PROVERBS, AND THE INTERPRETATION.
The road was straight, level, and monotonous. It seemed to stretch on for miles, walled in, on either hand, by the rank and profuse foliage of the South. Great cotton woods and water-oaks, walnuts, cypresses, larches, and junipers, stood side by side, with their brawny arms interlaced, and their trunks hidden in a dense and varied undergrowth; while jessamines and wild grapevines climbed up to meet the sunshine at their tops, and pendent moss hung their boughs with swaying drapery of gray-green leaves and filaments.
What lay beyond these walls of verdure was only to be guessed at from occasional and indistinct glimpses. Here, a transient view of corn or vegetable rows, and a sound of voices, gave token of the vicinity of a small plantation or market garden. There, a scarcity of deciduous trees and a predominance of evergreens, a more lush and succulent character of undergrowth, and a dark gleam of stagnant water, betrayed the proximity of an extensive morass. Frequently, the eye lost itself in the complicated vistas of thick pine-barrens, stretching far away to right and left. And, ever and anon, a sudden break in the long line of verdure, and the sight of a diverging wheel-track, quickly lost amid overhanging boughs, served to show in what direction some large rice or cotton estate lay hidden in the circumjacent forest.
It scarcely needs to be added that the road was pleasantly cool and shadowy in the late September afternoon. Even at midday, its track would present but few and scant patches of sunshine, alternating with dense masses of shadow or spots of flickering light and shade. Now, therefore, with the sun hanging red and low in the western horizon, scarce a fitful orange gleam fell athwart the path of the only traveller in sight,—a young man, of thoughtful face and stalwart figure, striding on at a firm, even pace, with a portmanteau strapped across his shoulder. Both the face and the portmanteau seemed to indicate that his walk was not for pleasure merely, but tended to some definite, anticipated goal; while the keen, observant glance with which he noted, not only every object of interest along his route, but the character of the soil beneath and the foliage overhead, showed that his road was as unfamiliar as it had been, for the most part, solitary. Since he left the outskirts of the city of Savalla behind, more than two hours ago, he had seen but three human faces. First, an old negro woman, wrinkled and white-haired, had ducked her decrepit form to him in what would have been, but for the stiffness of her joints, a most deferential courtesy. Later on, a teamster, of the same dependent and obsequious race, had doffed to him the ragged remnant of a palm-leaf hat, and uttered a civil, "Good ebenin', Massa." Lastly, a lank, listless, unkempt, sallow-skinned personage, in a white covered wagon, snapping a long-lashed whip at a nondescript team, and belonging to the curious class known as "crackers," had suddenly nodded to him, after a prolonged, and, at first, contemptuous stare, as if finally convinced of his claim to the civility.
For some time past, the road had led through a monotonous pine barren, and the traveller had fallen into a fit of thought. Raising his eyes, at last, from the path on which they had been fixed in abstraction, he saw that the long vista before him was once more enlivened by a moving object. His keen, far sight, trained in western wilds, easily made it out to be a half-obsolete kind of chaise, moving in the same direction as himself, but moving so slowly that he gained on it at every step. In a few moments, he was close behind it, quietly observing its superannuated style and condition, as well as the skinny little horse that furnished its motive power. Hearing the sound of his quick, firm tread, its occupant lifted his eyes from the tattered volume over which he was poring, and turned to look at him.
He himself, in a very different way, was well worthy of observation. He was small and spare, probably not more than sixty years of age, but looking much older. He had that parched and wizened look, oftenest the work of circumstances rather than years, which makes it difficult to realize that the possessor was ever young. His hair and complexion had once been light; the one was now gray, the other sallow, except for a faint suggestion of red at the tip of an otherwise handsome nose. His breath exhaled a perceptible odor of strong drink, surrounding him as with an atmosphere of inflammable gas. His dress was made up of divers ill-fitting garments that had doubtless accrued to him from cast-off wardrobes; not one of them bearing any relation to the other, but all being in an advanced stage of seediness well suited to the wearer. Something of the same fusing of special incongruities into general fitness also characterized his manner; wherein the mean and furtive air of the shiftless old vagabond was curiously blended with the pathetic dignity of the decayed gentleman.
He eyed the young foot traveller narrowly for a moment, though with a sidelong rather than a straightforward glance; then, bringing his willing horse to a stand by a jerk of the reins, and a sonorous "Whoa!" he lifted his hat and gravely accosted him:—
Manus manum lavat. Men were meant to help each other. Have a ride, sir?
The stranger hesitated, perhaps trying to reconcile the address and the speaker, perhaps with a natural enough doubt as to the character of the companionship thus offered. "Thank you," said he, at last, "but I doubt if it be worth while."
'Good and Quickly seldom meet,' responded the other, sententiously. "Besides," he added, seeing that the traveller was puzzled to understand the drift of his saw, "Pegasus—I call him Pegasus because he's not winged—is 'like a singed cat, better than he looks.' Moreover, Compagnon bien parlant vaut en chemin chariot branlant. Which may be freely translated, 'Good company shortens the road as much as a swift horse.'"
Oh! I meant no disrespect to your equipage, I assure you, returned the young man, smiling. "Only, I supposed that I must be near my journey's end. Is it far to Berganton?"
That depends. 'The last straw breaks the camel's back.' It is three miles, more or less. But I should have said, from your face, that you would want to stop this side of that.
Do I look so tired? Indeed I am not.
Um—no, I should say not. But faces show something besides weariness,—'like father, like son,' you know. If your looks are to be trusted, there's an old mansion about a quarter of a mile farther on, whose door ought to open to you of its own accord—if it can open at all.
The young man smiled and shook his head. "I am sorry that my looks should belie me," said he, "but I have no claim upon the said mansion's hospitality."
Umph! 'tis a wise child that knows its own father. Tush, tush, man! he added, hastily, seeing the young man's cheek flush, "I meant no harm; proverbs run from my tongue like water from a Dutch roof. Besides, Nao ha palavra maldita se na? fora mal entendida,—that is to say, 'No word is ill-spoken which is not ill-taken.' But come! come! jump in! I'll carry you to Berganton, since that's your goal, and welcome. The night is drawing on apace; you'll be glad of my pilotage before we get there."
The young man glanced down the darkening road, from which the last ray of sunlight had vanished, and seemed still to hesitate; but finally sprang lightly into the chaise, and the horse jogged on.
Proverbs, continued the old man, treating his three last sentences as mere parentheses, "have been the study of my life. I know Lord Chesterfield bans them as vulgar, but is he wiser than Solomon? or better authority than Cicero and Scaliger and Erasmus and Bacon and Bentley? Bah! the whole gist of his writings might be compressed into two or three of the maxims that he affects to despise. 'Fair-and-Softly goes far in a day,' will live when his 'Letters' are forgotten. And a good reason why. Proverbs are the royal road to wisdom. They're the crystallized experience of the ages. They epitomize the minds and manners of the people that brought them forth. Who but a 'smooth, fause' Lowland Scot, for instance, would have said 'Rot him awa' wi' butter an' eggs?' Who but a marauding Hielander would have declared, 'It's a bare moor that ane goes o'er and gets na a coo?' Who but poor priest-ridden, king-ridden Spain would have said, Fraile que pide par Dios, pide por dos, 'The friar that begs for God, begs for two;' Quien la vaca del rey come flaca, gorda la paga, 'He who eats the king's cow lean, pays for it fat;'—but I ought to beg your pardon, perhaps you know Spanish?"
Not very well, good-naturedly replied the young man, taking pity on his companion's inveterate habit of translation, and the delight which it plainly afforded him.
Well enough, I suppose, to know that it's a mine of wealth to the proverb-hunter, rejoined the old man graciously. "Here, now, is a good one, of a different character,—Adonde vas, mal? Adonde mas hay, 'Whither goest thou, misfortune? To where there is more?' And here is a pertinent question for people who live well without visible resources,—Los que cabras no tienen, y cabritos venden, de donde les vienen? 'They who keep no goats, and yet sell kids, where do they get them?' But, after all, for right sharp and serviceable proverbs, commend me to the Danish. Here is an old collection that I've lately picked up, printed at Copenhagen, in 1761;—-just let me read you two or three."
He opened the dingy volume aforementioned, and proceeded to read, translate, and comment, with infinite zest. "Ingen kommer i Skaden, uden han selv hielper til, 'No man gets into trouble without his own help'—(a moral which no one can point better than your humble servant); Naar det regner Voelling, saa har Stodderen ingen Skee, 'When it rains porridge, the beggar has no spoon'—(there's no contenting discontented people); Ingen Ko kaldes broget uden hun haver en Flek, 'A cow is not called dappled unless she has a spot'—(most gossip has some small foundation); Hvo som vil gj?re et stort Spring, skal gaae vel tilbage, 'He that would leap high must take a long run'—(else we should have bishops and judges without gray hairs); Det kommer igien, sagde Manden, han gav sin So Floesk, 'It will come back again, said the man, when he gave his sow pork:'—don't you see how the patient, shrewd, humorous character of the Danes peeps through them all?
"Yet, if some proverbs are national, others are cosmopolitan, and fit all generations, and all countries. For instance, there's the Greek saw, Archè êmisu pantós,—see how it comes down through every language under the sun, till, at last, it settles into terse English rhyme, 'Well begun Is half done.' Or, take that common saying, 'To carry coals to Newcastle,' which seems to have originated in the East. At least, we find it first in the Persian of Saadi, 'To carry pepper to Hindostan;' then the Hebrews have it, 'To carry oil to the City of Olives;' the Greeks, 'owls to Athens;' the Latins, 'wood to the forest;' the French, 'water to the river;' the Dutch, 'firs to Norway;' the Danish—Hallo! Pegasus! what are you about?
"The horse, being left to his own guidance while his master was riding his favorite hobby, had taken occasion to shoot off from the main road into an apparently little-used track, cut through a thick pine-barren at the left. He had made several lengths before his driver, taken at a disadvantage, could pull him up.
Pegasus is of the opinion that 'the longest way round is the surest way home,' remarked the old man, apologetically, as he scanned the narrow, tree-lined track, with a view to the possibility of turning safely around. "Or," he added, with a glance of sly humor at the traveller, "perhaps he thinks, as I did just now, that Bergan Hall is your natural destination."
Bergan Hall, repeated the young man, in a tone of extreme surprise,—"is this the way to Bergan Hall? I thought you came to the village first, from Savalla."
So you did, once, rejoined the old man, looking surprised, in his turn; "but that must have been before you were born, if your face doesn't belie your age. The road used to make a long elbow, to get round that swamp which you crossed a mile back. But it was straightened thirty years ago at least,—Autre temps, autre chemin,—a different time, a different road. And so you are going to Bergan Hall? Well, thanks to luck and Pegasus, you're in the right way."
But I must not take you out of yours, responded the young man, good-naturedly. And he had jumped out of the chaise before its owner was well aware of his intention.
Canis festinans coecos parit catulos, muttered the old man, in a tone of chagrin. "In other words, 'Look before you leap.' I'd as soon have gone this way as the other. My place lies between the Hall and the village, and the choice of roads isn't worth shucks,—at least, in comparison with a pleasant chat. However, you're out, and I suppose it's no use to ask you to get in again, since the Hall is but a few rods away. Keep straight ahead till you come to the old avenue, then turn to the left. Good day, il n'y a si bons compagnons qui ne se separent,—the best friends must part."
Yes—to meet again, said the young man, pleasantly.
Very true; les beaux esprits se rencontrent, returned the old man, slowly and cautiously backing his crazy vehicle around. And with another "Good day," and a parting gesture, he quickly disappeared among the fast-falling shadows.
The young man stood looking after him for a moment, with a smile half of amusement, half, of pity, upon his lips. But his features soon settled into something more than their accustomed gravity, and suddenly facing about, he pursued his way.
Ere long the tall, crowded pines of the barren gave place to various stubble and fallow grounds, with here and there a late crop waiting to be harvested; and shortly after, the narrow, irregular track that he had been following encountered a broader and more beaten one. Recognizing this, with some difficulty, as the "avenue" of which his late companion had spoken, he stopped, and gazed up and down with a look of surprise and pain.
It was bare of trees; but on either side extended a long row of live oak stumps, the size of which showed what massive trunks and far-reaching branches had once columned and arched it like a temple. Here and there, some forgotten bole or bough lay and rotted upon the very spot which it had formerly overhung with a soft canopy of verdure, and made beautiful with pleasant play of sunshine and leaf-shadow; while around it gathered a rank luxuriance of weeds, transmuting its slow aristocratic decay into teeming, plebeian life. In one or two cases, as if moved by an almost human sympathy, vines had sprung up around the bereaved stumps, and sought to soften their hard outlines with clinging drapery of leaves and tendrils. They had also done their best to cover up various unsightly gaps in the long lines of ruinous fence that divided the avenue from the open fields on either side. Yet the final effect of these gentle touches was only to deepen the painful impression of the scene. Where they did not reach, the bareness was so much more bare, the dilapidation so much uglier!
The young observer felt this bareness and dilapidation to his heart's core,—felt it all the more keenly because an image of the avenue's pristine grandeur, derived from the surrounding fragments (or from some other source), continually rose before his mind's eye, to heighten its present desolation by contrast. His brow contracted as he gazed; and the expression of his face changed rapidly from surprise to dissatisfaction, from dissatisfaction to perplexity, from perplexity to doubt. Once, he turned as if half-minded to retrace his steps; but the next moment, he shook off his irresolution with a gesture of disdain, and immediately hastened forward.
