a company in his uniform, and he would not come without it. He had his
own ideas of duty, and his own pride. But he sent a wreath of beautiful
flowers, which must have come from some city where there was a
hot-house. Miss Duke would not place the wreath upon the coffin, neither
would she leave it in the drawing-room; she stood a while with it in her
hand, and then she stole up stairs and laid it on Cousin Copeland's open
desk, where daily he had worked so patiently and steadily through so
many long years. Uselessly? Who among us shall dare to say that?
A week later, at twilight, old Dinah brought up the young officer's
card.
"Say that I see no one," replied Miss Duke.
A little note came back, written on a slip of paper: "I beg you to see
me, if only for a moment; it is a business matter that has brought me
here to-day." And certainly it was a very forlorn day for a pleasure
ride: the wind howled through the trees, and the roads were almost
impassable with deep mire. Miss Duke went down to the dining-room. She
wore no mourning garments; she had none. She had not worn mourning for
her aunt, and for the same reason. Pale and silent, she stood before the
young officer waiting to hear his errand. It was this: some one wished
to purchase Gardiston House--a real purchaser this time, a stranger.
Captain Newell did not say that it was the wife of an army contractor, a
Northern woman, who had taken a fancy for an old family residence, and
intended to be herself an old family in future; he merely stated the
price offered for the house and its furniture, and in a few words placed
the business clearly before the listener.
Her face lighted with pleasure.
"At last!" she said.
"Yes, at last, Miss Duke." There was a shade of sadness in his tone, but
he spoke no word of entreaty. "You accept?"
"I do," said Gardis.
"I must ride back to the city," said David Newell, taking up his cap,
"before it is entirely dark, for the roads are very heavy. I came out as
soon as I heard of the offer, Miss Duke, for I knew you would be glad,
very glad."
"Yes," said Gardis, "I am glad; very glad." Her cheeks were flushed now,
and she smiled as she returned the young officer's bow. "Some time,
Captain Newell--some time I trust I shall feel like thanking you for
what was undoubtedly intended, on your part, as kindness," she said.
"It was never intended for kindness at all," said Newell bluntly. "It
was never but one thing, Gardis, and you know it; and that one thing is,
and always will be, love. Not 'always will be,' though; I should not say
that. A man can conquer an unworthy love if he chooses."
"Unworthy?" said Gardis involuntarily.
"Yes, unworthy; like this of mine for you. A woman should be gentle,
should be loving; a woman should have a womanly nature. But
you--you--you do not seem to have anything in you but a foolish pride. I
verily believe, Gardis Duke, that, if you loved me enough to die for me,
you would still let me go out of that door without a word, so deep, so
deadly is that pride of yours. What do I want with such a wife? No. My
wife must love me--love me ardently, as I shall love her. Farewell, Miss
Duke; I shall not see you again, probably. I will send a lawyer out to
complete the sale."
He was gone, and Gardis stood alone in the darkening room. Gardiston
House, where she had spent her life--Gardiston House, full of the
memories and associations of two centuries--Gardiston House, the living
reminder and the constant support of that family pride in which she had
been nurtured, her one possession in the land which she had so loved,
the beautiful, desolate South--would soon be hers no longer. She began
to sob, and then when the sound came back to her, echoing through the
still room, she stopped suddenly, as though ashamed. "I will go abroad,"
she said; "there will be a great deal to amuse me over there." But the
comfort was dreary; and, as if she must do something, she took a candle,
and slowly visited every room in the old mansion, many of them long
unused. From garret to cellar she went, touching every piece of the
antique furniture, folding back the old curtains, standing by the
dismantled beds, and softly pausing by the empty chairs; she was saying
farewell. On Cousin Copeland's desk the wreath still lay; in that room
she cried from sheer desolation. Then, going down to the dining-room,
she found her solitary repast awaiting her, and, not to distress old
Dinah, sat down in her accustomed place. Presently she perceived smoke,
then a sound, then a hiss and a roar. She flew up stairs; the house was
on fire. Somewhere her candle must have started the flame; she
remembered the loose papers in Cousin Copeland's study, and the wind
blowing through the broken window-pane; it was there that she had cried
so bitterly, forgetting everything save her own loneliness.
Nothing could be done; there was no house within several miles--no one
to help. The old servants were infirm, and the fire had obtained strong
headway; then the high wind rushed in, and sent the flames up through
the roof and over the tops of the trees. When the whole upper story was
one sheet of red and yellow, some one rode furiously up the road and
into the garden, where Gardis stood alone, her little figure illumined
by the glare; nearer the house the two old servants were at work, trying
to save some of the furniture from the lower rooms.
"I saw the light and hurried back, Miss Duke," began Captain Newell.
Then, as he saw the wan desolation of the girl's face: "O Gardis! why
will you resist me longer?" he cried passionately. "You shall be
anything you like, think anything you like--only love me, dear, as I
love you."
And Gardis burst into tears. "I can not help it," she sobbed;
"everything is against me. The very house is burning before my eyes. O
David, David! it is all wrong; everything is wrong. But what can I do
when--when you hold me so, and when--Oh, do not ask me any more."
"But I shall," said Newell, his face flushing with deep happiness. "When
what, dear?"
"When I--"
"Love me?" said Newell. He would have it spoken.
"Yes," whispered Gardis, hanging her head.
"And I have adored the very shoe-tie of my proud little love ever since
I first saw her sweet face at the drawing-room window," said Newell,
holding her close and closer, and gazing down into her eyes with the
deep gaze of the quiet heart that loves but once.
And the old house burned on, burned as though it knew a contractor's
wife was waiting for it. "I see our Gardis is provided for," said the
old house. "She never was a real Gardiston--only a Duke; so it is just
as well. As for that contractor's wife, she shall have nothing; not a
Chinese image, not a spindle-legged chair, not one crocodile cup--no,
not even one stone upon another."
It kept its word: in the morning there was nothing left. Old Gardiston
was gone!
THE SOUTH DEVIL.
The trees that lean'd in their love unto trees,
That lock'd in their loves, and were made so strong,
Stronger than armies; ay, stronger than seas
That rush from their caves in a storm of song.
The cockatoo swung in the vines below,
And muttering hung on a golden thread,
Or moved on the moss'd bough to and fro,
In plumes of gold and array'd in red.
The serpent that hung from the sycamore bough,
And sway'd his head in a crescent above,
Had folded his head to the white limb now,
And fondled it close like a great black love.
JOAQUIN MILLER.
On the afternoon of the 23d of December, the thermometer marked
eighty-six degrees in the shade on the outside wall of Mark Deal's
house. Mark Deal's brother, lying on the white sand, his head within the
line of shadow cast by a live-oak, but all the remainder of his body
full in the hot sunshine, basked liked a chameleon, and enjoyed the
heat. Mark Deal's brother spent much of his time basking. He always took
the live-oak for a head-protector; but gave himself variety by trying
new radiations around the tree, his crossed legs and feet stretching
from it in a slightly different direction each day, as the spokes of a
wheel radiate from the hub. The live-oak was a symmetrical old tree,
standing by itself; having always had sufficient space, its great arms
were straight, stretching out evenly all around, densely covered with
the small, dark, leathery leaves, unnotched and uncut, which are as
unlike the Northern oak-leaf as the leaf of the willow is unlike that
of the sycamore. Behind the live-oak, two tall, ruined chimneys and a
heap of white stones marked where the mansion-house had been. The old
tree had watched its foundations laid; had shaded its blank, white front
and little hanging balcony above; had witnessed its destruction, fifty
years before, by the Indians; and had mounted guard over its remains
ever since, alone as far as man was concerned, until this year, when a
tenant had arrived, Mark Deal, and, somewhat later, Mark Deal's brother.
The ancient tree was Spanish to the core; it would have resented the
sacrilege to the tips of its small acorns, if the new-comer had laid
hands upon the dignified old ruin it guarded. The new-comer, however,
entertained no such intention; a small out-building, roofless, but
otherwise in good condition, on the opposite side of the circular space,
attracted his attention, and became mentally his residence, as soon as
his eyes fell upon it, he meanwhile standing with his hands in his
pockets, surveying the place critically. It was the old Monteano
plantation, and he had taken it for a year.
The venerable little out-building was now firmly roofed with new, green
boards; its square windows, destitute of sash or glass, possessed new
wooden shutters hung by strips of deer's hide; new steps led up to its
two rooms, elevated four feet above the ground. But for a door it had
only a red cotton curtain, now drawn forward and thrown carelessly over
a peg on the outside wall, a spot of vivid color on its white.
