ANOTHER DESCENDANT OF THE CAVALIERS.
“Those flashes of marvellous light point to the existence of dormant
faculties, which, unless God can be supposed to have _over-furnished_
the soul for its appointed field of action, seem only to be awaiting
more favorable circumstances, to awaken and disclose themselves.”—_John
James Tayler._
While the carriage is rolling on, and the occupants are getting better
acquainted, let us hurry forward and clear the way by a few
explanations.
Vance and his party had now been several days in New York, occupying
contiguous suites of rooms at the Astor House. The ladies consisted of
Clara, Madam Volney, and Mrs. Ripper (late Mrs. Gentry). Esha was, of
course, of the party. She had found her long-lost daughter in Hattie, or
Mrs. Davy, now a widow, whose testimony came in to fortify the proofs
that seemed accumulating to place Clara’s identity beyond dispute.
Hattie joyfully resumed her place as Clara’s _femme de chambre_, though
the post was also claimed by the unyielding Esha.
The gentlemen of the party included Mr. Winslow, Mr. Semmes, Mr. Ripper,
Captain Onslow, Colonel Delancy Hyde, and a youth not yet introduced.
Never had Vance showed his influence in so marked a degree as in the
change he had wrought in Hyde. Detecting in the rascal’s affection for a
widowed sister the one available spot in his character, Vance, like a
great moral engineer, had mounted on that vantage-ground the guns which
were to batter down the citadels of ignorance, profligacy, and pride, in
which all the regenerative capabilities of Hyde’s nature had been
imprisoned so long. The idea of having that poor toiling sister—her who
had “fust taught him to make dirt-pies, down thar by the old
duck-pond”—rescued with her children from poverty and suffering, placed
in a situation of comfort and respectability, was so overpowering to the
Colonel, that it enabled Vance to lead him like a child even to the
abjuring of strong drink and profanity. Cut off from bragging of his
Virginia birth and his descent from the Cavaliers,—made to see the false
and senseless nature of the slang which he had been taught to
expectorate against the “Yankees,”—Hyde might have lost his identity in
the mental metamorphosis he was undergoing, were it not that a most
timely substitute presented itself as a subject for the expenditure of
his surplus gas.
Vance had collected and arranged a body of proofs for the establishment
of Clara’s identification as the daughter of Henry Berwick; but, if
Colonel Hyde’s memory did not mislead him, there was collateral evidence
of the highest importance in those old letters from Charlton, which
might be found in a certain trunk in the keeping of the Widow Rusk in
Alabama. With deep anxiety, therefore, did they await the coming of that
youthful representative of the Hyde family, Master Delancy Hyde Rusk.
The Colonel stood on the steps of the Astor House from early morn till
dewy eve, day after day, scrutinizing every boy who came along. Clad in
a respectable suit of broadcloth, and concealing the shorn state of his
scalp under a brown wig, he did no discredit to the character of Mr.
Stetson’s guests. His patience was at length rewarded. A boy,
travel-soiled and dusty, apparently fifteen years old, dressed in a
butternut-colored suit, wearing a small military cap marked C. S. A.,
and bearing a knapsack on his back, suddenly accosted Colonel Hyde with
the inquiry, “Does Mr. William C. Vance live here?” In figure, face, and
even the hue of his eyebrows, the youth was a miniature repetition of
the Colonel himself; but the latter, in his wig and his new suit, was
not recognized till the exclamation, “Delancy!” broke in astonishment
from his lips.
“What, uncle? Uncle Delancy?” cried the boy; and the two forgot the
proprieties, and embraced in the very eyes of Broadway. Then the Colonel
led the way to his room.
“Is this ’ere room yourn, Uncle D’lancy? An’ is this ’ere trunk yourn?
And this ’ere umbrel? Crikee! What a fine trunk! And do you and the
damned Yankees bet now on the same pile, Uncle D’lancy?”
“Delancy Hyde Rusk,” said the Colonel solemnly, “stahnd up thar afore
me. So! That’ll do! Now look me straight in the face, and mind what I
say.”
“Yes, uncle,” said Delancy junior, deeply impressed.
“Fust, have yer got them air letters?”
“Yes, uncle, they’re sewed inter my side-pocket, right here.”
“Wal an’ good. Now tell me how’s yer mother an’ all the family.”
“Mother’s middlin’ bright now; but Malviny, she died in a fit last
March, and Tom, the innocent, he died too; and Charlotte Ann, she was
buried the week afore your letter cum; and mother, she had about gi’n
up; for we hadn’t a shinplaster left after payin’ for the buryin’, and
we thowt as how we should have ter starve, sure; and lame Andrew Jackson
and the two young ’uns, they wahr lookin’ pretty considerable peakid, I
kn tell yer, when all at wunst your letter cum with four hunderd dollars
in it. Crikee! Didn’t the old woman scream for joy? Didn’t she hug the
childern, and cry, and laugh, and take on, till we all thowt she was
crazy-like? And didn’t she jounce down on her knees, and pray, jest like
a minister does?”