The avenue terminated in an open, circular space. Evidently, it had once been a lawn; but it was now covered with half-obliterated furrows, showing that at some not very remote period, it had been planted with corn. Around it stood a number of gigantic live-oaks, heavily draped with moss, and brooding dusky shadows under their massive boughs. Fronting upon it, was a large mansion of dark brick, consisting of an upright, two-story main building, with a huge, clustered chimney in the midst, and long, low, rambling wings on either side.
The whole place had a deserted and melancholy appearance. The moss on the live-oaks swayed slowly to and fro in the evening breeze, with a wonderfully sombre and funereal effect; and the mansion was dark and silent as any ruin. Not a light shone from the closed windows; not a sound came from the deep, shadowy doorway; and the unsteady stone steps, slippery with damp and green with moss, gave the impression of a spot where no human foot had left its print for many years.
The young man halted at a little distance from the dark building, and surveyed it moodily. "Can this be Bergan Hall?" he murmured. "Can this gloomy old ruin be the open, cheery, hospitable mansion, full of light and life, that my mother has so often described to me? It looks a habitation for ghosts—and for ghosts only! I wonder if any living being—"
Breaking off abruptly, he ascended the moss-grown steps, only to find that the vines which so heavily draped the portico, had woven a thick network across the door. It was plain that it had not been opened for months, perhaps years. Nevertheless, not to be easily daunted, he found and lifted the knocker. It fell with a dull lifeless sound, that smote the young man's heart like a sudden chill. A dreary reverberation came from within, and then died away into silence. He knocked again, and, listening intently, he fancied that he heard the sound of stealthy footsteps within, and a slight creaking of the floor. But so dead a silence followed upon these imaginary sounds, that he soon became convinced of his involuntary self-deception.
Turning from the door, he now noticed a little footpath running round the end of one of the long wings. Committing himself to this timely guide, he soon came in sight of the rear of the mansion, which looked upon a sort of court; where a few ornamental shrubs still held an uncertain tenure against the encroachments of divers sorts of lawless and vagrant vegetation. At a little distance, was a long range of dilapidated offices, showing upon what an almost princely scale the housekeeping had once been administered. But this part of the premises was not less dark, silent, and deserted, than the other.
The footpath still held on, however, past the court and the offices, toward a bright light at a considerable distance, "The negro quarter!" muttered the young man, recognizing the whereabout of one of the most salient features of his mother's well-remembered descriptions. "At least, I may learn there what it all means." And, quickening his steps, he soon came upon a busy and picturesque scene.
In the midst of a large, quadrangular space, flanked on three sides by double rows of negro-cabins, and on the fourth apparently sloping down to a water-course, was a rough sort of threshing-mill, now idle, but showing satisfactory results of its day's labor in a large heap of rice by its side. A crowd of negroes, of both sexes, coarsely and uncouthly clad, were busily filling odd, shallow baskets from this heap, which they then poised on their heads, and bore off down the slope to some unseen goal. There were two regular, silent files, the one coming, the other going; and the heap of grain steadily and even swiftly diminished. Near the mill, stood the only white person visible,—a large, powerfully-framed man, carelessly and even shabbily dressed, yet with the unmistakable air of ownership about him. At his left hand, a half-naked, impish looking negro boy was holding a blazing pitch-pine torch, by the light of which he seemed to be jotting down some sort of memoranda in a small book.
The scene was even more strange and weird than picturesque. The dark figures of the negroes, filing noiselessly up the shadowed slope, suddenly grew distinct, wild, and fantastic, within the circle of enchantment made by the flaring light of the torch, only to become dim and spectral again when received back into the dusk. They might have passed for embodiments of those vagaries of the mind, which come from no one knows whither, play their fitful parts within the illuminated circle of the imagination, and vanish as they came. The young man would almost have taken it as a matter of course, had the whole spectacle suddenly melted into thin air.
Yet, even in that case, he would have expected the masterful personage aforementioned to have remained, as the one tangible link between the phantasms and the earth. In truth, a single glance at his massive figure, which seemed to have been hewn out of the rock, rather than moulded from any softer material, went far to disenchant the scene. Here was a touch of the actual, the substantial, and the dogmatic, not to be mistaken; and serving as a clue to the reality of everything else.
Toward this personage, after a moment's scrutiny, the young man unhesitatingly made his way, with the air of one who has found something certain amid much that is confused, illusory, and perplexing. He was immediately spied by the negroes, and followed by their curious gaze; albeit, they ventured not to intermit their labor for an instant, but contented themselves with slowly and stiffly turning their burdened heads toward him as they marched on, and keeping their shining black eyes fixed on him to the last, in such that the heads of the retreating file seemed to have been set on backwards. The boy with the torch was perhaps the most wondering, open-mouthed gazer of them all.
As yet, the master of the premises had not been made aware of the stranger's approach; but, looking up to reprimand his torch-bearer for inattention, he observed the imp's dumbfounded gaze, and turned to see what had caused it.
My uncle, Mr. Bergan, I presume, said the young man, taking off his hat, and bowing low: "I am Bergan Arling." And he added, after a moment, seeing that the other did not speak, "I bring you a letter from my mother."
Major Bergan—to give him the title by which he was known throughout the country round—displayed no alacrity of welcome. He first scanned his visitor closely from head to foot, and then silently extended his hand for the letter which the young man had drawn forth from an inner pocket.
Hold that light here! were his first words, in a tone deep as a thunder-peal, and addressed not to Bergan Arling, but to the aforesaid torch-bearer. "And quit your staring, and mind your business, or I'll—"
The sentence died away in an inarticulate growl, but the boy was plainly at no loss to understand its purport. With a startled look, he fixed his eyes on the torch, and only ventured to withdraw them for an occasional, furtive glance at the object of his curiosity. Meanwhile, his master opened the letter, and read it deliberately from beginning to end. The light of the torch fell full upon his face as he did so, giving Bergan Arling an opportunity to study him, in his turn.
His face was a striking one; in youth it had doubtless been handsome. Now, his brow was too massive, his mouth too stern, his eyes too cold, his beard too gray and heavy, to bear any relation to mere personal beauty. All soft lights and lines had long gone out of them; what remained was hard, bold, and rugged, as a rocky headland in winter. The rude strength which was the marked characteristic of his form, repeated itself emphatically in his face. Comparing it with the mental portrait, carefully touched and retouched by his mother's hand, which Bergan had carried in his mind since childhood, he felt that the one resembled the other only as a tree in autumn, stripped bare of its foliage and its blossoms, resembles the same tree in its gracious summer bloom and verdure. Little trace of the frank, proud lineaments, the warm, yet generous temper, of that ideal picture, was to be found in this harsh, stubborn, sarcastic face; the face of a man long given over to the hardening influences of a solitary and a selfish life. In short, Major Bergan confirmed anew the old truth that no man can live long for himself alone, shutting out all gentler ties and amenities, and driving straight at his own practical ends, unmindful of either the ways, the opinions, or the feelings of others, without reaping his due reward in a loss of moral health, and a gradual decay of all his finer sensibilities and higher instincts.
The only point wherein the real man resembled the ideal one, was in a certain ineffaceable pride of birth, showing itself not only in his port, but darkening his harsh features with a heavy shade of hauteur.
Yet a smile might do much to light up and soften the Major's face; and the smile came when he had finished the letter, and did its work all the more effectually because it was a somewhat sad one.
Forty and two years, said he, musingly, "since Eleanor went! Yet I can see her now, with her bright face and her arch ways! She was the sunshine of the old Hall; it has never been the same place since she left it. And she would hardly know it, if she were to come back now! But times change; and we are fools if we do not change with them. Well, my boy! I'm glad to see you, and that is not what I would say to many,—I'm not much in the way of having visitors. But Eleanor's son is heartily welcome to the old place."
He took his nephew's hand, shook it cordially, and continued to hold it in a vice-like grasp, while he once more attentively scanned the young man's features.
You are a true Bergan, he said, at length, "I'm glad to see that! And you have her eyes, too. Ah, what eyes they used to be! as soft and bright as any fawn's! Well! well! it's no use to think of the old times—they can't come back. But I am right glad to see you, my boy; and I take it very kind of Eleanor to have sent you to me. Is she much changed?"
I suppose so, said Bergan, smiling,—"that is, since you knew her. She has not changed greatly during my remembrance. She is a young-looking woman yet, for her years; her eyes are still bright, and her cheeks rosy. Our western climate and life have agreed with her well. Yet I cannot fancy her a young lady."
Ah, but you shall see her as a young lady! There's a portrait of her in the old house, taken not long before she went away, that does everything but speak and move. Indeed, I used to imagine that it did both, when I had it in my quarters out here, as I did for a time. But it gave me the blues so, to look at it, and think how things used to be, and see how they had altered, that I finally sent it back to its old place in the portrait gallery. But how did you get here, at this hour?
I walked from Savalla, leaving my baggage—except this portmanteau—to come on by stage to-morrow.
Walked! A nice little tramp of thirteen miles or more! Why in the name of sense didn't you ride?
I was too late for the stage, and could not readily find a hack. To be sure, I wasted but little time in looking for one; I do not mind walking, I am used to it.
That may do very well for the West. But you'll lose caste, my boy, if you walk here. You must have a horse.
When I can afford it, replied the young man, lightly shrugging his shoulders. "Meanwhile, doubtless I shall find my western habit useful, if vulgar. But I am not prepared to admit that it is vulgar. A young English nobleman, who spent some months in our neighborhood, was a practised walker; he thought nothing of fifteen or twenty miles, on occasion. And if it was 'caste' for him, why not for me?"
Humph! we Southerners boast a good deal of our English ancestors, but we don't feel called upon to imitate them!
With the softening recollections of his youth, the Major had also laid aside his unwonted gentleness of manner; and the freezing satire of his last words, though it was doubtful whether he meant it for himself or his nephew, pained the young man's ear. Instinctively he dropped the discussion.
I forgot to mention, said he, "that I did not walk quite the whole distance. A queer old character whom I overtook, insisted upon giving me a lift to Berganton."
To Berganton! What had you to do with Berganton, I should like to know?
I was not aware that the road had been changed; I supposed that I must needs pass through the village on my way to Bergan Hall. I intended to stay there over night, and come to you early in the morning,—I did not think it right to descend upon you suddenly, late at night. But finding myself unexpectedly on the road hither, and almost in sight of the Hall, I regarded it as an indication of Providence not to be misunderstood.
And well you did! returned the Major, with rude emphasis, "well you did! I should have taken it as a direct insult if my sister's son had slept anywhere in this region, but on the old place. I wish I could say, under the old roof," he went on, in a friendlier tone, "but that leaks like a sieve, and I quitted it long ago. Of course, it might have been mended; but, to tell the truth, the old house was much too big and gloomy and damp and disagreeable to keep bachelor's hall in comfortably, and I was glad to get out of it. Besides, I'd had all sorts of trouble with my overseers, and I decided that the only way to have things managed to my mind was to manage them myself. In order to do that, it was necessary to be on the spot. So I fixed up my overseer's cottage into a snug little box for myself, where I'm as cosey and comfortable as a rat in a rice-heap. But come in, and see for yourself how it looks. Jip, you rascal! why don't you take your young master's portmanteau?"
The torch-boy caught the portmanteau, and Bergan followed his uncle into a small cottage at one corner of the quadrangle, so situated as to command a view both of the mill and the cabins. The room into which he was ushered was plainly but comfortably furnished. A fire of pitch-pine knots blazed on the hearth, reddening the rough walls and the bare floor with its pleasant glow. A slipshod negress, with a gay turban, was busy laying the table for supper. The effect was, upon the whole, cheery, and ought to have been especially so to a tired and hungry traveller; yet Bergan looked around him with a manifest air of disappointment. His uncle noticed it, and remarked, apologetically,
You would prefer to see the Hall, eh? Well, you shall see it in the morning, and I reckon you'll agree with me that it's anything but a cheerful-looking abode. Though, if I had known that a nephew of mine was coming to keep me company, I don't know but I should have stayed there.
The negress now signified that supper was on the table, the food having been brought in, ready cooked, from the nearest cabin; and Major Bergan pointed to a chair opposite his own.
Sit down, Harry, and fall to. Your tramp must have given you a right sharp appetite.
Thank you. But, uncle, my name is Bergan, not Harry.
Not Harry! repeated the Major, sharply,—"I should like to know the reason why! Didn't your mother write that she had named you for me?"
Yes, certainly. But she regarded you as the head of the family, and in giving me the family name—
She named you for the whole breed—my degenerate half-brother and all! interrupted the Major, bringing his clenched fist down upon the table with a force that threatened to demolish it. "I tell you what it is, sir, I shall not stand any half-way work! If you are named after me, you've got to go the whole figure. Harry Bergan Arling you are, and Harry Bergan Arling you shall be,—at least as long as you stay in these parts."
The imperious tone of this speech was by no means agreeable to Bergan's ear; it was not without an effort that he replied, pleasantly;—
Call me what you like, uncle. I shall not refuse to answer to any name that you are pleased to give me.
Major Bergan was evidently much gratified. "That's right, my boy!—we'll shake hands upon that!" he exclaimed, heartily. "I'm glad to see that Eleanor has raised her son in the good old fashion of submission to elders. Bless my soul! I thought it was entirely obsolete. Young men round here know more at twenty than the fathers that begot them. As for obedience, they leave that to the negroes."
