of Peter Giles' log cabin, and puffed their pipes in silence. The
panorama spread out before them showed misty and dreamy among the
delicate spiral wreaths of smoke. But was that gossamer-like illusion,
lying upon the far horizon, the magic of nicotian, or the vague
presence of distant heights? As ridge after ridge came down from the
sky in ever-graduating shades of intenser blue, Peter Giles might have
told you that this parallel system of enchantment was only "the
mountings"; that here was Foxy, and there was Big Injun, and still
beyond was another, which he had "hearn tell ran spang up into
Virginny." The sky that bent to clasp this kindred blue was of varying
moods. Floods of sunshine submerged Chilhowee in liquid gold, and
revealed that dainty outline limned upon the northern horizon; but
over the Great Smoky mountains, clouds had gathered and a gigantic
rainbow bridged the valley. . . . . . . . . Simon Burney did not speak
for a moment. . . . "That's a likely gal o' yourn," he drawled, with
an odd constraint in his voice,--"a likely gal, that Clarsie." . . .
"Yes," Peter Giles at length replied, "Clarsie air a likely enough
gal. But she air mightily sot ter havin' her own way. An' ef 't ain't
give to her peaceable-like, she jes' takes it, whether or no."
This statement, made by one presumably informed on the subject, might
have damped the ardor of many a suitor,--for the monstrous truth was
dawning on Peter Giles's mind that suitor was the position to which
this slow elderly widower aspired. But Simon Burney, with that odd,
all-pervading constraint still prominently apparent, mildly observed,
"Waal, ez much ez I hev seen of her goin's-on, it 'pears ter me az her
way air a mighty good way. An' it ain't comical that she likes
it." . . . . . . . The song grew momentarily more distinct: among the
leaves there were fugitive glimpses of blue and white, and at last
Clarsie appeared, walking lightly along the log, clad in her checked
homespun dress, and with a pail upon her head.
She was a tall lithe girl, with that delicately transparent complexion
often seen among the women of these mountains. Her lustreless black
hair lay along her forehead without a ripple or a wave; there was
something in the expression of her large eyes that suggested those of
a deer,--something free, untamable, and yet gentle. "'Tain't no wonder
ter me ez Clarsie is all tuk up with the wild things, an' critters
ginerally," her mother was wont to say; "she sorter looks like 'em,
I'm a-thinkin'."
As she came in sight there was a renewal of that odd constraint in
Simon Burney's face and manner, and he rose abruptly. "Waal," he said,
hastily, going to his horse, a raw-boned sorrel, hitched to the fence,
"it's about time I war a-startin' home, I reckons."
He nodded to his host, who silently nodded in return, and the old
horse jogged off with him down the road, as Clarsie entered the house
and placed the pail upon a shelf.
. . . . . . . . .
The breeze freshened, after the sun went down, . . . there were stars
in the night besides those known to astronomers; the stellular
fire-flies gemmed the black shadows with a fluctuating brilliancy;
they circled in and out of the porch, and touched the leaves above
Clarsie's head with quivering points of light. A steadier and an
intenser gleam was advancing along the road, and the sound of languid
footsteps came with it; the aroma of tobacco graced the atmosphere,
and a tall figure walked up to the gate.
"Come in, come in," said Peter Giles, rising, and tendering the guest
a chair. "Ye air Tom Pratt, ez well ez I kin make out by this light.
Waal, Tom, we hain't furgot ye sence ye done been hyar."
. . . . . . . .
The young man took leave presently, in great depression of
spirits. . . . Clarsie ascended the ladder to a nook in the roof which
she called her room.
For the first time in her life her slumber was fitful and restless,
long intervals of wakefulness alternating with snatches of fantastic
dreams. . . . And then her mind reverted to Tom Pratt, to old Simon
Burney, and to her mother's emphatic and oracular declaration that
widowers are in league with Satan, and that the girls upon whom they
cast the eye of supernatural fascination have no choice in the matter.
"I wish I knowed ef that thar sayin' war true," she murmured, her face
still turned to the western spurs, and the moon sinking slowly toward
them.