“Did she? Did she, Delancy? Tell it over to me again. Did she raally
pray?”
“I reckon she didn’t do nothin’ else.”
“Try ter think what she said, Delancy. Try ter think. It’s important.”
“Wal, ’ was all about the Lord Jesus, and Brother D’lancy, and not
forsakin’ the righteous, and bless the Lord, O my soul, and the dear
angels that was took away, and then about Brother D’lancy again, and
might the Lord put his everlastin’ arms about him, and might the Lord
save his soul alive, and all that wild sort of talk, yer know. Why,
uncle! Uncle D’lancy! What’s the matter with yer?”
Yes! the old sinner had boo-hooed outright; and then, covering his face
with his hands, he wept as if he were making up for a long period of
drought in the lachrymal line.
We have spoken of the influence which Vance had applied to this stony
nature. We should have spoken of other influences, perhaps more potent
still, that had reached it through Peek. Before the exodus from New
Orleans, Peek had introduced him to certain phenomena which had shaken
the Colonel’s very soul, by the proofs they gave him of powers
transcending those usually ascribed to mortals, or admitted as possible
by science. The proofs were irresistible to his common sense, _First_,
That there was a power outside of himself that could read, not only his
inmost nature, but his individual thoughts, as they arose, and this
without any aid from him by look, word, or act.
Here was a test in which there was no room left for deception. The
_savans_ can only explain it by denying it; and there are in America
more than three millions of men and women who _khow_ what the denial
amounts to. Given a belief in clairvoyance, and that in spirits and
immortality follows. The motto of the ancient Pagan theists was, “_Si
divinatio est, dii sunt_.”[45]
_Secondly_, Hyde saw heavy physical objects moved about, floated in the
air, made to perform intelligent offices, and all without the
intervention of any agencies recognized as material.
The hard, cold atheism of the man’s heart was smitten, rent, and
displaced. For the first time, he was made to feel that the body’s death
is but a process of transition in the soul’s life; that our trials here
have reference to a future world; that what we love we become; that
heavenly thoughts must be entertained and relished even here, if we
would not have heaven’s occupations a weariness and a perplexity to us
hereafter. For the first time, the awful consciousness came over him as
a reality, that all his acts and thoughts were under the possible
scrutiny of myriads of spiritual eyes, and, above them all, those
Supreme eyes in whose sight even the stars are not pure,—how much less,
then, man that is a worm! For the first time, he could read the Bible,
and catch from its mystic words rich gleams of comforting truth. For the
first time, he could feel the meaning of that abused and uncomprehended
word, _pardon_; and he could dimly see the preciousness of Christ’s
revelations of the Father’s compassion.
Return we to the interview between uncle and nephew. Having wiped his
eyes and steadied his voice, the Colonel said: “Delancy Hyde Rusk,
yer’ve got ter larn some things, and unlarn others. Fust of all, you’re
not to swar, never no more.”
“What, Uncle D’lancy! Can’t I swar when I grow up? _You_ swar, Uncle
D’lancy!”
“I’m clean cured of it, nevvy. Ef ever you har me swar again, Delancy
Hyde Rusk, you jes tell me of ’t, an’ I’ll put myself through a month’s
course of hard-tack an’ water.”
“Can’t I say _hell_, Uncle D’lancy, nor _damn_?”
“You’re not ter use them words profanely, nevvy, unless you want that
air back of yourn colored up with a rope’s end. Now look me straight in
the face, Delancy Hyde Rusk, an’ tell me ef yer ever drink sperrits?”
“Wall, Uncle D’lancy, I promised the old woman—”
“Stop! Say you promised mother.”
“Wall, I promised mother I wouldn’t drink, and I haven’t.”
“Good! Now, nevvy, yer spoke jest now of the Yankees. What do yer mean
by Yankees?”
“I mean, uncle, ev’ry man born in a State whar they hain’t no niggers to
wallop. Yankees are sneaks and cowards. Can’t one Suth’n-born man whip
any five Yankees?”
“I reckon not.”
“What! Not ef the Suth’n man’s Virginia-born?”
“I reckon not. Delancy Hyde Rusk, that’s the decoy the ’ristocrats down
South have been humbuggin’ us poor whites with tell the common sense is
all eat clean out of our brains. They stuff us up with that air fool’s
brag so we may help ’em hold on ter thar niggers. Whar did the Yankees
come from? They camed from England like we did. They speak English like
we do. Thar ahnces’tors an’ our ahnces’tors war countrymen. Now don’t be
sich a lout as ter suppose that ’cause a man lives North, and hain’t no
niggers ter wallop, he must be either a sneak or a coward, or what Jeff
Davis calls a hyena.”