The meal was abundant and substantial. It consisted of a single course, of bacon, vegetables, and corn-bread, very simply, not to say rudely, served. It would seem that the master of the feast cared no more for refinements of table than of manner. Here, as elsewhere, were to be seen the pernicious effects of his solitary mode of life. He ate greedily; he forgot his duties as host, or they came but tardily to his remembrance; he fell into fits of abstraction, and started as from a dream at the sound of his nephew's voice. Yet tokens were not wanting that he had once been well versed in the art of external manners. At intervals, answering involuntarily, as it were, to the touch of Bergan's fine, natural courtesy, the gentlemanly instincts of earlier days revived, and flung a momentary grace around his words and actions. It was like the sunbeams that occasionally glimmer out over a cloudy landscape, attracting the gaze even more surely than any full blaze of splendor, yet causing a certain impatience, as if they ought either to kindle into satisfactory brightness, or be wholly extinguished. The rudeness of his ordinary manner was only thrown into bolder relief by these flashes of a half-extinct good breeding.
To meet the demands of thirst, a bottle of brandy, and another of water, stood by Major Bergan's plate; which, after filling his own glass, he pushed over to his nephew.
There, Harry! that is what will put new life into you, after your journey.
Thank you; but I seldom use brandy.
A little too strong for you, eh? returned the Major, indulgently. "Well, there's a stock of wine in the cellar of the Hall,—I reckon some of it must be fifty or sixty years old, it has been there ever since I can remember,—I'll send for a bottle or two of that." And he uplifted a stentorian call of "Jip," which brought that urchin-of-all-work to the door, in breathless haste.
Uncle,—began Bergan, but the Major was thundering out minute directions about cellars, and keys, and tiers, and labels, and either could not, or would not, hear.
I am sorry that you have given yourself the trouble, said Bergan, when quiet was restored. "I do not care for wine."
Major Bergan set down his glass, and looked at his nephew sternly and gloomily. "Don't tell me that you are a mean-spirited teetotaller," he growled. "I can't say how I might take it. There never was a milksop in the family yet."
No, I am hardly that. But I am not accustomed to use spirituous liquors of any sort. And I certainly do not need them. I am in perfect health; I hardly know what it is to feel tired.
I wish I didn't! muttered his uncle, a little less savagely. "I'm pretty hearty, for my years, to be sure. But an ache gets into my bones now and then, just to remind me that I am not so young as I was once. And the best thing to rout it is a good glass of brandy. Better take one?"
Not if you will be so good as to excuse me, replied Bergan, with a smile so frank, and a gesture so courteous, that the Major was irresistibly mollified.
A guest's wish is a command, said he, with one of his rare glimmers of courtesy. "But here comes the wine! I really cannot excuse you from that,—at least, I should be very loath to do so. I'll even join you in a glass. Here's to your mother's health and happiness!—you won't refuse to drink that, not on the place where she was raised."
If Bergan was annoyed by his uncle's persistency, he forebore to show it. But, having duly honored the toast, he pushed his glass aside, and declined every invitation to have it refilled.
Well, well, said his uncle, at last, in a tone of resignation, "we won't quarrel about it now. But I see that your education is incomplete, and I shall take it upon myself to finish it. If I don't teach you to drink like a gentleman, in a month, I shall know that you are no true Bergan, in spite of your looks."
Bergan only smiled.
Your temperance is the one thing I don't like about you, pursued his uncle, filling his own glass to the brim. "Ah, yes, there's one more;—your mother writes that you have studied law, and mean to practise it."
Yes; I received my license just two months ago.
Humph! it's well named! 'License,' indeed! Licensed to lie, cheat, steal,—or, at least, to help others to do so, which amounts to the same thing. No, no, Harry; it may be well to know law enough to keep from being imposed upon, but a Bergan can't stoop to practise it. Lawyers are, without exception, a set of miserable, lying, sneaking pettifoggers. You could drop the souls of a dozen into a child's thimble, and they'd rattle in the end of it after she had put it on her finger.
Bergan's cheek flushed a little, but he was more impressed by the comic than the provoking side of his uncle's dogged prejudice, and he only answered, good-humoredly;—
I am sorry that you should have had occasion to think so badly of the profession. I shall feel that it is incumbent upon me to make you change your opinion.
Never! growled Major Bergan, with an oath. "You would find it easier to lift the Gibraltar rock on the point of a needle. Unless," he added, after a moment, "you can tell me how to make a suit lie against Godfrey Bergan. I've been trying it for ten years, and I've spent money enough to buy another plantation as large as this."
My uncle Godfrey! exclaimed Bergan, in much surprise. "Why, what has he done?"
You had better not call him your 'uncle Godfrey' in my hearing, responded the Major, grimly. "In ceasing to be my half-brother, he ceased to be your uncle. Done! What hasn't he done? First, he got his head filled with cursed abolitionist notions, and freed all his slaves. Next, he offered the greater part of his land for sale at public auction;—just think of it! some of the old lands of Bergan Hall put up to be knocked down to the highest bidder! But I settled that business, by proclaiming far and wide that whoever bid for them might expect to reckon with me for his impertinence; and as I'm known to be a man of my word, no one dared to lift his voice at the sale, and I got them at my own price. Finally Godfrey capped the climax of his degeneracy by opening a hardware store in Berganton. Think of that, Hairy!—a Bergan of Bergan Hall, with a long pedigree of warriors and nobles at his back, standing behind a counter, selling hoes and tea-kettles to negroes and crackers!"
Bergan was silent. Though not without some touch of family pride, derived from his mother, he had nevertheless been taught to believe all upright labor honorable, to hold that life was ennobled from within, by its motive and aim, rather than from without, by its place and form. He could not help suspecting, therefore, that his host, deliberately leading the narrow life of an overseer of slaves, on his ancestral estate, was in reality a more degenerate son of his house than the relative whom he so bitterly contemned. Yet he foresaw that any attempt to defend Godfrey Bergan would but result in bringing down upon himself a torrent of fierce, half-drunken vituperation. Seasoned vessel though he were, the Major's repeated draughts of brandy, very little diluted, had not been without effect, in flushing his face, and inflaming his habitually irritable temper. His present mood would ill brook contradiction.
Fortunately, he neither expected nor waited for an answer. Hastily emptying his glass and filling it again, he went on.
Now, Harry, if you can tell me any way by which I can ruin his business, turn him out of his house, and make him quit the country, I'll own that I've done the law an injustice, and give you a handsome fee besides. Can the thing be done?
Bergan silently shook his head; he would not trust himself to speak.
Just as I told you! exclaimed the Major, with great virulence of expression. "The law has plenty of quibbles and quirks for the help of rogues and scoundrels, but it can't lend a hand to an honest cause, at a pinch! I'll none of it, Harry! I'll none of it! Get what you know of it out of your head as soon as you can."
The Major paused long enough to empty his glass, and then resumed, in a more amiable tone. "The best thing you can do, Harry, is to stay here with me; I'll make a rice-planter of you. It doesn't take a ninny for that, by any means; your talents will not be thrown away. And if we suit each other,—as I think we shall,—I'll give you Bergan Hall when my title to it expires. To be sure, I'm strong and hearty yet; but no one lasts forever. And as you are named for me, and I like your looks, I would rather give it to you than anybody else. In fact, I've had it in my mind, for some time, to write to Eleanor and ask her to do just what she has done,—send one of her boys to live with me, and be my heir."
You mistake, said Bergan, quickly, "neither my mother nor myself had any such idea. She merely wished me to consult you about commencing my profession in—"
Tut! tut! Harry, interrupted his uncle, "I meant it, if you and she did not. And I mean it more than ever now; that is, if you'll yield to my wish about the law. But if you persist in sticking to that, I give you up, once for all—mind, I give you up!"
I should deserve to be given up, replied Bergan, smiling, "if I were lightly to forsake a vocation for which I am fitted both by taste and education, to enter upon one of which I know absolutely nothing. I may reasonably hope to succeed as a lawyer; I fear I should make but a poor planter. Moreover, it would not suit me to be dependent upon any one."
Stuff! nonsense! exclaimed Major Bergan, bluntly. "I defy you to make a poor planter under my tuition,—I claim to understand that business. As for dependence, never you fear but that I shall get aid and comfort enough out of you to make our accounts square. For, after all, Harry, it is a dreary kind of a life that I'm leading, without chick or child, kith or kin, to speak to, or to care for. I cannot help asking myself, sometimes, what is the good of it all, and how Is it to end. But with a fine young fellow like you here, to enter into my plans now, and carry them out after I'm gone,—why, it would be like a fresh lease of life to me! We'll rebuild the old house, you shall drop the 'Arling,' and behold the seventh Harry Bergan of Bergan Hall, on this side the water! And really, I don't see how you can do better, Harry. Here are wealth, position, influence, and a chance to oblige your old uncle,—ready to your hand. Stay, my boy, stay!"
The Major's bluff voice had sunken to a hoarse tone of sadness, in his confession of loneliness, and finally, to one of entreaty, that touched his nephew's heart. Nor was the prospect held up before him without its own peculiar and powerful attraction. He looked thoughtfully into the fire, debating with himself what and how he should reply. His uncle watched him keenly for a moment, and then said, in his kindest tone and manner;—
Well, Harry, I won't press you for an answer, now. Stay here a month or two, and look around you; and then, we'll talk the matter over again, and see if we cannot settle upon something that shall be mutually satisfactory. For so long, surely, you can afford to be my guest.
Before Bergan could answer, there came a low tap at the door. A negro woman, of unusual height, and singularly venerable and dignified aspect, stood, courtesying slightly, on the threshold. She was plainly of great age,—her face was deeply furrowed, and her hair, where it could be seen under the dark blue kerchief that covered her head, was white as snow,—yet her shoulders had not bent under the burden of years, her tall frame, though gaunt, was little palsied by the touch of actual infirmity. Although she carried a cane, it was not so much for its support, as for its aid in feeling out her way along her accustomed paths; she had been blind for many years.
Master Harry, said she, clasping her hands over the head of her cane, and speaking in slow, somewhat tremulous tones, but with neither the slovenly utterance nor the vicious pronunciation of the ordinary slave,—"Master Harry, excuse me if I interrupt you, but I could not wait any longer,—I wanted so much to see Miss Eleanor's son!"
It is Maumer Rue, said Major Bergan, not only with unwonted kindness of tone, but with something akin to respect in his manner;—"your mother must have spoken to you of our old nurse, Harry?"
Indeed she has! exclaimed Bergan, earnestly, starting up to take the blind woman's hand. "Your name has always been a household word with us. The story of your devotion to my mother, in saving her from the flames, at the risk of your own life, and with the ultimate loss of your sight, was the one story of which we children never used to tire. Probably we felt, in our vague, childish way, that it was the one which came from the profoundest depth in her own heart,—since she could never tell it to us without a little tremor in her voice, and a soft dewiness in her eyes,—and that was the secret of its charm for us. You may be sure that she has never forgotten how much she owes you!"
The old woman's lips trembled, and large tears gathered in her sightless eyes. "The Lord bless my dear young lady!" she ejaculated fervently,—"I knew she would never forget her old maumer. And it's like her to make much of my little service; but I did nothing but what was my duty—nothing."
She thinks otherwise, replied Bergan, kindly. "She regards it as one of those rare instances of courage and devotion, for which the whole world is better and brighter. She bade me give you her kindest love, and tell you that you must not despair of meeting her once more, even on this side the grave. When the new railroad is finished, as far as our place,—which it promises to be in a year or two,—she fully intends to revisit her childhood's home, and look once more upon the faces of her childhood's friends. She furthermore charged me to pay you an early visit, in your own quarters, and tell you everything about her western home and life that you might care to hear."
How kind of Miss Eleanor to think of that! responded the blind woman, delightedly. "It shows that she's just her own old self, always trying to think what everybody would like, and then doing her best to give it to them. Of course, there's a hundred questions that I should like to ask about her; and if you really don't mind answering them, and will do me the honor to step into my little cabin, some day when you're passing by, I shall be more obliged to you than I can rightly tell. But as to my ever seeing Miss Eleanor again,—I beg your pardon, sir; you see I've not yet learned to say Mrs. Arling,—though there's nothing on earth that would make me so glad as to meet her again, and hear the sound of her sweet, cheery voice, yet I'm getting to be too old to dare to reckon much upon the future. But the next best thing to meeting her, is to meet her son, here on the old place; and I thank the Lord that He has let me live long enough for that."
The old negress bent her head devoutly for a moment, and then turned to Major Bergan. "Does he favor Miss Eleanor much, Master Harry?" she asked.
Yes, he is a good deal like her, maumer; he has her eyes exactly. But he is even more like what I was forty years ago; it really makes me feel young again to look at him. He's a real Bergan, I can tell you that.
Maumer Rue smiled as if well pleased; yet the smile seemed a little burdened with sadness, too; and Bergan saw that it was followed by a look of extreme wistfulness.
Can I do anything for you? he asked, kindly.
Nothing, master,—unless—if it is not asking too much,—and if you would not mind the touch of an old woman's fingers, that have to serve her instead of eyes, I could get so much clearer an idea of your looks,— and she finished the sentence by raising her hand significantly toward his face.
Bergan was much moved. "Of course I should not mind," said he, drawing near to her;—"examine me as closely as you like. It would be strange indeed if there were anything unpleasant to me in the touch of hands that have done so much for my mother!"
It's easy to see that you are Miss Eleanor's son, you have just her kind, pleasant ways, responded the blind woman, gratefully. "He is a little taller than you, Master Harry," she continued, turning toward the Major, as she laid her hand on Bergan's head,—"yes, just a little taller, though not much."
