
sons, aye, three, grow up to be the curse of his
existence. My father,—but why should I dwell
on such soul-sickening scenes and recollections?
his story in its catastrophe is that of my grandfather,
and let it rest in oblivion. Now, Virginia,
now comes the whirlwind and the earthquake;
now the curse begins to approach me
nearer and nearer, until I feel the grasp of fate
about my throat. We, I and my two elder
brothers, often thought and often shuddered
over the fate of our father and grandfather, the
latter of which some foolish or malignant
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people detailed to us. But we felt no apprehensions
for ourselves, although it was observed
by some of our friends that we were all inclined
more or less to melancholy and superstition,
as they called it; but I know better now,
and have another name for it, PRESENTIMENT.
“We lived together, and loved each other,
until my elder brother began to, to—spare me,
spare me the detail, Virginia; it is time for me
to conclude, or I shall go mad before my time.
It is sufficient, it must be sufficient to say, that
my dear brothers, one after the other, precisely
at the same age, under the same circumstances,
and under the same influence of a gloomy anticipation
of the fate which every succeeding
victim more surely marked was sooner or later
to become his own, followed the footsteps of my
grandfather and father, and died, and made no
sign of having once belonged to the race of
miserable inheritors of a curse which goes by
the name of a glorious privilege. I, I alone
remain; there is none other; no grandfather,
father, or brothers to run distracted, but me;
the vial of wrath has no other head but mine
to pour out upon. The hour approaches; the
next birthday, and then, then you must take
care of me, Virginia. I shall be dangerous,
especially to those I love, as I do thee, dear
woman of my heart. At this moment I dare
to tell thee so, for I feel like one that, having
disclosed the inmost secret of his soul, cares not
who knows all the rest. Yes, I, I the wretched
inheritor of curses that have never fallen to the
ground; I that can bring you nothing but a
benediction of horrors; I that ought to be
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howling among the wild beasts, or the still
wilder cells and dungeons of my kind; I dare
to tell thee so, Virginia.
“When my last brother kill—died, I could
not stay any longer in a place where I was
looked upon by the people as a victim marked
out by destiny; as a sort of mysterious object
of the wrath of Heaven. I sold my estate, and
bent my way to some spot where I and my
story should never have been heard of, and
where I might be looked upon as a fellow-creature
by my fellow-creatures. A distant hope
likewise animated me at times, that possibly
change of scene, change of air, change of life,
together with the absence of every thing that
could give to my mind the fatal direction of all
my family, might relieve me for a while from
the besetting fiend. At a distance, and when
doubtful whither to go, I heard of this village,
and of the character of your father. I came
hither; I found a welcome, friends, all, and
more than I ever expected to find in this world;
and for a little while I hoped to be at least as
happy as others of my fellow-creatures. But
I feel it is all in vain; I have a presentiment
which never yet deceived me, but is as sure as
fate itself, and which assures me that my hours
are numbered. Hah, hah, hah! isn't this a
romantic tale for a fair lady's ear; a touching
appeal from a thriving wooer to his lady love?
am not I irresistible, Virginia? hah, hah,
hah!”
“Don't laugh; don't laugh, for God's sake!”
cried the young maiden.
“What, you'd rather hear me howl, and
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gnash my teeth, and rattle my chains, and
chatter nonsense? Well, perhaps it would be
more in character.”
Virginia soothed him by degrees into something
like composure.
“The anticipation of misery, after all, is better
than the consciousness of guilt. I am thankful
that it is no worse.”
“But how could you believe for a moment
the absurd tale of murder?” asked he, reproachfully.
“Did not you yourself contribute to deceive
me?”
“Perhaps I did. I could not know what was
passing in your mind, nor you in mine. If
you knew how I shrink from the idea that any
human being should suspect the cause of my
melancholy, and that my apprehensions are for
ever fixed to that one single point, you would
easily conceive why I took it for granted you
alluded to no other. In the same manner I
was deceived by Paddock's suspicions, and
bribed him, not to conceal a crime, but a misfortune.”
“And I, misled by the turn given by Mrs.
Judith to your violent emotions and ambiguous
exclamations, mistook your confession of one
thing for that of another. You will pardon
me, I hope?” said she, with a melancholy
smile.
“If you will pardon me for daring to attempt
to establish an interest in the hearts of a worthy
family, who, if they cherish any regard for me,
must one day mourn over my fate. But let
me again remind you what it is to be an
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outcast, an exception to our fellow-creatures; to
wander through the peopled solitudes of the
world, a guest only at the tables of strangers;
to go and come, without a soul caring whither
or when; and to receive no sympathy from a
human being. Such was my case when I came
here, and was received with a kind hospitality
that went to my heart. I could not for the soul
of me resist it at first, or resign it afterwards.
Will you forgive me for cheating you into
friendship for one who is destined to repay it
with bitter recollections, perhaps with something
worse?” and he shuddered with some
gloomy anticipation that passed over his mind,
as he added, “I shall leave you to-morrow.
You must never witness it.”
“Witness what?” asked Virginia, anxiously.
“You must never see me gradually stripped
of my mind's regalia, the attributes of godlike
man, one by one. To see me hate those I
loved; to see me sit brooding over one single
miserable anticipation, which will grow and
grow from hour to hour, and day to day,
until it becomes a gigantic spectre so horrible
that reason turns away from it shuddering,
and takes refuge in madness. To see me wandering
about like a wild beast, the enemy of all
and feared by all, until at last, like the wolf or
the tiger, I am caught, and chained, and shut
from the light of heaven. I will spare you
this, Virginia, and depart to some place where
no one knows or cares who or what I am;
where, when the crisis arrives, I may howl without
piercing the ear, and die without wounding
the hearts of my friends.”
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The deep melancholy of his voice, as he drew
this appalling picture, touched the heart of Virginia,
and drew tears from her eyes. Though
her feelings towards Rainsford had been restrained
from giving way to the violence of
love, they had long passed the boundaries of
mere ordinary friendship. She certainly preferred
him far above any man she had ever
seen, which indeed was no great compliment,
she had seen so few. But the capricious
changes in his conduct and temper, joined to
the melancholy gloom which so often overspread
his countenance, while it excited her
interest, created doubts and suspicions, which
prevented that unbounded confidence necessary
to the very existence of love in the heart of a
sensible and virtuous woman.
The disclosure just made, had invested him
with a strange inexplicable interest, where
pity was coupled with a kind of vague indefinite
fear. Sometimes as her fancy realized the
picture he had drawn of himself in anticipation,
she would shrink from him with trembling
apprehension; while at others when he presented
the fair reality of an amiable handsome
youth, with a mind stored with all the richness
of past and present times; a voice of touching
melody; an eye which in his happier moments
was yet more eloquent than his tongue, and a
heart that not only seemed pure and good, but
was all hers; then she felt that soft and yielding
influence which prompts the pure virgin to
wish to join her fate with some chosen one, and
share his joys or sorrows in the journey through
this world.
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A silence of some minutes was at length interrupted
by the wild quaver of a screech-owl,
from the dark precipice on the opposite shore of
the river. It broke on the dead silence of the
evening with a tone so shrill, so cold, and cheerless,
that it is not to be wondered at that superstition
has connected it with its other regalia of
horrors. The favourite haunts of this invisible
bird are deep woods, mouldering ruins, and
churchyards. He lives among the dead, and
his sunshine is the obscurity of utter darkness.
He sees when others of the cheerful denizens
of the air are blind; he sallies out of his sepulchre
in some old hollow tree, to screech and
scream his funeral warnings under the windows
of the startled peasant, when all the rest of the
feathered race are enjoying their innocent
repose among the whispering leaves of the
forest.
The scream was so shrill, and broke so abruptly
on the deathlike repose of nature, that it
made Virginia, who was accustomed to the
sound, start from the revery into which she had
fallen.
“Let us go home,” said she.
“A few moments. That is my music, Virginia;
it is a prophetic song. Don't you think
that screech-owls see into futurity?”
“Certainly not, for then they would be wiser
than rational beings.”
“Rational beings! what is reason but a proud
temple built on the sands, to be overthrown by
the first blast that whistles by? I can understand
that owl as well as if he spoke English.
He is telling me—hark!”
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Another long shrill quaver came over the still
waters.
“Hark! dost thou know what he is saying,
Virginia? He tells me to make the most of
the present moments; to enjoy thy dear society
in all its full fruition of delight; to listen to the
music of thy voice, to hear thee breathe so
softly on the night; to exchange with thee the
rich treasures of thy mind, for the miserable
counterfeit coin of mine, for the last, last time,
for to-morrow, nay, this night we are to part for
ever. There is truth in owls, you may depend
upon it.”
“Let us go home,” again said Virginia,
rising.
“A little longer, Virginia, for the prophet
over yonder says it is the last time. Come,
look with me once more at this lovely work of
Nature's cunning hand. It has a moral; it is
prophetic, too, like the owl. The pure sky up
yonder is a mirror in which we may see if we
view aright the reflection of our future days.
Every human being has a star there, which
sparkles forth his history and his fate. My
planet is the moon; she does not shine now, as
if to indicate my light of joy and hope will be
extinguished this night. But the river, the
river, that is your true prophet. See how its
waves roll quietly away! not one drop will
ever return; and so with me. They find their
way into the ocean of waters, and are lost for
ever; I shall return to the ocean of the world,
and the kindest wish that I can ever breathe
for thee, Virginia, is, that my name, my fate,
my very memory may be lost in oblivion.”
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Virginia paused, and was silent a few moments;
she then said, with faltering hesitation,
“Why should you go to-morrow, or indeed
go at all?”
“Have you not driven me away, Virginia?”
“That was then I believed you guilty, and
hated you.”
“And now you pity me!” said Rainsford,
with bitterness. “You look upon me as a rare
monster, something out of the ordinary sphere
of mankind; and wonder at me as the boys
do at a mad beggar in the streets.”
“No, on my soul I don't, Mr. Rainsford.”
“Give me the proof, then,” cried he, vehemently;
“I love you, Virginia; I have told
you so before. If any human being can chase
away the fiend that haunts my reason and my
fancy day and night, it is you. To know that
you are interested in my happiness; to know
that I have a watchful cherub praying for and
shielding me from fate itself by her purity and
virtue, will, if it is not irrevocably decreed
otherwise, redeem me from the fate of all
my family. Now, Virginia, to try thee! darest
thou promise, darest thou pledge the purity of
thine immortal soul to me; me, standing on the
brink of a yawning gulf, and dizzy with looking
down upon it; darest thou promise me—
'Sdeath! what a selfish scoundrel I am! no, no,
it is decreed; I must go.”
“Mr. Rainsford,” said Virginia, with a sad,
yet firm solemnity mingled with tenderness;
“Mr. Rainsford, I think I know what you are
going to say; say on, and be assured that what
a woman sensible of her duty to her parents
-- 028 --
[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]
and herself, tenderly sensible of her obligations
to you, and of the claim you have on her gratitude,
ought to do, can do, that will I do with
all my heart.”
“Well then, Virginia, if it should please the
great Giver of life and reason to spare me the
bitter draught which all my race have drank
and died of—if I should pass the fated period,
and, having passed, I shall not fear it afterwards—
will you, dearest Virginia, can you consent
to share my fortune with me, to become
the chosen blessing to repay me for all I have
suffered in this world? Answer me, frankly
and finally.”
“With the approbation of my parents I will,”
replied she, after a pause, and hesitatingly.
“Ha! your father and mother! true, true,
they must know it; they must know all, and
shrink from me as all others who knew my
history, save you, have done, Virginia. I cannot
bear to be made a spectacle, an object of
horrible commiseration, of mingled scorn and
pity; to have every word, and look, and action
scanned with jealous scrutiny, and distorted
into an indication of approaching alienation of
mind. No, no, dearest Virginia, be you the only
depository of my secret; do not be kind by
halves; give all or nothing.”
Virginia hesitated; but, moved at length by
his forlorn and hapless state, she promised not
to betray the confidence of that evening.
“A thousand thanks, dearest, most beneficent
Virginia. I shall now have something to live
for, and, instead of for ever brooding over the
dark vista of the future, which hitherto has
-- 029 --
[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]
presented to me nothing but spectres of horror,
look forward to the hope that, under the guidance
of an angel, and shielded by her wings, I
may yet live to taste that happiness which has
been an alien to my heart ever since the dreadful
conviction was implanted in it, that I should
go the way of all that I loved or that ever loved
me.”
“May the gracious Providence ordain it so.”
“Virginia,” resumed he, with a solemn earnestness,
“Virginia, permit me here to seal the
compact on the sacred purity of thy balmy lips,
the first and the last time, unless the new vision
that has just dawned upon me should be realized.
For here I solemnly swear, in presence
of all those silent witnesses that sparkle yonder,
never to take, never to ask of you any one of
those sweet condescensions which virtuous delicacy
may blamelessly bestow on true affection,
until I can claim, and you can grant with a
perfect confidence, that last and greatest blessing
of possessing you. My spotless, pure Virginia
shall never run the risk of having her future
life poisoned by the recollection of the
endearments of one who some day may be
clanking his chains in a dungeon. Come, thou
dear one; the first, and perhaps the last.”
The maiden yielded a modest compliance,
and one kiss, one embrace was given and received
in silence; one kiss and one embrace
sealed the communion of weal and wo. They
returned together, and Virginia was at once
reminded of the rashness of the promise of
secrecy she had just made by the inquiring
-- 030 --
[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]
looks of her mother, and the cool salutation of
Colonel Dangerfield. She longed to throw
herself on the maternal bosom, and disclose all
that had passed.
-- 031 --
CHAPTER III.
A half-confidence is worse than none, which is not the
case with half a loaf of bread.
[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]
Much of the succeeding night was passed by
Virginia in wakeful anxiety. She did not regret
the engagement just entered into, but it weighed
heavily on her heart. There was a fearful responsibility
attending it, a risk so much greater
than even that which ever accompanies the
surrender of our happiness to the keeping of
another, that she almost shuddered when it presented
itself in the solitude of reflection and
darkness. Yet there was something of touching
and exquisite tenderness in the idea of
watching over the welfare of one so circumstanced
as Rainsford; a thrilling gratification
in the hope that he might yet, under her gentle
pilotage, steer clear of the rock on which his
family had all been wrecked, one after the
other. She resolved to watch over him, as a
mother over a sickly child; to devote herself
as far as might be, to his amusement; and to
lure him, if possible, from his bitter customary
contemplations, by holding up a glass which
should reflect the future in fairer and more
alluring colours.
When she met the family in the morning, the
colonel saluted her, as usual, with a kiss, but
not precisely such a kiss as she had been
-- 032 --
[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]
accustomed to receive; and Mrs. Dangerfield discovered,
in the timid consciousness with which
Virginia poured out the tea, that she had something
on her mind she did not dare to disclose.
“But she will tell it the first opportunity,”
thought the good mother; “for she has never
yet had any secrets from me.” Virginia, however,
did not tell her the first opportunity, and
her maternal anxiety was awakened to a watchfulness
she never thought necessary before.
Rainsford now visited more frequently, and
it was plain to Virginia that the hope which
animated him had a most favourable influence
on his mind and spirits. He indulged himself
in occasional humorous sallies, displayed various
indications of gentlemanly accomplishments,
which hitherto he had not the heart to
draw forth, and sometimes spread his wings in
such almost fearful flights of fancy, that he
seemed to be just hovering over the confines of
rational perception. She shuddered,she thrilled,
and she admired; but it was with that feeling
with which we behold the seaboy toppling high
on the topgallant-mast in a tempest, or the gambols
of a thoughtless child on the verge of a
precipice. In a little time, however, the perpetual
watchfulness she practised gradually produced
a feeling in the tender and virtuous heart
of Virginia, which partook almost equally of the
warmth of a mistress, the untiring, sleepless,
holy, guardian care of a mother. It could
hardly be called love that she felt; there was
too great an infusion of anxiety, of care; too
much of solemnity to admit of the buoyant
bubbles which float on the surface of the
-- 033 --
[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]
sweetest draught of human bliss, when love and hope
form its only ingredients.
The colonel and Mrs. Dangerfield could not
but notice what was passing; and though the
supervision of parents over their children, more
especially their daughters, is not so rigid and
watchful in this country, nor, happily for us,
so necessary, as in many others, still the former
could not refrain from occasional hints, nay, surmises,
about young ladies having their own secrets,
and being too wise to consult their parents
on the most important occasions of their lives.
The mother said nothing; but in the language
of the most beautiful, the most natural, and the
most affecting of all ballads ever written, Virginia
might have said, as she felt,—
“She look'd in my face, till I thought my heart would break.”
The situation of the daughter became every
day more and more painful, and she at length
threw herself on the generosity of Rainsford, to
be relieved from her obligation of secrecy.
“I cannot live in this way much longer. I
have never before had a secret from my parents,
and the thought of living every day in their
sight, sharing their affections, receiving their
bounty, and having that in my heart which I
dare not, or at least am not permitted, to disclose,
sickens me of my life. I cannot look
them in the face without a consciousness that
sinks my eyes to the ground, and they know it.
I can disclose our engagement without—without
betraying your—the reasons for postponing—
I—I—you know what I wish to say, though
I cannot say it.”
-- 034 --
[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]
Rainsford struggled with his feelings for a
while, and then answered,—
“Virginia, I will not be the cause of more
suffering to your gentle spirit than must be the
inevitable result of our engagement, for a time
at least, until—until my fate is decided. But
consider, dearest girl, that unless you tell all,
you will still have a secret—and such a secret!”
“Yes, but my heart will be relieved from its
heaviest burthen, a wilful, unnecessary denial
of confidence. Cannot I tell my secret without
exposing yours?”
Again Rainsford struggled with his insuperable
horror of disclosing, or consenting to any
measure that might possibly lead to a disclosure
of his family history. But the generosity of
his nature at length overcame the selfish feeling,
and he consented that she should tell all,
and in her own way. “But,” added he, “I foresee
that it will lead to our everlasting separation.”
Virginia sought her mother, sat down to her
sewing, made sad work of it, pricked her finger,
and screamed a little, as young ladies are wont.
“What is the matter?” asked the old lady,
pushing her spectacles up on her forehead.
“My dear mother, I have a secret to tell you.
O dear, how I have pricked my finger!”
“Is that your great secret, Virginia?”
“No, indeed, mother; but—but what do you
think of Mr. Rainsford? Dear me, how my
finger bleeds!”
“Why, I think Mr. Rainsford is in love with
Virginia Dangerfield, and that she is not much
behindhand with him.”
-- 035 --
[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]
“Lord, mother, how can you talk so? But
what a fool I am!” She approached her mother,
threw her arms about her neck, kissed her, and
wept. But soon drying her tears, she began,
with the dignified firmness of a virtuous maid,
conscious that in disclosing the inmost secrets
of her soul she had no occasion to blush or be
ashamed. Frankly and fairly she told her engagement;
but at the same time, being determined
not to betray the history confided to her
by Rainsford, unless it should become absolutely
necessary to her peace of mind, she merely
stated that their union was not to take place
until the expiration of a certain period, and not
then without the entire approbation of her parents.
“A certain period! and how long first, Virginia?”
“Why, that—that depends on circumstances
beyond Mr. Rainsford's control at present.”
“And what are they, my daughter?”
“I cannot disclose them, dear madam, as yet.”
“You say—that is, he says, he is wealthy,
of age, his own master; why should he wish to
delay his marriage to an indefinite period?”
“That is a secret.”
“I don't like secrets, my dear, nor postponements,
without some good, sufficient, avowed
reasons. I have no objection to Mr. Rainsford;
indeed, since the obligation he conferred upon
us all, I have wished that he might like you,
and you him. But I cannot help thinking his
conduct somewhat singular. Do you know his
reasons, Virginia?”
“I do.”
-- 036 --
[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]
“And you dare not disclose them? Perhaps
he will not permit you?”
“He has consented, if it should be absolutely
necessary. But I—I confess, my dear mother,
I had rather, and so would he, that they should
be secret for a time. One day you shall know
all. Either I will tell you, or—or circumstances
will disclose it.” And she sighed at the possibility
that the latter might come to pass.
Mrs. Dangerfield shook her head.
“Virginia, I dislike the whole course of your
wooing. Deceit is too often at the bottom of
mystery. I cannot help suspecting that he
is playing on the simplicity of your character,
if not betraying the tenderness of your
affections.”
“Oh! no, indeed, mother; if you only knew
all you would pity him, as I do.” And she cast
herself on the mother's bosom, and sobbed as
if her heart would break the while.
“Forgive me, dear mother!”
“I do forgive you, Virginia; but your father
must know all this; and now I think of it, he
has not for a long time past appeared to treat
Mr. Rainsford as a man like him seems to have
a right to be treated by one on whom he has
conferred so great an obligation. Have you
any objection I should tell him?”
“None; I wished you to do so; and I should
have told you all that you now know some time
ago, but that Mr. Rainsford exacted a promise
of secrecy, from which he only just now released
me.”
“Again, another secret!” exclaimed Mrs. Dangerfield,
and she remained musing for some
-- 037 --
[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]
moments. “But yonder comes your father;
we shall see what he thinks of all this. Had
you rather remain or retire while we talk over
the subject?”
“I think I'd better retire.” Virginia went towards
the door, but returned, and, taking her
mother's hand, looked up in her face with a
bewitching, beseeching eye. “You are not angry
with me, dear mother?”
“No, indeed I am not, Virginia.” She kissed
her affectionately, and they separated.
The colonel received the communications of
Mrs. Dangerfield with rather a bad grace. There
was something mysterious about Rainsford. He
had come among them without letters; and
though the hospitable habits of Kentucky rendered
them quite unnecessary in ordinary cases,
still he must know more of him before he consented
to give him his daughter. It was true
he had saved her life, and that entailed upon
them everlasting gratitude; but still this was
not a sufficient guarantee to his fortune and
character. His professed object in coming here
was to purchase and settle; yet he seemed to
have neither inclination, nor habits, nor any
thing else necessary to the success of such a
plan; nay, he appeared to have almost forgotten
that he ever entertained it. Besides, from
something he had learned a good while ago
of Zeno Paddock, he could not help sometimes
entertaining a vague suspicion, which, were it
not for the unspeakable benefit he had conferred
on them all, would have caused him, Colonel
Dangerfield, to institute an inquiry, which, if
not properly answered, would have led to a
-- 038 --
[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]
cessation of all further intercourse, if to nothing
more. He did not feel himself at liberty to
state what Zeno had told him. In the first
place, it might not be true, for the man was
a great busybody, and did not always talk
gospel; and in the second place, if true, it only
amounted to a surmise rather than an absolute
ground of suspicion.
“I must know more of this mysterious young
man, whom, however, I can't help liking for his
intelligence and amiable qualities, independently
of the obligations of gratitude. My friendship
is, and my purse would be, at his service if he
required it; but he has a command of large
funds, I know; yet, when it comes to giving
away my only daughter, it is another affair,
and requires every degree of rational circumspection.
I shall not fail to take advantage of
the first opportunity that presents itself to ask
him some questions about himself and his
family, which I have never done before, because
I don't think it becoming in a gentleman born
in Old Virginia, and residing in Kentucky, to
be inquisitive about a guest. It looks as if he
was not welcome for himself alone, as a fellow-creature,
as a mere man. But this is another
affair. I have sufficient confidence in Virginia
not to forbid their intercourse or break their
engagement; but the marriage shall never take
place with my consent till I know who Mr.
Rainsford is, whence he comes, what is his family,
and, above all, what is his character. In
the mean time I shall have an eye upon him,
though I confess it goes to my conscience to
suspect a man for an instant without telling
-- 039 --
[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
him so to his face, and giving him an opportunity
of vindicating himself.”
The reader will perhaps observe a change in
the character and style of Colonel Dangerfield
when he compares his conversation and conduct
with certain dialogues and incidents recorded
in the commencement of our story. It
is even so. Change of situation, duties, and
modes of life do not make less impression on
the mind than they do on the body. From the
moment the colonel parted with his estate, his
neighbours, and above all with Barebones, and
dashed into the wilderness, his character resumed
that native sagacity and vigour which
wealth, indulgence, and, above all, idleness,
had lulled to sleep with their syren lullabies.
His mind rose with the exigences of the
occasion; and whether as a soldier braving the
dangers and toils of a forest war, a magistrate
ruling the wild region around him more by the
force of his personal authority than that of the
laws, a father instructing or providing for the
wants of his children, or a husband fulfilling
the duties of a household divinity, he was
equally an example. His old friends on the
borders of James River would hardly have
known him now; and we ourselves, intimate
as we were with this worthy gentleman, cannot
help sometimes almost doubting his identity.
-- 040 --
CHAPTER IV.
Showing how Mrs. Judith Paddock was almost frightened
out of her wits.
[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
Virginia took the earliest opportunity of disclosing
to Rainsford the particulars of the interview
with her mother, and he expressed his
grateful sense of her delicacy in withholding
the secret which it had been the great object of
his existence to preserve. But he foresaw, and
he told her so, the painful situation in which he
had placed her, and at times lamented that she
had not made a full disclosure. From this period
he imagined himself an object of jealous suspicion,
and perverted every look, and word, and
action of the colonel and Mrs. Dangerfield accordingly.
Perhaps he was right; for though
they preserved towards him all the appearance
of outward courtesy, they could not divest themselves
of that awkward embarrassment which
is ever the product of the absence of confidence
in those with whom we associate.
A few days had passed when, an opportunity
presenting itself, Colonel Dangerfield took occasion
to introduce the subject of the engagement
which subsisted between Rainsford and Virginia.
“I will acknowledge, Mr. Rainsford, that all
I have seen of you since you came to this part
of the country has contributed to give me a
-- 041 --
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
favourable opinion of your talents and character,
independently of the obligation you have conferred
on me and mine. In other circumstances,
and as an ordinary acquaintance, I should rest
satisfied; but the relation in which you now
stand towards my family makes it necessary
that I should know more of you. You will
therefore, I trust, not think me impertinent or
curious if I now take the liberty of asking a
few questions.”
Though in general Rainsford was highly
nervous and sensitive, there were occasions
when he would rally himself into a lofty feeling
of firmness and decision. In the latter spirit
he replied,—
“Colonel Dangerfield, you certainly have a
right to ask any questions you think necessary.
I am sure they will be only such as your situation
and mine render it proper for one gentleman
to ask another. But I must tell you beforehand,
there are questions which, as yet, I
cannot, I do not feel disposed to answer.”
“Very well; frankly, then, where have you
generally resided before you came hither?”
“I cannot—I had rather be excused answering
that question.”
“Indeed! well, sir, may I ask the situation,
circumstances, and character of your family?”
“I am the last of my family,” said Rainsford,
with a shudder.
“That is somewhat remarkable. I scarcely
ever met a human being so utterly desolate as
to be without relatives. You must have been
very unfortunate. Are you a native of this
country?”
-- 042 --
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
“I am. I have some distant relatives, but
have never associated or had any interchange
of kindness with them.”
“And you decline giving any information
on the subject of your family or fortune?”