With a sudden resolution she rose to her feet. She knew a way of
telling fortunes which was, according to tradition, infallible, and
she determined to try it, and ease her mind as to her future. Now was
the propitious moment. "I hev always hearn that it won't come true
'thout ye try it jes' before daybreak, an' kneelin' down at the forks
of the road." She hesitated a moment and listened intently. "They'd
never git done a-laffin' at me, ef they fund it out," she
thought. . . . [She went out into the road.] She fixed her eyes upon
the mystic sphere dropping down the sky, knelt among the azaleas at
the forks of the road, and repeated the time-honored invocation: "Ef
I'm a-goin' ter marry a young man, whistle, Bird, whistle. Ef I'm
a-goin' ter marry an old man, low, Cow, low. Ef I ain't a-goin' ter
marry nobody, knock, Death, knock."
There was a prolonged silence in the matutinal freshness and perfume
of the woods. She raised her head, and listened attentively. No chirp
of half-awakened bird, no tapping of wood-pecker or the mysterious
death-watch; but from far along the dewy aisles of the forest, the
ungrateful Spot that Clarsie had fed more faithfully than herself,
lifted up her voice, and set the echoes vibrating. Clarsie, however,
had hardly time for a pang of disappointment.
While she still knelt among the azaleas, her large deer-like eyes were
suddenly dilated with terror. From around the curve of the road came
the quick beat of hastening footsteps, the sobbing sound of panting
breath, and between her and the sinking moon there passed an
attenuated one-armed figure, with a pallid sharpened face, outlined
for a moment on its brilliant disk, and dreadful starting eyes, and
quivering open mouth. It disappeared in an instant among the shadows
of the laurel, and Clarsie, with a horrible fear clutching at her
heart, sprang to her feet. . . . the ghost stood before her. She could
not nerve herself to run past him, and he was directly in her way
homeward.
. . . . . . . . .
"Ye do ez ye air bid, or it'll be the worse for ye," said the "harnt"
in a quivering shrill tone. "Thar's hunger in the nex' worl' ez well
ez in this, an' ye bring me some vittles hyar this time ter-morrer,
an' don't ye tell nobody ye hev seen me, nuther, or it'll be the worse
for ye." . . .
The next morning, before the moon sank, Clarsie, with a tin pail in
her hand, went to meet the ghost at the appointed place. . . . . .
Morning was close at hand. . . . . . the leaves fell into abrupt
commotion, and he was standing in the road, beside her. He did not
speak, but watched her with an eager, questioning intentness, as she
placed the contents of the pail upon the moss at the roadside. "I'm
a-comin' agin ter-morrer," she said, gently. . . . Then she slowly
walked along her misty way in the dim light of the coming dawn. There
was a footstep in the road behind her; she thought it was the ghost
once more. She turned, and met Simon Burney, face to face. His rod was
on his shoulder, and a string of fish was in his hand.
"Ye air a-doin' wrongful, Clarsie," he said sternly. "It air agin the
law fur folks ter feed an' shelter them ez is a-runnin' from jestice.
An' ye'll git yerself inter trouble. Other folks will find ye out,
besides me, an' then the sheriff 'll be up hyar arter ye."
The tears rose to Clarsie's eyes. This prospect was infinitely more
terrifying than the awful doom which follows the horror of a ghost's
speech. "I can't help it," she said, however, doggedly swinging the
pail back and forth. "I can't gin my consent ter starvin' of folks,
even if they air a-hidin' an' a-runnin' from jestice." . . . .
FOOTNOTE:
[47] By permission of Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, Boston.
DANSKE DANDRIDGE.
~1859=----.~
MRS. DANDRIDGE was born in Copenhagen, when her father, Honorable
Henry Bedinger, was minister to Denmark. In 1877 she was married to
Mr. Stephen Dandridge of Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Her first name,
Danske, is the pretty Danish word for Dane, and is pronounced in two
syllables.
WORKS.
Joy, and other Poems.
Mrs. Dandridge's poems are as dainty and airy as if the elves
themselves had led her to their bowers and discovered to her their
secrets; and this is truly what her poetic sense has done, for the
poet is a seer and singer of the secrets of nature.
THE SPIRIT AND THE WOOD SPARROW.