All the better for that, remarked the Major, parenthetically, "the Bergans must not degenerate."
Maumer Rue went on, without noticing the interruption; passing her fingers lightly over Bergan's features, as she spoke. "His brow is square and full, like yours, and he has the same straight nose; but his eyes are not so deep-set, nor his eyebrows so heavy. His jaw is like yours, too,—the set, square jaw of the Bergans,—but his mouth is more like Miss Eleanor's:—a sweet, pleasant mouth she had, the mouth of the Habershams, her mother's family. Yet it could be firm enough, too, when there was need; our Miss Eleanor had plenty of character. And I'm right glad to see that you are so much like her; you couldn't resemble any one better or handsomer."
She made a slight pause, and then added, in a half-humorous way,—"I reckon she couldn't give you any spice of the 'black Bergan temper,' as she had none of it herself."
I am afraid she did, answered Bergan, laughing, yet coloring, too; "and many a scrape it has gotten me into, before now. But I hope that I am learning to control it a little."
I don't see why you should, broke in the Major, gruffly. "The Bergan temper is an heir-loom to be proud of; it identifies the breed. It has run in the blood from time immemorial. A Bergan without it—that is, a male, of course a woman counts for nothing—would be no Bergan at all."
You say true, Master Harry, rejoined Rue, composedly; "it's always run in the blood, and heated it more than was good for it, many a time. Yet, now and then, there has been a Bergan who has learned how to keep it under, and been all the better for doing it. You surely must recollect what a mild, kind gentleman your father was, young as you were when he died; and I've heard say that there never was a truer Bergan, or one more respected all the country through."
The Major made a grimace, and muttered something unintelligible, in a tone half of acquiescence, half of irritation.
Rue turned again to Bergan. "You have been very patient with an old woman's talk, and an old woman's infirmity," said she, with a kind of natural dignity,—"I will not trouble you any longer. Good night, and thank you, Master—what name shall I say?"
Bergan hesitated, and looked doubtfully at his uncle.
He says his name is Bergan, explained the Major, shortly; "but I have given him to understand that he is to be known by my own name, Harry, while he stays here."
Rue shook her head. "There can be but one Master Harry for me," she said quietly,—"the one that I nursed as a babe and petted as a child, the one that I have lived with so many years, and who has always been so kind to me—kinder even than he has been to himself. So please let me call him Master Bergan; but, of course, the rest of the people will give him any name that you say."
Of course they will, returned the Major, haughtily, "or I'll know the reason why. As for you, maumer, I shall let you do as you please; you've had your own way too long to be balked of it now. But take care that the others don't hear and imitate you,—or you know what they'll get.".
Thank you, Master Harry, replied Rue, as gratefully as if the assent had been more graciously given,—"you are always good to your poor old maumer. Good night." And she turned to go.
But on the threshold, she paused, and lifted her sightless face toward the dim night-sky, across which dark clouds were swiftly scudding.
Master Harry, said she, suddenly, "do you remember how I told you, six months ago, that the Bergan star was set, and how angry you were?"
Yes, yes, I remember, exclaimed the Major, hoarsely and eagerly,—"what of it?"
She slowly raised her right hand, and pointed skyward, with a strange, intent, watchful expression in her uplifted "See! it is rising!" said she; "it comes up through the clouds,—they try to hold it back, but they cannot,—it grows brighter! it rises higher!—ah!"—drawing her breath hard and gaspingly,—"it stops—it goes down again!—the clouds cover it!—it is—No! it is not gone! it shines faintly behind the clouds—it breaks through—slowly, slowly, slowly,—it rises! it rises!"
Yielding, half-unconsciously, to the powerful influence of the blind woman's rapt, ecstatic manner, Bergan had drawn near to her, and now saw, with surprise, a single star shining for a moment through the rifts of the clouds. Glancing at the Major, whom he had before seen to be hanging with breathless interest upon the words of the old negress, he perceived that his eyes were fixed upon it also, with a gaze that was half-awed, half-triumphant. He knew not what to think.
Maumer Rue still stood in the same commanding attitude, with raised hand, and intent, uplooking face. Suddenly, her arm fell by her side; her head drooped on her breast; the majesty that had informed her pose and gesture went out like an expiring flame; she shivered, tottered, and would have fallen but for the Major's prompt support. Without a word, he guided her safely to the door of her cabin.
Coming back, he reseated himself at the table, which had been cleared of everything but the bottles and glasses, and hastily poured out and swallowed some raw brandy. Then he remarked, in a half-explanatory and half-apologetic tone,—
She enjoys the reputation of a seer, or prophetess, among the negroes; and I really think she has some faith in it herself. Certainly, she seems to have strange visions now and then; and some of her predictions have come true; I confess she puzzles even me. At all events, she is the best and most faithful old creature that ever lived. She was born on the estate, brought up in the Hall with my father and his sisters, shared their education, is thoroughly steeped in the family traditions, duly infected with the family pride, and entirely devoted to the family interests. She is the only person that I allow to do pretty much as she pleases; her long and faithful services to my father, Eleanor, and myself, deserve that much, I think. And really, she is of great use to me; I scarcely know what I should do without her. The negroes all believe her to be a hundred years old—undoubtedly she is past ninety—and that, together with her reputation as a prophetess, gives her great power over them, and saves me a heap of trouble in managing them. She has very good judgment, too, in many things; I frequently take her advice, and never yet had occasion to regret doing so. Indeed, it was chiefly at her instigation and entreaty that I had made up my mind, as I told you, to write to your mother about sending me one of her sons.
He paused for a moment, and then asked, in a careless tone, but with a quick, keen glance at his nephew, from under his shaggy brows,—"Did you see that star?"
Yes, answered Bergan. "It was a curious coincidence."
Hum—very, returned his uncle, evidently not quite satisfied with this view of the matter. But he said no more.
The conversation now turned into various other channels. It touched for a brief space upon the indefatigable quoter of proverbs whom Bergan had overtaken on his way to the Hall; and whom the Major declared to be the only living representative of one of the oldest and most influential families in the county. He had been reared in affluence, had been educated in Europe, and had inherited a large fortune and a fine estate. But he had early fallen into bad habits,—not so much from viciousness of temper and taste, as from weakness of will and consequent inability to resist temptation,—had run a short, rapid career of folly, extravagance, and dissipation, in which he had frittered away his inheritance, and so had gradually sunken into his present state of semi-vagabondage. He lived, by sufferance, in a little cabin, on one corner of the estate which he had formerly owned. From his wholesale shipwreck of fortune, position, will, energy, and hope, he had saved but one thing—his love of proverbs. It had even grown stronger in proportion as other things wasted and failed,—like a plant striking deep root into soil enriched by the decay of many sister plants. He had learned several languages solely for the sake of their proverbs; he had even been seen to hesitate and waver long between the diverse, but powerful, attractions of a bottle of ardent spirits and a dingy, old collection of saws, when but one came within the compass of his purse; and he was known far and wide by the sobriquet of "Proverb Dick." His real name was Richard Causton.
In listening to this history, Bergan could not but be struck by the curiously discriminating character of the Major's animadversion. He had little, or nothing, to say in disapproval of the depraved and ungovernable appetite for strong drink which, it was easy to see, had played so important part in ruining poor Richard Causton; while he could find no words strong enough to express his bitter contempt for the flabby will, the pitiable irresolution, and the insane extravagance, which had joined hands with that appetite for his complete destruction. Tender, as a mother to her babe, over the fault which he knew himself to possess (if he secretly acknowledged it to be a fault), Major Bergan was merciless to the weaknesses from which he was saved by a hardier will and a more energetic temperament.
But as the evening wore on, and the brandy slowly worked its way up to the stronghold of his brain, the Major's talk grew discursive, profane, and incoherent; until Bergan, shocked and pained, and anxious to escape from the mortifying spectacle, pleaded fatigue, and begged permission to retire. Jip was accordingly summoned, and he was conducted to a little, low room under the cottage roof, where his portmanteau had been bestowed, and some little provision made for his comfort.
Here Bergan quickly threw himself on the bed, to find, for the first time in his life, that it was one thing to woo the fair maiden Sleep, and another to win her. Recollections of his western home, of his mother, of the ancestral traditions on which his childish imagination had fed, of his youthful studies and aspirations, of his recent journey, and the disappointment in which it had ended, mingled with half-conceived plans and half-acknowledged hopes,—a vague, changeable, teasing, tireless procession of thoughts and images,—filed slowly through his mind, compelling his reluctant gaze, and blocking up every avenue to Slumberland. And if, for an instant, the vexing march stopped, and the importunate images began to waver and blend, sounds of stamping feet, of jingling glass, of muttered oaths and sentences, or two or three half-sung, half-shouted lines of a drunken ditty, coming up from below, startled him once more into wakefulness, and told him that his uncle's solitary debauch was not yet ended. It was already gray dawn when, worn out with restlessness, he fell into a brief slumber, and dreamed that old Rue, with the Bergan star in her hand, was beckoning him to follow her over a dreary, desolate country, full of briers and pitfalls, wherein he was so constantly entangled that, in spite of his best endeavors, he could never get any nearer to her. Turning suddenly, she flashed the star into his eyes, and:—oh, horror of horrors!—he was blind!
Starting up, all in a tremble, he found that the risen sun was shining full in his face, through the uncurtained window. It was morning.
Early as was the hour, Bergan found the table already laid for breakfast in the room below, where he was soon joined by the Major. He brought with him (besides a noticeable odor of brandy), a cordial morning greeting, and a temper which, though by no means urbane, had a certain, flavor of bluff good nature, in pleasing contrast with his extreme irritability of the preceding evening. Encouraged by these and similar signs of a clearer mental atmosphere, Bergan ventured to mention his uncle Godfrey, and to remark that he had been charged with a letter to him from his mother, which he must take an early opportunity to deliver.
Eh! what? asked the Major, laying down his knife and fork, with the look and tone of a man who doubts the evidence of his own senses.
Bergan quietly repeated his words.
The Major's face grew dark, and his eyebrows met in a heavy frown. "I shall take it mighty hard of you, if you do," said he, sternly and gloomily. "I tell you, Harry, he is no Bergan at all, and he ought not to be treated like one. Eleanor would never have written to him, nor desired you to visit him, if she had known the true state of affairs;—you can safely take that for granted, and act accordingly. Besides," he went on, after a slight pause, "it is only fair to warn you that any one who goes from Bergan Hall over to Oakstead (that's what he calls his place), doesn't come back again,—with my consent. There's no relation, nor commerce, nor sympathy, nor liking, between the two places; and there never can be any while I live,—nor after I am dead, either, if I can help it. So just put that matter out of your head, Harry, and say no more about it."
Bergan looked down, and the color rose to his brow. Without seeking to know the merits of the quarrel between his two uncles, he nevertheless felt that the abject submission, the complete surrender of principle and will, expected of him by Major Bergan, was simply impossible; and he began to wonder if it were not his wisest course to place himself at once on tenable ground, by saying that, while he should always be glad of his uncle's advice, and ready to give all due and respectful consideration to his wishes, yet, in matters involving questions of right and duty, the final appeal must needs be to his own conscience. Something of this sort was upon his lips, when the Major spoke again, and in a more amiable tone.
I am really sorry, for your sake, Harry, that things are just as they are, said he. "Of course, it is not agreeable to you to run thus unexpectedly against a family feud;—I really ought to have written Eleanor about it, but I thought to spare her the knowledge of her half-brother's disgrace. Besides, as Godfrey is our nearest neighbor, it might be pleasant to be on visiting terms, if he and his were only the right sort of company to keep."
I think he has children near my own age, remarked Bergan.
Not now. His two eldest died a few years ago.
Ah, yes; I remember hearing of it when I was in college.
He has but one left—a daughter, pursued the Major. "A pretty, bright little thing she was, too, as a child; I was really quite fond of her, and she used to spend half her time here,—that is, in the old Hall;—and Maumer Rue almost idolized her, because she fancied that she was something like what Eleanor was at her age. She even used to run away and come over here, after the trouble began; but I reckon they must have found it out, and put a stop to it." And the Major ground his teeth at the recollection, as if he owed his brother an especial grudge on this very head. "However," he went on, "it is better so; for though I could never have found it in my heart to be unkind to the child,—so fond of me as she was, too!—yet I want nothing to do with anybody, or anything, that belongs to Godfrey; and so I am glad, on the whole, that she stopped coming. Doubtless, she will soon merge the name of Bergan into Smith, or Brown, or something equally desirable; and as Godfrey has no son, to bear his patronymic and carry on his business, we may hope that there will be an end of them."
The last words were spoken with ineffable contempt. Then, suddenly rising, as if to dismiss the subject, the Major remarked, with an entire change of tone and manner:—
But I must not sit here chatting any longer, for I suspect that Ben—that's my head driver—is waiting for instructions. Will you come with me, or do you prefer to amuse yourself about home?
I will go with you, uncle, if you are willing.
Both willing and glad. Come on.
Bergan followed his uncle out into the quadrangle,—here called the "street,"—and found it to be, for the most part, silent and deserted. The cabins, many of which, on the evening previous, had been brightened by a little gleam of firelight within, or vivified by moving figures, were now closed and locked, the occupants being away at work in the fields. They were all neatly whitewashed; and they stood well apart from each other, leaving room for little gardens between, where vegetables, and, occasionally, flowers, were growing. Here and there, too, a pig rooted and grunted in a rude sty; or hens and chickens fluttered and cackled, in their busy, enlivening fashion, around the door.