“My family—so far I will say—my family
is respectable; and as to wealth, I have more
than I shall ever have occasion for. The proofs
I can produce at any time.”
“I am not very solicitous on that point. But
you must be aware, Mr. Rainsford, that I cannot
give my only daughter away to a man who
not only refuses to explain who he is, but
chooses himself to propose delays, for which,
though he has given her sufficient reasons, he
does not condescend to explain to my satisfaction.”
“Is not this very proposal of delay a proof
that I mean neither to wrong or deceive either
her or you? Did I intend this, I should hasten
the completion of that happiness which I sometimes
hope I may yet enjoy. Swindlers and
villains fear nothing so much as time, which
sooner or later lays open all secrets.”
“True, that is assuredly true,” replied the
colonel, musing; “but still, Mr. Rainsford—I
will be plain with you—still you must confess,
if you know any thing of the world and of the
intercourse of mankind, that the man who declines
giving a reasonable solution to any course
of conduct which is not within the sphere of
ordinary motives and principles, justly lays
himself open to a suspicion that his motives
will not bear examination. It is not without
-- 043 --
[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
good reason that the great mass of mankind
confound mystery with guilt.”
“But, Colonel Dangerfield, may not there be
misfortunes of such a peculiar and painful
nature, that a sensitive being will shrink from
disclosing them, as he would from the acknowledgment
of a crime?”
“Certainly; but these instances are so rare,
that no man has a right to complain if the
world transforms this feeling of sore delicacy
into the consciousness of guilt.”
“Yes, I know that but too well.”
“But, sir, to bring this home to ourselves: as
strangers, we are not entitled to ask of you any
disclosure that might be painful; as mere ordinary
acquaintances, we would not wish it: but
as the parents of a virtuous and, I must say,
beautiful young woman, who has somewhat
hastily intrusted her prospects of happiness to
your future decision, I now inform you, once
for all, that before the affair goes any further,
we must and we will know who and what you
are.”
“I will tell you, in one word, a wretch; but
not a guilty one. Colonel Dangerfield, do not
take from me the hope of one day, if it please
Heaven to spare me, calling Virginia mine. If
you knew all, you would pity, perhaps you
would shrink from me; it is that I fear, it is
that which makes me shudder at the thought
of laying open the sources of my conduct, the
apparent mystery in which I have wrapped
myself from all save Virginia. She had a right
to know, and she does know it all.”
`Some stale romantic story, I suppose,” said
-- 044 --
[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
the other, contemptuously; “some tale of
wicked indulgence, wrapped in the simulated
language of the day, when a violation of the
obligations of justice is called imprudence, and
guilt softened down into misfortune. Some
pretty device to steal away the pity of a tender,
inexperienced girl.”
“Would to Heaven it were! No, sir; you
wrong me, on my soul you do. But let us end
this painful interview. Colonel Dangerfield,”
continued he, with deep solemnity, “do you
believe in oaths; in appeals to the Being who
is all truth, all justice? If so, hear me assure
you, as I hope for happiness hereafter, if not
here; as I am a being possessing an immortal
soul, which I here pledge to everlasting perdition
if I say not the truth; hear me swear to
you, that it is misfortune, and not guilt, which
urges me to keep from you for a time the reasons
for my conduct towards you and yours.
They may be weak, unfounded, childish perhaps;
they may be a part of my mal—but
such as they are, I cannot overcome them just
now. Yet before the throne of the great Governor
of the universe, I here pledge myself
that ere another year has passed away, you
shall know all, and that in the mean time the
confidence you have bestowed upon me shall
not be abused. Dare you trust me thus far?”
“It is asking almost too much, sir; but when
I call to mind that but for you I should have
had no daughter, I cannot but confess that you
are entitled to some little confidence.” He reflected
a few moments, and resumed,—“I will
trust you; though even you yourself little
-- 045 --
[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
know at what a risk of one day being pointed
at as the most rash and imprudent of fathers.
I agree to your terms; in less than a year, you
say?”
“In less than a year. Oh! sir,” and he took
the hand of Colonel Dangerfield, and pressed
it; “Oh! sir, you cannot know my gratitude
for this confidence; and—and Heaven grant
you may never live to repent it!”
They separated, the colonel musing on this
last wish, which sounded somewhat equivocal,
and Rainsford bending his way to the domicil
of Master Zeno Paddock, where sat Mrs. Judith
in an ague, a very agony of curiosity. She
had a sort of instinctive feeling that something
had happened, that something would happen,
that something was going on which she did
not exactly comprehend, and she forthwith
lashed herself, as it were, in nautical phrase,
yardarm and yardarm, alongside of Rainsford,
determined to sink him outright, if he did not
surrender his secret. But alas! all her manoeuvres
for boarding failed. Rainsford was so
deeply immersed in his own anxious and painful
feelings, that he answered her like Hotspur,
“neglectingly, he knew not what,” and unintentionally
perplexed her beyond all womanly
endurance.
“I thought I saw you coming out of the
colonel's just now; didn't I, Mr. Rainsford?”
He looked in her face with a blank vacuity,
and replied to his own thoughts,
“One year more—yes—hum—and all will
be known.”
Mrs. Judith could make nothing of this.
-- 046 --
[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]
“O yes, as you say, one year more, and then—
we shall all be a year older.” Mrs. Judith
did not know exactly what to say, and, as usual
in such like cases, talked nonsense.
“Perhaps not—perhaps after all it may not
come to pass.”
“Not come to pass that we shall be a year
older next year!” screamed Mrs. Paddock, and
the scream brought him to his recollection for
a moment.
“We may be dead, you know,” said he,
smiling.
“Ah, that's true; that's clever; hah, hah! I
declare you make me laugh, Mr. Rainsford.”
“And yet,” said Rainsford, relapsing, “it
may be—hum—um—um.”
“What did you say, sir?”
“All—yes—all my poor brothers went that
way—and within a few months of the same
age—um—u—u—m.”
“Ah! yes sir, this is a scan—I mean a miserable
world; we may die, or be robbed, or
ose all we have in the world, and our wits into
the bargain, before—”
“What do you say about losing my wits,
woman?” cried Rainsford, starting up furiously,
and glaring at her as if he had seen a ghost.
Mrs. Judith fled out of the room like a timid
fawn, and, throwing her handkerchief over it
to protect the head of Holofernes from the sun,
“made tracks,” as Bushfield would say, in a
straight line over to the temporary residence of
Colonel Dangerfield, where the first person she
encountered was Virginia.
-- 047 --
[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
“O, Miss Phiginny! Miss Phiginny! such
an accident has happened to Mr. Rainsford.”
“What accident? tell me, Mrs. Paddock;
quick, quick!”
“O, what a miserable world is this! O, Miss
Phiginny!”
“For heaven's sake tell me,” cried the young
lady, “what, what has happened to Mr. Rainsford?”
and she trembled and grew as pale as
ashes.
“O!—O!—O, I declare I'm so frightened,
and so out of breath,—O, who'd have thought
it, poor young man!”
“What? what?” cried Virginia, in agony.
“Why, he's run distracted, as sure—”
Here Mrs. Judith was arrested in her speech;
Virginia uttered one scream, and fell as if dead
on the greensward of the little enclosure in
the rear of the house, where she had been sitting
under the shade of a spreading tree. Mrs.
Dangerfield heard the scream, and ran out to
see the cause. She found Virginia lying senseless,
and Mrs. Judith wringing her hands, and
crying out against this miserable world, almost,
nay, quite unconscious of what she was saying.
After some time and care, the young maiden
recovered sufficiently to utter a few rambling
incoherent words.
“So soon—it was not to have come yet.
Poor, poor Rainsford, and poor Virginia.”
Then seeing Mrs. Paddock, she raised herself
up, and asked,
“Are you sure, quite sure?”
“Why I can't altogether say that he has lost
all his wits but he talked as if he did not know
-- 048 --
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what he was saying, and looked at me as if he
didn't know me from Adam; and then he called
me woman, as if he meant d—l. But as I live,
here he comes; who'd have thought it?”
At this moment Rainsford looked over the
little paling, and invited Virginia to walk with
him to the river-side. Mrs. Dangerfield would
have opposed it, but Virginia insisted she was
quite recovered, and displayed so much impatience
of contradiction, that the kind mother
acquiesced.
“My dear Virginia,” thought she, “you are
not what you used to be.”
They walked a long while over the smooth
meadows that skirted the river, and under the
spreading elms and lofty sycamore-trees that
here and there overshadowed the carpets of
flowers, now putting forth their many-tinted
products of the spring. Rainsford inquired
the cause of her temporary indisposition, to
which he had heard her mother allude; but
she evaded the subject, fearful of giving him
pain, and by so doing inflicted perhaps a
greater. At length, urged beyond her will to
resist, she disclosed the whole of Mrs. Judith's
communication. He shrunk with bitter and
mortified feelings.
“Yes, every one sees it coming; every one
will know it soon, and fly from me as they did
from my poor father and brothers; as this
foolish woman did from me. Art thou not
afraid of me, Virginia?”
“Afraid of you!” and she gave him a look
so innocent and confiding, that he once more
revived to a perception of happiness. They
-- 049 --
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suffered their anticipations to pass the critical
period which it was supposed would decide the
colour of their future days.
“If,” said he, “as now I sometimes hope it
will be,—if all goes well with me, till the dark
line of my fate is safely crossed, shall we not
be happy, Virginia? I am sure we shall; for
art thou not all beauty, and purity, and intelligence;
and shall not I be the greatest brute
that ever abused the generous reliance of woman,
to repay such a confidence as was never
yet reposed in man, with any thing but
love, reverence, devotion, adoration? Yes,
yes! in the words of the poet of tenderness
itself,
`We'll live together like two wanton vines,
Circling our souls and loves in one another;
We'll spring together, and we'll bear one fruit;
One joy shall make us smile, and one grief mourn;
One age go with us, and one hour of death
Shall close our eyes, and one grave make us happy.”'
They sat on the same mossy rock, and the
same hallowed silence of nature breathed
around, as when he had told his sad history,
and disclosed his melancholy love. The time,
the occasion, and all the still sublimity of nature,
were calculated to call forth the most lofty
as well as tender associations.
“At such a time the soul oft walks abroad,
For silence is the energy of God!”
The peevish and evanescent excitements of
noise and motion, the petty feelings awakened
by the glittering pageantry of worldly pomps,
-- 050 --
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fade into insignificance compared with the holy
inspiration of a scene like this. The imagination
becomes swelled by those kindred conceptions
which the vast concave arch above, the
various and magnificent world lying basking
all around, awaken; and nothing selfish, or
mean, or wicked can enter a well-constituted
mind, while contemplating the glorious works
of a Being all purity, grandeur, and beneficence.
The mind of Rainsford seemed to take wing
to the highest heaven, and to revel in the most
glorious perceptions. With the mingled feeling
of poetry and philosophy, of love and devotion,
he expatiated on the beauty of nature, the
chaste delights of virtuous affection, the labours
and triumphs of well-aimed genius, and the
crowning gift of immortality bestowed upon it
here and hereafter. Virginia sat beside him,
leaning forward with downward face; her eye
raised to his in mingled admiration of his lofty
flights, and fear lest he should overleap the
slippery pinnacle of reason, and topple down
headlong on the other side. She trembled at
the dizzy height to which he sometimes soared,
and her fearful anticipations pictured him as
just shivering on the verge of the almost imperceptible
line, the very hairbreadth space
which, in the sensitive empire of the brain,
separates the fruitful region where the elements
act in sweet accord and all is universal harmony,
from that of chaos, where nothing but
shapeless monsters and jarring atoms abide.
A feeling of exquisitely mournful tenderness
came over her soul, and the tears flowed down
-- 051 --
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her cheeks as she gazed on his face, which was
become pale with the labours of the mind. He
observed her, and suddenly stopping his career
among the regions of the upper world, softly
asked,—
“What ails thee, Virginia? Do not be frightened;
I am not gone yet, whatever I may be,
or whatever Mrs. Judith may say. For the
first time since I began to live only in the bitterness
of anticipated wretchedness, for the first
time I have this evening suffered myself to hope
for better things, and the new guest has made
me almost giddy with delight. Yes, we shall
yet be blessed together.”
At that moment the same shrill, cold quaver
they had heard on a former occasion thrilled
across the purple waters.
“Let us go home,” said Virginia; and they
returned without exchanging another word
-- 052 --
CHAPTER V.
Showing how a pocket-handkerchief may be fatal to
other persons besides poor Desdemona.
[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]
Mrs. Judith Paddock, the mirror of village
gossips, went home with a bee in her bonnet,
which buzzed at such a tremendous rate that
she was nearly deprived of her wits. That
there was some “mystery and grand” she
was convinced; something between her lodger
and Miss Dangerfield, which she could not
fathom with the full-length line of her curiosity;
and this being one of the few secrets that had
ever eluded her sagacity, she was only the more
fervently stimulated to get at it by some means
or other. She went cackling about the village
like unto a venerable old hen which has lost
its last chicken, uttering mysterious innuendoes,
and throwing out random hints, which set the
ears of her sister spirits buzzing almost equal
to her own. The spinning-wheels stood stock
still; the pots and kettles boiled over; the panting
labourer, when he came home to dinner,
found it overdone, or not done at all; and the
pussy-cats skimmed the cream of the milkpans
with perfect impunity. Such are the dire consequences
of a secret in a country village!
Two other important events took place during
this remarkable spring, this annus mirabilis:—
Colonel Dangerfield commencing
-- 053 --
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rebuilding his house on a great scale; and Master
Zeno Paddock, having appointed a regent to
preside over his classical academy, departed for
the purpose of preparing the wherewithal to
commence his Daily. No marvel every thing
but talking and wondering was at a stand in
Dangerfieldville.
In the mean time, the watchful tenderness
of the mother became every day more and
more excited by the situation of her daughter,
and the conduct of Rainsford, whose mind
gradually resumed its vicissitudes of deep
depression and causeless exaltation. A mere
trifle will change the tone of such a mind as
his, and bring it back again to its wonted course,
with a reaction which gives new vigour to former
impressions. The tolling of a bell, the
whooping of an owl, the song of the whippoor-will,
heard of an evening or at midnight in the
solitude and silence of the country, will, to some
minds, and in particular circumstances, bring
a train of melancholy forebodings that strike
hard upon the chord which is most apt to vibrate
to presentiments and ideal terrors.
The whole course of Rainsford's life had predisposed
him to melancholy and superstition;
for years he had brooded over one single idea,
on which every thing he heard, or saw, or felt
bore with a force more or less painful or prophetic;
and the same shrill, menacing warning,
which time and the belief of a large portion of
mankind have consecrated to evil omen, occurring
twice, under almost the same circumstances,
and on the same spot, at once demolished the
temporary fabric which a new-born hope had
-- 054 --
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reared to his future happiness. In fact, the relaxed
state of his mind could not support the
tension it had undergone, and the momentary
perception of bliss, like a stimulating medicine
administered to worn-out nature, only contributed
to increase his ultimate depression.
Impelled by that fatality which so generally
attends on minds of his cast, instead of
using every effort to withdraw from the contemplation
of the painful idea which almost
ever occupied his thoughts, he commissioned
Zeno Paddock to procure him certain mischievous
books treating of the causes, symptoms,
and remedies of the malady which had
so long haunted his imagination. When that
worthy returned, as he did after an absence
of a month, Rainsford might be seen poring
with intense and harassing interest over their
pages, where, as might be expected, he found
enough to strengthen his habitual convictions;
for it is only in extremes that the madman differs
from the sage.
Poor Virginia now felt the truth of the universal
maxim, that every thing, even the most
indifferent in itself, brings to the apprehensive
affections more or less cause to believe what we
fear as well as what we hope. Every little
eccentricity, every burst of feeling, every flight
of fancy, which, but for her predisposition to
apprehend the worst would have amused or
delighted her, now carried with it a cold chill
of apprehension, and kept her for ever on the
rack of fear. This painful state, while it worried
her to the very soul, gradually increased
her interest in this intelligent, amiable being,
-- 055 --
[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
and she watched him with more than a mother's
anxiety as the period approached which
he looked forward to as the crisis of his
fate.
The election of members of the State assembly
was now approaching, and Leonard Dangerfield,
having received the last fine edge of
the law at the capital, was expected home ere
long to canvass for the honours of a seat. It
therefore behooved Master Zeno to bestir himself,
and get his Daily in order to support the
claims of the young gentleman against the opposite
candidate, who had already taken the
field. The greatest, certainly, and in all probability
the happiest, man in all Kentucky was
Zeno on the morning in which the first number
of the “Western Sun” shone in the village
of Dangerfieldville. His importance, not only in
his own eyes, but the eyes of his fellow-citizens,
was increased at least five hundredfold; that
being about the number of readers to whom his
opinions from that time forward were destined
to be little less than gospel. He began by modestly
regulating the affairs of the general government;
professed his determination to judge
for himself, and decide according to the dictates
of conscience; let fly a tremendous shot at the
editor of the Eastern Star for differing with him
in opinion; and concluded by criticising an almanac,
which, being the only book ever published
previous to that time in the village of
Dangerfieldville, was entitled to special notice.
We should not like to have been in the shoes
of the unlucky philomath who compiled it; for
it was a new court-party almanac, and Zeno
-- 056 --
[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]
belonged to the opposite side. He accordingly
cut it up terribly, and for ever destroyed its
reputation among the people, by proving that it
had already rained six times when the author
had pronounced the weather would be clear.
Having demolished this caitiff, he strutted about
famously, and began seriously to contemplate
upsetting the “new court party.”
In a little time a dreadful war raged between
the Western Sun and the Eastern Star, insomuch
that, had they only been nearer to each
other, there is little doubt but that they would
have been a great deal more civil. The village
of Dangerfieldville had heretofore been a quiet,
peaceable village, disturbed only by the incessant
cackle of Mrs. Judith; but now, since the
sceptre of public opinion was seized by the great
Zeno, his wife waned into comparative insignificance.
The torch of discord was waved by
a greater than she, and in the course of a few
weeks two duels and six rencounters took place
in various parts of the neighbouring country,
all of which might be traced to the agency of
the “Western Sun.” It was generally thought
that Zeno and he of the Eastern Star would
certainly have measured pistols, if they had not
been providentially separated by a great forest.
It was whispered, however, that the former had
scruples, in so far that though he didn't mind
giving offence, it ran against his conscience to
make atonement or give satisfaction. In truth,
he was a right moral man, whatever the Eastern
Star might aver to the contrary.
He was getting to be cock of the wood when
Leonard Dangerfield returned home, a most
-- 057 --
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proper man as was ever raised in the regions
of the west, so fruitful in fine specimens of the
human species. He was about six feet high,
and as straight as an arrow; his limbs were of
the finest proportions, such as are not common
elsewhere among men so much beyond the
usual size; and he had the same perfect command
of them as a young spirited blood-horse
has of his. His features, like his carriage, were
bold, manly, and indicative of a perfect selfconfidence;
and his eyes, though of blue, had
rather too much of that daring expression which
is one of the characteristics of perfect freedom.
As a physical being, a mere animal man, he did
honour to the rich soil and pure air in which,
though not produced, he had grown up and
flourished; for there was an admirable expression
of strength and activity in his form and
limbs, without the least approach to what is
aptly and expressively called clumsy. Nor did
his mind lack fellowship with his body, for he
possessed courage, energy, decision, enterprise,
and sagacity. Add to this, like almost all the
gentlemen we have ever seen from this portion
of the United States, he possessed a natural eloquence,
a flow of words and ideas which perhaps
originate in the fact that every young man in the
west looks forward to political life and political
distinctions, which can very rarely be obtained
without a command of that great weapon which
in a free country wins its way more certainly
than the sword.
The people of the United States have been
occasionally ridiculed for the warmth and eagerness
with which they participate in elections
-- 058 --
[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]
and other political contests of less importance.
Yet this perpetual solicitude about public affairs
is one of the great characteristics of liberty;
and provided it does not extend to actual violence,
nor to the disruption of kindred and social
ties, is a wholesome and indeed essential
ingredient in the composition of a free people.
Without this deep interest, which instigates
them to a perpetual watchfulness of their rulers,
and rivets their attention so closely to the acts
of their government, there would be no security
against those quiet, insidious usurpations which
power is perpetually making on the rights of
mankind.
For ourselves, we are pleased that our countrymen
are agitated occasionally by the wave
of politics, and hope never to see the day when
they shall become indifferent to the acts or the
character of their rulers, or neglect the exercise
of their great right of expressing their opinions
freely and fearlessly. And though we do not
admire female politicians, we as little like to
see a woman without patriotism as without religion.
It has often been a subject of regret to
observe that natural love of aristocracy, title,
precedence, and that disgraceful foible of giving
a preference to foreign fashions, manners, and
countries, which are among the characteristics
of the more vulgar and ignorant of those females
who aspire to distinction in the beau monde.
The love of country in the mind of a virtuous,
reflecting, intellectual woman should come next
to her faith, her domestic affections, and her
attachment to home. It ought never to mingle
in party dissensions, or become the common
-- 059 --
[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]
topic of her thoughts or conversation; but, like
the pure light of religion, it should be a quiet,
deep-rooted, unobtrusive principle, worthy of
every sacrifice except that of the virtues which
constitute the divinity of the sex.
The great day at length arrived big with the
fate of Leonard Dangerfield and Miles Starkweather,
each a candidate for the wayward affections
of that wayward sovereign the king people.
The sturdy freeholders of the west, as they are
pleased to say, with some little degree of reason
on their side, have no idea of buying a rackoon
in his hole. They like to see the candidates
face to face, to shake hands, talk, crack jokes,
and maybe crack a bottle with them, before
they assist in making them their temporary
masters, or, for the word master grates on the
ear of a freeman, their representatives. Above
all, they must hear each one make a speech, if
it be only from a stump, before they say ay or
no to his pretensions. On this occasion, therefore,
the opposing candidates attended the poll,
and gave in their creed of politics. Leonard
advocated the “old court” in a speech of two
good hours, and the sovereigns hurraed, and
pronounced him “transcendent.”
“I'll be goy blamed,” cried one Rowland Harrod,
a broth of a fellow at the polls, “if he don't
speak as if he hadn't another minute to live.”
The opposition man was born out of the
State, and suspected of having a cross of the
Yankee; which was a great disadvantage, for
Kentucky inherits from Old Virginia a decided
preference for orators and statesmen of her own
“raising.” But the worst of all was his
-- 060 --
[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]
propensity to dressing too well, and always carrying
a white pocket-handkerchief. Yet he had all
the “new court” party in his favour, and was
huzzaed most vociferously. There was no
knowing which of the courts would carry the
day, when a queer, wizened, weather-beaten old
gentleman, called Colonel Trollope, with one
eye, and a face of mortal obliquity, ascended
the forum, videlicet, the steps of the court-house,
and addressed the audience as follows:—
“Friends and fellow-citizens,—That man
who has been just speaking to you, it appears
to me, places great confidence in succeeding in
his election, because he has a white pocket-h-a-a-ndkerchief.
He means to touch in the
exquisite spot, and has been flourishing this
piece of white before your eyes to dazzle you.
Didn't you see how he flourished it when he
had nothing to say? when he was fairly up a
tree, just like the preacher the Sunday before
last? He got against a snag several times, and
then he would roar out, `O, Mesopotamia! Mesopotamia!
' and one old woman cried herself
into a conversion.
“But, gentlemen, I don't mean you; we are
not old women; we are not to be coaxed with
pretty words sweetened with maple sugar, and
no meaning in them, nor dazzled out of our
understandings with a white towel, for what I
know. (hurrah! wheugh! whoop!) I say his
gentility won't serve his turn here, nor his
gar-broth. I'm for Dangerfield, though he
hasn't got a white pocket-h-a-a-ndkerchief, and
though he can't play on the piane. He's a man
of good strong horse sense, and his sister can
-- 061 --
[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]
make a pair of moccasins out of his old boots,
I know, anyhow. Dangerfield knows what we
want, and will do it. But this genteelman of
the white flag [hurrah!] would be sipping
champaign, and studying fashions. We want
no such members that sail under the white flag;
no such exotics among us, that think they can't
study their A B C at home. We men of the
west are splendid executors of our own will,
and don't want the aid of the white h-a-a-ndkerchief.
Damme if I don't believe he had a
ring on his little finger!”
“O thunder! a ring! Dangerfield for ever.
Hurrah! Dangerfield for me!” cried old
court and new court; and the fortunes of
Miles Starkweather, like those of the Bourbons,
sunk under the white flag. In a few days
there appeared in the Western Sun a paragraph
headed “Glorious Victory! Waterloo Defeat!”
as if some foreign enemy had been driven
from our shores; and Master Zeno Paddock
was observed to deport himself after the manner
of a dunghill cock, that hath just frightened
a greater coward than himself.
-- 062 --
CHAPTER VI.
Proving that the fear of evil is the worst of evils.
[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]
During the progress of the events recorded
in our last chapter, little apparent change had
taken place in the outward deportment of
Rainsford; but if it had been possible to penetrate
the recesses of his mind, it would have
been discovered, that as the period to which he
looked forward as the crisis of his fate approached
more nearly, his terrors increased.
To those who watched him narrowly, as
did the mother of Virginia more especially,
there occasionally appeared inconsistencies in
his conduct, distorted opinions, and an equivocal
expression of the eye, that, all combined,
produced a suspicion in her mind that all was
not right with him. And indeed it was so.
He enjoyed not the present, he shrunk from the
future. The delight of being beloved, the
beauties of nature, the prospect of happiness
that seemed to await him, all turned to waters
of bitterness when connected with the dark
and dismal prospect which closed the train of
anticipations.
“How beautiful,” exclaimed Virginia, one
evening as they were contemplating the glowing
splendours of the setting sun, reflected in
the clouds, in a thousand glorious tints, which
baffle the power of language, and bid defiance
-- 063 --
[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]
to the colours of the most cunning artist.
“How beautiful! I never look on such a
scene as this without feeling a capacity to enjoy
the blessings of Providence with a sweeter relish.
I seem to identify myself with all nature,
which looks so smiling and happy that I cannot
help sympathizing with her.”
“How different it is with me,” replied Rainsford,
in a melancholy tone. “To me the sunshine,
the shade, the flowing river, the smiling
earth, the starry heavens, and all the glorious
panoply of nature, are but as dear objects, dear
friends with whom I must soon part for ever.
As I look on them, I am reminded by the fiend
that is always at my elbow, whispering in my
ear, that the time is now at hand when, in all
human probability, this combination of order
and beauty, this masterpiece of the Divine
Architect, teeming with subjects for reason
and fancy to dilate upon, and exhibiting to the
senses all that is lovely to the eye, sweet to
the smell, harmonious to the ear, will be to
me but as a howling wilderness, a chaos
like my mind, in which atoms will war with
atoms; and where the throne of the presiding
Divinity will be buried in its own
ruins. The wretched being who stands under
the gallows, on the brink of atoning for his
crimes, might as well expect to enjoy the last
light of the sun, or the first breath of spring,
as I.”