“Ain’t we down South the master race, Uncle D’lancy?”
“Wall, nevvy, in some respects we air; in some respects not. In dirt an’
vermin, ignorance an’ sloth, our poor folks kn giv thar poor folks half
the game, an’ beat ’em all holler. In brag an’ swagger our rich folks kn
beat thars. But I’ll tell yer what it is, nevvy: ef, as the slaveholders
try to make us think, it’s slavery that makes us the master race, then
we must be powerful poor cattle to owe it to niggers and not to
ou’selves that we’re better nor the Yankees. Now mind what I’m goin’ ter
say: the best thing for the hull Suth’n people would be to set ev’ry
slave free right off at wunst.”
“What, Uncle D’lancy! Make a nigger free as a white man? Can’t I, when
I’m a man, own niggers like gra’f’her Hyde done? What’s the use of
growin’ up ef I can’t have a nigger to wallop when I want ter, I sh’d
like ter know?”
“Delancy Hyde Rusk, them sentiments must be nipped in the bud.”
The Colonel went to the door and locked it, then cast his eyes round the
room as if in search of something. The boy followed his movements with a
curiosity in which alarm began to be painfully mingled. Finally, the
Colonel pulled a strap from his trunk, and, approaching Delancy junior,
who was now uttering a noise between a whimper and a howl, seized him by
the nape of the neck, bent him down face foremost on to the bed, and
administered a succession of smart blows on the most exposed part of his
person. The boy yelled lustily; but after the punishment was over, he
quickly subsided into a subdued snuffling.
“Thar, Delancy Hyde Rusk! yer’ll thahnk me fur that air latherin’ all
the days of yer life. Ef I’d a-had somebody to do as much for me, forty
yars ago, I shouldn’t have been the beast that Slavery brung me up ter
be. Never you talk no more of keepin’ niggers or wallopin’ niggers.
They’ve jest as much right ter wallop you as you have ter wallop them.
Slavery’s gone up, sure. That game’s played out. Thank the Lord! Jest
you bar in mind, Delancy Hyde Rusk, that the Lord made the black man as
well as the white, and that ef you go fur to throw contempt on the
Lord’s work, he’ll bring yer up with a short turn, sure. Will you bar
that in mind fur the rest of yer life, Delancy Hyde Rusk?”
“Yes, Uncle D’lancy. I woan’t do nothin’ else.”
“An’ ef anybody goes fur to ask yer what you air, jest you speak up
bright an’ tell him you’re fust a Union man, an’ then an out-an’-out
Abolitionist. Speak it out bold as ef you meant it,—_Ab-o-litionist!_”
“What, uncle! a d-d-da—”
The boy’s utterance subsided into a whimper of expostulation as he saw
the Colonel take up the strap.
But he was spared a second application. Having given him his first
lesson in morals and politics, Colonel Hyde made him wash his face, and
then took him down-stairs and introduced him to Vance. The latter
received with eagerness the precious letters of which the boy was the
bearer; at once opened them, and having read them, said to Hyde: “I
would not have failed getting these for many thousand dollars. Still
there’s no knowing what trap the lawyers may spring upon us.”
Turning to Delancy junior, Vance, who had opened all the windows when
the youth came in, questioned him as to his adventures on his journey.
The boy showed cleverness in his replies. It was a proud day for the
elated Hyde when Vance said: “That nephew of yours shall be rewarded.
He’s an uncommonly shrewd, observing lad. Now take him down-stairs and
give him a hot bath. Soak him well; then scrub him well with soap and
sand. Let him put on an entire new rig,—shirt, stockings, everything.
You can buy them while he’s rinsing himself in a second water. Also take
him to the barber’s and have his hair cut close, combed with a
fine-tooth comb, and shampooed. Do this, and then bring him up to my
room to dinner. Here’s a fifty-dollar bill for you to spend on him.”
Three hours afterwards Delancy junior reappeared, too much astonished to
recognize his own figure in the glass. Colonel Hyde had thenceforth a
new and abounding theme for gasconade in describing the way “that air
bi, sir, trahv’ld the hull distance from Montgomery ter New York, goin’
through the lines of both armies, sir, an’ bringin’ val’able letters
better nor a grown man could have did.”
A dinner at Vance’s private table, with ladies and gentlemen present,
put the apex to the splendid excitements of the day in the minds of both
uncle and nephew.
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Footnote 45:
If there is divination (clairvoyance), there must be gods (spirits).