One of the buildings, of considerable size, and two stories high, where several women and children, with peculiar haggard, heavy, listless, and withal resigned faces, were lying or sitting around the porch, Bergan easily recognized as the infirmary. Another, seemingly stuffed with babies and young children, under the charge of several half-grown girls and one superannuated old woman, he knew to be the day-nursery; for the safe bestowal of the infant population of the quarter, during their mothers' absence in the fields. Here, Maumer Rue seemed to be making a visit of inspection; though invisible herself, the slow tones of her voice, exhorting one of the young nurses to greater watchfulness, sounded distinctly from within; and becoming quickly aware of the approach of her master and his guest, she came to the door, and made them a stately courtesy, as they passed.
Quite apart from the quarter, yet within sight, stood a cabin of especially rude and forlorn aspect; the open door of which disclosed a strong stake driven into the ground in its centre, and divers rusty chains, handcuffs, padlocks, et cetera, hanging round its sides. This was the prison. Human justice being thus provided with a fitting abode, Bergan involuntarily looked around in search of a corresponding dwelling for Heaven's mercy, in the shape of a little cross-tipped church or chapel,—but saw none.
Major Bergan first stopped at the threshing-mill, where Engine (that is to say "Engineer") Jack, a remarkably intelligent negro,—and an exceedingly black one as well,—was waiting to bring to his master's notice certain slight repairs necessary to the machinery. While the needful discussion was going on, Bergan looked around him, the better to understand the topography of the place.
He observed that Bergan Hall, the roof of which he saw afar off, rising among the trees, was situated upon a considerable elevation,—a sort of bluff, overlooking a small inlet, or arm of the sea. To this circumstance, Major Bergan owed his ability to live upon his plantation throughout the year, instead of fleeing therefrom, like most of his class, at the approach of summer. For, just when the home-scenery takes on its most tender and fascinating grace,—when the rice-fields are green as the meadows of paradise,—when the temple-like oak-glades are most beautiful with gentle gloom and glinting sunshine,—when every thicket has its garland of bloom, and every tree has its clinging, flowering vine,—when the sweet-smelling pine-woods are glittering with the gorgeous coloring, and melodious with the multifarious voice, of thousands of birds and insects;—Just then, the rice-planter has to flee for his life from its final, treacherous charm—-the soft-shining mist, the deadly malaria, that creeps up at night from the marshes, and covers the land like a sea. If he lingers for but one ramble in the fair, moon-lighted, and moss-festooned avenues, through that silver haze, fever walks by his side under the grand arches, and death waits for him at the end of the alluring vistas.
From this terror and this necessity, the owner of Bergan Hall was free. His vast plantation stretched across the border-line which divides the pestilential rice-swamps from the healthful sea-islands; one extremity touching the river, and the other the ocean. At one time, its chief revenue was derived from the far-famed sea-island cotton, to the production of which its sea-board portion was well-adapted, but as that crop declined, and the rice-crop rose, in value, its neglected swamp-lands were gradually reclaimed and brought under cultivation; and were now the most valuable portion of the estate. Too remote from Bergan Hall to poison it, or its vicinity, with their malaria, they were yet quite near enough for necessary superintendence.
The negro quarter lay somewhat lower than the Hall. On its left, the ground sloped gradually down to a little creek; where lay several flat-boats loaded with rice, to show what had been the goal of the negro procession of the previous evening. Along the opposite bank ran a dark fringe of pines.
Horses were now brought. The one assigned to Bergan was a superb blooded filly, full of life and fire. While he stood taking delighted note of her many fine points, she sniffed round him in half-wild, half-curious fashion,—now starting quickly back, now timidly drawing near,—and ended by frankly putting her nose in his hand, as if in token of amity. Nor had he been long on her back, ere he felt, with an electric thrill of pleasure, that perfect sympathy between horse and rider, that singular blending of their identity, which is the purest delight of horsemanship, and best explains the fable of the Centaur.
How do you like her? asked his uncle, at this juncture.
Exceedingly, replied Bergan, with enthusiastic emphasis. "I think that I never rode anything more admirable."
Henceforth, then, she belongs to you. And never mind the thanks,—I am really glad to hand her over to a fitting master. She is too much given to dancing and frolicking for my use,—-my sober-paced stallion meets my wants a great deal better;—consequently, Vic—that's her name, short for Victoria,—Vic stands in the stable, eating her head and kicking her heels off, for the greater part of the time. She will be much happier in the hands of a master young enough to sympathize with her.
Bergan could not fail to be delighted with a gift so generous and so timely; bestowed, too, with a delicacy of manner, an appearance of asking a favor instead of conferring one, in strong contrast with his uncle's wonted bluntness. Visions of long, solitary rides of exploration rose fascinatingly before him. Nor would he suffer his pleasure to be alloyed by any insidious doubt lest the gift might some day take the form of an unpleasant obligation.
The road ran along the bank of the creek, passing divers fields under cultivation, and divers others long "turned out,"—that is, exhausted, and left to lapse back into their primitive pine-barrenness. In the course of an hour, the two gentlemen came upon a second negro quarter, considerably larger than the first, but with the same general characteristics, even to the threshing-mill. This one, however, ran by water power, instead of steam.
The horses were here left in charge of a negro, while the gentlemen walked over to the rice fields. They soon came into view, stretching, almost as far as the eye could reach, along the bank of a broad, turbid river. Bergan speedily became much interested in their complicated system of dykes, ditches, canals, and gates; as well as in watching the dusky laborers, both men and women, that were busy therein. Leaving details for results, however, he could not but be impressed with the fact that a vast amount of hard work was annually done, and a rich and remunerative crop annually reaped. Plainly, Major Bergan was an energetic, skilful manager.
On his part, the Major was greatly pleased with his nephew's intelligent interest, and predicted, more than once, that he would make a rice-planter of him, in due time, who would show his neighbors "what was what."
The sun was half way down the western slope, when the uncle and nephew returned to the cottage. Dinner over, the Major civilly expressed his regret that he was unexpectedly called to another part of the plantation. Bergan could accompany him; or—not to disappoint him of his promised visit to the old Hall—he could get the keys of Maumer Rue, and explore it by himself.
Bergan eagerly caught at the latter alternative. Nor, to do him justice, was the Major at all displeased thereby. Without troubling himself to analyze his own emotions, he yet felt an unconquerable aversion to the task of showing his nephew through the deserted home of his forefathers. Though little accustomed to care for the opinions or the feelings of others, he foresaw an inevitable mortification in looking with Bergan upon the ruin and desolation for which he knew himself to be so largely responsible; since, if he had not invited the ravages of time, he had put forth no hand to stay them. Perhaps this feeling was strong enough, even, to lend to the business that called him away, an imperative aspect which it might otherwise have lacked.
Bergan, on his part, was well content to dispense with his uncle's guidance. Not only would his presence be a constraint upon his own irrepressible emotions of sadness, regret, and, possibly, indignation; but there would be a rare, subtile charm in wandering alone through precincts at once so familiar and so strange, in finding out for himself (or led only by the shadowy image of his maiden mother), spots hallowed by the tender touch of oldtime joys and sorrows, and nooks and corners darkened not more by mould and cobwebs than by the clinging dust of immemorial family tradition.
First, however, Major Bergan requested his companionship as far as the stable. There they found a bright looking boy, somewhat older than Jip, who had just finished rubbing down the filly of which Bergan had so lately become the master, and now stood regarding the result with great apparent satisfaction.
Well, Brick, said the Major, sternly, "I hope you've done better than you did last time."
Yes, massa, she done berry fine, I'se sure,—spec' I put a right smart hour on her. Look a dar, now, don' she shine?
The Major examined her carefully, and finding nothing to fault, silent. It was not his way to waste words in commendation. He merely turned from the horse to the negro, and asked, pointing to Bergan,—
You see that young gentleman?
Yis, massa; sartin, massa. And Brick made an embarrassed bow, uncertain whither this conversation might tend.
Well, that's Vic's master, and yours. It's your business to take care of her, and wait on him,—that is, do everything he tells you. Hereafter, you are to go to him for orders.
And quickly mounting his own horse, the Major rode off, without waiting for thanks or comments.
Bergan stood looking doubtfully at his new acquisition. Property of this kind gave him a novel sensation; he could not tell, on the instant, whether he liked it or no. Nevertheless, he recognized the inexpediency of discussing the matter with the dusky chattel himself; who, to represent him fairly, seemed in nowise displeased with his change of owners. He had opened his eyes a trifle wider at his sudden transfer, and uttered a mechanical, "Yis, massa,"—that was all. He now stood, tattered hat in hand, waiting for orders. Bergan was somewhat disconcerted to find that he had none to give. Finally, he asked,—
What is your name?
Rubric, sah. But dey mos'ly calls me Brick.
Ah, yes, I see. And your family name?
Hain't got no family, sah.
Your father's name, I mean.
Nebber had any fader, sah. He sold down souf, fore I's born.
Your second name, then.
Same's yours, massa, I s'pose.
Hum—How old are you?
Brick scratched his head reflectively. "Don' jes' know, massa, 'zactly. Spec' bout—bout—fifteen or—twenty, sah; jess 's massa likes."
Bergan bit his lip. Never had he met with such a spirit of accommodation.
Well, Brick, he asked, after a moment, "if you had a half-holiday, now, what would you do with it?"
Brick's face grew radiant through all its dusk. "Go a-fishin', massa," he burst out, eagerly; "I jes' should!"
Well, go fishing, then,—if you think you can be back by supper-time.
Yis, massa. Tank you, massa. And Brick was off like an arrow from the string.
Bergan immediately sought out old Rue's cabin. Outwardly, it differed little from its neighbors; but its interior was not without evidences of thoughtful provision for the faithful old nurse's comfort. Having kindly answered all the questions that she chose to ask, in reference to "Miss Eleanor" and her western life, he made known his errand. She instantly took a key from her pocket, and was about to put it in his hand, when she suddenly drew back, exclaiming:—
No, no, that will never do! I forgot. That is the key of the back door. You see, sir, I sometimes look into the Hall, and that way is most convenient.
I assure you that it will serve me very well, too, replied Bergan. "It does not matter how I make my entrance."
Rue shook her head. "It is not fitting," said she, "that the son and heir of the house should first enter at the back, like a servant."
The son, but not the heir, replied Bergan, smiling.
Rue turned quickly toward him. "Not the heir!" she exclaimed, as if greatly surprised. "And why not?"
The question was not easy to answer. Bergan could not say frankly, "Because such heirship must be bought at too high a price,—even the surrender of my profession, will, conscience, individuality." Nor did the answer present itself to his own mind in this definite form. He was conscious, at the moment, of nothing but a confused, hazy throng of doubts, fears, possibilities, and wishes.
Rue seemed quite satisfied with his silence. She turned to a bureau near by, and, after a little search, drew forth a large, rusty key, which she handed him with a kind of solemnity.
It has waited long, said she, "for the hand that should rightfully put it into the lock, and let light and hope once more into the old house. I thank the Lord that I live to see the day."
Bergan was too much touched to answer. He walked quickly to the front of the deserted mansion, cut the vines from the door, and put the key in the lock. At first, it opposed a stubborn resistance to his efforts; then, suddenly, the bolt yielded, the door turned slowly on its long-unused hinges, and he stood, with a beating heart, in his ancestral hall.
He was met by a swift gust of wind, so chill and vault-like, and hurrying past him with so woful a sigh, that it seemed like the rush of innumerable imprisoned ghosts, eagerly seizing upon the opportunity for escape. Involuntarily letting go the door, it fell to behind him with a clangor that reverberated loudly, for a moment, through the house, and then suddenly ceased, as if smothered in some remote corner by a lurking hand. The silence which followed was dreary and oppressive,—all the more, because Bergan, coming so suddenly from the outward sunshine, was altogether bedimmed by such density of gloom as brooded within, most of the windows being either darkened by blinds, or closed with heavy opaque shutters. For a single instant, he felt a thrill of unreasoning horror. The impenetrable gloom, the oppressive stillness, the damp, dead air (which might have come straight from the open mouth of a tomb), gave him a chill impression that he had committed sacrilege.
Quickly recovering himself, however, he again flung wide open the door, and fastened it back. By the light thus admitted, he easily found his way to a window at the other end of the hall, which he also opened. There was an immediate inward rush, not only of the sunny daylight, but of the sweet, warm air of the autumn afternoon, with its inevitable suggestions of tranquil sea, and tender sky, and slow-waving forest; quickly penetrating, he felt sure, to the uppermost corner of the long-deserted dwelling, and scattering everywhere some healthful, purifying, enlivening influence.
He could now see that he stood in a wide and lofty entrance-hall, decorated with a profusion of carved woodwork; panels, cornices, and casements, being ornamented with garlands of oaken roses, or quaint heads of animals, stiff as petrifactions, and almost ebon-black with time and rubbing. The furniture consisted of a small table, a cumbrous cabinet, and ponderous, high-backed chairs, of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, brought from England, as heir-looms, by the first emigrant Bergan. There was also a tall, spectral clock, which, to Bergan's intense astonishment, suddenly began to fill the hall with a loud, monotonous tick, as if the march of time, long ago arrested in the deserted mansion, was now duly resumed:—doubtless the rusty wheels had been jarred into spasmodic motion by the violent closing of the door. By way of decoration, there were a few dingy pictures, in dark, carved frames; and in two of the oaken panels hung complete suits of armor,—helmets, cuirasses, gorgets, greaves, and gauntlets,—memorials, not only of long-buried Bergans, but of long-vanished days.