“O Rainsford! I thought—I hoped you were
looking forward to happiness!” said Virginia,
deeply affected with his melancholy. “For
my sake, for your own sake, I beseech you to
-- 064 --
[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]
struggle with such dreadful anticipations. It
is not certain, nay, I feel a presentiment it will
not be. Exert yourself, dear Rainsford.”
“I do—I have. Never man sustained such a
struggle as I have done, as I do now, and every
moment of my life. Sometimes I succeed in
whipping the hovering demons from my brow,
but they come again, and find me only the
weaker for my useless victory. Sometimes, as
in a dream, I am taken up and carried away
to the regions of hope, but, like the prisoner
enjoying a few minutes respite from his dungeon,
it is only to be brought back into darkness,
the more dismal from the contrast of light he
has enjoyed. Sometimes I lose for a moment
the clew of my eternal thoughts, but it is only
to find it again, and be dragged along with
greater violence than ever.” He paused awhile;
Virginia could not answer for her emotions.
“Virginia,” continued he, with a sad solemnity,
“I must leave this place at once, and for
ever; or at least until the hour is past. You,
that have known and cherished me as a rational
being, worthy to be one day the guardian of
your happiness, must not see me when I
shall, in all human probability, become an object
of fear, horror, disgust. No, no, you shall
not see me gnash my teeth; foam at the mouth;
twist myself into a thousand contortions;
roar—rave—blaspheme, tear my flesh; bite the
dust; and, perhaps, in some cunning paroxysm,
escape the watchful eye of affection, only
to commit violence on those I best love.”
“O don't talk so, don't talk so! or I shall go
mad myself,” cried Virginia.
-- 065 --
[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]
“Ay, madness is catching; it runs in the
blood they say. But surely a wife cannot
take it from her husband. If she can it will
be a rare conjunction, you and I. Whoever is
born under it will be a philosopher.”
“What—what are you talking of, Dudley?”
“Ay, true—I am only taking a step before
old time; but there's no occasion, it will come
soon enough—no danger of that—for they say,
they do say—”
His wanderings were arrested by an exclamation
of anguish from Virginia, who sunk
down on the ground, overpowered by the terrible
conviction that his malady had in truth
come upon him. He placed his hand on his
brow, rubbed his eyes, then knelt down beside
her, and by degrees came to himself
again.
“I was only jesting, Virginia. I am not
mad yet, indeed I am not. I was only rehearsing
the tragedy,” added he, bitterly.
“Then let me beseech you, never to jest
with me thus again. I am not lead, nor marble,
nor a fool, to be thus played with. O,
Rainsford, spare me such jests in future. I
cannot bear them.”
He led her to a seat, and proceeded,
“We must part, Virginia; I feel if I wish to
spare you the last drop in the cup of bitterness,
we must part at once. If my calamity overtakes
me here—”
“And what if it overtakes you elsewhere?”
asked Virginia, suddenly interrupting him.
“No matter; it will be among strangers, or
perhaps in some wild solitude of the woods
-- 066 --
[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]
where I can perish without exciting disgust and
horror. They may find me some day or
other, but they cannot tell my bones.”
“Why, why will you talk thus? But listen
to me, Rainsford; I do not, I cannot believe in
the truth of your presentiment. I am satisfied
if you can only keep your mind from the
anticipation, the reality will never come.”
“Ay, there's the difficulty; perhaps that very
anticipation is a part of my malady?”
“Well, whether it be or not, if the worst
should come, the worse it is the more you will
require some one to watch over you; to abide
by you in your hours of depression; and to assist
in all that may administer to your comfort.
I owe you this good turn and will pay it.”
“You, you, Virginia, with those delicate
fingers, those slender limbs, that soft and gentle
heart! No, no, I must have chains, and giants
to put them on. Go, go, tell your parents all,
and let them drive me away, for I am bitten, as
sure as there is a Providence above us whose
decrees are irreversible. I heard a voice last
night telling me to make my peace with Heaven,
while yet I was responsible for my acts:
and I will do it. I'll go to church to-morrow,
and pray that I may die without the guilt of
blood upon my head or hands; and then, the
day after, bid you all farewell, and launch my
boat among the stormy billows of the world,
haply without rudder or compass to direct her
course. Perhaps, some time hence you may
hear of a starving, ragged wanderer, roaming
among the distant regions, chattering disjointed
nonsense to a troop of ragged boys, and having
-- 067 --
[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]
no owner to claim him. Wilt thou shed a tear
then, Virginia?”
Virginia could not answer. She was silent,
motionless, in the numb palsy of despair. The
conviction of his ultimate fate had come upon
her, and hope took its flight for ever. She
grasped his arm with trembling hesitation, and
begged they might return home. That evening
the conduct of Rainsford was so strange,
and he spoke so confidently of going away
soon, that both the colonel and Mrs. Dangerfield
were surprised, anxious, and almost offended.
The depression, the paleness, and the
traces of tears on the face of Virginia also
caught their attention; and when the young
man retired, and Mrs. Dangerfield sought her
room, the unhappy girl followed, and throwing
herself into her arms, sobbed as if her heart
would break. She told her mother all, and the
mother discreetly, tenderly, yet firmly, advised
her to let Rainsford go; nay, to encourage his
going; the sooner the better.
“Were it poverty, sickness, imprudence,
any thing but guilt,” said she, “I would not
urge you to break your engagement. But
this, this is too terrible; no pledge, no obligation
ought to be considered binding in a case
like this; since nothing can be more certain,
my dear, than that, without administering in
the least to his happiness, you must inevitably
sacrifice your own.”
“But, dear mother, perhaps my presence,
my affectionate attentions, my watchful cares,
my never-ceasing kindness, might do something
towards his happiness. It may be only a
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constitutional melancholy, what I have heard called
hypochondria; and physicians say, that the best
way of curing this is to call up agreeable impressions
and anticipations. Let me try; do,
dearest mother!”
The mother sighed, and shook her head.
“Ah! Virginia, yours are but the dreams of
youth—and female youth. To you, and such
as you, love is the soul of existence, the object
and the end of life. It can do all with you,
and you think it can do the like with all. But
there are miracles it cannot perform, and this
is one. Know you not that when the mind is
fairly unhinged, and swings with creaking
harshness from its usual bearings, nine times
in ten the objects of our dearest love become
those of our deepest hate. Insanity distorts
every thing, and this among the rest. It
must be so: you must be separated.”
“But whither can he go?” exclaimed Virginia,
in anguish. “He has no kindred, no
friends; nay, scarcely an acquaintance but ourselves;
for his peculiar situation has kept him, he
says, aloof from all association with his fellow-creatures.
What will become of him should
his malady overtake him among strangers?”
“Be not afraid, my dearest daughter. Go
where he may, he will find good hearts to pity,
and afford him all the cares and comforts of
which he may be susceptible.”
“Yes, a chain, a cell, and a grave,” sighed
Virginia; “a strait waistcoat, a cudgel, and a
brute to lay it on.”
“Necessity, my love, has no law of kindness
or forbearance.”
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“Yet, I cannot but think that kindness and
forbearance might often take the place of brutal
force. Let me try, O let me try, dear
mother! a little while, only a little while—
until we see the end.”
“The risk is too great; the penalty that
may be paid for it too dear. Neither I nor thy
father can consent to it. But enough for tonight,
to-morrow all must be settled. Good
night, my love; and may angels watch over
thy innocence.”
“Good night, dear mother.” She kissed her
mother, and reposed her head a moment on her
bosom. “Good night, dear mother,” repeated
she once more, and slowly left the room. She
sat a long while at the window, pondering
over her unhappy situation, and shuddering
at the prospect before poor Rainsford. Nature
seemed to lower in sympathy with her sad forebodings,
for the night was one of pitchy darkness
and death-like repose, save when the
flashes of zig-zag lightning passed like fiery serpents,
with forked tongues, athwart the lowering
clouds rearing their heavy volumes above
the cliffs on the other side of the river, followed
by the distant thunder, which ever and anon
grew louder, and more near. By the light of
one of the flashes she thought she saw a figure,
stalking near the window which looked out
upon the little greensward. She was somewhat
alarmed; when a well-known voice addressed
her in an under tone.
“Virginia, know you what day of the week
and month this is?”
“Saturday, the tenth of May,” she replied.
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“Ay, I thought I was right in my reckoning;
it is the glorious anniversary,—it is the day on
which my last brother, the last of all but me,
died, as I shall die.”
“O, don't break my heart! go home, I beseech
you, Rainsford. The storm is coming across
the river, and you will be drenched with rain.
Quick, quick, there's not a moment to be lost.”
“Well, let it come; the rain will cool my
brains, and if the wind should be strong, it may
blow down some high tree, and dash them out.
Farewell, farewell.”
She saw him dart away into the forest, and
the gentle, blessed guest, the cherub sleep,
visited not her pillow that long melancholy
night, during a great part of which the heavens
seemed on fire, and the earth shivering beneath
the crash of the angry thunders.
-- 071 --
CHAPTER VII.
“O, he's a screamer!”
Mississippi Boatman.
[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]
The following day being the Sabbath, the
village of Dangerfieldville was in a state of
great excitement on account of the arrival of
a famous preacher; an event of no small consequence
where so few novelties occurred to
rouse the rural populace from the even tenor
of their daily occupations. As happens in
many parts of our country, there was a neat
little church in the village, but no regular clergyman,
and they were indebted to the occasional
visits of itinerants for their opportunities
of public devotion. These happened so seldom,
that the arrival of a preacher was quite an
event. All, therefore, flocked to the little
church; some to while away the idle Sabbath
morn, some to laugh, and some to say their
prayers.
The church was filled when the preacher
ascended the pulpit, and there might be observed
a little flurry among the congregation,
a low whisper, as they settled themselves in
reverent attention to hear what he had to say.
He was a tall, raw-boned, fleshless man, with
an appearance of great physical energy; high
cheek-bones, hollow cheeks, deep sparkling
eyes, a pale aspect, a long face, and a profusion
of stiff black hair standing almost upright
-- 072 --
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above his high forehead. There was something
not only energetic, but intellectual about him;
that species of strong unpolished intellect
which sometimes performs such wonders in
this world. There was a wild earnestness in
his tone and gesture, as he proceeded in his
discourse, which evidenced his sincerity and
fervour; an absence of all attempts at rhetorical
embellishment, which sometimes, nay
often, approached to vulgarity, and while it
created a shuddering thrill of horror in apprehensive
minds, in others awakened a feeling of
the burlesque. But with all this, there were
genius, energy, pathos, and enthusiasm, we
may say fanaticism, combined; and though
undisciplined and unpolished, still their strength
and force were perhaps only the more irresistible.
He was the preacher of terror, not of
religion; he relied more on the fears than the
reason or the hopes of mankind; forgetting
that the great Being who has made mercy the
first of our duties, cannot have adopted vengeance
as the first of his attributes; and that,
in the language of a reverend bard,
“Thou, fair Religion, wast designed,
Duteous daughter of the skies,
To warm and cheer the human mind,
To make men happy, good, and wise.
First drawn by thee, thus glow'd the gracious scene,
Till Superstition, fiend of wo,
Bade doubts to rise, and tears to flow,
And spread dark clouds our view and Heaven between.
Drawn by her pencil the Creator stands,
His beams of mercy thrown aside;
With thunder arming his uplifted hands,
And hurling vengeance wide.
Hope at the sight aghast yet lingering flies,
And dash'd on terror's rocks faith's best dependence lies.”
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The moisture burst from his forehead, and
rolled down his hollow cheeks; he writhed in
the toils of his own sublimated energies, as he
proceeded. He first drew a picture of the vengeance
of Heaven even in this world, where it
was supposed offenders escaped its justice; he
painted, in colours of exaggerated truth, the
torments of a guilty conscience struggling with
present pain, and the fear of future punishments,
and how the decay of the body only
added tenfold to the terrors of the dying sinner.
He dwelt with a sort of savage exultation on
the various dispensations of this world of guilt
and misery; told how the wrath of the Almighty
visited the sins of the father upon the children
in a thousand hereditary diseases and defects,
the consequences of his crimes and unbelief.
To some he sent the gout, to others he sent
lameness, to others blindness, to others apoplexy,
and to others he sent idiocy and madness;
thus punishing generation after generation,
by taking away from them the faculties
they had perverted to the purposes of impiety
and unbelief.
“Thus,” exclaimed he, in a voice of thunder,
“thus are the wicked deprived of their
boasted impunity even in this world. But the
world to come, the after world! the punishment
the guilty soul endures throughout all eternity.
Look! you don't see it, but I see it! I see you
at this moment standing like children laughing
on the edge of a high rock, on the very brink
of eternal flames. The awful gulf lies yawning
right before you, and yet you take no care to
avoid it. I see you,” and he leaned over the
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pulpit and looked down as if in horror, “I see
you tumbling down, down, down, one after the
other: there you go, there! there goes a young
man who thought because he was young he
would never die; there! there goes a vain
girl, who, because she had red cheeks, and
sparkling eyes, and a snow-white bosom,
dreamed that death would spare her, and the
great Judge pardon her offences on the score
of her beauty. And there! there tumbles a
trembling old sinner, who, because he had lived
to fourscore years, thought he would live for
ever. And there! see how the smoke rises!
but I cannot look any more,” and he sank back
into the pulpit and was silent a few moments,
while the simple congregation sat stupified
with terror. Suddenly he clapped his hands to
his ears.
“But ah! my brethren, what is that I hear?
It is in vain I try to shut it out from my eyes—
it comes in at my ears. From the dark den of
your suffering I hear the screams, the shrieks,
the curses of tormented sinners. One cries, O
it would be a happy thing for me if this toothache
of mine would last only a thousand years
or two. Another prays that he may be let off
for a hundred thousand years of gout—that is
the glutton, the winebibber. Another beseeches
the eternal ministers of vengeance, who stand
with their ladles, throwing oil, and pitch, and
pine-knots on the fire to keep it up, that he may
have a drop of muddy salt water to cool his
tongue. That is a man who thought because
he was honest, and just, and loved his wife and
children, and fulfilled all his worldly duties, he
-- 075 --
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would be happy hereafter. Miserable fool! I
tell thee, my brethren, these are the devil's
links, that chain the immortal soul flat down
upon the earth, and keep it there. But what a
howl was that! Did you not hear it? Ah!
now I look down, I see who it is; that is a
vain, conceited philosopher, who said, in the
pride of his heart, there is no God, no hereafter,
no heaven, and no hell. Ah hah! he
knows better now. Hark! he is lamenting in
the midst of his torments, that he had not been
created a toad, a serpent, any crawling, filthy
reptile of the mud and mire, rather than an
immortal being, to suffer everlasting torments.
“My brethren, O! that you could be like
a quill in the fire, to be shrivelled and burnt up
in a moment. But no, you will writhe in torments,
and still live, and every hour will add
to your capacity to feel more keenly. You
think, I suppose, you'll get used to it at last.
But, believe me, you will not; you will feel ten
thousand times the agony that the poor people
did the other day, who were scalded to death in
the steamboat. And then, oh! then, you will
hear your dear friends howling beside you—
your fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and
your dear little children will be crying out to
you for help; and you'll see them crawling
about on billows of fire. And then, too, you
will be thinking of the good things you have
enjoyed in this world; the dainties, the vanities,
the lusts of the flesh, and all those wicked
delights you held so dear. You think I'll comfort
you! I will be a witness against you.
And if any one of you dare to appear before
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the judgment seat of Heaven, I will turn you
back, and send you howling to the bottomless pit
of fire.”
There was a strange, an almost supernatural
force in the unstudied oratory of this singular
man, which nearly overpowered the well-ballanced
minds of the most staid and rational
hearers. The day was sweltering hot, the little
church crowded almost to suffocation; and
these circumstances, combined with the stirring
terrors of the ghost-like preacher, overpowered
the nerves of many of the congregation, who
gasped for breath, and cried out until nature,
no longer able to support the mental, as well as
physical exertion, subsided into a sort of quiet
insensibility.
Rainsford had made his appearance at church.
The absence of food, which Mrs. Judith declared
he had not tasted for four-and-twenty
hours, the harassed state of his mind for
some time past, and his exposure to the storm
the night before, had given him the appearance
of one whose mental and physical energies had
been most sorely tried. Virginia sat and
watched him with intense anxiety. The declamations
of the preacher seemed to shake his
very soul; he could not become paler than he
was; but she marked the convulsive twitches
of his features, the terrible wildness of his eye,
and the shudder of his frame, when the clergyman
came to that part of his discourse, in
which he spoke of hereditary insanity as the
punishment of the crimes of the parent. Nor
did she fail to mark the strange unintelligible
look he fixed upon her, at the passage
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denouncing the ties of affection, and the social feelings
and duties, as the chains with which Satan fastened
the soul of man to the earth, and prevented
his realizing his immortal hopes.
He joined her after service, and they walked
together. As is usual, they talked of the preacher,
and the sermon, of both which Virginia
expressed her disapprobation; but Rainsford
appeared deeply affected by them. He seemed
to be under the influence of the most sublimated
enthusiasm; and had not Virginia now
accustomed herself to shrink from every lofty
flight, or daring plunge of his imagination, she
would have been charmed with the glowing
richness of his mind.
“It is a beautiful theory, Virginia,” said he,
“that of entire abstraction from this world, and
all its occupations, feelings, sufferings, and delights.
It makes us independent of joy and
sorrow; and places us on a level with the beings
of the upper worlds. To me it would be
the lot, of all others, most desirable; for to him
who is hopeless of happiness here, it were
some comfort to be insensible to misery.”
“But is such a state possible?”
“Most assuredly, Virginia; there have been
men, ay, and women too, so self-sustained, or so
supported by the divinity of faith, as to be insensible
to all mental or corporeal suffering,
save that which arose from the uncertainties
of hereafter. Nay, they have cast away all
the ties of kindred, severed the links of nature,
sacrificed love, glory, riches, parental and fraternal
affection, and became as spirits walking
the earth, but holding no communion with it
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or its inhabitants. I almost wish I were such
a one. And I could be,” cried he, his eyes
almost glaring with awakened hopes, “I could
be, were it not for one link that binds me to
the earth; were that but severed, I might be
little less than the angels.”
“Would to heaven it were possible!” thought
poor Virginia.
“What is your opinion, Virginia?”
“These things are above my thoughts; yet
I cannot see how it is possible to live in this
world, and abstract ourselves so entirely from
it as neither to know nor care for any thing or
anybody but ourselves. And if it were possible,
it seems to me that this, after all, would be but
the most refined selfishness. There are ties in
this world that ought not to be severed but
by death; duties which we cannot shrink from
without blame; and enjoyments which it would
be ungrateful in us not to taste in moderation.”
“Ties! duties! enjoyments! Pish! Virginia,
did you not hear what the preacher said? These
are the devil's links. Yes, yes, he was right.
With such a load of mortal trumpery on our
backs, one might as soon attempt to scale an
ice mountain perpendicular to the skies as gain
the blessings of hereafter. For my part, I mean
one of these days to go and live alone in a hollow
tree in the woods, and not allow a squirrel
or a woodpecker to share it with me. Ha, ha!
what think you of the idea, Virginia?”
“As one unworthy the subject we are speaking
on,” replied she, in a tone of deep depression.
“The sublime and the ridiculous are as nearly
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allied as life and death, time and eternity. An
imaginary line separates them, and thus they
become opposite principles, like the people of
two nations divided by nothing, yet who scarcely
seem to think they belong to the same identical
class of quarrelsome curs. Ha, ha! Virginia,
were you to die suddenly—I mean in an instant—
by a flash of lightning, before you could cry
`God bless me!' do you think you would go
to heaven?”
“I hope so, through Heaven's mercy.”
“I'll warrant you—I'd swear to it! and thus
there would be two souls saved at once. Thou
art all innocence, dear Virginia; thy life has
been, until I came to mar it, a blessing to thyself,
a blessing to all around thee, ay, all but
me!” and here he lowered his tone, so that she
could not distinguish what he said. “To die
now were to be happy; for who knows but
when you come to be a wife, and all the worldly
ties of marriage surround and trammel thee,
thou mayst lose thy hold on heaven, and tumble
to the earth? It were a great pity! Better to
die now!”
“I don't comprehend you,” replied Virginia,
who had been listening with a vague yet fearful
foreboding.
“So much the better, so much the better!
Ha! yonder I see the inspired man; I must go
and talk with him. I've a case of conscience
to submit. It requires a man that can split a
hair to decide it. When it is settled you shall
know all, for the bliss of heaven must consist
in the fruition of knowledge. Good-by, Virginia;
thou art an angel, if not a martyr!”
-- 080 --
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He hurried off to meet the preacher, leaving
Virginia saddened, perplexed, and terrified with
his strange ramblings, which either meant nothing
or boded mischief.
-- 081 --
CHAPTER VIII.
Fanaticism.
[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]
Rainsford invited the preacher to a conference,
in which the latter unwittingly, and without
suspecting his object, said all he could to
confirm him in the dark design which had been
conjured up by his discourse of the morning.
With the rash and fervent eloquence of an imagination
almost as heated as that of Rainsford
himself, he declaimed against the moral duties
of this world, and arraigned the gentle ties of
kindred, friendship, and love at the bar of eternal
Omnipotence as impious lusts of the flesh,
hateful to the purity of the immortal soul. He
stigmatized the love of a beautiful and virtuous
woman as one of the secret temptations of the
enemy of man, to lure him from the pursuit of
his everlasting happiness; and denounced the
best affections of the heart as the product of its
rank, incurable corruption. In short, they parted,
leaving the young man a gloomy, thoughtful
visionary, on the high road to the fury of
fanaticism, and alternately the sport of reason
staggering on its throne, of imagination exalted
into madness.
By degrees he came to be fully impressed
with the conviction that the misfortunes of his
family were the ministers of Divine vengeance
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for some great offence of his grandfather, and
that the only way in which he could make
atonement, so as to escape their fate and ensure
his future happiness, was to offer a sacrifice of
all his worldly affections on the altar of faith.
After a struggle which increased and accelerated
the natural tendency of his mind towards
a total derangement, he at length convinced
himself that Virginia was the great and fatal
obstacle in the way of his salvation; and that
by making a noble disinterested sacrifice of her,
he would ensure his peace here and hereafter.
A deep, stern gloom succeeded this conviction.
He would sit for hours in one position and one
spot, gazing with vacant look at some object
of which it was apparent he had no distinct
perception; he neglected all the common offices
of life, his dress, his beard, his meals, and his
sleep; and passed the whole day without uttering
a single word in answer to the ten thousand
questions of Mrs. Judith Paddock.
At the end of the third day his eye suddenly
brightened, he started from his seat with a
strange alacrity, and, concealing a dirk in his
bosom, which he had brought with him from
an idea that his journey might expose him to
occasions when it would be necessary, he sank
on his knees, appeared deeply engaged in devotion,
and then walked briskly forth towards the
dwelling of Colonel Dangerfield. Virginia welcomed
him with a melancholy tenderness, and
shuddered at the alteration he had undergone
since last they parted. He invited her to enjoy
an evening walk, and led her on by degrees to
a spot on the river-side which could not be seen
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from the house. He desired her to be seated,
and, sitting down by her side, fixed his eyes
intently on her face for some moments, with a
strange expression that, she knew not why,
alarmed her, not for herself, but him.
“Virginia,” at length he said, “dost thou remember
any sins thou hast committed, and not
atoned for?”
“It would be presumptuous in me to say so;
but this I believe I can say, that I have never
sinned without being sorry for what I had
done.”
“I warrant you. I would stake a life ten
thousand times more worth than this ragged
remnant I possess, that thou art as innocent of
all intentional offence to thy fellow-creatures
or their Creator, as was the lamb which the old
patriarch offered up instead of his only son.
Dost thou believe in the efficacy of such sacrifices,
Virginia?”
“I believe that there is a better sacrifice than
this,—that of ourselves, our selfish wishes, and
selfish passions.”
“You say true, you say true,” cried he, eagerly;
“the welfare of the immortal soul, the
interminable duration of eternity, must not be
sacrificed at the shrine of the few short years,
the few miserable enjoyments we can crowd
into them. But to obtain the great blessing for
which all men were created, some victim is necessary,
and that victim must be spotless innocence
itself. The wretched sinner can offer no
atonement for others, for his own transgressions
require all his blood to wash them out. The
harmless lamb or the unsinning virgin can
-- 084 --
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alone atone for the wickedness of the race of
man; and hence, in the early stages of almost
all religions, calamities were averted or blessings
obtained by the greatest of all testimonies—
greater than the voluntary martyrdom of the
saints—the sacrifice of an Iphigenia, the dearest,
the bitterest proof of full faith in the religion
they professed.”
“But our mild, beneficent religion requires
not these; it requires not to be consecrated by
the shedding of blood.”
“Not consecrated by the shedding of blood!
What think you of the thousands of martyrs
in almost every age and nation? of the innocent
women and babes, the millions of human
sacrifices which bigotry, ambition, avarice,
and revenge, skulking under the mantle
of faith and holiness, have offered up to the
sword or the fire? Virginia! I tell you, Virginia,
that all the enjoyments of this world, all
the bliss of hereafter, is the price of blood!”
The young maiden shuddered at hearing
these gloomy and terrible words, and beholding
the wild expression of his eyes as he uttered
them. She wished herself at home, and was
rising to go, when he hastily exclaimed,—
“Not yet, not quite yet; a few minutes more,
and you shall commence your flight. Come,
kneel down and pray for me, as I will for you.
Heaven knows I want the prayers of all good
people. Come, pray for me, Virginia; wilt
thou?”
They knelt down together, and together their
orisons ascended to the skies. As Rainsford
contemplated her pale and touching face, and
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the calm expression of her reverent eye, cast
upwards in the holy abstraction of devotion and
love combined,—for she prayed for him she loved
and pitied,—he thought to himself that now, now
was the time; now that her mind was divested
of all worldly dross, and her soul already halfway
on its flight to heaven. Twice—thrice did
he put his hand into his bosom; thrice he felt
the sharp-pointed weapon; and thrice he shuddered
and snatched his hand away, as if he had
met the fangs of the rattlesnake. Virginia did
not seem to observe him; her spirit appeared
communing with intelligences high seated above
the stars, that now one by one began to twinkle
dimly in various portions of the heavens. When
she was about to rise from the ground, he gently
detained her with a trembling hand.
“Not yet, not quite yet, Virginia; let me look
on you a moment longer.”
She remained still kneeling, and looking in
his face with a tearful eye, so mild, so confiding,
so affectionate, that the wild purpose of his
wayward intellect became every moment more
difficult to execute. Again, however, the dark
thought crossed his mind, which was becoming
every moment more chaotic from the struggles
it was sustaining, that if she lived he should
still love her, and she him, and thus both their
souls would be jeopardized by indulging in
worldly thoughts, worldly enjoyments, and
worldly pursuits, to the neglect of all others.
“We will go to heaven together,” thought he;
and again he put his hand in his bosom; again
he felt and grasped the weapon of death, while
such was his fearful agitation, that Virginia
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was overpowered with a feeling of tenderness
and pity. She placed her soft white hand, now
cold with her emotions, against his colder fore
head, damp with the dews of agony, and exclaimed,
in a voice of touching melody,—
“Poor, poor Rainsford!”
