SMOKING FLAX
BY
HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES
_SECOND EDITION_
F. TENNYSON NEELY
PUBLISHER
LONDON NEW YORK
=Neely’s Prismatic Library.=
=GILT TOP, 50 CENTS.=
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_SOUR SAINTS AND SWEET SINNERS._
_By Carlos Martyn._
_SEVEN SMILES AND A FEW FIBS._
_By Thomas J. Vivian. With full-page illustrations by well-known
artists._
_A MODERN PROMETHEUS._
_By E. Phillips Oppenheim._
_THE SHACKLES OF FATE._
_By Max Nordau._
_A BACHELOR OF PARIS._
_By John W. Harding. With over 50 illustrations by William Hofacher._
_MONTRESOR. By Loota._
_REVERIES OF A SPINSTER._
_By Helen Davies._
_THE ART MELODIOUS._
_By Louis Lombard._
_THE HONOR OF A PRINCESS._
_By F. Kimball Scribner._
_OBSERVATIONS OF A BACHELOR._
_By Louis Lombard._
_KINGS IN ADVERSITY._
_By E. S. Van Zile._
_NOBLE BLOOD AND A WEST POINT PARALLEL. By Captain King._
_TRUMPETER FRED._
_By Captain King. Illustrated._
_ FATHER STAFFORD. By Anthony Hope._
_THE KING IN YELLOW._
_By R. W. Chambers._
_IN THE QUARTER. By R. W. Chambers._
_A PROFESSIONAL LOVER. By Gyp._
_BIJOU’S COURTSHIPS._
_By Gyp. Illustrated._
_A CONSPIRACY OF THE CARBONARI._
_By Louise Muhlbach._
_SOAP BUBBLES. By Dr. Max Nordau._
F. TENNYSON NEELY,
PUBLISHER,
NEW YORK, LONDON.
_Copyrighted in the United States and
Great Britain in MDCCCXCVII by
F. Tennyson Neely._
_All rights reserved._
TO MY MOTHER AND THE SOUTH
INTRODUCTION.
“Smoking Flax” is a story of the South written by a young Kentucky
woman. Undoubtedly in the South its advent will be saluted with
enthusiastic bravos. What will be the nature of its reception in
the North it is hazardous to predict. One thing, however, can be
confidently prophesied for it everywhere--consideration. This the
subject and manner of its treatment assures.
The methods of Judge Lynch viewed from most standpoints are, without
extenuation, evil; from a few aspects they may appear to be perhaps
not wholly without justification. Miss Rives, through the medium of
romance, presents the question as seen from many sides, and then leaves
to the reader the responsibility of determining “what is truth,” though
where her own sympathies lie she does not leave much in doubt.
The authoress comes of an old Virginia stock to whom the gift of
narrative and literary expression seem to be a birthright. Since
revolutionary days literature has been more or less enriched by
contributions from successive members of the family--the well known
contemporary novelist and the youthful author of this book sharing
at the present time the responsibility of upholding the hereditary
traditions. It seems, therefore, happily appropriate that Miss Rives
should have taken upon herself the task of placing before the world
southern views of the problem of lynching, which, be it understood, are
far from unanimous. The subject is handled with admirable tact, the
author steering clear alike from prudish affectations of modesty and
shocking details of inartistic realism: and throughout is maintained
a judicial impartiality infrequent in the treatment of such burning
questions.
Miss Rives will achieve distinction in the South and at least
notability elsewhere.
H. F. G.
ROCHESTER, N. Y.
_September 22nd, 97._
CHAPTER I.
The house faced the college campus and was the only one in the block.
This, in Georgetown, implies a lawn of no small dimensions; the place
had neither gardener’s house nor porter’s lodge--nothing but that
old home half hidden by ancient elms. For many a year it had stood
with closed doors in the very heart of that prosperous Kentucky
town, presenting a gloomy aspect and exercising for many a singular
attraction. Near the deep veranda a great tree, whose boughs were
no longer held in check by trimming, had thrust one of its branches
through the frontmost window. Dampness had attacked everything.
The upper balcony was loosened, the roof warped, and lizards sunned
themselves on the wall.
As for the garden, long ago it had lapsed into a chaotic state. The
thistle and the pale poppy grew in fragrant tangle with the wild ivy
and Virginia creeper, and wilful weeds thrust their way across the
gravel walks.
Sadly old residents saw the place approaching the last stages of
decay--saw this house, once the pride of the town, in its decrepitude
and loneliness the plaything of the elements.
“A noble wreck! It must have a history of some kind,” strangers would
remark.
“Ah, that it has, and a sombre one it is!” any man or woman living near
would have answered, as they recalled the history of Richard Harding’s
home. For the fate of Richard Harding was a sad memory to them. They
remembered how he had been the representative of a fine old family and
that much of his fortune had been spent in beautifying this place, to
make it a fitting home for Catharine Field, his bride.
She too had been of gentle birth and held an important place in their
memory as one who brought with her to this rural community the wider
experience usual to a young woman educated in Boston, who, after a few
seasons of social success in an ultra fashionable set, has crowned her
many achievements by a brilliant marriage.
Her husband adored her and showed his devotion by humoring her
extravagant tastes and prodigal fancies. He detested gayeties, yet
complied with her slightest wish for social pleasures.
Although it was generally agreed that this young couple got on well
together, at the end of two years the husband had to admit to himself
that his efforts to render his wife happy had not been entirely
successful. He saw that she fretted for her northern life, was bored
by everything about her. She cherished a bitter resentment for the
slaveholders, vowing that it was barbarous and inhuman to own human
beings as her husband and neighbors did. Though expressing pity for the
poor, simple, dependent creatures, she did little to make their tasks
more healthful and reasonable ones, or to render them more capable and
contented.
Her baby’s nurse was the one servant of her household who met with
gracious treatment at her hands. This old slave came to her endowed
with the womanly virtues of honor, self-respect and humility. But in
marveling at her on these accounts, Mrs. Harding forgot that it was the
former mistress--her husband’s mother--that had made her what she was.
At length the truth became clearly apparent that she was an obstinate,
intensely prejudiced and very unreasonable woman, who, having lived for
a time at a centre of fashionable intelligence in a city of culture,
supposed herself to be quite beyond the reach of and entirely superior
to ordinary country folk. Eventually, her morbid dissatisfaction became
so extreme that her husband yielded to her importunities, closed the
house, and with her and their baby boy, went to live in Boston.
This sacrifice he made quietly and uncomplainingly, his closest friends
not then knowing how it wrenched his heart. A year passed, then
another, and at the end of the third, the papers announced the death of
Richard Harding.
Though never again seeing his southern home, where he had planned
to live his life in peace and useful happiness, it had held to the
end a most sacred place in his memory--a memory which he truly hoped
would be transmittted to the heart and mind of his son. It was his
last wish that the old homestead should remain as it was--closed to
strangers--that no living being, unless of his own blood, should
inhabit that abode of love and sorrow, that it be kept from the
careless profanation of aliens.
The world prophesied that his widow would soon forget the wishes of the
dead, but as witness that she had thus far kept faith, there stood the
closed, abandoned home, upon which Nature alone laid a destroying hand.