Hesitating, for a moment, between two half-open doors, Bergan finally chose to enter the main parlor, a room full of a dusky, old-time grandeur. A piano stood between the windows, over the keys of which he ran his fingers, but found that its music had been imprisoned so long as to have grown hoarse and melancholy. So, doubtless, had that of the harp, which showed skeleton-like through its torn baize cover, and was flanked by a pile of music-books, the leaves of which were yellow with age. Odd, unwieldy chairs, covered with faded silk damask and a rich coat of dust, kept solemn state in the dim corners; ottomans and footstools, elaborately embroidered by forgotten fingers with birds, flowers, and other once cheerful devices, stood under the windows, or were scattered around the floor. On the walls, in frames of tarnished magnificence, hung two or three pictures in worsted, the designs of which, like the hands that had wrought them, were now faded beyond recognition. Just in proportion as these things had once helped to brighten the room, they helped to make it more sombre now. Like the images of vanished joys, they were all the gloomier because once so glad. Looking upon them, Bergan was painfully impressed with the latent identity of gayety and grief. Only give them time enough, and they merge into the same dull neutral tint!
Bergan next glanced into a second parlor, a dusky ante-room, and a dining-room, but leaving these places undisturbed in their dim and dusty sanctity, as not of pressing interest, he made his way to the library, on the other side of the hall. It was a large and lofty room, set round with ancient book-cases, above and between which hung rows of portraits, in frames of oak and gilt. These represented the early forefathers and later worthies of the Bergan lineage,—some in knightly armor, with mailed hands clasping a gleaming sword-hilt; some in the rich array of the Tudor or the Stuart court, with laced and plumed hats under their arms; some in the red coats and top-boots of English squires, with a favorite horse or hound looking out from one corner of the picture; some in the huge horsehair wigs and ermined robes of the judge's bench; and others in the cocked hats and knee-breeches of the Revolution, or in the modern black coat and pantaloons, seated in arm-chairs, with their backs to a crimson curtain. There were also dames to match, with towers of lace and curls upon their heads, ruffs, farthingales, and all manner of obsolete finery.
Most of the faces had the austerity of aspect common to old portraits, as if time had delighted to bring into clearer view the hard, stern traits of character which the painter had dared but faintly to delineate, and had even then done his best to cover up with pleasant coloring, and a final coat of lustrous varnish. Nowhere was this effect more striking than in the portrait of Sir Harry Bergan, earliest emigrant of the name, and father of the American line. The younger son of a noble English house, he had early fallen under the displeasure of a stern father, by reason of careless and spendthrift habits; and had finally been banished, in disgrace, to a small continental town, upon an allowance barely sufficient to keep body and soul together. Under this severe discipline,—smarting, too, with a rankling sense of injustice in the treatment that he had received,—his character underwent a complete transformation. His carelessness and extravagance, as well as the generosity and frankness of which they had been the rank, ill-trained outgrowth, fell from him like worn-out garments; he became bitter, morose, and dogged.
At this crisis, the sudden death of his mother placed him in possession of her own large fortune and family estate. Life once more opened before him; but no gentle affection called him back to the paternal neighborhood. On the contrary, he emigrated to Georgia, just then luminous with the career and the fame of General Oglethorpe; with the ambitious design of founding a Bergan lineage in the new world, which should equal, if not surpass, that of the old one. He bought a vast tract of land, and vigorously commenced the work of bringing it under cultivation; he distinguished himself both as soldier and citizen in the Spanish war and the colonial trials, and was knighted for his services; finally, he imported men and materials, and built Bergan Hall as nearly as was possible in the style of his early English home, and called it by the same name. The bricks, the tiles, the elaborate oak carvings, the door and window-frames, the furniture and decorations, the copies of ancestral portraits, were all brought from England, and put in their places by English artisans.
Scarcely was the work finished ere he died, bequeathing to his descendants, not only a vast estate, a splendid home, and an illustrious name, but, by a still stronger law of heirship, certain marked traits of character hereditary in himself,—indomitable energy, dogged independence, strong family pride, and an occasional lunacy of rage, familiarly known as the "Black Bergan temper," to which the race had been subject from time immemorial. These characteristics were to be traced, more or less distinctly through all the portraits of his successors; but in none did they seem to be so perfectly reproduced as in his present representative. In truth, Major Bergan might be regarded as the original Sir Harry over again; his harsh features and stern expression being shown in the old, time-darkened picture with a degree of prophetical accuracy little short of actual portraiture.
Other pictured faces there were, however, which time, still faithful to its work of bringing out the essential truth, had only touched into softer beauty. Such was the face of Eleanor, wife of Sir Harry; a woman of fair and noble presence, in the rich prime of her life, with a wise, strong, beautiful soul, shining out through her deep, soft eyes. Before this picture Bergan lingered long. Even in babyhood, his mother had resembled it strongly enough to make it seem most fitting that she should receive its name; and the likeness had so strengthened with years, that now, it might easily have passed for her portrait, painted from life.
Seeing how perfectly these twain of their ancestors were reflected in his mother and uncle, not only in features, but also in character, Bergan was suddenly seized with a nightmare of doubt and questioning. Was a man's good or evil, then, a mere matter of inheritance, an inevitable heirloom, handed down to him from a remote ancestry, by a more effectual law of transmission than has ever been established, in respect to more tangible property? If so,—if the defects and weaknesses, the depraved tastes and ungovernable passions, which characterized the father were inevitably passed on to the son, and the son's son,—if the moral disease under which this man groaned, as well as the sweet temper which made that woman a household sunbeam, were to be surely traced back to their ancestor of a hundred years ago; what became of individual worth, individual shame, and individual accountability?
Bergan shrank from the apparently inevitable conclusion. He felt, with an unutterable horror, its snaky coils tightening around him, squeezing the breath out of every noble aim and aspiration. He could only escape from it by an appeal from his reason to his consciousness.
If, he asked himself, "I should now take that grim picture from the wall, and thrust it into the fire, in revenge for the pain which it has given me, should I not know, despite all reasoning to the contrary, that I—I alone, and not that bearded Sir Harry, was responsible for the foolish act? Certainly, I should; for whatever else he may have sent down to me, he did not give me either my will or my conscience. These are my own, and never Bergan of them all had them before me!" And he drew a long breath of relief.
His attention was now directed to the portrait of a young girl, at the end of the second row, nearest the window. It had an odd, illusive resemblance to some one that he had known,—a singular likeness in unlikeness, which puzzled while it attracted him. All at once, capturing the fleeting, familiar expression, as it were, by a swift side-glance, he recognized it as that portrait of his mother in her youth, of which Major Bergan had spoken. He stood gazing upon it long and earnestly, yet with a strange, undefinable feeling of sadness, too. For this bright, young being, with the smooth brow, the arch, dimpled face, and the unwakened soul dreaming at the depths of the soft eyes, was, after all, a stranger to him,—a being that he had never known, and never could know, any more than if she had been laid years ago under the sod, and her sweet substance gradually transformed into violets and daisies. He went back to the picture of Lady Eleanor, and felt, with a thrill of gladness, that he had found again the mother that he seemed, for a brief space, to have lost.
He now turned from the pictures to the book-cases, and found them to contain a heterogeneous collection of ancient and modern volumes, carelessly ranged upon the shelves, without reference either to age or theme. Latin and English classics stood shoulder to shoulder; law and poetry were harmoniously cheek by jowl; divinity and science amiably helped each other to stand upright; history, philosophy, morality, and controversy, met on the same plane, and sunk their differences under one uniform coat of dust. Geography that read like fiction, geology that had no interest except to the antiquarian, and infidelity that had not a peg left to stand upon, were huddled together in one corner, and (no doubt to their utter amazement) helped, in these latter days, to point the same moral.
Growing oppressed, at last, with the sight of so much hopelessly shelved thought, so many pages bearing the prints of a long succession of fingers now crumbled into dust, Bergan turned back to the hall, mounted the staircase, and glanced into two or three of the chambers. He found in all faded carpets, ancient bureaus, high-post bedsteads, shadow-haunted hangings, a thick coating of dust, and a heavy, breathless scent which, it seemed to him, death must needs have left there, in his oldtime visits. Indeed, he could almost have believed that the last occupant of each dusky cavern of a bed had stiffened into clay therein, and been left to choke the air, and coat the furniture, with his own mouldering substance. No lighter dust, he thought, could have made the atmosphere so thick, or caused him to draw his breath so heavily.
Opening the last door in the gallery, Bergan was startled to find a room with every appearance of recent occupancy. Not a speck of dust dimmed the carpet or the furniture; the curtains and the bed-drapery stirred lightly with the breeze from a half-open window; the soft pillows seemed waiting for the head that had dreamed upon them last night; a chair, with a shawl thrown carelessly over the back, stood where it must needs have been left a moment ago; an open workbox showed a suggestive confusion of spools of silk and bits of ribbon and worsted; a vase of flowers adorned the mantel; and a little white glove lay on the toilet-table, among brushes and scent-bottles, and was reflected in a small, bright mirror. Bergan hastily drew back, feeling intuitively that he had intruded upon a maiden's bed-chamber, keeping still the perfume of her sweet breath and happy thoughts.
Yet—the bed-linen, how strangely yellow!—the shawl, how dim and faded!—the flowers, how withered! He advanced again; he began to understand that the maiden who had dreamed on that pillow, whose hand had left its dainty mould in that glove, the sweetness of whose virgin breath still lingered in the room with the scent of the withered rosebuds, went out from it years ago,—a bride,—to be known thenceforth as wife and mother,—his mother! His eyes grew moist; one by one he touched the little possessions left behind with her girlhood, striving thus to come a little closer to the fair, shy image, that moved him with such unutterable tenderness, yet seemed so far beyond his ken. Reverently, at last, he closed the door, as upon a still, white, smiling corpse, at once ineffably beautiful and ineffably sad.
But who had cared for this one room so tenderly, while all the rest of the house had been left to go to ruin? The answer was plain. Old Rue, whose love for her young mistress was half a worship, had taken a sorrowful pleasure in keeping the room (with such help as she could easily command) in the exact state in which it had been left.
Bergan was in no mood for further exploration. He made his way back to the entrance-hall, and sat down in one of the antique chairs. He was not quite ready for the instant transition into the outward sunshine. His heart was too heavy. The ancestral home was only an ancestral tomb. Surrounded by memorials of the old state and splendor of Bergan Hall, he felt all the more keenly its present desolation and decay. Remembering the noble Bergan lineage, he was humiliated to the dust by the thought of its present representative.
And here, first, his uncle's offer rose before him in the dazzling garments of temptation. Was it, after all, an ignoble ambition to lift the family name out of the dust, to restore the family home, fill it again with social life and warmth, and make it the centre of purer, more refining, and more elevating influences than ever before? Was it not better than any mere personal ambition? Might it not be just the place which he was meant to fill, and which, if he declined to take it, would be left empty? From questions he went on to answers; and his thoughts shaped out a tempting vision of Bergan Hall restored, revivified. Light steps and rustling garments went up and down the broad staircase,—his mother sat smiling in her old room,—voices of children echoed through the large, sunshiny parlors,—guests came and went,—he himself sat in the library, crowned with honors as with years, and—
He was recalled to the present and the actual by a low rumble of thunder. The sunshine had faded from the sky; clouds were rolling up from the west; he hastened back to the cottage through the first drops of the rain.
The evening passed much like its predecessor. When, at last, he went up to his room, leaving his uncle to the dear companionship of his bottle and glass, he found it half-flooded with water from a newly sprung leak in the roof. Hastily declining the Major's hesitating offer of a share in his own apartment, he begged permission to quarter himself in the old Hall.
Major Bergan set down his glass, and looked at him with a mixture of wonder and admiration. "Certainly, Harry, if you are in earnest about it," said he. "But I must say that you are a brave fellow to choose to sleep alone in an old ruin like that,—haunted, too, the negroes say. But are you sure that you can find a room there any less leaky than your present one?"
Quite sure. I noticed two or three, on the south side, which seemed to be in excellent condition.
Very well; take your choice, and make yourself as comfortable as you can. Brick is under your orders, of course; and Maumer Rue will send you out one of the women, with what linen is needed. Good night.
The Major remained standing at the door, till he saw, first, a wandering gleam of light through the crevices of the old house, and then the steady beam of a candle, shining from an upper window.
A light in Eleanor's room!—I never expected to see that again! he murmured, and went back to his bottle, to drink all the deeper for some unwontedly sad and remorseful thoughts.
Meanwhile, Bergan had not once dreamed of appropriating that maiden sanctuary. He had merely chosen the room next to it; and the door between being transiently opened for better ventilation, Major Bergan had seen his light through the designated window.
It was not an easy task to make his dusty, mouldy room even tolerably habitable, but it was finally achieved; and, dismissing Brick, Bergan laid his head on his pillow, with a real satisfaction in being, at last, domiciled under his ancestral roof.
Two days of drizzling rain followed, and did their best to make the black roof and mouldy walls of Bergan Hall look more cheerless than ever. But a counteracting influence was busy within. An energetic young spirit was rapidly organizing a home for itself in one corner; turning the shadows out of nooks where they had lain so long as almost to have established a pre-emption right, and making short work with dust, mould, and dead air. And, in some inexplicable way, the whole house seemed to catch the pleasant infection, and to be faintly astir with life. A passer-by of delicate instincts would have seen at once that the long lease of silence and emptiness had expired. And in truth, it would have been strange if a dwelling, so old—so long familiar with human affairs and interests, the very timbers of which must have been oozy with the exhalations of a long succession of joys and sorrows—had not shown itself ready to sympathize with every passing phase of life, and especially to welcome back to its empty old bosom a fresh, young, beating heart.
That it did so, Bergan felt intuitively. In return, he did what he could to vivify with his single personality its whole wide indoor world. Having received unlimited discretionary powers from his uncle, in regard to choice of rooms and furniture, as well as the most unrestrained privilege of exploration, he went from room to room, ransacking and arranging, here picking up a quaintly carved chair, and there an absurdly contorted little table, and setting wide open doors and windows wherever he could find a reasonable excuse for doing so. He even mounted to the garret, a great twilight-hall, stored with the lumber of many vanished generations, and dived into nooks of dingiest obscurity, with the eager zeal of a discoverer; coming forth covered with dust and cobwebs, and laden with spoils. File upon file of yellow papers, having a possible interest as family annals, a curiously gnarled and twisted genealogical tree, a dust-choked flute, several Spanish songs in manuscript, a discolored sketch-book, and a quaint old secretary, from the innumerable pigeon-holes of which sprang a whole colony of alarmed mice,—these were among the treasures that he unearthed, and transferred to his own room for examination or use. Every hour, the home-feeling grew upon him. Despite the gray and dripping sky, and the disconsolate, water-soaked earth, these days had their own peculiar illumination and charm. Oldness and newness combined to produce one rich—albeit, a little heavy—atmosphere of enjoyment.
Occasionally, his uncle came to watch his progress, and favor him with half-serious, half-jocular commentary. He was both interested and amused to observe how readily the new inmate fitted himself into his surroundings, and what talent he displayed in organizing various crude and chaotic elements into one harmonious whole. By turns he adapted, invented, or altered, until his room presented an aspect of pleasantness, as well as an array of conveniences, in striking contrast with the rude accommodations of the cottage, and even with the oldtime appliances that had served former occupants. His uncle wondered and admired even while he shook his head over the un-Bergan-like trait, and questioned if, after all, it were not a sign of degeneracy. This doubt wellnigh culminated in conviction when, on the afternoon of the second day, in a lull of the storm, he discovered his nephew calmly seated astride the high ridge-pole, with a bundle of shingles and a pocketful of nails, stopping the leaks with which the long rain and his visits to the garret had made him acquainted; and accompanying his work with a very sweet and deftly executed whistle.
That settles the question, Harry, he shouted to the amateur carpenter, a smile and a frown struggling for supremacy on his upturned face. "There never was a Bergan, from first to last, who could have done that!"
Do not speak so disrespectfully of our common ancestors, uncle! As if they had not the use of their hands!
Humph! It's plain that you have the use of yours, and of your head, too! How in the world did you reach that dizzy altitude?
Bergan laughed. "'Where there's a will there's a way.' What should you say to the chimney?"
Nonsense! How did you get up there?
I really cannot answer that question as it stands. There is a mistake in the terms.
You rascal! what do you mean?'
I did not 'get up;' I came down. And Bergan glanced at a great oak-bough, swinging full ten feet above his head.
The Major uttered a cry of admiration. "You are a Bergan, and no mistake!" he cried, emphasizing the statement with an oath. "You've got the real, old, brave Bergan stuff in you, Harry, and I'm proud of you, in spite of your tinkering. But that bough is now out of your reach; you cannot come down by that route."
A new one will be more interesting. And the chimney has a most capacious throat; the builders must have contemplated the passage of other things than smoke.
Harry! you'll break your neck! Don't you dare to come down till I send you a ladder! At the same time, I'll order the carpenter to finish up that job, if it must be done.
He will be too late, uncle; I am just laying the last shingle.
Speak lower, you scamp! lest the old portraits under your feet should hear you and blush.
Their thanks would be much more to the point—especially Sir Harry's, coolly replied Bergan. "Two hours ago, the water from this very leak was pouring in a stream down his long ancestral nose; you would have said the picture had an influenza."
The Major emitted a sound between a laugh and a growl, and vanished.
Poor Brick was even more scandalized by his young master's plebeian readiness with his hands. The very ease with which Bergan performed his self-imposed, and, for the most part, unaccustomed tasks, misled the dusky spectator. To be sure, Brick was a little comforted to observe that those agile hands knew the trick of the ivory piano-keys full well, and could evolve soulful melody from the flute, that they were not ignorant of the mysteries of sketching, and betrayed a scholarly familiarity with books and papers, pen and ink; yet he doubted if even these gracious accomplishments could wash from them the stain of that dreadful manual labor in which they were erewhile engaged,—the only redeeming feature of which was that it was not done for bread.
Nevertheless, Brick loved his young master with all his heart. He had succumbed at once to the rare charm of Bergan's manner,—so grave and thoughtful for his years, yet so richly illuminated, at times, with soft gleams of humor, and always so genuinely kind. He followed him like his shadow; he could scarcely be happy out of his presence; and notwithstanding his own inward struggles with doubt and mortification, he continually held him up to the admiration of the quarter in the strongest language of encomium that he could command, as a "bery high-tone gemman, and jes' de bes' massa dat ebber stepped foot on de old place."
The appearance of this "high-toned gentleman" on the roof, in the humble r?le of carpenter, was, therefore, a rude shock to Brick's finer sensibilities. He watched him from the ground below, groaning simultaneously over probable fractures to his limbs, and certain damage to his reputation. It gave him some consolation to find that the Major was inclined to treat the matter in a jocular rather than a serious light; and he was profoundly impressed with his hearty admiration of the gymnastic feat with which the questionable performance had opened. That, at least, his own dusky friends of the quarter could understand and approve.
Brick was still further reassured by Maumer Rue, to whom he stood in the relation of grandson. On being consulted, she had replied, loftily,—
A Bergan can do what he pleases, child. He is not obliged to walk by rule and measure, like people whose pedigree stops with their grandfathers. If a king chooses to make a box, a barrel, or a piece of furniture, for his own use, it is not a meanness, but an eccentricity. And the long word not only floored Brick's last remaining doubt, but furnished him with the means of silencing other critics. In view of carpentry and tinkering, dignified with the sonorous title of "exkingtricities," nothing was left to the quarter but to roll its eyes and shut its mouth in mute amazement.
On the morning of the third day, the sky pushed aside its gray veil of clouds, and smiled once more upon the wet and melancholy earth. Thereupon the latter quickly dried up some of its tears, and made what shift for joy it could with the remainder. Every pool reflected a bit of the sky's wide smile, or the pleasant stir of overhanging foliage. The grand old evergreen oaks around Bergan Hall shook from their far-reaching boughs broken sunlight and dancing shadows, fresh breeze and shining raindrops, in nearly equal measure. The whisper of the pine-woods became a song rather than a sigh;—or, if it were a sigh, it was of that pleasant kind which struggles up unconsciously from a heart a little overfull of pleasure. Even the long streamers of gray moss decked themselves with prismatic jewels, and forgot to be mournful.
If you do not mind a little mud, said the Major, at the dinner-table, "we will order our horses, and ride over to Berganton this afternoon. You must be tired of being cooped up in the house, by this time, in spite of your ready knack at finding occupation and amusement where most people would gape their heads off with ennui. Besides, it is high time that you should see something of the neighborhood, outside our own plantation,—as well as the village which your ancestors founded. To be sure, there is precious little to see,—Berganton is not what it was once,—but I shall be glad to show you that little, and also, to introduce you to some of my old acquaintances."
As the two gentlemen were riding through the mutilated avenue, Bergan could not help asking if the trees which had formerly arched and shaded it had been felled on account of decay.
No, replied the Major, a little gruffly, as if he suspected a latent rebuke in the question; "but they spoiled twenty or thirty acres of the best corn-land on the plantation, and were very valuable for timber, besides. And, about that time, I was bent on lifting a certain old mortgage off from the place, and getting generally forehanded with the world, at any sacrifice, short of selling land. However," he continued, his face clearing again, "if you will stay here, Harry, you shall replant the avenue, just as soon as you like, if that is your pleasure. The trees will not grow large enough to do much damage, in my time;—besides, I can afford the land now,—and almost anything else that you may happen to fancy. I have not saved and slaved all these years for nothing;—you may be certain of that. And, as I've said before, I don't believe in half-way work. If you stay here, it will be as my adopted son; and I mean to show myself an indulgent father."
A kindlier smile than was often seen on the Major's rugged features, lit up his face as he concluded. Then, suddenly turning to Bergan, and holding out his hand, he asked, in the husky tone of emotion, and with a look of entreaty,—
Shall we shake hands upon it?
Bergan was taken by surprise. In grateful recognition of his uncle's manifest kindness of intention, as well as of his unwonted softness of manner, he impulsively clasped the outstretched hand. At once he became aware that, in so doing, he had appeared to yield an unqualified assent to his uncle's wishes. Hurriedly casting about for inoffensive phraseology wherein to disavow any such intent, it was singularly hard to find. To increase the difficulty, Major Bergan was pouring forth his gratification that the matter was finally settled, in terms of unusual warmth and animation. It was evident, not only that the plan lay nearer to his heart than had hitherto appeared, but that he himself had taken stronger hold of his uncle's affections than he had imagined.
In fact, Bergan had come to the Major just at the auspicious moment when, having measurably accomplished the object which had absorbed all his thoughts and energies for many years, he was looking around him for something to fill its place in his life, and beginning vaguely to discern that his heart was empty, and his future aimless. The old family home was not the only thing that he had left to go drearily to ruin, while pursuing his own selfish ends in his own unscrupulous way.
Beholding, at this moment, a frank, brave, handsome youth by his side, full of talent and of promise, and singularly attractive in manner,—in whose veins, too, ran some of the same blood that filled his own, and whose features were moulded after the best ancestral type,—his dormant affections quickly awakened to fasten themselves pertinaciously around the timely object. His thoughts began industriously to shape out for himself a new future, which should embrace, as a setting its appropriate jewel, a brilliant and prosperous career for this young hope of his house. The unsuspected strength of these feelings now made itself clearly visible, both in the hearty grasp which he gave his nephew's hand, and in a sudden affectionateness of eyes, mouth, voice, gesture, and every indescribable manifestation, that Bergan had never seen in him before. Naturally enough, the young man shrank from the utterance of words certain to drive back on itself this outgush of the inestimable tenderness of a stern nature, to bring back the old sharpness and severity to eyes that now lay so soft and deep under their shaggy brows.
Moreover, he felt that his own resolution was wavering. Bergan Hall had grown strangely dear to him during his solitary occupation of its silent, but suggestive precincts. He might have been proof against every temptation that it could have offered in its grandeur and its prosperity; but in its loneliness and decay there was a pathetic appeal to much that was best and noblest in his nature. To this influence, a stronger one, even, was now added. Seeing the strength of his uncle's new-born affection, and its softening effect upon his face and manner, Bergan began to question within himself whether a still better and nobler work than the restoration of the ancestral home, might not here call for his hand—even the restoration of a human life. Those woful habits of intoxication and profanity, far worse than the dry-rot that gnawed at the timbers of the old Hall; that roughness and sordidness which had gathered over the once promising character, far sadder to behold than the mould and the dust that dimmed the ancestral grandeur;—were there not moral instruments available for the cure of the one, as there were artisan's tools able to remove all traces of the other.
To young minds there is always a strong fascination in the prospect of exerting a good influence upon others. Older heads—seeing how little is often effected by the best and most persistent endeavors, and sadly cognizant of the fact that influences are received as well as exerted (a long deterioration in one's self being sometimes the price of a little, brief improvement in another)—are not so ready to take upon themselves the responsibility of acting upon any human soul, nor so sanguine of success. But Bergan had none of this late wisdom,—if wisdom it be. Through his quiet character there ran the golden vein of a noble enthusiasm. He believed that it was his part and duty to make the world better for having lived therein. Still susceptible to influences himself, he had no conception of the iron bands, the indestructible tendencies, of evil habits indulged for years. He stood ready, at any time, and anywhere, to throw himself into the long conflict between Right and Wrong, and doubted not that the issue of the fray would turn upon his single sword.
Half-buried in thought, half-listening to his uncle's talk, he rode mechanically onward. On one side of his path, flowed the smooth, shining waters of the creek; on the other ran the Bergan estate, with its odd aspect of mingled thrift and neglect. He had often wondered at the singular blending, in his uncle's character, of the sturdy English energy inherited from that indefatigable Briton, Sir Harry, with the indifference and impromptitude induced by the climate. It was especially curious to note how these diverse qualities displayed themselves in different directions. With human beings, his laborers and dependents, and even with his animals, he was prompt, energetic, and exacting, accepting no excuses, and showing no indulgence; with inanimate things, he was often careless, negligent, and unobservant. On this portion of the estate, which seemed but little cultivated, fences were down or dilapidated, gates swung unwillingly on their hinges, and outbuildings seemed ready to fall with their own weight.
Soon, too, these things were made more noticeable by contrast, as a long line of neatly-kept grounds and well ordered fences came into view. Shortly after, a pleasant cottage, amply provided with broad, cool, vine-draped piazzas, appeared on the right; standing a little apart from the road, in the midst of a group of live-oak trees scarcely less grand and venerable than those which flung their heavy shadow over Bergan Hall. At sight of it, the Major's face grew dark again; especially as Bergan, pleased with its neat and cheerful aspect, turned to give it a second look.
Yes, he burst forth bitterly, with a fearful oath, "that is where my brother, the hardware merchant, lives! I tell you what, Harry, the very first thing that you are to do, as soon as you get a chance (if I don't live to do it myself), is to buy out his heirs, and raze that impertinent shanty to the ground. Just recollect that, will you? if I should happen to forget to put it into my will."
Bergan forebore to reply. He was learning that it was his wisest course—at least, so he thought—to take no notice of his uncle's bitter wrath and prejudice, since he could not sympathize with them. If his growing wish to possess Bergan Hall lay at the bottom of this silence, he was as yet unconscious of it.
His uncle,—accepting his forbearance as a sign of acquiescence to his wishes,—now, for the first time, really exerted himself for his entertainment. He talked with vivacity, humor, intelligence, and much of the tone and manner of his earlier days. His better self revived, for a time; and Bergan recognized something of the refined, cultured, accomplished gentleman, of his mother's descriptions, whose lightsome flow of spirits, gay sparkle of wit, and frank, cordial address, had made him the life and soul of the circle wherein he moved. It was mournful to see him under this pleasant transformation, and think of him in his usual aspect. Bergan could not but wonder how he had ever fallen to that lower level. He had not seen the easy descent from gayety to dissipation of his younger days; nor could he understand how naturally, with years, drinking in frivolous companionship had been exchanged for drinking alone, lavishness for parsimony, the gay, aimless life of a man of the world for the steady, energetic pursuit of one selfish, isolated, exclusive object.
They now reached the village. As they rode through its principal street, which was wide and handsomely shaded, the Major pointed to one and another of the houses along its sides, and quietly named men and women that had occupied them in years agone; either forgetting, or unaware, that most of them were now tenanting that one earthly house, of whose narrow accommodations every mortal must needs have some experience,—namely, the grave.
Bergan, meanwhile, felt himself quite at home among names so often heard from his mother's lips; and momentarily expected that his uncle would stop at some one of these friendly dwellings, for the renewal of his own acquaintance, and the introduction of his nephew. But to his extreme surprise, the Major rode straight through the village, and dismounted, before a tavern, at its extreme end.
It needed but a glance to show Bergan that the tavern was of the lower sort. It was dingy and dilapidated without, and from its open windows were wafted sounds of hoarse voices, shouts of laughter, the jingling of glasses, and a strong odor of tobacco, betokening a corresponding amount of moral dinginess and dilapidation within. Bergan turned to his uncle with a disgust that he hardly attempted to conceal,—the natural disgust of a healthy body and mind for things coarse, foul, noisy, and vulgar,—and inquired;—
Do you intend to stop here long?
Quite long enough for you to get off and stretch yourself, replied the Major, carelessly. "This is an old halting-place of mine, and looks as natural as possible, though it is a year or more since I have set eyes on it. No doubt I shall find some old acquaintances here. Come! don't sit there gaping at the outside, like a man trying to guess at the purport of a letter from the looks of the envelope, when the inside would tell him what he wants to know, in a jiffy; get off your horse, and come in."
Bergan obeyed, but with a manifest reluctance that brought a cloud to the Major's brow. Muttering something between his teeth, which had the tone and bitterness of a curse, but was unintelligible, the latter led the way to the bar-room.
Several varieties of the genus loafer, both of the genteel and vulgar species, were leaning over the counter, or seated in tilted-up chairs, puffing out tobacco smoke, and discussing matters of local interest. The appearance of the Major was greeted with enthusiasm,—all the more, that his first words, after a "How d'y" of very general application, were an order to the landlord to make a stiff bowl of punch, on a scale commensurate with the numbers of the party.
This is my nephew, gentlemen, he went on, addressing the delighted audience,—"Harry Bergan Arling, as he now calls himself, or Harry Bergan, of Bergan Hall, as he is to be, in good time,—a real chip of the old family block, as you can see at a glance. I expect that you will all do me the honor of drinking his health in a bowl of the best punch that Gregg can concoct. Hurry up, Gregg! you know how I like it,—not too strongly flavored with our two days' drizzle;—was there ever a nastier spell of weather?"
Never knew the sky so leaky in all my life, responded a languid loafer of the genteeler sort, too lazy to furnish his sentences with nominatives. "Begun to think, with Father Miller, 'twas getting worn out."
It will last our time, I reckon, returned the Major. "And 'after us the deluge,' of course. I would not mind taking a swim in it myself, if it were of punch such as Gregg, there, is mixing. It looks like the real thing! Now, gentlemen, step forward and take your glasses. Here's to the health of my nephew,—Harry Bergan,—and may he unite in his single person all the virtues of all the Harrys of the line, from Sir Harry down;—yes, and all the vices, too, they are good Bergan stock, every one of them!"
A toast so perfectly in harmony with the corrupt atmosphere of the bar-room could but be received and drunk with acclamation. Bergan, perforce, lifted his glass to his lips, but the fiery draught, prepared with a single eye to the requirements of his uncle's sophisticated palate, was so little suited to his own purer taste, that he set it down with its contents very little diminished. Observing this, Major Bergan's face grew dark.
That will never do, Harry, he growled, aside. "Don't disgrace me here, whatever you may do at home! I insist upon your emptying your glass like a man, and doing your part towards making things pleasant. Now, then, gentlemen," he continued, aloud, "be pleased to make ready for toast the second. We will drink success to my nephew's future proprietorship of Bergan Hall;—may it come late, and last long!"
The cords of conventionalism—even the conventionalism of a bar-room—are strong; and Bergan was somewhat young for complete independence of character. Nevertheless, he was quite capable of turning his back on the whole company of tipplers, both genteel and vulgar, indifferent alike to their wonder, censure, or scorn, had it not been for his uncle; whose wishes, in his double character of host and relative, seemed entitled to some degree of respect. Yet both instinct and principle revolted from the certain intoxication of the distasteful glass in his hand. By a quick and dexterous motion, he sent half its contents flying out of the window near which he stood, and supplied their place with water from a convenient pitcher. Flattering himself that he had done this unobserved, he tried to swallow his disgust at the place and the companionship in which he found himself with the diluted draught.
That's pretty fair stuff, said the Major, setting down his empty glass; "it has just about the right snap in it. Is there enough for another round, Gregg?"
Plenty, sir, and another one on the end of that. I knew you didn't like to see the bottom of the bowl, in a hurry, Major.
You are another Solon, Gregg. Your wisdom is only to be equalled by your disinterestedness. Come, gentlemen, fill your glasses again! Harry, is your glass filled?
As he spoke, the Major drew near, and fixed a keen eye on Bergan's glass, in a way which led the latter to suspect that his late manoeuvre had not been so successful as he had imagined. At any rate, it would not be easy to repeat it. Well, what matter? He had submitted to his uncle's tyranny long enough; he might as well free himself first as last. He would try to do so in the way least likely to give offence.
Uncle, he pleaded, with a graceful frankness and courtesy that could scarcely have failed to reach the Major's better self, if it had been less under the vitiating influence of strong drink,—"uncle, I really must beg your kind indulgence. I am not accustomed to potations so many nor so strong; and whatever I may be able to do, in time, under your skilful guidance, I must now use a little discretion. Pray excuse me from taking any more at present."
I'll be hanged if I do! said the Major, bluntly. "If you don't know how to drink like a gentleman and a Bergan, it is high time you should learn. Fill up his glass, Gregg; he shall drink!"
Scarcely were the insulting words spoken ere Bergan felt, with a thrill of dismay, a hot tingling sensation in all his veins, as if the blood in them had suddenly been turned to fire. Too well he knew what it meant. The "black Bergan temper," which had been the one, great sorrow and struggle of his life, thus far, and which he had believed to be completely tamed, was stirring within him in a way to show that, if it were not instantly controlled, it would carry him, in its headlong fury, he knew not whither. Every other feeling, every other thought, were, for the moment, swallowed up in the instinct of self-preservation. He would submit to his uncle's imperious dictation, not that he either prized his love or feared his anger, but because that treacherous demon within must at once feel a firm foot upon its neck, and be shown that it could expect no indulgence, and no quarter.
At this moment, there was a slight bustle at the door, occasioned by an arrival; under cover of which he again turned to the friendly water pitcher, to make sure that, while fleeing from one fatal influence he was not running blindly into the leashes of another.
Dimidium plus toto, I see, observed a well-remembered voice at his elbow, in a tone of good-natured sarcasm. "But you make a slight mistake in your practical translation; it is a 'half,' not a quarter (or I might say, an eighth) which is 'better than the whole.' And anyway, I doubt if old Hesiod meant his maxim to apply to punch."
Glad of anything that promised to create a diversion, Bergan turned and gave the hand of Richard Causton a much more cordial grasp than he would have been likely to do, under other circumstances. The old man, better accustomed to the cold shoulder from all reputable acquaintance, returned it with tears in his blear eyes, and for once, had no proverb at command wherein to do justice to his feelings. Before he could find one, Major Bergan came up, with a sly gleam of humor or of mischief, on his face. "What! you know Harry!" he exclaimed. "Oh! yes, I remember,—you helped him on his way to Bergan Hall. So much the better. You will be glad to know that it was my nephew to whom you showed that courtesy, and to drink to your better acquaintance. All ready?"
Bergan turned round for his glass, which he had left standing on the window-sill, and, the sooner to be done with the distasteful business, swallowed at a gulp what, it seemed to him, the next moment, must have been liquid fire. A loud laugh from his uncle told him to whom he was indebted for the substitution of raw spirit for weak punch. The passion which he had so promptly smothered, doubly inflamed by the consciousness of being betrayed and the instantaneous action of the potent draught, blazed up with sudden, ungovernable fury. Feeling that he was losing control of temper and reason together, he rushed toward the door. At a sign from the Major, two or three of the bystanders threw themselves in his way. They were instantly sent reeling right and left by two powerful blows. Dick Causton, catching hold of him with the friendly design of preventing him from doing more mischief and provoking more enmity, was shaken off with a violence that threw him in a disordered heap on the floor; over which Bergan strode wrathfully towards his uncle, who had planted himself in the doorway. The spectators held their breath to witness the expected encounter between uncle and nephew,—Bergan against Bergan, the blood of both up, the hereditary frenzy blazing in each pair of dark eyes.
But Bergan was not quite so mad as that. Seeing who it was that impeded his way, he turned and darted through a window close at hand, jumped over the piazza railing, sprang upon his horse, and was off before the bystanders had well recovered their breath, or Dick had picked himself up, with the caustic observation,—
Perit quod facis ingrato,—'Save a thief from hanging, and he will cut your throat.'
Poor Vic!—never in all her life had she been urged to such mad and merciless speed as on that ill-starred day. Protesting, at first, by various plunges and rearings, she finally fell in with her master's wild humor, and sped through the village at a pace that sent the foot-passengers to the fences in terror, and crowded the doors and windows with wondering gazers. Whether he were fleeing from destruction, or riding straight to it, was no affair of hers; in either case, she would do her best to meet his wishes. The village was quickly left behind; house after house, and field after field, slid by in a swift panorama; already they were turning the corner, toward the Hall, when Bergan's scattered senses were suddenly recalled by a stern "Halloo! what are you about?" mingled with a faint cry of alarm. To his horror, he saw himself to be on the point of riding down a young lady equestrian, who was on her way to the village, accompanied by her father. There was not an instant to lose, not a moment for reflection; the heads of the two horses were almost in contact. Putting his whole strength into one sudden, ill-considered jerk, Vic was thrown back on her haunches, and he and she rolled over in the mud together.
Fortunately, neither was much hurt, and both sprang to their feet considerably sobered by the shock. Bergan was deeply humiliated, also; he would gladly have compounded with his mortification for almost any amount of physical pain. No bodily injury could have made him writhe with so sharp a pang, as the conviction that he had flawed his claim to the title of gentleman. To have nearly ridden over a lady, in a blind frenzy of rage and semi-intoxication, was a disgrace that he could never forget. He would gladly have buried himself in the mud with which he was already tolerably well coated. Since he could not do that, he took off his hat to the horseman,—he dared neither address nor look at the lady,—and said, in a tone that trembled with shame and regret,—
I beg your pardon, sir.
You would have done better to look where you were going, replied the gentleman, with the unreasoning anger that often follows upon the reaction from fear and anxiety. "No thanks to you that my daughter is not maimed or killed!"
I think you mistake, father, quickly interposed the young lady, in a low, sweet voice, tremulous from the recent shock to her nerves;—"did you not see how promptly the gentleman sacrificed himself to save me, as soon as he saw the danger? I hope you are not hurt, sir," she added, courteously, turning to Bergan.
Thank you; not half so much as I deserve to be, replied he, only the more remorseful on account of the delicate consideration that she showed for him, while her cheek was still blanched, and her lips trembling, at her own narrow escape from danger caused by his rashness. And, feeling wholly unworthy to say another word to anything so pure and sweet, so utterly incompatible with the vile place and scene which he had just quitted, he stood aside, with uncovered head, to let her pass.
Apparently, she would have lingered long enough to make sure that he was really uninjured; but her father, who had been eyeing him keenly, hurried her away. "Do you not see," he inquired, sharply, as they rode on, "that the fellow is drunk?"
Impossible, father! He had such a fine, noble countenance!
It will not be noble long, replied the father. "Neither will it be the first noble countenance that has been spoiled by drunkenness," he added, with a sigh.
Left alone, Bergan remounted Vic, though not without difficulty. The bewildering effect of his potent draught, which had momentarily been overcome by the excitement of his late adventure, now made itself felt again. As he rode along, his head began to swim; a deadly nausea seized him; his limbs seemed paralyzed. Arrived within the gates of his uncle's domain, he suffered himself to slide slowly from the saddle to the ground; and almost immediately, consciousness forsook him.