Underneath the windows hung flimsy strips of bark covered with
brightly-hued flowers.
"They won't live," said Mark Deal.
"Oh, I shall put in fresh ones every day or two," answered his brother.
It was he who had wanted the red curtain.
As he basked, motionless, in the sunshine, it could be noted that this
brother was a slender youth, with long, pale-yellow hair--hair fine,
thin, and dry, the kind that crackles if the comb is passed rapidly
through it. His face in sleep was pale and wizened, with deep purple
shadows under the closed eyes; his long hands were stretched out on the
white, hot sand in the blaze of the sunshine, which, however, could not
alter their look of blue-white cold. The sunken chest and blanched
temples told of illness; but, if cure were possible, it would be gained
from this soft, balmy, fragrant air, now soothing his sore lungs. He
slept on in peace; and an old green chameleon came down from the tree,
climbed up on the sleeve of his brown sack-coat, occupied himself for a
moment in changing his own miniature hide to match the cloth, swelled
out his scarlet throat, caught a fly or two, and then, pleasantly
established, went to sleep also in company. Butterflies, in troops of
twenty or thirty, danced in the golden air; there was no sound.
Everything was hot and soft and brightly colored. Winter? Who knew of
winter here? Labor? What was labor? This was the land and the sky and
the air of never-ending rest.
Yet one man was working there, and working hard, namely, Mark Deal. His
little central plaza, embracing perhaps an acre, was surrounded when he
first arrived by a wall of green, twenty feet high. The sweet
orange-trees, crape-myrtles, oleanders, guavas, and limes planted by the
Spaniards had been, during the fifty years, conquered and partially
enslaved by a wilder growth--andromedas, dahoons, bayberries, and the
old field loblollies, the whole bound together by the tangled vines of
the jessamine and armed smilax, with bear-grass and the dwarf palmetto
below. Climbing the central live-oak, Deal had found, as he expected,
traces of the six paths which had once led from this little plaza to the
various fields and the sugar plantation, their course still marked by
the tops of the bitter-sweet orange-trees, which showed themselves
glossily, in regular lines, amid the duller foliage around them. He took
their bearings and cut them out slowly, one by one. Now the low-arched
aisles, eighty feet in length, were clear, with the thick leaves
interlacing overhead, and the daylight shining through at their far
ends, golden against the green. Here, where the north path terminated,
Deal was now working.
He was a man slightly below middle height, broad-shouldered, and
muscular, with the outlines which are called thick-set. He appeared
forty-five, and was not quite thirty-five. Although weather-beaten and
bronzed, there was yet a pinched look in his face, which was peculiar.
He was working in an old field, preparing it for sweet potatoes--those
omnipresent, monotonous vegetables of Florida which will grow anywhere,
and which at last, with their ugly, gray-mottled skins, are regarded
with absolute aversion by the Northern visitor.
The furrows of half a century before were still visible in the field. No
frost had disturbed the winterless earth; no atom had changed its place,
save where the gopher had burrowed beneath, or the snake left its waving
trail above in the sand which constitutes the strange, white, desolate
soil, wherever there is what may be called by comparison solid ground,
in the lake-dotted, sieve-like land. There are many such traces of
former cultivation in Florida: we come suddenly upon old tracks,
furrows, and drains in what we thought primeval forest; rose-bushes run
wild, and distorted old fig-trees meet us in a jungle where we supposed
no white man's foot had ever before penetrated; the ruins of a chimney
gleam whitely through a waste of thorny _chaparral_. It is all natural
enough, if one stops to remember that fifty years before the first
settlement was made in Virginia, and sixty-three before the Mayflower
touched the shores of the New World, there were flourishing Spanish
plantations on this Southern coast--more flourishing, apparently, than
any the indolent peninsula has since known. But one does not stop to
remember it; the belief is imbedded in all our Northern hearts that,
because the narrow, sun-bathed State is far away and wild and empty, it
is also new and virgin, like the lands of the West; whereas it is
old--the only gray-haired corner our country holds.