(_From Joy, and other Poems._[48])
'Twas long ago:
The place was very fair;
And from a cloud of snow
A spirit of the air
Dropped to the earth below.
It was a spot by man untrod,
Just where
I think is only known to God.
The spirit, for a while,
Because of beauty freshly made
Could only smile;
Then grew the smiling to a song,
And as he sang he played
Upon a moonbeam-wired cithole
Shaped like a soul.
There was no ear
Or far or near,
Save one small sparrow of the wood,
That song to hear.
This, in a bosky tree,
Heard all, and understood
As much as a small sparrow could
By sympathy.
'Twas a fair sight
That morn of Spring,
When on the lonely height,
The spirit paused to sing,
Then through the air took flight
Still lilting on the wing.
And the shy bird,
Who all had heard,
Straightway began
To practice o'er the lovely strain;
Again, again;
Though indistinct and blurred,
He tried each word,
Until he caught the last far sounds that fell
Like the faint tinkles of a fairy bell.
Now when I hear that song,
Which has no earthly tone,
My soul is carried with the strain along
To the everlasting Throne;
To bow in thankfulness and prayer,
And gain fresh faith, and love, and patience, there.
FOOTNOTE:
[48] By permission of the author, and publishers. G. P. Putnam's Sons,
N. Y.
AMÉLIE RIVES CHANLER.
~1863=----.~
MRS. CHANLER, or AMÉLIE RIVES as she still styles herself in writing,
was born in Richmond, Virginia, but passed her early life at the
family place in Albemarle County, called "Castle Hill." She is a
granddaughter of William Cabell Rives, once minister to France and
author of "Life of Madison"; and her grandmother, Mrs. Judith Walker
Rives, was a woman of much ability, and left some writings entitled
"Home and the World," and "Residence in Europe."
She was married in 1888 to Mr. John Armstrong Chanler of New York and
has since spent much time in Paris, studying painting for which she
has as great fondness as for writing.
Her first stories were written in the style of the time of Shakspere;
the best of them is "Farrier Lass o' Piping Pebworth." They created a
sensation as they came out and were said to be the work of a girl
under twenty. She has also written stories of Virginia life and of
modern times; besides poems, and dramas, in which last her talents
seem to reach a higher plane than in any other kind of writing.
WORKS.
A Brother to Dragons.
Farrier Lass o' Piping Pebworth.
Virginia of Virginia.
The Quick or the Dead?
According to St. John.
Athelwold, [drama].
Barbara Dering, [sequel to The Quick or the Dead?]
Nurse Crumpet Tells the Story.
Story of Arnon.
Inja.
Witness of the Sun.
Herod and Mariamne, [drama].
Poems, [scattered in magazines].
Tanis, the Sang-Digger.
TANIS.
(_From Tanis, the Sang-Digger._[49])
Gilman was driving along one of the well-kept turnpikes that wind
about the Warm Springs Valley. He recognized the austere and solemn
beauty that hemmed him in from the far-off outer world; but at the
same time he was contrasting it with the sea-coast of his native
State, Massachusetts, and a certain creeping homesickness began to
rise about his heart.
[Illustration: ~Model School, Peabody Normal College.~]
In addition to this, he had left his delicate wife suffering with an
acute neuralgic headache, and also saddened by a yearning for the
picturesque old farm-house in which he had been born, and where they
had lived during the first year of marriage. The trap which Gilman
drove was filled with surveying instruments, and, as he turned into
the rough mountain road, which led towards the site of the new railway
for which he was now prospecting, the smaller ones began to rattle
together and slide from the seat beside him. Finally, as the cart
slipped against a stone, the level bounced into a puddle. He was about
to jump out when a bold, ringing voice called to him:
"Set still--A'll pick hit up."
Then a figure slid down the rocky bank at his right, her one garment
wrinkling from her bare, sturdy legs during the performance.
Gilman had never seen anything like her in his thirty years of varied
experience.
She was very tall. A curtain of rough, glittering curls hung to her
knees. Her face, clear with that clearness which only a mountain wind
can bring, was white as a seagull's breast, except where a dark, yet
vivid pink melted into the blue veins on her temples and throat. