MEETINGS AND PARTINGS.
“I hold it true, whate’er befall,—
I feel it when I sorrow most,—
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
_Tennyson._
It being too late to take the boat for Natchez, Vance proceeded to the
St. Charles. The gong for the fire o’clock ordinary had sounded.
Entering the dining-hall, he was about taking a seat, when he saw Miss
Tremaine motioning to him to occupy one vacant by her side.
“Truly an enterprising young lady!” But what could he do?
“I’m so glad to see you, Mr. Vance! I’ve not forgotten my promise. I
called to-day on Mrs. Gentry,—found her in the depths. Miss Murray has
disappeared,—absconded,—nobody knows where!”
“Indeed! After what you’ve said of her singing, I’m very anxious to hear
her. Do try to find her.”
“I’ll do what I can, Mr. Vance. There’s a mystery. Of that much I’m
persuaded from Mrs. Gentry’s manner.”
“You mustn’t mind Darling’s notions on slavery.”
“O no, Mr. Vance, I shall turn her over to you for conversion.”
“Should you succeed in entrapping her, detain her till I come back from
Natchez, which will be before Sunday.”
“Be sure I’ll hold on to her.”
Mr. Tremaine came in, and began to talk politics. Vance was sorry he had
an engagement. The big clock of the hall pointed to seven o’clock. He
rose, bowed, and left.
“Why,” sighed Laura, “can’t other gentlemen be as agreeable as this Mr.
Vance? He knows all about the latest fashions; all about modes of fixing
the hair; all about music and dancing; all about the opera and the
theatre; in short, what is there the man doesn’t know?”
Papa was too absorbed in his terrapin soup to answer.
Let us follow Vance to the little house, scene of his brief, fugitive
days of delight. He stood under the old magnolia in the tender
moonlight. The gas was down in Clara’s room. She was at the piano,
extemporizing some low and plaintive variations on a melody by Moore,
“When twilight dews are falling soft.” Suddenly she stopped, and put up
the gas. There was a knock at her door. She opened it, and saw Vance.
They shook hands as if they were old friends.
“Where are the Bernards?”
“They are out promenading. I told them I was not afraid.”
“How have you passed your time, Miss Perdita?”
“O, I’ve not been idle. Such choice books as you have here! And then
what a variety of music!”
“Have you studied any of the pieces?”
“Not many. That from Schubert.”
“Please play it for me.”
Tacitly accepting him as her teacher, she played it without
embarrassment. Vance checked her here and there, and suggested a change.
He uttered no other word of praise than to say: “If you’ll practise six
years longer four hours a day, you’ll be a player.”
“I shall do it!” said Clara.
“Have you heard that famous Hallelujah Chorus, which the Northern
soldiers sing?”
“No, Mr. Vance.”
“No? Why, ’tis in honor of John Brown (any relation of Perdita?) You
shall hear it.”
And he played the well-known air, now appropriated by the hand-organs.
Clara asked for a repetition, that she might remember it.
“Sing me something,” he said.
Clara placed on the reading-frame the song of “Pestal.”
“Not that, Perdita! What possessed you to study that?”
“It suited my mood. Will you not hear it?”
“No!... Yes, Perdita. Pardon my abruptness. But that song was the first
I ever heard from lips, O so fair and dear to me!”
Clara put aside the music, and walked away toward the window. Vance went
up to her. He could see that she was with difficulty curbing her tears.
O, if this man whose very presence inspired such confidence and hope,—if
it was sweeter to him to _remember_ another than to _listen_ to
_her_,—where in the wide world should she find, in her desperate strait,
a friend?
There was that in her attitude which reminded Vance of Estelle. Some
lemon-blossoms in her hair intensified the association by their odors.
For a moment it was as if he had thrown off the burden of twenty years,
and was living over, in Clara’s presence, that ambrosial hour of first
love on the very spot of its birth. “For O, she stood beside him like
his youth,—transformed for him the real to a dream, clothing the
palpable and the familiar with golden exhalations of the dawn!” Be wary,
Vance! One look, one tone amiss, and there’ll be danger!
“Let us talk over your affairs,” he said. “To-morrow I must leave for
Natchez. Will you remain here till I come back?”
Clara leaned out of the window a moment, as if to enjoy the balmy
evening, and then, calmly taking a seat, replied: “I think ’t will be
best for me to lay my case before Miss Tremaine. True, we parted in a
pet, but she may not be implacable. Yes, I will call on her. To you, a
stranger, what return for your kindness can I make?”
“This return, Perdita: let me be your friend. As soon as ’t is
discovered you’ve no money, your position may become a painful one. Let
me supply you with funds. I’m rich; and my only heir is my country.”
“No, Mr. Vance! I’ve no claim upon you,—none whatever. What I want for
the moment is a shelter; and Laura will give me that, I’m confident.”
Vance reflected a moment, and then, as if a plan had occurred to him by
which he could provide for her without her knowing it, he replied: “We
shall probably meet at the St. Charles. You can easily send for me,
should you require my help. Be generous, and say you’ll notify me,
should there be an hour of need?”
“I’ll not fail to remember you in that event, Mr. Vance.”
“Honor bright?”
“Honor bright, Mr. Vance!”
“Consider, Perdita, you can always find a home in this house. I shall
give such directions to Mrs. Bernard as will make your presence
welcome.”
“Then I shall not feel utterly homeless. Thank you, Mr. Vance!”
“And by the way, Perdita, do not let Miss Tremaine know that we are
acquainted.”
“I’ll heed your caution, Mr. Vance.”
“We shall meet again, my dear young lady. Of that I feel assured.”
“I hope so, Mr. Vance.”
“And now farewell! I’ll tell Bernard to order a carriage and attend to
your baggage. Good by, Perdita!”
“Good by, Mr. Vance.”
Again they shook hands, and parted. Vance gave his directions to the
Bernards, and then strolled home to his hotel. As he traversed the
corridor leading to his room, he encountered Kenrick. Their apartments
were nearly opposite.
“I was not aware we were such near neighbors, Mr. Kenrick.”
“To me also ’t is a surprise,—and a pleasant one. Will you walk in, Mr.
Vance?”
“Yes, if ’t is not past your hour for visitors.”
They went in, and Kenrick put up the gas. “I can’t offer you either
cigars or whiskey; but you can ring for what you want.”
“Is it possible you eschew alcohol and tobacco?”
“Yes,” replied Kenrick; “I once indulged in cigars. But I found the use
so offensive in others that I myself abandoned it in disgust. One sits
down to converse with a person disguised as a gentleman, and suddenly a
fume, as if from the essence of old tobacco-pipes, mixed with odors from
stale brandy-bottles, poisons the innocent air, and almost knocks one
down. It’s a mystery that ladies endure the nuisance of such breaths. My
sensitive nose has made me an anti-rum, anti-tobacco man.”
“But I fear me you’re a come-outer, Mr. Kenrick! Is it conservative to
abuse tobacco and whiskey? No wonder you are unsound on the slavery
question!”
“Come up to the confessional, Mr. Vance! Admit that you’re as much of an
antislavery man as I am.”
“More, Mr. Kenrick! If I were not, I might be quite as imprudent as you.
And then I should put a stop to my usefulness.”
“You puzzle me, Mr. Vance.”
“Not as much as you’ve puzzled _me_, my young friend. Come here, and
look in the mirror with me.”
Vance took him by the hand and led him to a full-length looking-glass.
There they stood looking at their reflections.
“What do you see?” asked Vance.
“Two rather personable fellows,” replied Kenrick, laughing; “one of them
ten or twelve years older than the other; height of the two, about the
same; figures very much alike, inclining to slimness, but compact,
erect, well-knit; hands and feet small; heads,—I have no fault to find
with the shape or size of either; hair similar in color; eyes,—as near
as I can see, the two pairs resemble each other, and the crow’s-feet at
the corners are the same in each; features,—nose,—brows—I see why you’ve
brought me here, Mr. Vance! We are enough alike to be brothers.”
“Can you explain the mystery?” asked Vance, “for I can’t. Can there be
any family relationship? I had an aunt, now deceased, who was married to
a Louisianian. But his name was not Kenrick.”
“What was it?”
“Arthur Maclain.”
“My father! Cousin, your hand! In order to inherit property, my father,
after his marriage, procured a change of name. I can’t tell you how
pleasant to me it is to meet one of my mother’s relations.”
They had come together still more akin in spirit than in blood. The
night was all too short for the confidences they now poured out to each
other. Vance told his whole story, pausing occasionally to calm down the
excitement which the narrative caused in his hearer.
When it was finished Kenrick said: “Cousin, count me your ally in
compassing your revenge. May God do so to me, and more also, if I do not
give this beastly Slave Power blood for blood.”
“I can’t help thinking, Charles,” said Vance, “that your zeal has the
purer origin. _Mine_ sprang from a personal experience of wrong; yours,
from an abstract conception of what is just; from those inner motives
that point to righteousness and God.”
“I almost wish sometimes,” replied Kenrick, “that I had the spur of a
great personal grievance to give body to my wrath. And yet Slavery, when
it lays its foul hand on _the least of these little ones_ ought to be
felt by me also, and by all men! But now—now—I shall not lack the sting
of a personal incentive. _Your_ griefs, cousin, fall on my own heart,
and shall not find the soil altogether barren. This Ratcliff,—I know him
well. He has been more than once at our house. A perfect type of the
sort of beast born of slavery,—moulded as in a matrix by slavery,—kept
alive by slavery! Take away slavery, and he would perish of inanition.
He would be, like the plesiosaur, a fossil monster, representative of an
extinct genus.”
“Cousin,” said Vance, “all you lack is to join the serpent with the
dove. Be content to bide your time. Here in Louisiana lies your work. We
must make the whole western bank of the Mississippi free soil. Texas can
be taken care of in due time. But with a belt of freedom surrounding the
Cotton States, the doom of slavery is fixed. Give me to see that day,
and I shall be ready to say, ‘Now, Lord, dismiss thy servant!’”
“I had intended to go North, and join the army of freedom,” said
Kenrick; “but what you say gives me pause.”
“We must not be seen together much,” resumed Vance. “And now good night,
or rather, good morning, for there’s a glimmer in the east, premonitory
of day. Ah, cousin, when I hear the braggarts around us, gassing about
Confederate courage and Yankee cowardice, I can’t help recalling an old
couplet I used to spout, when an actor, from a play by Southern,—
‘There is no courage but in innocence,
No constancy but in an honest cause!’”