Mark Deal worked hard. Perspiration beaded his forehead and cheeks, and
rolled from his short, thick, red-brown hair. He worked in this way
every day from daylight until dusk, and was probably the only white man
in the State who did. When his task was finished, he made a circuit
around the belt of thicket through which the six paths ran to his
orange-grove on the opposite side. On the way he skirted an edge of the
sugar-plantation, now a wide, empty waste, with the old elevated
causeway still running across it. On its far edge loomed the great
cypresses of South Devil, a swamp forty miles long; there was a sister,
West Devil, not far away, equally beautiful, dark, and deadly. Beyond
the sugar waste were the indigo-fields, still fenced by their old
ditches. Then came the orange-grove; luxuriant, shady word--the
orange-grove!
It was a space of level white sand, sixty feet square, fertilized a
century before with pounded oyster-shells, in the Spanish fashion.
Planted in even rows across it, tied to stakes, were slips of green
stem, each with three leaves--forlorn little plants, five or six inches
in height. But the stakes were new and square and strong, and rose to
Deal's shoulder; they were excellent stakes, and made quite a grove of
themselves, firm, if somewhat bare.
Deal worked in his grove until sunset; then he shouldered his tools and
went homeward through one of the arched aisles to the little plaza
within, where stood his two-roomed house with its red cotton door. His
brother was still sleeping on the sand, at least, his eyes were closed.
Deal put his tools in a rack behind the house, and then crossed to where
he lay.
"You should not sleep here after sunset, Carl," he said, somewhat
roughly. "You know better; why do you do it?"
"I'm not asleep," answered the other, sitting up, and then slowly
getting on his feet. "Heigh-ho! What are you going to have for dinner?"
"You are tired, Carl; and I see the reason. You have been in the swamp."
Deal's eyes as he spoke were fixed upon the younger man's shoes, where
traces of the ink-black soil of South Devil were plainly visible.
Carl laughed. "Can't keep anything from your Yankee eyes, can I, Mark?"
he said. "But I only went a little way."
"It isn't the distance, it's the folly," said Mark, shortly, going
toward the house.
"I never pretended to be wise," answered Carl, slouching along behind
him, with his hands wrapped in his blue cotton handkerchief, arranged
like a muff.
Although Deal worked hard in his fields all day, he did not cook. In a
third out-building lived a gray-headed old negro with one eye, who
cooked for the new tenant--and cooked well. His name was Scipio, but
Carl called him Africanus; he said it was equally appropriate, and
sounded more impressive. Scip's kitchen was out-of-doors--simply an old
Spanish chimney. His kettle and few dishes, when not in use, hung on the
sides of this chimney, which now, all alone in the white sand, like an
obelisk, cooked solemnly the old negro's messes, as half a century
before it had cooked the more dignified repasts of the dead hidalgos.
The brothers ate in the open air also, sitting at a rough board table
which Mark had made behind the house. They had breakfast soon after
daylight, and at sunset dinner; in the middle of the day they took only
fruit and bread.
"Day after to-morrow will be Christmas," said Carl, leaving the table
and lighting his long pipe. "What are you going to do?"
"I had not thought of doing anything in particular."
"Well, at least don't work on Christmas day."
"What would you have me do?"
Carl took his pipe from his mouth, and gazed at his brother in silence
for a moment. "Go into the swamp with me," he urged, with sudden
vehemence. "Come--for the whole day!"
Deal was smoking, too, a short clay pipe, very different from the huge,
fantastic, carved bowl with long stem which weighed down Carl's thin
mouth. "I don't know what to do with you, boy. You are mad about the
swamp," he said, smoking on calmly.
They were sitting in front of the house now, in two chairs tilted back
against its wall. The dark, odorous earth looked up to the myriad stars,
but was not lighted by them; a soft, languorous gloom lay over the land.
Carl brushed away the ashes from his pipe impatiently.
"It's because you can't understand," he said. "The swamp haunts me. I
_must_ see it once; you will be wise to let me see it once. We might go
through in a canoe together by the branch; the branch goes through."
"The water goes, no doubt, but a canoe couldn't."
"Yes, it could, with an axe. It has been done. They used to go up to San
Miguel that way sometimes from here; it shortens the distance more than
half."
"Who told you all this--Scip? What does he know about it?"
"Oh, Africanus has seen several centuries; the Spaniards were living
here only fifty years ago, you know, and that's nothing to him. He
remembers the Indian attack."
"Ponce de Leon, too, I suppose; or, to go back to the old country,
Cleopatra. But you must give up the swamp, Carl. I positively forbid it.
The air inside is thick and deadly, to say nothing of the other dangers.
How do you suppose it gained its name?"