He took her hand gently away, and was about
to put it to his lips, when, suddenly letting it
go, he exclaimed,—
“No, I have sworn it, and will not die with
the weight of perjury on my soul! Look, Virginia,
yonder is the evening star, the star of
love's queen, just hiding behind the distant
hills.”
She turned her head to look at the star, and
as she contemplated it a few moments, he
snatched the weapon from his bosom, raised
it, and—
“It is impossible! it is impossible!” he cried
aloud; “my soul shall perish first!” and, rushing
into the adjoining wood, he disappeared,
leaving Virginia to return home by herself; to
ponder and mourn over his wayward eccentricities,
and indulge her despair of ever being
happy with him.
She found, in addition to the family circle,
assembled in the parlour, the wandering preacher,
Mr. Bushfield, and the Black Warrior, who had
come to ask a supply of ammunition from the
colonel, as was his usual custom. The Indians,
however high-minded and independent in other
respects, are, like all mankind in their primitive
state, careless of the rights of property, extremely
avaricious, equally prodigal, and notorious
for asking for every thing. When a chief
-- 087 --
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introduces a young warrior to a white dignitary
west of the Mississippi, his eulogium is as follows:—
“He is a brave warrior, a great horsethief,
and very considerable of a beggar.”
The itinerant and the Black Warrior were
talking about the creation of the world, the
former having made a dead set at the latter
with a view of converting him. The truth is,
he was one of those whose well-meant yet illtimed
zeal intrudes itself everywhere, and on
all occasions. He seemed to think, and no doubt
did persuade himself, that his profession emancipated
him from the rules of propriety and
good breeding which govern all well-bred people.
He had already banished the cheerful hilarity,
the innocent freedom which usually pervaded
the social circle, and caused a restraint that destroyed
all the pleasure of the little party. When
Bushfield dwelt with his usual eloquence on the
pleasures of the chase, the delights of living
alone, and having nobody to stand in your daylight,
he took occasion sternly to reprehend the
sport as interfering with the ceaseless care
which was necessary to the salvation of the
soul. When Colonel Dangerfield spoke to his
son of the charms of eloquence and poetry, the
pleasures attendant on the acquisition of knowledge,
he denounced all these as temptations of
the evil one to detach us from the one thing
needful. When Mrs. Dangerfield happened to
mention the domestic happiness of one of her
friends, and the attachment which subsisted between
the wife and the husband, the children
and their parents, he called all the domestic
affections nothing but carnal lusts of the flesh,
-- 088 --
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leading us into the flowery paths of temptation.
When the duties a man owes to his country
and his fellow-citizens were insisted on, he
placed patriotism in that class of worldly feelings
which interfere with the more important
interests of the immortal soul; and when Mr.
Littlejohn lauded the delights of luxuriating on
three chairs, he treated him as little better than
one of the wicked. All this was said and done
with an arrogant assumption of superiority, an
air of harsh, uncompromising bigotry, which
answered no other purpose than to make the
most mild, amiable, forgiving, and lenient
faith ever propounded to mankind appear directly
the reverse of what it really is. Nothing
is so unbecoming in a divine as the absence of
humility; for how can he who arrays himself
in the trappings of pride and presumption correct
those vices in the rest of mankind, or enforce
those precepts which his practice every
day belies?
The Black Warrior was sitting near a window,
smoking his pipe, a privilege allowed him
by Mrs. Dangerfield, when the over-zealous man
made a demonstration towards him. The Indian
listened with great gravity and decorum,
as the red men always do to what is said to
them, while he was giving a sketch of the Mosaic
account of the creation of the world, the
deluge, the ark, and the subsiding of the universal
waste of waters. When he had finished,
the Black Warrior waited some minutes to allow
him an opportunity of continuing if he wished,
and then, taking his pipe from his mouth,
gravely replied,—
-- 089 --
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“You white black-coats tell big lies. Him
you call Adam no first man. My father long
way off first man, and he was named in English
Sour Mush; he father of all my tribe, and not
Adam, as you say. Listen! the Great Spirit
want somebody to live below here, and he say
to my father, `You go down yonder, and make
people.' Well, he set out; at first he go very
well; then, when he got little way farther, he
go too fast, bang! down, down, down,—hardly
fetch breath, he go so fast. Well, by'm-by
come birds, and put their wings under him, and
let him down easy, very easy, and put him
softly on the top of a tree on a high mountain.
Well, he set there one, two, three day, and at
last he grow very hungry, want to eat mighty
much, and he say so to the Great Spirit; and
Great Spirit tell him, `Blow, blow on the waters.'
Well, he blow, blow, blow, till water only up to
his knee down on the prairie. But he say to
the Great Spirit, `May as well be deep like before;
nothing to eat yet, very hungry.' Then
the Great Spirit tell him blow again, and he
send the winds to help him. And he blow,
blow, blow, and the winds come and help him
blow till all the water go away. Then Sour
Mush he come down from the mountain, and
his feet make deep tracks in soft mud; and,
huh! out jump buffalo, deer, elk, and all sorts
of game, and so my father get plenty to eat.
Then Great Spirit in some time send him a
wife, who come right out of a cave in the
ground; and so in a great many moons we
got to be a great nation. Huh! think Indian
-- 090 --
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don't know who first man as well as white
black-coat?”[1]
The zealous wanderer was “like all wrath,”
as Bushfield said, with the poor Indian, for thus
asserting his ancient belief. He denounced his
tradition as an invention of Satan himself, instead
of viewing it philosophically in the light
of a strong corroboration of the actual occurrence
of that great deluge the dim and vague
traditions of which seem to pervade the earliest
memorials of every people of the earth.
eaf311v2.n1[1] This is a genuine tradition of the
Osages.
-- 091 --
CHAPTER IX.
Bushfield “trees a curious varmint.”
[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]
The next morning was signalized by a visit
from Mrs. Judith, that woman of evil omen,
whom Virginia now trembled to see approaching.
She came to announce the disappearance
of Rainsford, and that he had not been at home
all night. Virginia restrained her emotions
on receiving this information, which excited
the most fearful forebodings. There was in
her heart a union of tenderness and firmness,
more often found in women than men; and
which, wherever found, is the parent of deep,
silent, lasting impressions. A shiver of anguish
shook her limbs, a paler hue abided on
her cheek, and that was all. She dismissed
Mrs. Judith, who denounced her in her private
opinion as the most insensible of mortals, to be
so little affected on such an occasion; and took
the first opportunity of consulting Mrs. Dangerfield.
The result was a communication to the
colonel, which was immediately followed by a
search for the lost wanderer. It appeared, from
an examination of his room, that he had taken
nothing with him, except the clothes he wore.
Nothing remained to give the least clew to his
intentions, or to indicate whither he had gone.
Colonel Dangerfield and Leonard lost no
time in mustering the men of the village and
-- 092 --
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despatching them in all directions. But they
returned, one by one, at different intervals, in
the course of a few days, without having discovered
the least traces, or gained the slightest
information of the fugitive. Thus they remained
in the most harassing uncertainty whether
he had wandered no one knew whither, or
had made away with himself, none knew how.
We will not attempt to describe the feelings of
Virginia, during this period of racking doubt;
she made no display herself. To the eyes of
the villagers, when they occasionally saw her,
she appeared to be pursuing her usual course
of domestic duties and avocations; and it was
only the quick instinct of affection that detected
the deep wound she had received. At
the expiration of about a fortnight, a boat coming
up the river from the Ohio, brought news
of the body of a drowned man having been
found about a hundred miles below, and though
the description of his dress and person was
vague and uncertain, there were circumstances
enough to produce a conviction it was that
of Rainsford. The particulars were cautiously
communicated to Virginia, and received in silence.
On the bosom of maternal affection she
breathed a prayer for the repose of his immortal
soul, and his name was mentioned no more.
But she did not think of him the less for
saying nothing. She remembered his eloquence,
his affection, his gentle kindness, his
sufferings, and his death; yet she did not turn
her back upon the world, because of a thousand
blessings bestowed upon her, she had been
deprived of one, though that one was the
-- 093 --
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dearest of all. Rainsford was seldom absent
from her thoughts, and she grew, in time, to
think of him as one whom, perhaps, the mercy
of Heaven had snatched away from cureless
misery, to the enjoyment of happiness. “Better
that he should die thus, even thus, and be
buried among strangers,” she would say to
herself, “than live to realize what he has so
long anticipated.”
Thus passed the time, and Rainsford was
considered by all as no longer an inhabitant of
this world, when one day as Bushfield returned
to his home in the forest, after a long and unsuccessful
chase, he found Mammy Phillis in
great tribulation at having nothing to give him
for supper. He had come home in none of his
best humours, for this first disappointment had
brought a conviction to his mind that the game
was fast emigrating, and that he must soon
follow.
“What have you done with all those venison
steaks I left hanging up there, you greedy old
'possum?” said he.
“I no eat him, massa.”
“You no eat him! who eat him then, I
should like to know?”
“Why, gentiman did, tudder day.”
“What gentiman, you beautiful snowball?”
“Him go out all day wid massa, and shoot
nothin.”
“What, Rainsford?”
“Ees, massa, here dis morning, and take
away ebery ting he lay hands on.”
“Why, you fool, he's been dead, I don't know
-- 094 --
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how long; he was drowned, or drowned himself
in the Kentucky.”
Phillis screamed. “Ah! den him must be
him's spook. I tought he no eat like Christian.”
“Pshaw, who ever heard of a spook eating?”
“Huh! I guess dem eat well as udder folks.
I see spooks eat when I was in my own country.
I see plenty dare. All black, jus like
me.”
“A black ghost!” cried Bushfield, breaking
into a loud laugh. “I'd as soon think of a
white nigger. But what are you talking about
seeing poor Rainsford's ghost. Come tell me
all about it.”
By dint of questioning he drew from her the
following details. It appears she was occupied
in eating her breakfast, very intently, when on
a sudden a man, who she persisted was Rainsford,
bolted into the house, seized some of the
victuals, and began to devour them, as she said,
like a hungry wolf. He soon cleared the table,
and then helped himself to all the eatables he
could find, which he was carrying away, when
he seemed suddenly to recollect himself, put his
hand in his pocket and threw her some money,
exclaiming at the same time, with a laugh,
“There—there's the reckoning, the price of a
priest's religion, a lawyer's conscience, and a
patriot's vote. There, you angel of darkness,
go buy a white skin, and then you may bear
false witness against your neighbour, as well
as your betters.”
Phillis further stated that he was very
ragged; had a long beard; a bloodshot eye;
-- 095 --
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and looked as if he were almost starved to
death.
“Poor creature!” said Bushfield, drawing the
sleeve of his hunting shirt across his eyes.
“But I shall tree him to-morrow.”
“What, tree spook?” chuckled old Phillis.
“Ecod, I believe massa tink he tree any ting.”
Bushfield went to bed, that is to say, laid
down on his bearskin, outside the house, under
a spreading tree, and slept as well without his
supper as with it, for he did not mind such trifles
as four-and-twenty hours' abstinence. In
the morning, bright and early, before the dew
was off the ground, he called unto him old
Phillis, and bade her show him, if she knew,
which way the spook went. She did so, and
he whistled his dogs, placed them on the scent,
and followed with his rifle on his shoulder.
The dogs pursued a devious winding course,
through the most difficult-passes of the forest,
until they reached a rocky eminence, which
formed the dividing line between two neighbouring
streams. It was a wild savage scene,
remote from the usual haunts of the hunters.
A signal from the hounds at a distance, indicating
that they discovered something, caused
Bushfield to hasten to the spot, where he beheld
the Black Warrior, standing at bay, with his
rifle pointed at one of the dogs, which was the
most clamorous and troublesome.
“Don't hurt the sweet varmints,” cried he,
“or its likely I may hurt you, anyhow.”
Bushfield “hated an Ingen mightily;” and, to
do him justice, he had tolerable good reasons
for it. But he would not have harmed one,
-- 096 --
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except in self-defence, as he called defending his
dogs, on any account. He called them off,
and they commenced a parley.
“Game very scarce now,” said the Black
Warrior. “Indian must soon go cross the
great river.”
“Yes, and white man too, if he wants to follow
the track of the deer. Have you seen any
game?”
“No, only squirrel, he no worth powder and
shot. Has the white man seen any?”
“O, I'm on another track. I'm hunting a
white man.”
“Eh! I reckoned white man only hunted
Indian that way.”
Bushfield explained to him his object; and
the Black Warrior offered his aid.
“I like Misser Rainford, he sometime fill
my pouch wid tobacco.”
“We shall only be in each other's way, like
a couple of fellers in the same track.”
“Room enough here for white man and red
skin. White man want all room to himself,”
muttered the Indian. “But I must help find
Misser Rainford.”
They proceeded in different directions, after
agreeing to fire their guns in case of any discovery;
and had pursued their search for some
time, when the forest echoed with the report of
the Black Warrior's rifle. Bushfield hastened
in the direction, and found the Indian standing
guard at the foot of a high rock, on the very
verge of which was a figure scarcely human,
capering, and shouting, and looking down, as
if in scorn of the intruder. Sometimes he
-- 097 --
[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]
shook his fist at him, and grinned. Sometimes
he would laugh aloud; and at others pelt him
with sticks or stones. Bushfield approached
close to the foot of the rock, and he seemed for
a moment confused with some recollection,
while he looked wistfully down upon him. He
then shouted and disappeared; then returned
again, laughing and capering like a child playing
at bo-peep; and finally, sat himself down,
with his legs hanging over the edge of the high
rock, making faces at them.
Bushfield called him by name, and entreated
him to come down to his friends.
“Ah hah! catch me at that,” cried he, laughing.
“I know what you want; you want to
chain me; you want to clap me up in a dungeon,
and set a tiger to watch me. No, no, I
know a thing worth two of that. Whiz! look
here,” and he cut a huge caper, and sat down
again. “Here I am, a gentleman commoner
of nature. I can go where I please, and do as
I please, without asking leave of the parson,
the lawyer, the justice, or of those good people
who would kill me with kindness to save my
life.”
“I'll be shot if he don't talk more like common
sense than many roarers I have heard
make speeches in court, in my time, anyhow.
I think if I could only get a fight out of him,
I'd bring him to, pretty quick,” said Bushfield
to his associate.
They consulted together on the best method
of securing the wretched outcast, and at length
finally agreed on a plan. It was obvious that
he could not be secured where he was by any
-- 098 --
[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]
mode of attack or approach; for the side of the
rock nearest them was inaccessible, and, if
assailed in the rear, there was great reason to
fear he would dash himself down, and perish.
“Somehow or other,” said Bushfield, “I don't
think it a matter worth crying for if he did,
anyhow. But who knows, after all, but the
poor feller has some kind of pleasure in this sort
of out-door life that I don't know any thing
about? He's a free man, and that's something.
He can lay down and drink of the branch without
a cup, which is what I call being independent,
anyhow.”
As neither had any food with them, it was
determined to go home, and return the next
day with a supply, which they were to leave in
a conspicuous spot near the haunt of Rainsford,
in the expectation he would be compelled by
the wants of nature to come and take it. Each
was to hide himself in some convenient nook
for intercepting a retreat to his stronghold.
Accordingly they took leave of the maniac,
who told them to go and catch birds with fresh
salt, and saluted them with a volley of stones,
and returned to their respective homes. The
next day they put their plan into execution,
and awaited the result in their hiding-places.
Some hours elapsed, and the poor wanderer did
not appear. But about midday they heard his
laugh, and presently after saw him approach
the place where the food had been placed, which
he seized and devoured with the eager avidity
of a famished tiger. When he had done, he
laid himself down quietly, and fell asleep at the
foot of a tree.
-- 099 --
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Now was the time, and now the white man
and the red put in practice the tactics of the
warfare of the woods. They lay down on their
faces, and crawled along like wily snakes in
the grass, dragging their rifles after them, until
within striking distance; when Bushfield, who
never took odds, he said, against man or beast,
motioning the Black Warrior to halt where he
was, rose, and with the spring of a tiger pounced
upon the sleeping Rainsford, whose arms he
seized with the gripe of a vice, as he was wont
to boast. A struggle now ensued, too violent
to be lasting; after a few convulsive, phrenetic
efforts, accompanied by demonstrations of ferocious
anger, the strength of the poor maniac
became quite exhausted, and he remained on
the ground perfectly quiescent, as is the case
with persons of this class when they find themselves
fairly mastered.
He lay for a time with his eyes shut, and the
Black Warrior now brought some fresh grapevines
he had cut, for the purpose of binding his
hands behind him; but Bushfield demurred to
this.
“No, hang it, redskin, I could never yet find
in my heart to bind a free white man. There
are two of us; I'm half a whole team, and you
the other half; and it's a hard case if we can't
manage him without disgracing the poor cretur.”
“True,” said the Black Warrior; “and then
the Great Spirit would be angry if we hurt him,
for you know he loves all mad people can't take
care of themselves. Great Spirit make prophet
of 'em sometimes; love 'em very much. I most
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[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]
forget that; glad I not lay hold of him like you.
Never shoot deer any more if I hurt him.”
“What ignorant Turks these Indians are,”
thought Bushfield, “to believe in such crossing
of the track as this. I'm a nigger if I think
this copper-washed man is a right clean, full-blooded
feller-cretur.”
Nothing is more passive than raging passion
when once overcome. Rainsford now rose from
the ground, and stood stock still, with a subdued
look, and languid expression of the eye.
His head, legs, bosom, and arms were bare;
and as Bushfield noted the bruises and the
marks which he had been forced to inflict upon
the poor youth, he felt his eyes grow dim. He
took his passive hand, shook it with honest fervour,
and, as if he thought himself understood,
made his apology for having treated him so
roughly. “If I hadn't sooner eat garbroth with
a real nigger, may I never see a tree nigh
enough to my house to make a fire without
the help of a cart and oxen,” said he. “But
come, stranger, I think now you'd best go home
again. There's the colonel and his lady are on
the wrong scent about you, and Miss Virginia
looks as white as an eggshell.”
“Virginia?” said Rainsford, “Virginia? ay,
Old Virginia. I've heard of her; she never
tires, they say.”
“Old Virginia! no, I mean young Virginia,
the yellow flower of the forest, the sweetest sap
that ever was boiled into maple sugar. O, she's
a beauty, anyhow. Have you forgot Virginia
Dangerfield, that I hear you were going to be
married to when you cut this caper?”
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[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]
“Dangerfield! yes, now I recollect, that was
the name of the old beggar that cursed my
grandfather; he that was once an old black
woman that I stole venison from, and cooked it
on a gridiron made of the ribs of a rogue that
was gibbeted. Yes, yes—O, I remember it all
as if it was the day after to-morrow.”
“Then you will go with us?”
“To be sure I will. Give us your hand;
your fingers are as soft as iron bars, almost as
soft as Virginia's—I mean Old Virginia, that
never tires. As I was saying—but you talked
about going to be married just now, didn't you?
Now, if I marry anybody, it shall be the black
beauty I met t'other day, who gave me a good
dinner; but she made me pay for it. Look
here! what a grip she gave me!” and he held
out his bare bruised arms.
“Come then with me, and I will take you to
your friends, and they shall take care of you,”
said Bushfield, who long afterwards declared he
never had felt so since the time he lost his
mother and little sister at one shot.
“Well, come on; I'm a free man now, and
ready for a frolic anywhere. But don't talk of
being married, for that is the shortest cut to the
devil; the parson told me so. Come, don't look
as if I was lying about it. I tell you he swore
to me once by—I forget what it was—by the
sole of his shoe, that if the sky should happen
to fall, there would be a great squabble about
the stars. For my part, I should go for Saturn,
because he falls the farthest, and is a great traveller.
Hurrah, boys! come along; but here,
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Mister—what's your name?—O, Dangerfield—
Mr. Dangerfield, you'll bring that old sexton
there with you, because I expect to be married.
It's curious,” whispered he to Bushfield, “but
I seem as if I remembered backwards, as a crab
goes to church. Hurrah! come to the funeral,
and then for the plum-cake and a lying epitaph.”
So saying, he took Bushfield by the arm, and
they went their way towards the village of Dangerfieldville,
where they arrived in the dusk of
the evening; Rainsford so fatigued, that he fell
into a deep sleep immediately. Persons were
appointed by Colonel Dangerfield to watch him,
that he might not wander away into the woods
again.
-- 103 --
CHAPTER X.
A glimpse of sunshine darkened.
[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]
It would have been a wonder to distance all
the other wonders of the world had Virginia
remained ignorant of the discovery and arrival
of Rainsford any longer than Mrs. Judith Paddock
took to cross the way and tell the story.
It is hard to say what were her feelings on this
occasion, and for that reason we will not attempt
to delineate them. She could receive no joy at
his return in the state Mrs. Judith described,
and still less could she find in her heart to regret
that he had not perished in the manner
before related. Certain it is, however, that she
was observed to lose that quiet air of resignation
which had followed the loss of hope; and
from this time forward her watchful mother
detected in her manner and conduct all the indications
of a mind agitated by conflicting emotions.
The paroxysm in which Rainsford was found
in the forest had arisen as much from hunger,
exposure, and the miserable roots and berries he
had subsisted on for some days, as from any
predisposing cause. And he awoke the next
morning, after snatches of sleep disturbed by
occasional starts and ravings, in a quiet state
of gloomy languor, which encouraged Mrs. Judith
to venture on the gratification of her
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curiosity, by paying him a visit in his accustomed
room, where he had been secured for the present.
He paid little attention to her or her questions,
until, apparently wearied and fatigued,
he looked sternly at her, and exclaimed,—
“Get thee behind me, Satan; I know you of
old. You have been at me many a time before
with that ugly black face and cloven foot. You
needn't try to hide it or your face either; for if
your husband's a fool I am not; I can see
with half an eye you've got a split foot, and
horns on your head, just like an ox.”
Mrs. Judith was exceedingly wroth at this
unseemly blunder; for well saith the great poet,
“Use lessens marvel,” and it is the happiness
of mankind, as well as womankind, that by dint
of frequent contemplation in the looking-glass,
they not only become reconciled to, but peradventure
enamoured of, deformity. We may
call this vanity, but in our minds it is the true
essence of philosophy; for where would be the
use of pining over those infirmities which it
hath pleased Providence to inflict upon us, and
which all the regrets in the world, so far from
alleviating, only tend to make ten thousand
times more painful. To laugh at such delusions
as contribute to the happiness of the unfortunate
only shows the folly and ill-nature of
mankind. We have before hinted that Mrs.
Judith was, as it were, one of nature's most
masterly blunders; but if she admired herself,
so much the better for her husband; for it was
the cause of a certain dulcet humour of which
he reaped much of the benefits. But this sortie
of poor Rainsford against her beauty irritated
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her sorely, and she bounced out of the room,
declaring that, however she might have doubted
before, all the world would not persuade her
now that he was not as mad as a March hare.
The unhappy youth sat down and burst into a
hearty laugh; but whether from a remote perception
of the ridiculous or not, is difficult to
decide. There is certainly a mischievous wilfulness
in deranged intellects that has sometimes
almost persuaded us that such a state of
mind often consists less in the inability than
the inclination to restrain its excesses. Anger
is justly denominated a short madness; yet it
is ever under the restraint of prudence, and we
doubt if the most furious victim of that passion
would dare to exhibit it in the presence of the
man he feared.
Various were the consultations of Colonel
Dangerfield with his wife and son as to the
best mode of disposing of this unfortunate young
man, with whose friends and former residence
they were totally unacquainted. Dangerfieldville
not being the county town, there was neither
court-house nor jail in which he might be
secured until he regained, if he ever regained,
his reason; and it was obvious that the chamber
of Master Zeno would be insufficient to retain
him if he should be determined on escaping.
It was proposed to insert a description of his
person and situation in the Western Sun, in the
hope of his being recognised by his family, if he
had any; but to this, Virginia, who often joined
in these consultation, strenuously objected.
“If he should ever recover,” said she, “I know
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[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]
his sensitive feelings will shrink from such an
exposure.”
“Alas! I fear all hope of his recovery is vain,”
replied Mrs. Dangerfield.
“He who deprived him of his reason can restore
it, mother.”
“My dear child, you know not how difficult
it is to heal the shattered intellect of a rational
being.”
“Not so difficult, dear mother, as to create a
rational being.” She paused, and resumed, in
a hesitating voice, “Now that you are here together,
I have a proposal to make, a wish to
gratify, if I dared to ask permission.”
“What is it, my love? said Mrs. Dangerfield.
“I—I wish to see Mr. Rainsford once—once
more. I have a hope—a presentiment I may
almost call it—that he would know me, and
that I might sooth his calamity, if nothing
more. Will you permit me to make the trial?”
“For heaven's sake! for our sakes, Virginia,
abandon the idea. I shudder at the
thought of such an exposure. Suppose, in a
paroxysm of phrensy, he should tear you to
pieces. Such things have happened.”
“Ah! I fear him not, my mother. There
must yet remain some little recollection of what—
what we have been, and were to be to each
other, that the sight of me, the sound of my
voice will awaken. I beseech you, as you value
my peace, I might say my life, to let me see
him once more. I should never know the repose
of a moment, if I were not conscious of
having done all that my heart suggested to me
as possible to awaken poor Rainsford to a
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recollection of himself, if only for one moment.
Let me, let me go, or perhaps I may become
one day like him.”
The solemn earnestness, the hope, however
hopeless, with which she urged her request, at
length wrought on them all to consent to her
visiting the unhappy young man once more.
It was arranged that the colonel and Leonard
should accompany her, and remain just without
the door, while she should enter alone.
The mother inquired when it should be, and
Virginia hesitated, and trembled for a moment,
ere she uttered the single monosyllable,
“Now.”
Leonard went over to ascertain the state of
the patient; and in the mean while Virginia
arrayed herself in a gown of spotless white,
not whiter than her pale cheek and forehead,
over which her chestnut hair was smoothly
parted, in that most beautiful and simplest form
of delicate womanhood. “I am ready,” said
she, firmly; and she took the arm of her father,
and walked with a steady step to the
place of meeting. When just outside the door
she paused and faltered; but it was soon over;
and the door being opened, she entered.
Rainsford, who had been persuaded to suffer
himself to be dressed and shaved, in one of his
good-natured intervals, was sitting with his
back towards the door, his body inclined forward,
and his head depressed on his bosom,
employed in picking a little fragment of linen
in pieces. He paid no attention to her entrance,
and she had an opportunity of recovering her
firmness, before she uttered, in the sweetest
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music that ever floated on the balmy breath of
spring, the single word,
“Dudley Rainsford!”
He suddenly whirled himself round on his
chair; but it was evident the sound, and not
the sense, had roused him, for he displayed no
symptoms of recognising the person who gave
it utterance.
“He has forgotten me!” sighed Virginia;
and she was obliged to lean against the wall
for support.