"Diabolus is common enough as a title among Spaniards and Italians; it
don't mean anything. The prince of darkness never lives in the places
called by his name; he likes baptized cities better."
"Death lives there, however; and I brought you down here to cure you."
"I'm all right. See how much stronger I am! I shall soon be quite well
again, old man," answered Carl, with the strange, sanguine faith of the
consumptive.
The next day Deal worked very hard. He had a curious, inflexible,
possibly narrow kind of conscience, which required him to do double duty
to-day in order to make up for the holiday granted to Carl to-morrow.
There was no task-master over him; even the seasons were not
task-masters here. But so immovable were his own rules for himself that
nothing could have induced him to abate one jot of the task he had laid
out in his own mind when he started afield at dawn.
When he returned home at sunset, somewhat later than usual, Carl was
absent. Old Scipio could give no information; he had not seen "young
marse" since early morning. Deal put up his tools, ate something, and
then, with a flask in his pocket, a fagot of light-wood torches bound on
his back, and one of these brilliant, natural flambeaux in his hand, he
started away on his search, going down one of the orange-aisles, the
light gleaming back through the arch till he reached the far end, when
it disappeared. He crossed an old indigo-field, and pushed his way
through its hedge of Spanish-bayonets, while the cacti sown along the
hedge--small, flat green plates with white spines, like hideous tufted
insects--fastened themselves viciously on the strong leather of his high
boots. Then, reaching the sugar waste, he advanced a short distance on
the old causeway, knelt down, and in the light of the torch examined its
narrow, sandy level. Yes, there were the footprints he had feared to
find. Carl had gone again into the poisonous swamp--the beautiful,
deadly South Devil. And this time he had not come back.
The elder brother rose, and with the torch held downward slowly traced
the footmarks. There was a path, or rather trail, leading in a short
distance. The footprints followed it as far as it went, and the brother
followed the footprints, the red glare of the torch foreshortening each
swollen, gray-white cypress-trunk, and giving to the dark, hidden pools
below bright gleamings which they never had by day. He soon came to the
end of the trail; here he stopped and shouted loudly several times, with
pauses between for answer. No answer came.
"But I know the trick of this thick air," he said to himself. "One can't
hear anything in a cypress-swamp."
He was now obliged to search closely for the footprints, pausing at each
one, having no idea in which direction the next would tend. The soil did
not hold the impressions well; it was not mud or mire, but wet, spongy,
fibrous, black earth, thinly spread over the hard roots of trees, which
protruded in distorted shapes in every direction. He traced what seemed
footmarks across an open space, and then lost them on the brink of a
dark pool. If Carl had kept on, he must have crossed this pool; but how?
On the sharp cypress-knees standing sullenly in the claret-colored
water? He went all around the open space again, seeking for footmarks
elsewhere; but no, they ended at the edge of the pool. Cutting a long
stick, he made his way across by its aid, stepping from knee-point to
knee-point. On the other side he renewed his search for the trail, and
after some labor found it, and went on again.
He toiled forward slowly in this way a long time, his course changing
often; Carl's advance seemed to have been aimless. Then, suddenly, the
footprints ceased. There was not another one visible anywhere, though he
searched in all directions again and again. He looked at his watch; it
was midnight. He hallooed; no reply. What could have become of the lad?
He now began to feel his own fatigue; after the long day of toil in the
hot sun, these hours of laboring over the ground in a bent position,
examining it inch by inch, brought on pains in his shoulders and back.
Planting the torch he was carrying in the soft soil of a little knoll,
he placed another one near it, and sat down between the two flames to
rest for a minute or two, pouring out for himself a little brandy in the
bottom of the cup belonging to his flask. He kept strict watch as he did
this. Venomous things, large and small, filled the vines above, and
might drop at any moment upon him. But he had quick eyes and ears, and
no intention of dying in the South Devil; so, while he watched keenly,
he took the time to swallow the brandy. After a moment or two he was
startled by a weak human voice saying, with faint decision, "_That's_
brandy!"
"I should say it was," called Deal, springing to his feet "Where are
you, then?"
"Here."
The rescuer followed the sound, and, after one or two errors, came upon
the body of his brother lying on a dank mat of water-leaves and
ground-vines at the edge of a pool. In the red light of the torch he
looked as though he was dead; his eyes only were alive.
"Brandy," he said again, faintly, as Deal appeared.