“What!” cried he, at length, after looking at
her awhile; “what! are you come back again,
with your cloven foot and horns? Don't you
know I have sworn to put to death all the handsome
Jezebels in the creation; because I have
it from the best possible authority they keep
more honest men from heaven than the very
old boy himself. Go away, go away, or I shall
fall in love with that deceitful handsome face
of yours.”
“Dudley Rainsford!” said Virginia, coming
nearer, “don't you know Virginia?”
“What, Old Virginia? Yes, I think I have
heard of such a trifle; but don't come near me,
stand off; I don't choose to lose my soul for a
woman, I can tell you. Though when I look
at you, I think I might run the risk, for you
put me in mind of a little angel I once saw in
a dream.”
Virginia approached yet nearer, and placed
her hand on his brow. “What, you will come,
hey! You're determined I shall roast, as the
old black woman, that made me pay so dear for
my dinner, said. Look here what a price for
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a dinner.” And he stripped up his sleeve, and
showed the deep marks of the struggle with
Bushfield.
Virginia could not speak, but she hung over
him, and the scalding tears fell on his forehead.
In those beautiful fictions of poetry and romance
which are now almost overwhelmed by
the barren exuberance of their successors, it
has been fabled that the ferocity of the lion
was tamed by the divinity of virgin purity and
gentleness. Even so with Rainsford. He felt
the tears trickle on his forehead; he felt the
balmy breath breathing in his face; and all at
once he seemed to be recalled to some faint yet
organized traces of the incidents of his former
life. He looked at her intensely, a few moments,
then took her hand and kissed it, as he softly
exclaimed,
“Virginia! are you not afraid of me?”
“O! he knows me now!” cried she, in a
burst of joy.
“Yes, I do know thee; and I have broken the
oath I made once. I remember—where was
it? no matter, I am lost now. I see it. I am
doomed to howl, howl, as the preacher said;
and all because I didn't do it when I had so
good an opportunity. But I am glad I did not,
for I had rather howl than harm thee, Virginia.”
She sat down by his side, her hand in his;
and for a little while, apparently with continued
efforts, he mastered his malady sufficiently to
avoid incoherence. But the exertion was too
great for him; by degrees he began to lose all
power of arrangement; and the last effort of
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his departing reason was to beseech, to command
her to leave him.
“Go! go! it is written I shall shed blood;
let it not be yours!”
The colonel and Leonard Dangerfield were
alarmed at the increasing loudness of his voice,
and showing themselves at the door, beckoned
her to come forth. She obeyed them unwillingly;
and the moment she left the room,
Rainsford started up, shut the door violently,
and exclaimed,
“There! there! now she's safe; and let me
howl and welcome. Who says I'm not a hero
to give away my soul for a woman?”
The interview, however painful to her feelings,
was on the whole calculated to cherish a
latent spark of hope in the bosom of Virginia.
That he had known her; that he had for a few
minutes, at least, enjoyed an interval of recollection,
indicated that his mind was not irretrievably
gone. Kindness, care, and perseverance
might do much, perhaps might do every
thing necessary to the restoration of his reason,
and she had long accustomed herself to
think that both affection and gratitude demanded
all her exertions to save him. She
accordingly settled it in her mind that she
would repeat the experiment every day, as long
as there remained any hope.
She communicated her wishes to her mother,
who, observing her pale cheek, tearful eye, and
agitated frame, was fearful such a plan would
end rather in being fatal to her health, than effectual
in regard to the unfortunate Rainsford.
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She endeavoured to persuade her that seeing
him every day would gradually undermine her
happiness for the rest of her life, and destroy
that strength of mind so essential to its dignity
and usefulness. The reply of Virginia was as
remarkable as it was true.
“My dear mother, I am young, but I have
lived long enough, and suffered enough, to know
by my own experience that those evils we
shrink from are always the most terrible to the
imagination. What we are not afraid to look
upon we are not half so much afraid of as if
we turned away from it in fear or horror. I
had pictured poor Rainsford as a raving maniac,
divested as well of the form of humanity,
as of the attributes of reason; but I found him
still fair and gentle, and can almost think of
him with pleasure again.”
“Well, then, my dear daughter, take your
own way; for it is not the weak vanity of a mother,
nor her childish indulgence, which make
me say, that so help me Heaven, as I believe I
might trust you everywhere, where intellect
and virtue are the safeguards of woman.”
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CHAPTER XI.
A touch of scholarship, an elopement, and a discussion
on equality.
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It was one laughing morn in the merry
month of June, when the redbirds sung, the
grasshoppers chirped—we mean the crickets
chirped, the grasshoppers flitted their circumscribed
flights, the little yellow butterflies were
solacing themselves in the moisture of the road-side,
and the luxurious swine, the sole aristocracy
of this republic, since they enjoy every
thing without labour, banquet on the fat of the
land, and are marvellously short-lived, were
wallowing in the very mire of sentiment. It
was on such a morning, for ever hallowed in
our remembrance as the season of luxurious
abstractions, delicious languors, and visionary
flights of fancy,—it was on such a morning
that the veritable Zeno Paddock and his wife
were sitting at breakfast, sipping tea and
politics. Zeno exchanged with one paper at
least in each of the twenty-two states at
that time in being, and read them all, every
soul of them; by reason of which he had so
many errors to correct, so many recreants to
chastise, and such a mass of political heresies
to expose to the world, that he hardly knew
which way to turn himself. He was at this
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moment poring over a number of his great antagonist
the Eastern Star, when all at once he
jumped from his chair, as if a Chinese cracker
had exploded under his nose. Mrs. Judith was
smitten with a tender curiosity, and inquired
what was the matter; he handed her the
paper, pointing at the same time to a certain
article, and exclaiming,—
“There, there—he, he! Judy, what do you
think of that? I'm a stunted pedant! I don't
know a B from a bull's foot!—he, he!”—and
he fluttered about in a paroxysm of wounded
vanity.
It seems this learned Theban had in an evil
hour essayed, in the triumph of his heart, to
enact the critic on divers occasions, having been
so successful in detecting the falsehoods of the
new court almanac concerning the weather.
He undertook to write an article on a volume
of poetry published by a young man at Lexington,
as we believe, in the which he made a desperate
plunge into the bowels of antiquity. He
first compared Aristotle and the Stagyrite in
philosophy, giving it as his opinion that the
latter was the deeper of the two by all odds.
From thence he sallied out into the regions
of “crack-sculled Parnassus,” where he committed
great ravages among the laurels and
other evergreens. He asserted roundly that,
whatever might be said to the contrary, there
was no comparison between Homer and the
great Melesigenes; that Virgil could not hold a
candle to Maro; and that the Mantuan swain,
who was a self-taught shepherd, was superior
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to both. He pronounced Horace's Odes to be
inimitable, and far more spirited than those of
his great rivals Quintus and Flaccus; and concluded
by pronouncing a certain pope of Rome,
whose name he had forgot, though he believed
it was Pope Alexander, the first poet among the
moderns, partly because he was so easy on man,
one of the most difficult of all subjects; and
partly because he wrote a beautiful poem on a
fellow stealing the lock of a door.
For all these multifarious offences his great
antagonist of the Eastern Star did take him up
roundly, denying all his positions, and pronouncing
him “a stunted pedant,” the most opprobrious
of all epithets to a man of function
like Zeno. He denied in toto that the Stagyrite,
or Stageright, as he called him, was any way
equal to Aristotle, who discovered the immortality
of the soul; or that either Melesigenes, or
Maro, or the Mantuan swain, or Quintus, or
Flaccus could any way compare with Homer,
Virgil, Horace, or even Mecænas. As for Pope
Alexander, he never heard of but one pope
who made verses, and that was Pope Joan. He
concluded by saying he thought Mæonides,
upon the whole, the first poet of antiquity,
though most of the critics preferred Homer.
Mercy on us! how Zeno did fume, and how
sincerely and with what fervour Mrs. Judith
sympathized with him! True, she had called
the profound Zeno a blockhead and pedant a
thousand times; but that was altogether a different
affair from other people calling him so.
For that wife must be more or less than woman
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who, when it comes to the pinch, won't take
sides with her good man against all the world,
though she may fully agree with it in her own
private opinion. There is no saying what
would have been the result of this holy alliance
of the high contracting powers; for before they
could agree upon the protocol they were interrupted
by the entrance of Leonard Dangerfield,
who came to inquire into the state and condition
of poor Rainsford.
The room occupied by this unfortunate young
gentleman was at the extremity and in the rear
of the house, and, though not actually in durance,
the door was kept carefully locked, and
one of the villagers employed in watching outside
during the night. It seemed to have escaped
the notice of his friends, or perhaps they did
not think it material, that there was a window
not five feet from the ground, which, though
nailed down, yet was not impassable to a desperate
man. The person appointed to mount
guard slept as soundly as most watchmen do in
some great cities which shall be nameless, and
with such a quiet conscience, that nothing less
than the last trumpet would have roused him
before his time.
Under these circumstances, it does not altogether
amount to a miracle that when the door
was opened the prisoner was non est inventus.
On examination, it was found that the nails
which fastened the window had been removed
by some one of those cunning expedients so
common with people in his situation, and that
he had escaped in that way; but at what time
of the night there were no means of judging,
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nor were there the least indications to point out
the course he had pursued. All traces of him
were lost, and all subsequent inquiries proved
fruitless in this remote quarter, where people
lived at a distance from each other, and held
little communication with the rest of the world.
The new-born hope awakened in the bosom of
Virginia was thus for ever blighted; and the
bow that had for a moment been forced into
elasticity became more relaxed than before. It
was, indeed, almost a mortal blow; and it is
not surprising if, after so many trials, she sank
into a state of almost hopeless depression.
But the sun rose and set as usual, the people
of the village continued their daily occupations,
and the people of the world followed their example.
What was it to them if a hair-brained
wanderer was let loose upon the surface of that
slippery bubble called life, to scramble his way
in beggary, and perish haply by the road-side?
or that a tender-hearted girl was mourning his
fate in the silence of despair? Men must eat and
die, and worms must eat them; the world must
go on; and, happily for the race of insects that
crawl upon it, the sum total of the woes of life
amounts to no more than that which falls to the
share of each single individual; and that is
enough in all conscience.
Zeno continued to fire his paper pellets
briskly at the head of his antagonist, who blazed
away in turn; and it came to pass at length,
that according to the good old way of the world,
they were miraculously reconciled by the interposition
of a third party in the war of criticism,
who most unceremoniously knocked their pates
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together, and denounced them as a couple of
blockheads, so equally ignorant that none but the
great mathematician who subtracted nothing
from nothing, and found to his astonishment
that nothing remained, could decide between
these two incomprehensible nonentities. From
that moment they united their forces against
the common enemy, and were ever after held
together by the cement of a common enmity.
But the condition of Mrs. Judith after the
departure of Rainsford, and the total seclusion
of Virginia, was most to be deplored;
for now she had scarcely a peg on which to
hang even a shred of curiosity. Not to speak
irreverently of the divinity of woman, she might
be likened unto a hound at fault; she tripped
about the village this way and that, in all directions,
poking her nose here, and there, and
everywhere, with a wistful look of inquiry, an
anxious, business-like air, exceedingly edifying.
It happened, by a miraculous interposition, as
cruel as it was unaccountable, that there was
not a single secret to be had in all the village.
Such a dearth, such a famine was never known
within the memory of the oldest gossip; and
there is reason to fear that it would have been
all over with Mrs. Judith Paddock, had she not
most providentially, on the sixth day of her abstinence,
detected a stranger riding into the
town with an umbrella over his head. What
he could want of an umbrella, when it neither
rained nor did the sun shine, puzzled her to the
quick. But when he stopped at the house of
Colonel Dangerfield, which was now renewed
in more than its pristine glories, to the great
exultation of that pillar of the aristocracy
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Pompey Ducklegs, she became one of the happiest
of women; for she was sure there was a secret
in embryo, if not already in being. In addition
to this, Leonard Dangerfield departed about this
time to take his seat in the Assembly; and next
to an arrival in a village is a departure from
it. Altogether, Mrs. Judith became quite comfortable;
and in this state of salubrity we shall
leave her for the present.
The stranger, whose oppertune arrival had
given such absolute content to Mrs. Judith, was
a stout, well-made, ruddy-faced man, it may be
about five-and-forty, who wore a pair of fancy
cord breeches, a pair of white-top boots, and a
gray coat with covered buttons. On the top
of his head was his hair, and on the top of his
hair his hat, which was a beaver of most respectable
dimensions as to brim, if not as to
crown. His hair consisted of a profusion of
short stiff curls, resembling what the illustrious
Manuel, now figuring in the dressing-room of
Death, whilom did call “everlasting,” baked—
yea, by this light, baked!—like a brown loaf in
the oven! Whether it was a wig, or whether
his own crop, whether a work of nature or of
art, we must leave to Mrs. Judith Paddock to
ferret out; solemnly pledging ourselves to the
curious reader, who doth inordinately dote on
these man-milliner matters, that if she ever at
any future period penetrates this important
affair, we will forthwith apprize him of it by a
telegraphic despatch. Altogether, this remarkable
stranger, who looked out of his eyes just
like other people, had that about him which we
call respectable; and if we might judge from
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certain marks which constitute national identity,
he was a native of what the old bards once
called “merry England.”
Such as he was, he rode up to the door of
Colonel Dangerfield, and was detected by Mrs.
Judith in the very act of delivering a letter;
the reception of which was immediately followed
by his dismounting from his horse, and
entering the hospitable door, which, as in poor
old Ireland, they say always opens in Kentucky
of itself on the arrival of a stranger.
“I'll lay my life,” exclaimed Mrs. Judith, clapping
her hands, “he brings news of the runaway.”
But Mrs. Judith was mistaken for once
in her life.
He was described in the letter to Colonel Dangerfield
as an English country gentleman of
easy fortune, who, having three or four months
to spare previous to the hunting season, had
taken a voyage across the Atlantic to see the
Falls of Niagara, and satisfy himself, by a close
and minute investigation of the true state of the
country, by riding through it as fast as a comet.
He was a scholar, a liberal, and a sensible man;
but, like all his countrymen, he was ever in
a desperate hurry when he travelled. In a
stage, he scolded, or bribed the driver to get on;
and he was once nearly annihilated by being
obliged to travel twenty miles on a canal. In
this we profess to sympathize with him most
heartily. He had been spoiled by whirling on
railroads; and more than once astounded our
whips, who thought they were doing wonders,
by exclaiming, in all the impatience of incurable
languor,—
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“Zounds! my good fellow, how slow you
travel!”
A steamboat of eight or ten miles an hour
was intolerable; and if haply he had got
hold of the tail of a comet, he would have
bribed the driver to go a little faster. Never
man was in such a hurry to get to a place except
this selfsame gentleman, when he got
there, to get away from it. He had made the
grand tour in five weeks; and on being questioned
by Colonel Dangerfield how he could
“make tracks,” as Bushfield would say, at such
a rate, his reply was perfectly characteristic.
“Why, sir, you must know, I always had a
courier in advance to order my meals, so that
they were sure to be ready on my arrival, and
allowed myself only an hour to eat them. In
this way I found it very delightful; for I always
had a good dinner, and escaped the horrors
of being detained in a French or Italian town.”
Yet with this foible, which, we believe, is
common to all your islanders, whose insular
situation generates a feeling of “circumscription
and confine,” and instigates a desire of escaping,
as it were, Mr. Barham was a man of
estimable qualities, of an enlarged mind and
liberal spirit.
If ever an American and an Englishman got
together in this world, old or new, without talking
politics, and disagreeing about them, it
was not in our presence. It happened in the
course of the evening of the arrival of Mr. Barham,
that a neighbour, a tradesman, brought
home a pair of shoes, or something of that sort,
for one of the family; and was, as usual, asked
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in, and treated as every man of good character
was sure to be treated by the family of Colonel
Dangerfield. He was invited to sit down, to
“take something.” And after talking about the
news, the crops, and the election, quietly took
his leave. Mr. Barham felt as if a pig had run
against him, and soiled his white-top boots,
and could not refrain from shrugging his shoulders
a little, as the colonel shook him kindly by
the hand and bade good night. Dangerfield saw
and comprehended the shrug, and determined
to have a bout with the stranger the first opportunity.
This is never wanting to two men
ready cocked and primed, especially an American
and an Englishman. Mr. Barham soon
took occasion to utter the word equality, with a
certain equivocal sarcastic tone, which is sufficiently
expressive to apprehensive ears; and
the colonel snapped his rifle directly.
“You don't approve of our system of equality,
I perceive, Mr. Barham.”
“To be frank, for you know we Englishmen
always speak our minds, I do not.”
“Why so, sir?”
“Why, because I don't like the intrusive familiarities
of the vulgar; nor do I believe any
system of government can subsist for a length
of time without a decided broad distinction of
ranks.”
“Why so, sir?”
“Because my own reading, reflection, and
experience have satisfied me that equality in any
respect, either as to rank or fortune, is an impracticable,
ruinous theory, which never can be
realized.”
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“I differ with you, Mr. Barham. As to you
reading and reflection, I will say nothing, for
my maxim is, to appeal to experience, wherever
resort can be had to it. May I ask whence you
derive your conviction of the impossibility of a
system of equality as far as ranks are concerned?”
“From England, sir, from my own country.”
“I don't exactly see how your experience can
have any application to England, because she
has never tried the system of equality, and can
therefore know nothing of its impracticability,
or its ruinous effects, if it were practicable.”
“Why, sir, don't we every day see the consequences
of the mob getting uppermost; destruction
of property and lives?”
“That is just because there is no equality
among you, and not because there is. It is the
sense of inequality, and its attendant wants
and mortifications, that produce these violent
eruptions of popular discontent. If you choose
to call the people of this country all equal, very
good. You don't see any mobs in Kentucky,
nor anywhere else, except among those who
bring with them from abroad those habits, and
feelings, and old antipathies generated by the
very absence of equality.”
“But how is it possible for one man to have
a proper respect for another, without some feeling
of inferiority on his part? Without this,
society must become a perfect bear-garden, and
the intercourse between people essentially vulgar
and indiscriminate,” said Mr. Barham.
“That does not necessarily follow; nay, it
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does not follow at all. Surely, Mr. Barham,
you cannot believe that courtesy, respect, and a
due regard to the claims and feelings of others
cannot be maintained without a sense of inferiority
on one part, and of superiority on the
other. Is there no such sentiment in the human
mind as that of veneration for superior
virtue, or talents; no kindly feeling of one fellow-being
for another, that he should require a
man to be called a lord, and to possess privileges
of which he is denied a share, before he can
properly respect him? If you come to the
other sex, is there not beauty, virtue, the natural
desire to please, and the universal passion of
love to ensure them due tenderness and consideration,
without their being called ladies? So
far indeed as I am acquainted with the countries
where these distinctions of ranks prevail, that
respect which the sacred institution of marriage
requires from man to woman, and from woman
to man, is not the most striking feature in
the character of the higher ranks.”
“But really now, Colonel Dangerfield, you
have travelled, and seen the world; do you
think it possible to introduce equality into England,
without overturning every thing venerable
and sacred there?”
“I don't know exactly what you mean, Mr.
Barham, by every thing venerable and sacred.
If you mean abuses that have grown sacred by
long proscription; follies consecrated by time,
and institutions that have become venerable,
like ruined edifices, because they no longer answer
the end of their creation; if you refer to
these, I don't believe that they can or will
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survive the adoption of a single feature in the system
of equality. I admit the difficulty and
danger of abolishing the distinction of ranks
in countries where it has long prevailed; where
every step and stage in life is graduated by the
ladder of precedence; and where the people,
from education and long habit, have lost all
other criterion of respect or reverence, but
that of mere rank and title. Here, however,
in this country it is quite different; habit and
education have prepared them to estimate other
claims; and though they may still retain some
vestiges of the ancient delusion in respect to
these things, there is nothing on the face of the
earth which they would so soon resist as a person
who should come and demand as a right
any privilege or precedence, merely on the
score of his title.”
“Very well, very well, sir, but you will yet
live to see the futility of these notions, that all
men are equally wise, equally virtuous, equally
brave; and that therefore they must of necessity
be made equally rich, equally honourable,
and equal in all respects to their rulers.”
“Why do you not add, equally tall, equally
fat, equally strong, and equally active?” asked
the colonel, smiling at this absurd view of
equality, which is either ignorantly or wilfully
made to represent the rational system of this
country. “My dear sir, our policy is not founded
on the complete overthrow, but the establishment
of the system of Providence, which
hath ordained that there shall ever subsist a
difference in the activity and capacity of mankind,
as well as in the opportunity, and the
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results of their exercise. Everybody knows
that it is impossible to regulate the consequences
of all these, and that one will be
wiser, richer, and happier than another, in spite
of all laws to make them equal; and in defiance
of all efforts to regulate their course of
action. Such is not our absurd system of
equality, which consists simply in an equality of
social and civil rights, granted and guarantied by
the laws, over which we ourselves have a control,
each in his primitive character of a citizen, a
portion of the government. There is not here,
as in many, I may say in all parts of the Old
World, one law for the king, another for the
noble; one law for the noble, another for the
commoner; one law for the freeholder, another
for the copyholder; one law for the bishop, another
for his curate. No, sir; all the people are
peers to each other; peers of the Republic;
and you might as well assert that because
every member of your House of Lords is the
peer of the others, that, therefore, they must all
be equally wise, rich, and noble; that there
can be no distinction between them; that the
idiot lawgiver must be held everywhere, and at
all times equal to the wisest; the poorest as rich
as the Marquis of Stafford; and that among
the nobles of England nothing but beastly familiarity
and rank vulgarism can possibly prevail
in their intercourse with each other.”
Mr. Barham discovered some little impatience
at this long harangue. He himself spoke very
quick, like a majority of his countrymen of the
same class; while the colonel, like most Americans,
delivered himself with great deliberation.
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The worthy Englishman had never been at
Washington to learn patience by attending the
debates in Congress; he yawned more than once
before he replied,—
“Well, you have made out a pretty strong
case. I think I could match it with a stronger
if there were time. You will excuse me, Colonel
Dangerfield, if I ask permission to retire;
but I cannot, I fear, excuse myself to this lady
for being accessory to keeping her listening so
long. Good night. I must be up betimes in
the morning, and will take my leave now; for
I have arranged to meet the steamboat at New
Madrid. I must be in New Orleans in a week,
at New York in a fortnight after, and in England
a month after that, or I shall lose my
chance of killing the first pheasant in the good
county of Kent. So good night, good night,
and thanks for your lecture and your hospitality.”
Thus they parted, and thus endeth the chapter
of equality. We feel, however, bound in
honour to apprize the curious reader that Mrs.
Judith Paddock never discovered whether the
curls of the stranger were natural or “everlasting,”
and he must be content to remain in condign
ignorance for the time to come. For we
grieve to say, it appears by the latest accounts
that Mr. Barham not long since lost his breath
on the Manchester railroad in an attempt to
travel at the rate of sixty miles an hour, and
never recovered it again.
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CHAPTER XII.
The best man of the village, and other matters.
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Nothing worthy of being handed down to
posterity occurred in the village of Dangerfieldville
until the expiration of some three weeks,
when Master Zeno Paddock received a packet
franked by the honourable Leonard Dangerfield,
and containing a printed copy of his maiden
speech in the House of Assembly. In the United
States, and more especially in the west, making
a speech is considered equivalent to gaining a
great victory by sea or land. It constitutes an
era in the life of a young man, and with great
reason; for in a free community, where there
are no standing armies of any kind, either soldiers
or police, sufficient to enforce obedience, the
power of persuasion is the supreme power, and
he who best wields it the true monarch. The
next day the Western Sun rose in all its glory; it
contained an account of the great debate on the
subject of the small ward collector's malversations,
which not only involved many important
constitutional principles, but incidentally
affected the liberties of the people, and not only
the people, but all their posterity.
On this great question, according to the Western
Sun, “the honourable Mr. Stapvital spoke
four hours, with an eloquence never surpassed
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in this or any other age; the honourable Mr.
Flamgudgeon followed on the other side, in a
speech of six hours, replete with argument and
profound investigation; he was answered by
the honourable Mr. Doddipol, who was on his
legs (or, as Zeno unfortunately had it, knees)
upwards of eight hours, and electrified the house
by a display of oratory which Cicero might
have envied, and Tully strove in vain to equal.
The honourable Mr. Flapdowdle took the floor
on the other side; and in a speech of three
days presented a bird's eye view of the state of
Europe, from the decline and fall of the Roman
empire to the decline and fall of Napoleon.
This occupied the first day. On the second he
talked about railroads, canals, internal (or, as
Zeno had it, infernal) improvements, the public
lands, state rights, and the tariff; and on the
third he discussed the subject of matters and
things in general. It was a most powerful
effort of eloquence. The speaker was observed
several times to hang down his head, as if overpowered
by the weight of argument; several
of the members nodded assent on various occasions;
and many serious accidents happened to
the little children, whose mothers and nurses
were so fascinated by Mr. Flapdowdle's eloquence,
that they forgot to go home and take
care of their domestic affairs. But when the
honourable Mr. Dangerfield arose, you might
hear the grass grow in the fields, there was such
a deathlike silence. He commenced by a solemn
exordium,” &c. &c. Here followed the
speech, which, indeed, was one that did the
young man great honour, and was only
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rendered almost ridiculous by the absurd praises
of Master Zeno Paddock, who manufactured a
whole column of fustian on the occasion.
On the adjournment of the legislature, which
happened immediately after the great debate
concerning the delinquency of the small ward
collector, Leonard Dangerfield returned home,
where he was received with affectionate pride
by his family, and with enthusiasm by the
people of the village, who decreed him the ovation
of a barbecue. The young man was struck
with the change which a few weeks had made
in the looks of his sister, and, above all, in
her deportment and temper. She was deadly
pale, and the charming roundness of her figure,
which had been fostered by the pure springs and
pure air of the Kentucky uplands, had given
place to a meager form, all lassitude and weakness.
The alteration had not struck the parents,
who saw her every day; but when Leonard
pointed it out to them, their fears were
greatly excited. A consultation was held, which
ended in a plan for a little family tour and voyage
on the Mississippi, which, it was hoped,
might give a new direction to her feelings, by
the change and variety of objects it would offer
to her contemplation. Virginia gave a listless
assent, and the thing was presently arranged.
The great Pompey, who grew grayer and
younger every day, and the little Pompey, now
a greater man than his ancestor, were to accompany
them. But Mr. Littlejohn, after divers
expressive yawns, decided, that as they would
want an active person to look round and take
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care of matters and things about the place, he
would stay at home.
It was now the early autumn, when our travellers
set forth on horseback to strike some point
of the Mississippi, whence they might embark
in one of the steamboats which now began to ply
regularly between St. Louis and New Orleans.
Their object in this land journey was to give
Virginia the benefit of the exercise it afforded.
In the short period that had intervened since
Colonel Dangerfield sought the wilderness,—
such are the rapid changes which the genius of
freedom, the parent of courage, energy, and generous
enterprise, produces in these regions—roads
had been made in various directions, and little
towns, destined in the imagination of the founders
one day to become the mart of half the
New World, had risen, or at least had been “laid
out,” as the phrase is, wherever a favourable
situation presented itself. Yet still, occasional
parts of the ride were through primeval forests,
the growth of the virgin earth, whose unexhausted
energies produced all the wonders of
spontaneous vegetation. If it should peradventure
ever happen to our book to be read by persons
unacquainted with the energies which seem
to be here communicated from the soil to its
lords, they will doubtless marvel at the phenomenon
of a young and delicate girl and an
elderly matron thus travelling after the manner
of the lady-errants of yore, on ambling palfrey,
through unpeopled solitudes. But we assure
them nothing is, or was a few years ago, more
common; and we ourselves were once acquainted
with a little fair-haired, blue-eyed western
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damsel that looked as delicate as a snowdrop,
who used to accompany her father, a senator of
the United States, to the seat of government,
and return with him (a distance of more than
seven hundred miles), on horseback.
In due time our travellers reached a little
town on the banks of the Mississippi—that
mighty river, with a name almost as long as its
interminable course—just in the nick of time to
get on board a steamboat on her way upwards.
As the vessel steered out from the shore into
the rash and boiling stream, whose force appeared
as if it might baffle all the powers physical
and intellectual of that sturdy little emmet
yclept man, it was sublime to see how at first
she trembled on being struck by the current,
and stood still, as if to collect her energies for
the great encounter of all that was consummate
in art with all that was tremendous in nature.
At first, it seemed doubtful which would gain
the victory, until, by degrees, the boat began to
ascend faster and faster, and dashed forward
with a triumphant vigour, which seemed to proclaim
that the power of art was irresistible. No
one, indeed, can behold the change which these
vessels are now silently bringing about in the
great region of the west, and resist the conclusion
that the genius of Fulton, whom the ungenerous
rivalry of England has sought to rob
of the glory of having consummated this noble
invention, has laid the foundation of greater
and more rapid changes in the New World than
the genius of Napoleon did in the Old.
The novelty of this mode of conveyance, and
the beauty of the scenery, which, after passing
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some distance up the river, opened before them,
gradually awakened Virginia from that feeling
of lassitude and hopeless indifference which had
by degrees usurped the dominion of her once
active, energetic mind. The long rich “bottom”
called Bois Brulé, which by the learned
Thebans of the broad-horns has been done into
English under the name of “Bob Ruly;” the
Cornice Rock, forming a regular massive wall
of perpendicular strata, and exhibiting all the
appearance of a long castellated rampart; the
High Tower, rearing itself out of the bosom of
the swift current in lonely grandeur; the farfamed
“Sycamore-root,” that spot infamous in
the logbooks of Mississippi navigators for the
wreck of many a stately broad-horn; the darting
of the boat across the river, from the swift
adverse current to the favourable eddy; the
manœuvring to avoid the snags and sawyers,
names of dangerous import; and a thousand
other novelties, all rapidly succeeding each
other, restored a temporary spring and cheerfulness
of heart, to which for some time she had
been a stranger.
When tired of the river, they went ashore at
the little towns on its banks, and stopped for
another boat, until finally they reached St.
Louis, which, standing near the point of junction
of two of the greatest rivers of the earth,
aspires with the claim of legitimacy to a future
eminence, of which the people seem to think
they can form no sufficient idea. Here all that
was old was French, and all that was new
American. It is the land of saints; St. Charles,
St. Louis, St. Genevieve, St. Francis, and many
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more; and the crosses of the churches mark
the abodes of the ancient faith. The residence
of the Frenchman was more picturesque in the
distance; its mud walls, neatly whitewashed,
appeared beautiful in the midst of rich meadows,
or on the borders of prairies adorned with harvests
of flowers, casting forth the perfumes of
a hundred Arabies. The Yankee, on the contrary,
follows his own fashion; and as it seems
the destiny of that revolutionary race to change
every thing wheresoever they go, our travellers
could easily detect the commencement of the
wonders they achieve in their incessant wanderings.
It is curious to reflect on the odd confusion
of names to be found in this and every other
portion of the United States. The early settlers
seem to have put in requisition the four
quarters of the world. St. Francis and Perry,
St. Charles and Monroe, St. Louis and Madison,
St. Genevieve and Jefferson, Hannibal and
Potosi, Belle Fontaine and Herculaneum, New
Madrid and Tywapatia, Palmyra and Bluffton,
Caledonia and Kaskaskias, Tiber and Waconda,
Pinkney and Grenville, Columbia and Cote sans
Dessein, not forgetting the Big Black Fork of
Little White River, and a thousand more, all
form a portion of the body politic of the state
of Missouri, and all he peaceably together side
by side. Some owe their existence here to the
attachments of men who came from far distant
countries; some to religious feelings; some to
classical recollections; some to a patriotic attachment
to distinguished names; some to
vanity; and some to caprice. The whole
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combination marks the association of people coming
from distant regions of the earth, and here perpetuating,
as far as possible, the country of their
fathers or the place of their nativity. The
names of a few of the great rivers may, perhaps,
serve to keep alive the recollection of the
first lords of the soil long after every other memorial
has passed away
One of the most novel as well as enchanting
scenes in nature is the prairie, or delta, extending
to a distance of many miles between the
two great rivers. It is for a considerable portion
of the year one sea of flowers, one wide
region of fragrance; and its features differ from
those of any other lands in any other country.
Not a tree is to be seen except upon its outer
edge, and the blue horizon meets it everywhere,
forming a long straight line, without the least
appearance of irregularity or undulation. As
you cast your eye over it, it is all one series of
deceptions. Sometimes, owing to a particular
state of the atmosphere, or the position of the
sun, distances and objects are increased or diminished
like the vagaries of the phantasmagoria;
things that are near will appear as if at
a great distance, and those at a distance at other
times seem as if you could almost touch them.
Now a bird will seem as if touching the sky
with its head, and anon the herds appear like
an assemblage of insects. One day it was proposed
to Virginia to make an excursion to St.
Charles, and visit at the same time the Mamelles,
as the French have aptly called them,—
a succession of fine regular bluffs of great height,
and commanding a full view of the beautiful
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scenery in the vicinity, after which they were to
return to a little old picturesque French village,
there to sojourn awhile if they should find comfortable
accommodations. They passed a delightful
morning in rambling among the endless
variety of flowers, or on the summits of the
Mamelles, whence they could distinguish the
two vast streams which here unite in a spot
worthy of them both. Nothing could be more
beautiful to the eye, nothing more ennobling to
the imagination, which carried them to the distance
of thousands of miles, to the remote and
almost unknown, unvisited regions whence
they receive their first tribute from some nameless
spring in some nameless mountain recess
or hidden forest. After banqueting on the
scene till almost satiated with its redundant
beauties, they rode over to the French village,
where they found tolerable accommodations at
the house of a little old Frenchman, like all his
gallant nation, good-humoured, polite, and devoted
to the ladies.
But he did not like the Yankees, by which
term he designated the Americans in general.
They had begun terrible inroads upon the old
customs of the village, and to make the dust of
antiquity, which had been quietly gathering
there for two centuries, fly at a great rate.
“They are commencing their pestilential improvements,”
said he, “and one has nothing to
do now but to work all day to be only as comfortable
as we used to be without working at
all. When I first came here, one had only to
apply to the governor, and he gave him as much
land as he could cultivate, without slaving
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himself to death, for the price of a small fee to his
secretary. Now Congress makes everybody pay
for it, and in a little while the Yankees make
it worth so much that it is enough to ruin a
man to buy it. In fact, they increase the price
of every thing, and I myself have been obliged
to descend to the honour of entertaining the ladies
at my house, in order to keep up with the
march of improvement, as they call it. Diable,
monsieur! the Yankees are so busy, they have
no time to go to church except on Sunday, and
instead of hearing the bells ring so charmingly
from morning to night, as they used to do here
when the people had nothing to do but pray
and dance, parbleu! these heretics eat fish, I
believe, every day when they can get them, except
in Lent. Ah! monsieur, the old French
regime—the old Spanish regime much more
charming. Ah! so easy, so—what you call?—
ah! yes, so lazy as the Yankees say. No gentleman,
no noblesse, no aristocracy now. Eh
bien! never mind — can't be helped. Malbrook
son—” and he skipped off, humming the
old French air with right good will.
Having performed his vocation, whatever it
was, he returned, just as a tall, raw-boned, athletic
fellow was standing opposite the window
of the hotel, pronouncing himself to be half
horse, half alligator, and a little of the snapping-turtle;
and affirming, with a few original
oaths peculiar to this latitude, that he could
whip his weight in wild cats, there being no
back out in him or any of his breed. He was
all the way from Roaring River, and had once
rode through a crab-apple orchard on a flash of
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lightning, besides performing several other remarkable
feats too tedious to mention.
“Pray, monsieur, who is that valiant person?”
asked Colonel Dangerfield.
“Ah! that is the best man in the village.
Diable! under the French and Spanish regime,
the good priest was the best man; now this
half horse, half alligator is the best. Voilà,
monsieur! he goes about, he challenges everybody,
he whips everybody, and then, diable!
he calls himself the best man in the village!
Hey, begar! this is one way of being good, I
think. 'Tis what they call one Yankee notion,
I suppose.”
The best man in the village was, in fact, a
sort of George-a-Green, a Pinder of Wakefield,
the champion of the community, the glass of
fashion, the director of public opinion among
his fellow-boatmen, and a sort of privileged outlaw
who played all sorts of pranks with a prescriptive
impunity originating in that involuntary
respect which is everywhere paid among
the common people to strength and courage
combined. Yet he was not ill-natured nor
blood-thirsty, but was actuated by a false taste
rather than a bad heart. Such men mark the
existence of a state of society in which the
physical and pugnacious qualities predominate
over the intellectual; and their disappearance,
like that of the buffalo and beaver, is a sure
sign that civilization is at hand. In the van
of life, where every step and every station is
beset with dangers from the wild beast and the
wild man, courage is the quality of all others
most in request; and it is not to be wondered
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at if the disposition to do battle should become
chronic, and subsist long after the necessity has
ceased. The best man of the village would
have been a treasure surrounded by dangers;
he was little better than a nuisance in a civilized
community.
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CHAPTER XIII.
A philosopher in rags.
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The little village in which our travellers sojourned,
was one of those old establishments
which seem destined never to grow any larger.
It was inhabited by a mild, amiable race—the
descendants of the early French emigrants, of
whose character it is sufficient to say that they
were the only people that ever gained the
affections and confidence of the wild aboriginal
race of North America. It was a
primitive Catholic settlement; and whether it
is owing to the number of saints' days and
holydays in this ancient and venerable code,
or from any other cause, we have heard it
observed, that in the old countries the people
of this persuasion are, in general, not so active
and industrious as those of many others. Perhaps
the vast number of charitable institutions
connected with this church in almost
every country, and the custom of distributing
alms, or food, on particular days, to all comers,
by relieving the poor from the necessity of exertion,
may contribute not a little to the effect
which we have noticed. There was a little
church, the bell of which seemed never quiet,
and the only busy man in the village was the
bell-ringer. Other than this, there was little or
nothing to disturb the repose of the good people,
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who had long lived, and might have long lived
in contented simplicity, had not the transfer of
the vast region of Louisiana, the only empire
ever acquired without the expense of a drop of
blood, paved the way for the intrusion of those
“cochon Yankees,” as the old French landlord
called them in his sleeve, who straightway
began, as usual, to turn every thing upside
down. By their pestilent activity they rendered
it absolutely necessary that everybody should
be as stirring as themselves, in order to keep
pace with the progress of the new comers; for
though an indolent community may do very
well by itself, the moment it comes in contact
or in rivalry with one that is active and industrious,
it must go the way of all flesh, or accommodate
itself to the circumstances of the
times, and exert all its energies to prevent falling
far in the rear of the rest of the world.
“Ah! monsieur,” said the landlord, an old
remnant of the ancient régime: “Ah! monsieur,
the Yankee are one great people, but
then she always so busy, busy, busy, morning,
noon, and night. Diable! she don't give himselves
time to say their prayers, I think. She
come here among us, and she must ave new
road: very well, the road is make at last.
Eh bien! then she must ave a canal right long
side of him, and everybody must give money
for him. Very good, then we shall ave new
streets, a new court-house, a new market, and
a new church. So she come round for more
money for that. Then she goes on, busy, busy,
busy, never satisfied, more work, more money,
and all for the dem publique good. Diable! I
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wonder what the publique ever do for me that I
shall work for him if he was the king himself?
Well, monsieur, we ave got new road, new
canal, new court house, new market, and new
church; and now I say to myself, ha, hah! I
think she must ave satisfaccion at last. Phew!
no such thing; she must ave town meeting to
choose the police; then she must ave town
meeting to choose the legislator; then she
must ave town meeting to send the president and
his bureau all to le diable, for something I don't
know. Eh bien! all this done, I say ha hah!
I shall dance and sing now a leetle. Phew!
Morbleu, no such thing. Next time all this to
do over again. The government machine out
of order, she say, and must set it right again.
So we go, year after year, making the grande
improvement, and mending the government;
and we Frenchmen, bongre, malgre, must do
every thing de haute lutte, when we had much
rather do nothing at all. Peste! that I shall
be condemned to live in one dem country,
always in want of improvement, under a government
that always want mending. What
you call? Ah! the dem self-government more
trouble than she is worth, I think. For my
part, monsieur, I like somebody shall take it off
my hands, and let me dance a leetle some time.
Voilá! yonder comes one great politician, one
grand tariff man, as she call himself.”
Such was the harangue of mine host to Leonard
Dangerfield, as they sat on the little piazza
of the hotel in social chit-chat during the
absence of the rest of the family, who had
taken a walk to see the ancient church, which
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was now open, and the bell ringing, as usual,
most musically melancholy. The interruption
was occasioned by the approach of one of those
wandering vagabonds not unfrequently seen
haunting the precincts of village taverns. He
came up, and planting his stick on the ground,
crossed his arms in rest, and remained looking
at them in silence, as if waiting to be noticed.
At first Leonard took him for one of those pestilent
outlaws who, having wasted their substance
at the tavern, ever afterwards assume
the privilege of hanging about the doors, and
abusing the landlord for not trusting them, now
that their money is all spent. If wars answer
any good purpose, it is doubtless in ridding the
country of these worthless excrescences, who
seldom fail to get swept off by recruiting parties
in their progress through the villages. They
hardly ever return, being excellent food for
powder; and if spared by arms, generally fall
victims to their former vices in the end.
His dress displayed innumerable incongruities,
being composed, or rather decomposed, of
the remnants of many fragments of finery, preposterously
disposed about his person. His
coat had been once military, the rusty buttons
bearing the vestiges of our national symbols,
the soaring eagle and the thirteen stars; his
waistcoat was of embroidered satin, with oldfashioned
flaps, such as might have once appertained
to a player; his trousers of homespun
tow linen, and his shoes, but of these
little remained, for his wanderings had left his
feet almost bare. On his head he wore an old
cocked hat, ornamented by a wreath of
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evergreens and faded flowers, and something like a
star of tin was fastened on the breast of his
coat. The landlord accounted for his military
costume by the circumstance of his having exchanged
his former clothes with a worthless
discharged soldier, who had cheated him. The
features of the peripatetic, though haggard,
squalid, dirty, and almost hidden by an enormous
bushy beard, still wore the remains of an aspect
of some interest; and his black eyes,
though sunk deep in his head, sparkled with a
restless animation, indicating an active or a
troubled mind.
The worthy host affected to take no notice
of the intruder, and continued to discuss the
various subjects of war, commerce, agriculture,
manufactures, matters which every man within
the limits of these United States understands,
at least as well as the mother that bore him.
They were, however, interrupted from time to
time by the man of rags, who, without raising
his chin from his crossed arms, or his arms
from his stick, now and then made a strange
random observation, as he seemed to catch and
comprehend a portion of the conversation between
Leonard and mine host. Thus, on hearing
the words domestic manufactures, he
chuckled forth an odd dry laugh, and pointing
to his trousers, exclaimed, in a hoarse hollow
voice, which indicated that he was labouring
under a severe cold,—
“Look! I am a great advocate for domestic
manufactures; a black spider spun and wove
these; they were stitched with the needle of a
compass that pointed nine ways from Sunday.
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[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]
Don't you see every stitch squints a different
way?”
Just then a mosquito settled on his hand,
which he caught, and squeezing the blood out
of his body—
“Good! mosquitoes are your true insect soldiers;
they live by blood. Huzza! boys, I
shall conquer the whole nation one of these
odd-come-shorts, and make every gallinipper a
field-marshal.”
Then, approaching nearer, he asked the landlord,
“if he could tell him the reason why cats
washed their hands with their tongues, and ran
after their tails.” On his replying in the negative,
the ragged Theban exclaimed most contemptuously—
“Tut! then go and twist your gray beard
into a rope, and hang yourself on a sugar-cane,
as I mean to do as soon as mine grows long
enough. You see I am nursing it, daddy. I
sleep all night in the fields with my face up to
the moon; they say it turns fish rotten, and
men's brains upside down; but I don't believe a
word of it, or I should have been mad long ago,
instead of being a philosopher. But what was
I saying? O! I sleep with my face turned up
to the moon: they say it's made of green cheese,
but I doubt that, for it would have been about
my ears long ago in a shower of skippers.
You'd be surprised at the queer things I see up
in the stars there, sometimes, when every one
is asleep; some think they govern men, but for
my part I go by the moon when it shines, and
when it goes down I strike fire with two Irish
potatoes, and study philosophy till my eyes turn
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[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]
into dark lanterns, and will-of-the-wisp leads
me into the mire. He was a blind dancingmaster
once.”
“Don't pester the gentleman with your nonsense,
but go about your business; go to sleep,
that is the best thing you can do.”
“Sleep! Landlord, did you ever see a goose
stand sentry on one leg, to keep itself awake?
that is your true reason: a philosopher must
have a reason for every thing. Do you know
why a goose always stands on her left, and a
gander on his right leg?”
“Diable! not I,” answered mine host, petulantly.
“Then how dare you talk to a philosopher,
most ignorant publican, and justly classed with
sinners? I saw your fate in Mercury last
night; you'll be hanged for feloniously robbing
a cask of your own whiskey, and filling it up
with water.”
“I believe you've got too much whiskey in
your head; you are in love with whiskey I'm
afraid,” said the other.
“Love! What do such pieces of old wormeaten
parchment as you know of love? I was
in love once myself before I turned astronomer,
and was bubbled by the moon out of the
sixpenny worth of wits my father left me for
an inheritance.” He put his hand to his forehead,
as if to recall something.
“I have it. I remember it was the year behind
the flood, before the grass grew, or swallows
built their nests in young men's whiskers,
or cows fed in the churchyards, or sextons
laughed in their sleeves when other people
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[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]
were crying. I forget her name—I forget her
name, though it used to be music to me. But
it's no great matter now; for if we had married,
I should certainly have killed her with kindness,
and then I should have howled for it.
They said I should marry her when I lost my
wits; but I valued them too highly, and stuck
to them like death to an old negro. But, would
you think it? she fell in love with a wigblock
in a barber's window, and left me, because,
as I afterwards heard, the story went I lost my
wits in searching out a way to be married without
losing my soul for it. But here is the whole
story in black and white. I wrote it one night
in the churchyard. Read it, read it; it will
make you laugh ready to split your sides. You
can give it me again in the churchyard, where
I walk every clear night, and study the lying
epitaphs. It makes me laugh—ha, ha, ha! it
makes me laugh to think how easy it is to be a
good man on a tombstone!” Saying this, he
handed an old soiled paper to Leonard, who had
been musing in painful perplexity at his disjointed
chat, and went away as merry as madness
could make him.
As Leonard Dangerfield listened to the wanderings
of the poor itinerant, and scanned more
attentively his appearance and manner, he felt
a vague, dreamy sort of impression that somewhere,
and at some time or other, he had seen
him before. He fancied he could perceive
something about him indicating that he was
one who had seen better days. It is difficult to
define what it was, but, in the language of romance,
it was that mysterious something of
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which neither rags, poverty, nor desolation of
heart can strip a being whose mind has once
been embellished with the graces of intellectual
refinement. He held the paper in his hand
while he questioned the landlord, who informed
him that the poor creature had first made his
appearance in the village about a fortnight before,
pretty much in the state he was now. He
seemed perfectly harmless, and found little difficulty
in obtaining of the charitable a sufficiency
to supply the necessities of hunger. He
had either forgotten his name, or designedly
kept it a secret; for he would not disclose
either that or the place whence he came. He
never accepted of a bed for the night; but
when the weather was fair slept, as he said, at
the sign of the moon and seven stars; and when
it was foul, he would not tell where. As the
landlord finished these details, Dangerfield accidentally
turned his eye on the paper which
he had continued to hold in his hand. He
started, and uttered an exclamation of painful
surprise; for it was an old letter in his own
handwriting, directed to Dudley Rainsford, and
which he had written him on receiving the information
of his having saved the life of Virginia.
“Good God!” exclaimed he; “can it be possible
that I should not have known him!”
“Known whom?” asked the landlord, inquisitively.
The question brought him to his recollection,
and mine host being called away, he was left a
few moments alone to consider of the course to
be pursued in this delicate emergency. The
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result was a determination to keep the matter
a secret from Virginia, while he sought an interview
with the wandering beggar, whom he
contemplated placing in some asylum where he
would be kindly treated, and where his sister
might never have an opportunity of having her
feelings harrowed up by witnessing his miserable
plight. He had scarcely settled this in
his mind when the party returned. Virginia
seemed in better spirits than she had been for a
long time; she described the incidents of their
walk, the church, the altar, the pious pictures
painted by artists more remarkable for their orthodoxy
than their skill, and the various little
peculiarities that so strikingly mark the difference
between the forms of the Catholic and
those of the religion in which she had been
brought up, with a degree of spirit and vivacity
which caused her parents to exchange glances
of encouraging sympathy. But the anxiety of
Leonard prevented his partaking in these newlyawakened
hopes; for he felt a presentiment
that there was in store for the poor girl a trial
more severe than any she had yet endured.
Virginia noticed this, and rallied him, but ineffectually.
He took the earliest opportunity to
walk out in search of the wandering mendicant.
But he was nowhere to be found, and he returned
with a determination to urge their departure
early in the morning. His plan was to
forget his pocket-book, or something of value,
that might furnish a pretext for his returning
immediately and resuming his search for Rainsford,
which he resolved to prosecute until all
hope of discovery was lost.
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CHAPTER XIV.
A criticism on epitaphs.
[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]
Though it was now hazy autumn, yet the
air in this mild climate was quite genial at
times, and the calm silence of the night in this
orderly little village invited to contemplation
as well as repose. The chamber of Virginia
looked into the churchyard of the little ancient
edifice, where reposed the ashes of the generations
that had passed away. The region of the
narrow house was marked by those expressive
little hillocks whose ominous size and shape
give token of the uses to which they are appropriated.
Nature, as if abhorring the very idea
of extinction, seldom, if ever, forms any thing
like a grave; and go where we will, in the
churchyard, the forest, or the field, we can tell
almost instinctively the spot where repose the
last remnants of mortality from all others.
Most of the graves were marked by a white
cross, the emblem of an ancient and respectable
faith; and a few distinguished by tombstones
of snowy marble, standing like sheeted
ghosts of dignity and distinction amid the lowly
plebeian race around them, affording significant
indications that pride as well as hope
looks beyond the grave. The little gray church,
unspoiled by paint, had an air of dignity derived
from its antique form and simple
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plainness, which well harmonized with the pious
ends to which it had been so long consecrated.
It called not up ideas of pride, or wealth, or
arrogance, but of primitive simplicity, dignified
poverty, and lowly humility, which better, far
better than all the vulgar trappings of decoration,
all the titles of ecclesiastical aristocracy,
accord with the vocation of those whose highest,
most endearing title is that of a shepherd,
whose most dignified employment that of tending
their flocks.
The night had been some time on the track
of morning as Virginia sat contemplating the
scene before her, and occasionally soaring into
the regions of the past or the future, as memory
or imagination took the reins. The waning
moon, “like sky-hung Indian bow,” was fast
sinking towards the western horizon, and the
long shadows began to be more and more indistinct.
Beyond the church she had a full view
of the river, across which a single line of light
threw its long narrow radiance, looking like a
silver bridge athwart some fabled tide, for the
nymphs and river-gods to enact their nightly
sports, or bask in the rays of the regent of the
starry empire.
Presently her attention was attracted by the
appearance of a figure bounding from the little
porch of the church, and bending its steps
among the quiet people; now stopping as if to
read the inscriptions; now hurrying from one
to another, and anon throwing itself full length
on a grave. The moon now sank behind the
Mamelles, and in the starry light she could not
distinguish whether it was man or woman;
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but that it was something human she was sure,
for the indistinct murmurings of a human voice
fell faintly on her ear at intervals. After remaining
quiet on the bed of death, it started up
on a sudden, and seemed to be employed in digging
with its hands. Virginia was happily ignorant
of the refinements of a highly-cultivated
state of society, one of the indications of which
is the existence of a race of wretches who violate
the sanctity of the tomb, and bring about
an untimely resurrection of those sacred remains
which savages revere, and none but
Christians violate. Yet still she shuddered
with a vague horror at the midnight occupation
of the figure, which, after continuing awhile
apparently scratching up the earth, all of a sudden
ceased, on hearing the faint sound of oars
proceeding from a boat coming down the river,
and sought concealment in the place from
whence it had emerged. Curiosity retained
her at the window some time longer, but, seeing
it did not return, she sought her pillow;
and it was not till the first crowing of the cock
that the gentle visitant of night poured the blessing
of oblivion on her pillow.
She arose in the morning pale and languid,
and answered the inquiries of her friends by
relating what she had seen during the night.
Various were the conjectures of the parents, but
Leonard said nothing. He had his suspicions,
but wisely kept them to himself, as every discreet
man should. The honest landlord, however,
soon set them all to rights. It was a
ghost, which had appeared at about the same
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hour for ten or twelve nights in succession, to
the great consternation of the village.
“But Father Jacques will be here to-morrow,”
said he, “and soon settle his business.”
“Why don't you set a watch, and find out
who or what it is?” asked Colonel Dangerfield.
“Why, monsieur, we did; but somehow or
other, just before the time it generally comes
they all got so sleepy they couldn't keep their
eyes open; and as they couldn't well watch
with them shut, you know, monsieur, they
thought they might as well go home and sleep
quietly in their beds.”
“A very judicious decision, certainly. But
didn't the Yankee curiosity induce some of
them to see it out?”
“O no, monsieur; the Yankees don't believe
in any thing, I think. They doubt the divine
right of the king and the infallibility of the pope.
Diable! I was wrong; they do believe in roads,
canals, and the blessings of liberty.”
The appearance of the ghost made Leonard
Dangerfield more anxious than ever to leave
the village, and he pressed it with such earnestness,
that Virginia could not help asking,—
“Why, Leonard, what has come over you?
I never saw you in a fidget before. I do believe
you are frightened at the prospect of a
visit from the ghost.”
“Perhaps I am,” said he, with a sad sort of
smile.
“Well, for my part, I have not seen a place
since we left home I like so well as this little,
odd, old-fashioned village; it is so quiet and so
idle, that I feel infected with a delightful
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inclination to stay here and do nothing all the rest
of my life.”
But Leonard urged their departure so strenuously,
and gave so many good reasons that
were good for nothing, that it was at length
settled to leave the village immediately after
breakfast. Accordingly, after receiving the compliments
of mine host, who declared to Mrs.
Dangerfield he was much puzzled to tell the
mother from the daughter; and to Virginia,
laying his hand on his heart, that he was in
despair at her going; they set out on their return
to St. Louis. Immediately on their arrival,
Leonard discovered the loss of his pocketbook,
and declared the necessity of returning to
look for it. Virginia laughed, which she had
seldom done of late.
“Well, I declare I'm almost glad of it. Never
let me hear you again scold me for dropping a
handkerchief, or tell me to my face that one
quarter of my life has been spent in looking for
lost keys. If you do, I shall certainly quote the
incident of the pocket-book. Shall I lend you
some money to pay your expenses? Poor
man!”
“Some young men would be willing to lose
their pocket-books for such a smile as that,”
said Leonard, gayly.
This speech turned the current of her thoughts
into their accustomed channel, and checked her
vivacity in a moment. She thought of who it
was that once valued her smiles, and soon became
lost in a labyrinth of doubts and anxieties
as to what had become of him. The stream
that has been diverted from its course by
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artificial means returns with accelerated force to
its wonted channel, carrying all before it, and
deepening its bed.
Leonard Dangerfield lost no time in returning
to the village, where he found his pocketbook
without difficulty, but did not find poor
Rainsford, who, except when compelled by
hunger, never appeared; for it seemed he had
some secret haunt which no one had discovered,
or indeed thought worth seeking. His
hopes now rested on the night, and he stationed
himself at a window which commanded a view
of the churchyard, with a resolution to watch
as ong as he could keep himself awake. It
was after midnight, and the silence of death
reigned in the village, when he saw something
moving about among the tombstones and
graves with little white crosses. Determined
at once to satisfy his doubts as to the nature
of this mystery, he sallied forth and cautiously
entered the churchyard, where,shrouded among
the high grass he at length discovered the object
of his search, lying with his face upwards,
as he had described himself in his interview
with the landlord.
“Rainsford! Rainsford!” said Leonard, in a
gentle tone.
“Whose ghost are you?” exclaimed he, bounding
on his feet; “if you're a lawyer, here's
your fee; if a doctor, you must demand it of
the good folks hereabouts. You'll find all your
patients here.”
“Don't talk so madly, Rainsford; you know
who I am well enough.”
“Yes, I know you; you're the preacher that
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gave me such a knock on the head with his
Bible that I had nothing but texts in it for a
month. But you needn't come here, for these
people never subscribe to build churches, or
print tracts. Let the old worm-eaten trunks
alone, can't you.”
“Come with me, Rainsford, come into the
house and they will give you a comfortable bed,
come.”
“Pooh! don't you see I am digging my grave?
when I've done it I shall come and bury myself
slyly, for fear of the doctors. You must know,
old black coat, this is consecrated ground, and
your true orthodox worm won't eat a heretic.
So I shall be safe enough, like a mole, if I only
once get under ground.”
“Rainsford, dear Rainsford! come with me.”
“How often must I tell you my name is not
Rainsford? that is the name of a race that all
ran mad. Now I, sir, Mr. Snortgrace I mean,
I am as much in my senses as the man in the
moon himself. Come, come, sit down here,
and we'll have a talk; a little piece of secret
biography, for there's nobody to blab here.”
He drew Leonard towards a grave, who, being
determined to humour him, sat down by his
side.
“Yes, here, here—no, here on this grave—
there's one below that broke his mother's heart,
and yet he escaped hanging, and got an excellent
epitaph. I wonder if the worms have any
stomach for such rascals. Just here is another
pretty boy that was hanged for murder,
yet they gave him a public funeral, and made
a saint of him afterwards. And here's a
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precious fellow, who went about begging money
for a poor widow, and then pocketed the whole
on pretence that her dead husband owed him
money. Yet he got a funeral sermon, and was
buried with the honours of war.”
Leonard again urged him to go into the
house, for the morning air was becoming raw
and cold, and the white fogs were rising lazily
from the river, with fever and agues on their
wings.
“What!” cried he, “are you afraid of your
precious bones? My bones are of steel, and
my heart is flint, and so when I feel cold I've
nothing to do but strike fire with them and
warm myself. Don't you think that an economical
way of making fire, old Snortgrace? I'll
not stir a peg; go to bed yourself, if you had
rather sleep than talk reason. If you'd only
stay I'd tell you why one star is bigger than
another. I am in jolly company, and see how
gloriously my drawing-room is lighted. No
wonder your ghosts of any taste love to walk
by moonlight.”
Just then a cloud darkened the low waning
moon.
“Ay, ay, my lady! you may well hide your
face. I'll swear there is something villanous
going on in the world just now; and you
turn your back, like a watchman, that you
may pretend not to see it. Some plunderer is
abroad; adultery and seduction is going on
somewhere; or else—yes, that must be it;
some murderer is lifting his knife to send some
one to kingdom-come before his time. I'll tell
you what, Snortgrace, if there is any part of
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the day that is irretrievably d—d, it must be
from midnight to daylight.”
Here he fumbled about very busily for a few
moments, paying no attention to the persuasions
and remonstrances of Dangerfield.
“I wish I could find it.”
“What?” said the other.
“It is erected to the glorious memory of a
fellow that cheated his orphan sisters out of
fifty thousand dollars, and tried to cheat heaven
by making it an accomplice, and building
a church with part of the money. It would
surprise you to read what a good man he was
for all that; he built this church with part of
his sisters' portion. They lie somewhere yonder,
without a memorial; but I've an idea they
don't howl quite so musically as some folks.
See! the business is done,” continued he, as the
moon emerged from the cloud; “there's some
poor damsel the worse for the last half hour;
or what's just as likely, there's hot blood smoking
on some knife that will be used to cut bread
with next Sunday.”
Leonard was becoming chilled with cold,
and impatient withal at this rambling folly, and
asked him,
“Will you go home with me, for the last
time?”
“No, I scorn to accept bed or board from any
man. I am a fellow of clear estate, and pay
my way as I go. I owe nobody a shilling, and
here I mean to sleep till doomsday, which is the
day before to-morrow, according to last years'
almanac—hic jacet—look here—here I am,”
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and he threw himself, or rather sunk down on
the ground: “Here, between two capital fellows;
on one side is a lawyer, who never exerted
himself but in a bad cause; and on the
other a client, who was ruined by gaining a
lawsuit. Worshipful company! Good night,
Snortgrace, I must to my studies, now I think
of it, and not lie idle here. There's a learned
mouse discussing the folios, yonder; I must go
and assist him, for some passages are a little
too hard for his teeth. Good day, good day,
old Snortgrace.”
He attempted to rise, but the stiffness occasioned
by the chill of the night, added to the
exhaustion of his frame by abstinence the whole
day, and violent declamations during the preceding
interview, had so worn him out that he
sunk down again, and became perfectly silent.
On attempting to raise him, Dangerfield found
his limbs were entirely relaxed, and that
he had become insensible. He exerted his
strength, lifted his light emaciated body from
the ground, and bore him into the house, where
he laid him on his own bed, and roused the
landlord to his assistance. By degrees he recovered
his animation, but his pulse was high,
his skin burnt like fire, and a physician being
sent for in the morning, pronounced him in a
high fever.
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CHAPTER XV.
Showing how one enemy drives away another.
[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]
The situation of Rainsford caused great perplexity
to Leonard Dangerfield. He could not
think of leaving him until all was decided, and
his stay would occasion anxiety to his family,
unless he accounted for his absence. How to
do this he did not know; and in the mean
time the patient grew worse. The delirium of
fever seemed to have superseded the derangement
under which he had previously laboured;
and his incoherent talk assumed a new character
and direction. His exclamations were rather
plaintive than otherwise, and his wild wanderings
seemed to have finally settled down
into one leading impression, that of a lover deserted
by his faithless mistress. Leonard had
caused him to undergo a lustration, and clothed
him decently from the wardrobe of the worthy
landlord, who good naturedly acquiesced, while
he shrugged his shoulders, and looked his wonder
that so much care should be taken of a mad
beggar.
The second day of Rainsford's illness Leonard
was most disagreeably surprised by the arrival
of the rest of the party, who came to see
what had become of him.
“We thought you had lost yourself instead
of finding your pocket-book,” said Virginia,
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gayly. “But what under the sun keeps you
here, Leonard? and why did you not write or
send?”
Leonard was taken by surprise; he had no
excuse or explanation ready; and his hesitation
appeared so plain, that like a discreet sister she
looked her wonder, and said nothing. What
a pity Mrs. Judith Paddock had not been there
to profit by her example!
The young man took the earliest opportunity
of apprizing his parents of the discovery and
situation of Rainsford; and various were the
plans proposed and rejected for the purpose of
getting Virginia away from this dangerous vicinity
without exciting her suspicions. But
while this consultation was going on, accident
had saved them the trouble of devising schemes
of concealment. Virginia having been certified
that the room she had formerly occupied was
vacant, and in the situation she left it, had
retired thither with her waiting-maid, a little
ebony damsel, of whose attendance we have
hitherto said nothing, presuming it was not
necessary to advertise the reader that our heroine
had actually such an appendage. While
sitting there, her attention was caught by a
voice in the next room, which made her start
and shudder. It was one she imagined familiar
to her ear, dear, still dear to her heart, and it
uttered strange incoherent rhapsodies that bespoke
a disordered mind. She listened again,
but all was silent; and she imagined herself
mistaken. But again its incoherent ravings, or
rather moanings, met her ear so distinctly, that
she could no longer doubt.
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“Hark! what dat? who dat, missee?” cried
the maid, fearfully.
Virginia did not answer; an irresistible impulse
came over her; she started up, rushed
to the place whence the voice proceeded; and,
careless at this moment of all considerations
but one, opened the door, and entered the sick
man's room. The quick ear of affection had
recognised the voice, and the quick eye of affection
at the first glance distinguished the altered
features of the poor wanderer. But he did not
know her. He lay on his back on the pillow,
with his eyes glaring upwards on vacancy, and
his lips moving as if unconsciously, sometimes
uttering disjointed talk, at others without producing
any sounds save low, inarticulate whispers.
Virginia neither shrieked, nor wept, nor
fainted; she stood like an image of despair
gazing on the flushed face, glazed eye, and haggard
features of the poor invalid, without uttering
a word, or stirring a finger. At length, he
seemed to notice her, and, waving his hand,
said, in his usual plaintive voice,—
“Go away, go away; I don't want to have
any thing more to say to you. What's your
name? ah! old Virginia. I was willing to lose
my soul for your sake, and you repaid me by
breaking my heart. Go away; there's no use
in plaguing me any more.”
“Rainsford—Dudley Rainsford—don't you
know me?” at length she said, in a voice which
might have cast out seven raging fiends.
“O yes, I know you of old; once I might
have loved such a deceitful face and sweet
voice, but I hate all women now; they have
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been the plague of my life. One of them
brought me into the world to be miserable, and
another sent me out of it howling.”
Virginia covered her face and wept; for the
sound of his voice seemed to unlock the springs
of grief that before were closed.
“Ay, ay, you may well weep; but what does
that signify? The rain is of no use in the desert
where nothing will grow; and I have heard
of a cruel, deceitful animal—I forget its name,
but I believe it's woman—that always sheds
tears when it is going to tear its victim to
pieces. Yes, yes, yes—” and here he began
again his low, indistinct, disjointed cogitations.
This painful scene was interrupted by the
entrance of Mrs. Dangerfield, who had gone
into Virginia's room, and, not finding her there,
sought her where she was to be found. Without
uttering a word to disturb the invalid, she
took her hand, looked in her face with an eye
of anxious, affectionate authority, and led her
out of the room, without being observed by
Rainsford.
The moment they were in private the mother
besought, nay, commanded the daughter to accompany
her immediately to St. Louis, and
spare herself the unnecessary pain of being
present, or so near him, at the period now fast
approaching when Rainsford's sufferings were
about to be brought to a close. She could be
of no service, and would only be laying up
recollections that would for ever blast her happiness
and destroy the repose she might yet
attain. The physician, she stated, had already
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pronounced his doom; all human aid was vain,
and he must die.
“Then let me stay here and pray for him,
dear mother,” said Virginia.
“You can do that as effectually absent as
present.”
“But why cannot I wait on him, sit by his
bedside, and see that nothing, nothing that human
care, that human aid, that affection and
gratitude can perform to sooth his last hours
is wanting?”
“My dear daughter, recollect you are not Mr.
Rainsford's wife.”
“True, mother; but if not here, we shall be
united hereafter. I know the forms of the world
forbid such things; but here, in this remote region,
among strangers whom I shall never see
again, and who will never see me; in the presence
of you, my father, and Leonard, if sanctioned
by your consent, who shall dare to say
that in such a situation, and under such circumstances,
I should do wrong to obey the impulse
of my heart and my reason? Mother, dear
mother, I must see him, I must be with him
when he dies.”
“Good heavens! Virginia, why?”
“I have heard that when Providence takes
to itself an immortal soul, just when the light
is to be extinguished for ever in this world,
the reason, which has been obscured or shattered
by sickness and suffering, is almost always
restored for a little while before the final separation.
I must be with him then. I conjure
you, as you value my peace, my life, to let me
be with him then, that he may know I did not
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[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]
desert him in his last hour, and forgive, and
call me once more his dear Virginia. The
recollection of that will be something to dwell
upon, and I shall remember him, not as a wayward,
wandering maniac, but a kind, rational,
dear friend, whose last look recognised, whose
last word blessed me. Wilt thou oblige me,
dear mother?”
“Your weak state of health and tenderness
of heart, my daughter, will sink under such a
trial. I dare not trust you.”
“Mother, none better know than you, for
your own life has proved it so, that neither
strength, nor youth, nor nerves, nor sinews, no:
even Samson himself, though he bore the city
gates upon his shoulders, is half so strong, so
enduring as true affection. The weakest woman,
animated by this, can encounter fatigues,
loss of rest, absence of food, yes, every privation
of life, with a faith and perseverance to which
men can never arrive. For her husband or her
offspring she is invincible so long as hope is
kept alive in her heart.”
“But what hope can you have, my daughter?
The doctor says there is nothing to hope.”
“Nothing from the doctor; but there is a
greater than he, and we know not yet his decision.
Mother, hear me! I know not how, or
when, or whence it came, but I have a conviction—
no, not a conviction, but a hope, which
almost approaches it—that the crisis is close at
hand, and that this fever is destined to produce
a great change in the mind of poor Rainsford.
It may be folly, it may be fanaticism; but I feel
as if I could save him, and I alone. My
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[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]
cares, my affection, my ever-watchful superintendence,
aided by the blessing of Heaven, shall
yet restore him to his better self, and make him,
what he was intended to be, a bright example
of genius and virtue.”
“But if at last you are disappointed?”
“If so, so be it. If after doing all I can,
and fulfilling what I consider a solemn duty
dear to my reason and my affection for him
who not only saved my life, but who would
have devoted his own life to me had it been
permitted; should it please Heaven that I am
disappointed at last, you shall then see me
bear myself as becomes the daughter of such a
mother. My conscience will then be at peace,
and I have read that we can bear up against
any feeling but that of remorse.”
“My noble girl!” cried Mrs. Dangerfield,
clasping Virginia in her arms, “you shall be
gratified. I too will watch, all of us will watch
by turns or together; and may the hope you
cherish be prophetic!”
From this period the character of Virginia
assumed an almost sublime elevation, such as
is always the result of the steady, rational, persevering
pursuit of one great object. A serene,
unchanging, solemn self-possession governed
every moment of her life, and no one ever heard
her sigh, or saw her weep, or falter for a moment
in her attentions to Rainsford. When she
did not sit by the bedside of the sufferer, she
was ever near, hovering over him like a ministering
spirit, watching the expression of his
eye, the changes of his countenance, the motions
of his muscles, his breathing, and
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following with intense interest the wanderings of his
mind, to discover if any ray of reason broke
forth from the dark chaos of confusion. The
father and brother, though they did not exactly
approve her devotedness, could not help admiring
and lending their aid to this course of persevering
gratitude and affection; but they were
utterly hopeless of its consequences. The physician
had given it as his opinion that the condition
both of his mind and body previous to
the fever precluded all rational hope of Rainsford's
recovery. He shook his head more significantly
every time he came, and repeated his
assurances that the crisis of the disease would
be followed by immediate dissolution.
The usual state of the young man was that
of quiet as to bodily exertion, while his mind
seemed perpetually rambling, as appeared by
the motion of his lips and occasional mutterings.
But he neither raved, nor required force
to restrain him; and there was no apprehension
of any violence in his conduct. Thus
several anxious days passed away, accompanied
by increasing weakness on the part of Rainsford,
and decreasing hope on the part of his
friends.
“He cannot live,” said the mother; “he is
wasting away every hour. Be prepared, my
dear Virginia.”
“I am prepared, yet still I hope,” replied the
daughter.
On the fifteenth day, or rather night, for it
was far in the night, it happened that Virginia
was sitting in the sick man's room, with no
other companion than an old French nurse,
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who was now fast asleep in her chair. She
was, as usual, anxiously watching his every
look and motion, when all at once his low murmurings,
which day and night had continued
without intermission, ceased, and a dead, awful
silence, like that of the grave, succeeded. Virginia
snatched a light, and held it over his face.
His eyes were closed, and his countenance was
that of deathlike repose—of death itself—pale,
sunken, and motionless. She took his emaciated
hand; it was moist, and the pulse still
beat its low alarum. He was asleep, not dead.
“The hour is come!” thought Virginia; and,
seating herself again, watched, as a mother
watches the bed of her last and only offspring
when wearied nature, worn out with sickness
and pain, seeks a temporary reprieve in the
arms of sleep. For a considerable period he
neither stirred, nor spoke, nor breathed to the
listening ear of Virginia; and often in the dead
silence that reigned all around, within and without,
in the heavens and the earth, the conviction
came over her that now he must be dead.
But the unerring witness, the pulse, that still
continued its motion, told that the tide of life
was yet on its way to the ocean of eternity.
As thus she sat, fearing that every beat would
be the last, she felt a tremulous motion in his
fingers, his hand was drawn towards his head,
a sigh heaved from his breast, and he opened
his eyes. They did not glare as wont, but
gradually moved around the room, and rested
at last on the face of Virginia. He contemplated
it for a moment, passed his hand over his
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eyes, and uttered, in a low, whispering, weak
voice,—
“I thought I saw Virginia, but she's gone.”
He looked again wistfully in her face, while
she remained motionless, scarcely breathing,
scarcely able to breathe, for the conflicting feelings
which now rushed on her heart almost
choked her.
“Virginia,” said he at length, “is it you?”
“Blessed be Providence! he knows me,” said
the soul of Virginia; but she could not answer.
“I thought so; it is nothing; a dream—or”—
here he closed his eyes again, and sunk into
another deathlike sleep which lasted an hour or
more. Again he awoke as before, and again he
saw the same white vision bending over him.
“Virginia,” whispered he, for his strength
admitted of no more, “is it you, or am I again
cheated with a dream or a shadow?”
“It is I,” replied the young maiden, scarcely
knowing whether she ought to answer him or
not.
He tried to raise himself on his elbow to
look at her, but his strength failed him, and he
again sunk into a doze.
The day was now dawning; the watchful
nurse, who usually slept on her post, like many
others, for it is the anxiety of affection alone
that can keep the eyes wide open night after
night, now awoke; and Virginia, motioning
her towards where she sat, whispered her to go
and summon the physician, who had requested
to be called, in the event of any change in his
patient. He came while Rainsford was still
asleep, and Virginia expressed in a whisper her
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hope that this disposition to repose was the forerunner
of recovery.
“My dear young lady, never believe it,” replied
he in the same tone; “it is the precursor of
the last sleep; indeed it is doubtful whether he
will ever wake. But if he does it will be but
for a few hours, and then—”
“Cannot you do something for him, doctor?”
“Nothing; all human aid is vain. It is useless
for me to attend here any more. I can do
nothing for him. There—he's gone now—his
pulse is stopped—no—there it is again—one—
two—three—but it's all in vain—let him die in
peace—I can do nothing more—good morning.”
And he departed without ceremony.
“Then I will try,” thought Virginia, who remembered
having heard many instances of persons
recovering after having been given over
by the doctors. Nature, indeed, seems often to
do wonders when left to herself; or it may be
that Providence interposes in these cases sometimes,
to remind us how idle is all dependence
on the presumptuous ignorance of man.
He had scarcely gone when Colonel Dangerfield
appeared at the door, accompanied by a
venerable old man. Virginia motioned them
not to enter, and went softly out to apprize them
of the state of the patient, and the decision of
the doctor.
“Will you permit me to see him?” said the
old man, in a French accent. “My profession
is rather the cure of souls than of bodies; but
the nature of my calling, and the vicissitudes
of my life have made it necessary that I should
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know something of both. At any rate, he will,
I presume, if he awakes at all, awake in the
possession of his reason. In that case I may
pray with him, if I can do nothing more.”
“I feel grateful for your kindness, but this
young gentleman is not a Catholic.”
“Well, never mind,” said Father Jacques, as
he was called; “we may pray together for all
that. Though we may differ in some things,
there are others of a thousand times greater
consequence, in which we all agree. I am
a native of France, but have lived long in this
mild and tolerant land, and have not been
scourged into bigotry by persecution, or seduced
into it by the power of persecuting others. I,
at least, cannot do him harm, and may be of
service. Permit me to see him, I entreat you.
There is no other clergyman in this part of
the country.”
The good man received the permission, and
entered the room where Rainsford was now
lying, awake, and in possession of his senses,
but so weak that he held on life but by a
single hair. Though he had spoken lightly
of his skill, Father Jacques had the benefit of
general learning, aided by long experience as a
missionary among white men and red men;
and was indeed far superior to many professed
and practising physicians. He saw at once
that all that was to be combated now was
weakness of body and mind. The disease had
left them both free from every thing but that.
He prescribed various little remedies for the
purpose of keeping the spark alive, until nature
had time to rally and resume her functions.
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For some days it was a struggle between life
and death, time and eternity; and during that
period it is not too much to say that he owed
his life to the perpetual, the intense cares of
Virginia. She never left him; she it was that
poured the restoratives of the good Father
Jacques, drop by drop, into his mouth; she it
was that marked every movement indicating
pain or uneasiness; she it was that placed his
pillow, or his head; and she it was that, raising
herself above the petty affectations that spoil the
gentlest of all beings, woman, shrunk from
nothing which she thought might conduce to
his ease or administer to his recovery. He
sometimes attempted to speak to her, to thank
her—but she stopped him at once, by declaring
that if he persisted she would leave him. But
though he spoke not, his eye followed her
wherever she went, and his heart was almost
bursting with gratitude and love.
As he continued to gather strength, Virginia
gradually began to absent herself, or only to
visit his chamber in company with her mother.
He reproached her for it, and almost wished he
were dying again, that he might have more of
her society. Relieved in some measure from
her intense anxiety, she took an opportunity of
inquiring of Leonard the particulars of the discovery
of Rainsford. He spared her the relation
of the most affecting and revolting part,
and contented himself with merely stating that
he came there in a high fever and delirium, no
one knew from whence. During the progress
of his recovery, which was slow and lingering,
the good Father Jacques, who had been let into
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his history by the family of Dangerfield, came
to see him almost every day, conversing with
him on the subject of mental maladies, without
intimating his knowledge that it could have
any particular application to him. He mingled
a rational philosophy with a rational religion;
took frequent occasion to warn him against the
indulgence of a belief in presentiments, which
added to actual misfortunes all the miseries of
anticipation, without enabling us to avoid or
mitigate them; and above all against the spirit
of fanaticism, the fruitful source of mental
horrors unutterable. The force of calm, dispassionate
reason, and unaffected piety, combined,
is almost irresistible. Father Jacques
neither puzzled him with metaphysics, nor disputed
points of faith, but dwelt on topics of
practical philosophy, and practical religion,
such as all rational beings can comprehend.
The difference between this rational old man,
and the fiery-headed preacher of the terrors of
the bottomless pit was, that the one goaded the
apprehensive nervous being to madness, the
other soothed him into a firm reliance in the
mercies of the Supreme Being.
The good priest saw with honest pleasure
the effect produced on the mind of his patient
by the course he was pursuing, and was delighted—
for there was that about the mind and
manners of Rainsford which conciliated and attracted
almost all with whom he associated—to
discover that he had no distinct recollection of
any thing that occurred, from the time of his
first derangement to the period of his restoration.
He had a vague idea of having lost the
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consciousness of some portion of his existence;
but Father Jacques insensibly led him into the
belief that this was nothing more than the effect
of the delirium, which was itself the consequence
of his fever. Thus he remained,
happily unaware of the incidents of the few
last months; and the recollection of the fate of
his family, together with the weight of the
dreadful presentiment of his own, yielded in a
great degree to the reasonings of the good and
wise old man, aided by the hope, and almost
the belief, that he had now fulfilled his destiny,
by his temporary alienation of mind. The period
which his fears had always rested upon, as that
in which the evil was to come upon him, was
now rapidly passing away, and he felt every
day more confident. The fact is, his mind was
now getting into a healthful state, and life, and
all that constitutes its ingredients, began to assume
an aspect entirely different from that
which they had presented for years past. The
fever, and its consequent treatment, had not only
entirely broken the habitual concatenation of
his ideas, but created, as it were, a new physical
man, with new feelings, thoughts, recollections,
and anticipations. Still there was at times a
certain dreamy consciousness, an indistinct
perception, which is as difficult to analyze as to
describe, and which prevented his ever making
any inquiries into the circumstances or the
reasons of his being where he was, when he
first came to his recollection.
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CHAPTER XVI.
Touching the march of improvement, and the distinction
between law and conscience.
[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]
When Rainsford was sufficiently recovered,
they began to make arrangements for returning
to Dangerfieldville. Some anxiety was felt
lest the sight of accustomed objects might
revive old associations, and renew old feelings
in his mind; but it was finally determined that,
as in all probability, his fate and that of Virginia
were now inseparably united, it was best
at once to put his newly acquired state of mind
to this test, preparatory to their marriage. Accordingly
they took leave of the good Father
Jacques, with every expression of gratitude;
and Rainsford, especially, regretted that he had
no mode of testifying his sense of the obligations
he had conferred upon him.
“I shall be satisfied,” said the other, “if you
will only bear in mind, for the future, that religion
is not hatred, but love; and that it was
intended to make mankind friends, not enemies.”
Having taken leave of the old man, the landlord
was summoned to receive his money, and
their thanks, for in reality he had conducted
himself with uniform courtesy and attention.
He came in a most formidable passion, scolding
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in tolerable French, and pretty bad English.
The colonel inquired the cause.
“Diable! monsieur, another improvement;
last year they assess me for one grand public
improvement! one road to go somewhere, I
don't know. Eh bien! I pay the money.
Well, this year they assess me for one other
grand public improvement—very grand—voilá,
monsieur, one other road, right longside the
other, both going to the same place. Diable!
I no want to travel on two turnpike roads. Ah!
monsieur le colonel, I shall be very rich, O! very
rich indeed, by these grand improvements.
They take away all my land to make room for
the grand improvement; they take away all
my money to pay for him, and then they tell
me my land worth four, six time so much as
before. Peste! what that to me when my land
all gone to the dem public improvement, hey?
I shall be very rich then. Diable! I wish myself
gone to some country where every thing
was go backwards—what you call tail foremost,
instead of forwards, for the dem march of improvement
shall ruin me at last.”
When Colonel Dangerfield paid his bill he
looked at the money with a rueful countenance,
and exclaimed, with a shrug of pious resignation,—
“Eh bien! never mind, make very good road
and canal. Morbleu! I shall wonder what
they want of these road and canal. Voilà,
monsieur! yonder one dem big river, she come
two, three thousand mile that way. Eh bien!
Voila, monsieur! yonder one t'other dem big
river, she come two three thousand mile that
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way. Diable! is not this long way enough to
travel, without the dem public improvement.
Ah! we shall be in ruins soon.”
The colonel condoled with the little old man
of the old regime, and expressed a hope that
times would mend when all the public improvements
were finished.
“Eh bien!” replied he; “yes, times will
mend when there is nothing else to mend, I
think. Monsieur, there is my neighbour, Jan
Petit, live right over the way, yonder. Twenty
year ago he very rich; he ave every thing
comfortable; he fiddle, he dance, he laugh, sing,
gallant the demoiselles; no care, no trouble, no
dem work at all. He ave one leetle house, one
leetle garden, and raise plenty radishes and sallad;
he live like leetle king. Eh bien! by-and-by
Yankee come; public improvement
march this way. Phew! off goes Jan Petit;
they cut a street right through his garden; dig
up his radishes; pull down his house, and then
make him pay for taking away his house, his
garden, and his radishes! Voila, monsieur,
she ave sometime one, yes, two dozen cambric—
what you call? chemise—two dozen, very fine.
Well, he now but one left in the world, and that
ruin him.”
“How so?” asked Colonel Dangerfield, highly
amused at the droll complaints of mine host.
“Voilà, monsieur! he pay one laundress by
the piece, and begar! he chemise ave so many
pieces now, he pay for two dozen every time
he is washed. This is one grand consequence
of the grand system of the grand internal improvement,
as they call him. Morbleu! under
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the old regime internal improvement mean improvement
of the inside, the head, the comprehension,
the understanding; now she mean to
dig the grand ditch, to make the grand road,
and the grand canal right alongside the grand
river. Begar! the river no use now, I think.
Ah! monsieur, suppose you had only lived under
the old regime; den I shall smoke my pipe,
sing, dance, go to church twice every day; no
trouble, no improvement, no dem paper money.
But the Yankee come, and now a man must do
zomezing, or he shall soon ave but one chemise,
and be ruined by his laundress like Jan Petit.
Ah! monsieur, suppose I one young man. I
shall come ome to the old countries, where
every thing stand still or go backwards, and
be so happy. Ah! 'tis so easy, so charming
to go down the ill 'stead of up!”
All things being ready, the colonel left mine
host in the midst of his perplexities, and the
party turned their faces towards home. Nothing
occurred during the journey worthy of
record, save that on his arrival at St. Louis
Rainsford ordered a suit of rich damask pulpit
furniture to be sent to the church over which
Father Jacques presided. The good man was
delighted with the present, and such was the
exultation of his heart as he contemplated the
splendours of his little pulpit, that he often
prayed to be preserved from the assaults of pride
and the seductions of worldly vanity.
As they proceeded on their journey, the heart
of Virginia expanded with delighted gratitude
at marking the healthful vigour which the
mind of Rainsford was every day acquiring.
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He seemed to look on the world and every thing
in it in a new and animated point of view.
Every object of nature appeared to administer
to his happiness; and if in contemplating the
majesty or beauty of the scenery along the
great river he sometimes soared into the regions
of imagination, it was with a steady flight, like
that of the eagle. A perfect connexion and
continuity of ideas marked every thing he said,
and it was evident that reason had resumed the
reins, in all probability never again to resign
them.
It was one of the strongest proofs that fate
had at length relented in her persecutions of
Rainsford, that on the very morning of the day
in which the family of Colonel Dangerfield arrived
at home, Master Zeno Paddock and his
wife Mrs. Judith departed from the village never
to return. Such was the reputation of the proprietor
of the Western Sun, and such the extraordinary
capacity he had exhibited in the matter
of criticism, and, most especially of all, in
setting the village together by the ears, that a
distinguished speculator, who was going to
found a great city at the junction of Big Dry
and Little Dry Rivers, made him the most advantageous
offers to come and establish himself
there, and puff the embryo bantling into existence
as fast as possible. he offered him a whole
square next to that where the college, the court-house,
the church, the library, the athenæum.
and all the public buildings were situated.
Master Zeno swallowed the square at one
mouthful, and Mrs. Judith was utterly delighted
to remove to such a fine place, where there
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must be so many new secrets to come at. Truth
obliges us to say, that on his arrival at the city
of New Pekin, as it was called, he found it covered
with a forest of trees, each of which would
take a man half a day to walk round; and that
on discovering the square in which all the public
buildings were situated, he found, to his no
small astonishment, on the very spot where the
court-house stood on the map, a flock of wild
turkeys gobbling like so many lawyers, and
two or three white-headed owls sitting on the
high trees listening with most commendable
gravity. Zeno was marvellously disappointed,
but the founder of New Pekin swore that it
was destined to be the great mart of the West,
to cut out St. Louis, Cincinnati, and New Orleans,
and to realize the most glorious speculation
that was ever conceived by the sagacity or
believed by the faith of man. Whereupon Zeno
set himself down, began to print his paper in a
great hollow sycamore, and to live on anticipation,
as many great speculators had done before
him. Poor Mrs. Judith was bitterly disappointed
in the splendours and magnitude of the city.
She never got possession of but one secret, and,
as fate would have it, there was not a single
gossip within forty miles to tell it to. Whereupon,
in a fit of despair she went and whispered
it to the air on a certain spot on the bank of
Big Dry River, whence in good time there
sprung up a grove of little poplars that did nothing
but whisper and wag their leaves if but
a zephyr blew. At length, this worthy woman
died of an intermitting fever, in consequence of
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a great overflow of Big Dry River, and her last
words were, “I shall get at the secret now!”
The absence of these two incendiaries from
Dangerfieldville was a great blessing to Rainsford
and Virginia, since it relieved them from
the plague of two pestilent busybodies always
prying into the affairs of others, and always betraying
them the first opportunity. Great was
the joy of Mr. Littlejohn at the return of the
family, and great the exultation with which he
detailed the vast improvements he had made
during their absence; how he had grafted six
apple-trees, planted a whole row of parsnips,
weeded nearly one-half of a bed of salad in a
single morning, pulled up a great thistle that
grew in the lawn with his own hand, and caught
a catfish that weighed thirty-six pounds and a
half. This, it seems, crowned the series of his
glorious exploits, for we cannot find that he did
any thing worthy of record from that time until
the arrival of the colonel. Truth obliges us to
confess that many of the chairs bore shrewd
testimony that the old habit of reclining on
three at a time had not been neglected by Mr.
Littlejohn.
The Black Warrior and Bushfield were not
wanting in their duty, but came to see the
colonel as soon as they heard of his arrival.
“Little squaw no look so white now as when
she go away,” said the warrior.
Virginia blushed a little, and looked at somebody.
“Well, colonel,” said Bushfield, “I've let go
the willows at last. I can't go it any longer
here.”
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“Why, what's the matter?” asked the other.
“O, every thing is getting so dense here, that
a man can't turn round, or say his soul is his
own. There's that interloper that has located
himself just under my nose, about five miles
off, I caught him in the very fact of shooting a
deer on my side of the river, I'll be goy blamed
if I didn't, colonel. Well, what would you have
a man do? I challenged him to take a shot at
from a hundred yards to meeting muzzles. But
he's as mean as gar-broth. He said he'd bought
the land of Uncle Sam, and had as good a right
to shoot there as the old man himself. This
was more than a dead 'possum could stand. I
wish I may be shot if I didn't lick him as slick
as a whistle in less than no time. Well, by
George!—would you believe it?—he took the
law of me! Only think of the feller's impudence,
colonel, to take the law of a gentleman!
I paid him fifty dollars for licking him; but if
I don't give him a hundred dollars' worth the
next time we meet, I'm a coward, anyhow.”
The colonel condoled with him, but at the
same time advised him to submit to the laws.
“Laws! none of your laws for me, colonel.
I can't live where there's law or lawyers, and
a feller don't know whether he's right or wrong
without looking into a law-book. They don't
seem to know any more about conscience than
I do about law. Now, for my part, I do just
what I think right, and that's what I call going
according to my conscience. But colonel,” continued
he, with a queer chuckle, “I've got into
a worse scrape than that business with the
squatter.”
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“No! I'm sorry for that; what is it?”
“Why, you must know, not long after you
went away there came a man riding along here
that I calculate had just thrown off his moccasins,
with another feller behind him in a laced
hat, and for all the world dressed like a militia
officer. Well, I hailed him in here, for you
know I like to do as you would in your own
house; and he came-to like a good feller. But
the captain, as I took him to be, hung fire, and
staid out with the horses. So I went and took
hold of him like a snapping-turtle, and says I,
`Captain, one would think you had never been
inside of a gentleman's house before.' But he
held back like all wrath, and wouldn't take any
thing. So says I, `Stranger, I'm a peaceable
man anyhow, but maybe you don't know what
it is to insult a feller by sneaking away from
his hospitality here in Old Kentuck.' I held on
to him all the while, or he'd have gone off like
one of these plaguy precussion-locks that have
just come into fashion. `Captain,' says I,
`here's your health, and may you live to be a
general.' `Captain!' says the other, `he's no
captain; he's my servant.' `What!' says I,
`one white man be a servant to another! make
a nigger of himself! come, that's too bad!' and
I began to feel a little savage. I asked one if
he wasn't ashamed to make a slave of a feller-cretur,
and the other if he wasn't ashamed to
make a nigger of himself; and they got rather
obstropolous. I don't know exactly how it came
about, but we got into a fight, and I lick'd them
both, but not till they got outside the door, for
I wouldn't be uncivil anyhow. Well, what do
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[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]
you think? instead of settling the thing like a
gentleman, the feller that had a white man for
his nigger, instead of coming out fine, I'll be
eternally dern'd if he didn't send a constable
after me. Well, I made short work of it, and
lick'd him too, anyhow. But I can't stand it
here any longer. Poor old Snowball slipped
her bridle the other day, and went out like a
flash in the pan; so I'm my own master again,
with nobody to stand in my way at all. I must
look out for some place where a man can live
independent, where there's no law but gentlemen's
law, and no niggers but black ones. I
sha'n't see you again, colonel, it's most likely,
so good-by all. I expect you'll be after me
soon, for I look upon it to be impossible for a
man in his senses to live here much longer, to
be hoppled like a horse, and not go where he
pleases.” And away he marched, with a heart
as light as a feather, in search of a place where
he might live according to his conscience.
-- 184 --
CHAPTER XVII.
A secret which Mrs. Judith would have given her ears
to hear.
[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]
Another autumn had now arrived with all
its mellow beauties, and the hazy Indian summer
threw its soft obscurity over the land, giving
to distant objects the tints of an early twilight,
and to those more near all the effect of
distance. The flowers were all gone, but the
rich and varied tints of the woods supplied their
places; and though the air was not so genial
as that of the laughing, jolly springtime, it possessed
an even, sober temperature, that without
relaxing the frame, disposed to exercise and
activity. Rainsford was now restored to perfect
health of mind and body, and Virginia to
the sober certainty of happiness. The colonel
and Mrs. Dangerfield felt their confidence in
the permanency of his recovery every day increasing,
and no longer opposed the union of
the lovers, who were soon to be united for ever.
Their hours passed cheeringly away in the enjoyment
of the society of each other, either
within doors or in rambles by the river-side.
The first time they visited the spot where the
demon of fanaticism had tempted him so sorely,
Rainsford shuddered at the recollection of that
hour. He remembered as a horrid dream his
feelings and his purpose at that time, and he
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remembered now more deeply, more profoundly,
more touchingly than ever what he owed to the
kind being he had once devoted to destruction.
His heart overflowed with gratitude and tenderness;
he looked at her with his soul in his
eyes; and it was not so much the touching
beauty of her face, the perfection of her form,
nor all the harmony of female loveliness he saw
before him that occupied his mind, as the idea
of the faithful, gentle maiden, who had under so
many circumstances of discouragement consented
to trust her happiness to his care, and
contributed so materially to make him capable
of guarding so sacred a deposite. The fulness
of his heart overpowered him, and he dropped
his head on her shoulder.
Virginia was startled with the apprehension
that the sight of old scenes had recalled some
of those feelings and apprehensions which she
had hoped were now banished for ever from
his mind. She asked him fearfully what was
the cause of his emotions, and hinted at her
suspicions.
“It does, indeed,” said he, mournfully, and
raising his head, “it does, indeed, remind me
of what I would give all the world but you,
Virginia, to forget. But you shall know all.
You shall know the risk you once encountered
from me; but which, I have full faith in Heaven,
will never be encountered again. But you
shall know all—I will have no secrets from
thee, Virginia. Before you give yourself to me
for ever, it is proper, it is my sacred duty to disclose
what I have intended, as well as what I
have done. My honour demands it of me.”
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He then detailed the turn given to his mind,
already almost overborne with the presentiment
which had poisoned so great a portion
of his cup of existence, by the fiery fanatic
who had preached in the village the year preceding.
He painted the struggles of his feelings;
the final adoption of his determination;
the time and manner in which he so nearly
completed his purpose; and his final abandonment,
after a contest which brought on the
fever, that, owing to the blessings of her fostering
care, had terminated in his restoration to
happiness. We have before observed, that
Rainsford had lost all recollection of the period
which elapsed between his first derangement
and his recovery.
“Now, Virginia, you know all, and here, on
the spot where you first pledged yourself to be
mine, do I now give you full liberty to withdraw
it. I love you with an affection made up of
every ingredient that can enter into the composition
of love; true, lasting, and unwavering
love. I will, if after this you dare trust me,
devote myself, my time, my talents, my very
soul, to your happiness. Whatever you wish
me to be, that will I be. If retirement, and domestic
occupations be your wish, so shall it be.
If honour, if ambition allure you, I feel I have
that within me can make me whatsoever I strive
to become; and you shall see me, if I live, take
any place wherever you point your finger.
Now, Virginia, once more my fate is in your
hands—decide, and for ever. Dare you trust
me after this?”
“As I did before it; as I shall for ever after
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it,” said Virginia, firmly, and without hesitation.
Rainsford clasped her, for the first time, in
his arms, and called her by every name dear to
the heart of woman.
“I have not broken my oath,” said he, releasing
her, “for I can now look back upon the
past, and forward to the future, with a confident
hope, a settled conviction that I have fulfilled
my destiny; I have a presentiment, dearest
Virginia.”
“Ah! Rainsford, beware of presentiments.
If they are ever prophetic, it is that they contribute,
like prophecies, to their own fulfilment.
I am convinced that the true source of various
maladies of mind and body, is in the predisposition
given by a presentiment that they will
surely happen.”
“True—most certain—where did you become
so wise,” said Rainsford, smiling.
“Have I not a wise and virtuous mother?”
was the sensible reply. “But now that you
have told your secret, I will tell you mine.”
“Yours? you secrets too? Beware, or I
shall take you for another Mrs. Judith Paddock.”
“Yes, I; I knew of the intention you have
just disclosed, at the time.”
“You? you?” cried he, in astonishment.
“You knew it?”
“Yes, Rainsford; you thought I was looking
at the evening star, when you held the
weapon over me. But I saw it.”
“And neither shrieked, nor fled nor fainted
at the time; nor hated me afterwards! O,
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Virginia, may Heaven bless thee! But how, how
was it possible?”
“You forget,” said she, modestly, “who, and
what I am; I call myself a daughter of Old
Kentucky. You forget that when we first
came hither, danger walked like the pestilence,
in daylight and in darkness, through these
forests; that we never laid down at night without
the expectation that before morning we
should be roused by the yell of death; that we
never, for years, could calculate an hour on the
possession of life; and that I, yes, Rainsford, I
and my dear mother, have more than once
stood by our husband and father, when the
savages were approaching to set fire to our
house, loading the guns that he and his people
were discharging at the painted warriors. You
forget that we had become familiar with death,
and that the spot on which we stand is part of
that region called the `dark and bloody
ground.' Are you not afraid I shall shoot you
one of these days?” added she, playfully.
“No, by Heaven! I am only afraid I shall
always, when I approach you, feel as the fox
did when he came into the presence of the lion.”
“O yes! I thank you. But don't you remember
how soon the fox got over this?”
“Well, well, my sweetest, best Virginia,
though I may not fear, I hope you will allow
me to worship you?”
“O, by all means, provided you won't treat
me as the worshippers of idols sometimes do
their wooden divinities, when they don't grant
their unreasonable desires.”
The horn, which it was customary to blow,
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for the purpose of summoning the labourers to
dinner, now echoed far and wide, reminding
them of the progress of the time, and they
turned towards home with lighter steps and
lighter hearts than they had known for many
a day.
On a certain Christmas eve, Virginia, having
completed her twentieth year, which put her
in possession, as Rainsford now learned for the
first time, of a handsome fortune, left her by an
aunt, when but a year old, resigned to his care
a heart worth all the jewels of the Persian diadem,
a person lovely and pure as the first flower
of spring. We will not describe her dress, or
that of the bridegroom, for we fear they were
both deplorably deficient in fashion and material.
We have heard confidentially that the costume
of the bride contained no more than
twelve yards of muslin, which the milliners,
whom we consider the highest authority, assure
us, is one-third less than appertains to a reasonable
woman, meaning a woman of reasonable
dimensions. As for master Dudley Rainsford,
he had no whiskers, and that is quite enough
to consign him to utter oblivion in the ranks of
fashion. There was neither waltz nor gallopade
danced on the occasion, but of all the
happy faces and white teeth ever exhibited in
this new world those that peeped into the
doors, and eke the windows too, of Colonel
Dangerfield, were the happiest and the whitest.
There stood Pompey Ducklegs the Great,
who still lives, and if it is in our power to
make him, shall live for ever, whose masticators
still held out in all their glorious array
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of ivory, amid the ruins of time; and there
stood Pompey the Little; and by his side the
gentle dusky Venus, yclept Cora, waiting-maid
to the beauteous bride, partaking in her dignity,
and as it were, a portion of the wedding itself; and
here, and there, and everywhere, peeped forth
faces that shone like lumps of anthracite coal,
or well-blacked boots, all with eyes dancing out
of their heads; and all with hearts gladdened
at the happy wedding of young missee. And
well might they love her, for she was kind to
them all.
It was a great day for the great Pompey
Ducklegs, that last remnant of the Old Virginia
aristocracy. He bustled and bragged
away about old times, and after telling the
young fry about his travels to St. Louis, and
all that, concluded by solemnly giving it as his
opinion, “that after all there was nothing like
Old Phiginny, Icod! she never tire, I say dat
for she.” Pompey the Little (it was at supper
where the ebony race crowded as much enjoyment
in an hour as other people do in a whole
winter of dissipation) Pompey the Little,
however affirmed, that for his part he thought
young Miss Phiginny worth a dozen of Old Phiginny.
Whereupon the great Ducklegs corrected
himself, and magnanimously acceded to
the amendment, at the same time asserting the
dignity of age, by reminding the young “racksal,”
how he disgraced his family, by losing
the great race of Barebones against lady Molly
Magpie. These merry varlets kept up the rout
and revelry in the kitchen, hours after that
period in the history of lovers which all
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discreet authors have agreed to leave to the imagination
of their readers.
“Why is marriage like death?” said Caroline
Lilliwhite to Rodolph, Count of Sweighausenbergenstein.
“Because,” said the count, “all romances end
with one or the other.”
In deference to such high authority as the
count, who has the finest crop of whiskers in
town, and reads Goëthe, we shall here close our
tale, which, the reader is assured, we could with
perfect ease carry through two more volumes,
if necessary. But we cannot part with some
of our old acquaintance for ever without a passing
notice and farewell.
Mr. Ulysses Littlejohn is, or was a few years
ago, one of the oldest, and, if not one of the
wisest, certainly one of the happiest old men in
all “Old Kentuck.” That lucky indifference
to the little rubs and crosses of life, which is a
better shield than the hide of Achilles or the
presumptuous affectation of philosophy, preserves
him even from the pettishness of age and
infirmity. There is, moreover, a sort of easy,
old-shoe character about him that fits everybody
and pinches nobody. Even his growing
infirmities have not spoiled his temper, and he
is wont to felicitate himself on the indolent
habits of his life, which, now that he is unable
to take exercise, relieve him from the impatience
of idleness and inactivity. One day, old Pompey,
who still flourishes his duck legs in immortal
youth, was condoling with him on not being
as active as himself.
“Ah! Massa Leetlejohn, what pity you no
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such leg as mine! Aristocracy always have
good leg.”
“Pomp,” replied Ulysses, “I wouldn't have
such a pair of legs as yours for a gift; why,
they're just the shape of a gourd. I was reckoned
once to have the handsomest leg in all
Prince William.”
“Eh! once 'pon a time worst time in the
world. Once 'pon a time catch massa one of
dese days.”
“Well, let him, Pomp; I won't run away.”
“No, ecod; I tink massa no run from Old
Death himself.”
Mrs. Judith Paddock—but she's dead, rest
her soul! we killed her off some time ago. But
Master Zeno still lives in the anticipation that
New Pekin will yet fulfil its glorious destiny.
He has, indeed, strong reasons to anticipate the
speedy arrival of this great consummation; for
though not above ten years have elapsed since
the foundation of this illustrious city, it did at
one time actually contain three log houses.
True it is, they were swept away one day by
an inundation, and floated down Big Dry River
in great style, until they were arrested and converted
into pigsties. But their having once
been built is a good omen; and Master Zeno
is, or was not many years since, keeping an
hotel in a broad-horn moored in Big Dry, near
the site of the great city, where he sells whis
key and other necessaries of life to the boatmen,
and is one of the happiest of men, in the anticipation
of the future glories of New Pekin. He
no longer prints the Western Sun, for that was
extinguished by the freshet which destroyed
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the town, and at the same time carried away
his types, his printing-press, and his printer's
devil.
That worthy Scot, Kenneth Mactabb, having
grown immensely rich, was in the decline of
his days mortally smitten with the Swiss malady.
He accordingly paid a visit to his early
home; but he found, to his cost, that after a
man has been forty years absent from his country,
he may as well stay away altogether; for
he will return only to visit the graves of his
early associates. Disappointed at finding himself
alone, even on the spot of his nativity, and
too old to begin to plant the seed of affection in
a new soil, with any hope of ever living to taste
the fruits, he came back to America, and ended
his days on the banks of James River. He did
many generous acts worthy of record, but never
could thoroughly get the better of his old habit
of saving a penny. The last clause of his
will forgave an old friend a debt of thousands,
and the last act of his life was stooping to pick
up a pin.
Conversing with a Missouri trader some years
ago, we accidentally heard news of our old acquaintance
Bushfield. It seems he had gradually
receded, as the tide of white population
flowed onwards, towards the setting sun, and
at length established himself somewhere in the
vicinity of one of our most remote military posts
on the Missouri, where he frequently came to
exchange his game and furs for powder, lead,
and other indispensable articles. His luxuriant
head of hair had become as white as the driven
snow; his keen, watchful, deep-blue eye, though
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sunk far in the socket, still retained its wild,
resolute expression; and his person was as
straight as an arrow. He regularly hunted on
the confines of those vast plains where the buffaloes
still lingered, and his great complaint
was, that he could scarcely hear his dog bark
or his gun go off in this tarnation place, where
there was no echo, and where the sounds never
came back again, but were lost in the interminable
vastness of space.
“One morn they miss'd him;” another and
another came, and he did not appear. This
excited no attention, as he was often absent for
weeks together. Shortly after, however, a party
of hunters from the fort discovered him sitting
upright against a tree, his rifle between his legs,
and resting on his shoulder. He had shot his
last shot, killed his last buffalo, and sunk into
his last sleep. The animal was lying at a little
distance, and his dog crouching at his feet, unconscious
that the repose of his master was to
last until the day of judgment. They buried
him among the graves of their dead comrades,
and many a hardy soldier said to himself,
“Peace to the remains of the old hunter, one
of the last of the companions of Boone!”
Did Colonel and Mrs. Dangerfield ever live
to regret their consent, or did Virginia receive
the reward of her tenderness, her gratitude, her
perseverance, and her strong faith? We are
happy in being able to reply to the first interrogatory
in the negative, to the second in the
affirmative. Some years have now elapsed,
and Virginia and Rainsford become more happy
every passing year, as their confidence in each
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other and in themselves increases. It would
be idle, as it would not be true, to say that this
happiness was not at first shaded by occasional
painful recollections of the past and apprehensions
of the future. But these carried with
them their own antidotes, in the increased tenderness
and solicitude of Virginia to administer
to the happiness of Rainsford, and his profound
gratitude and affection when he remembered
the debt he owed her. In short, the present
content and fruition at length swallowed up the
recollection of past sorrows, dispersed the clouds
of the future, and laid the foundation of a solid,
permanent reliance on the goodness of Providence.
Virginia has of late encouraged Rainsford to
employ his ample wealth in the improvement
of the surrounding country, and his fine talents
in public life. Both Leonard Dangerfield and
himself are now running a brilliant career in
goodly fellowship; and Virginia sees with delight,
that while the mind of her husband is
occupied in grasping the vast magnitude of
those subjects which connect themselves with
the welfare and glory of our native land, it
gathers strength, and acquires new brilliancy
in the exercise. He no longer broods over himself
and his petty apprehensions, but forgets
them all in the noble ambition of being useful
to others. Our heroine is rewarded as she deserves
to be, for she leads a life of love and
virtue, and her path is illuminated by the consciousness
of having persevered in the payment
of a debt of gratitude. She still lives, and we
trust long will live, happy in the devoted
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affection of a man of whom she has reason to be
proud; in the full enjoyment of a woman's best
dower,—the love of her parents, her brother,
her neighbours, and her dependants.
The moral of our tale will, we trust, be found
in the warning it holds forth against the approaches
of fanaticism, the weak indulgence
of PRESENTIMENTS OF EVIL; the testimony
it bears, that while there is life there is hope,
and that nothing is more worthy the special
interposition of a gracious Providence in our
behalf than a perseverance in all the kind offices
of humanity towards those on whom the hand
of misfortune hath been heavily laid.
THE END.
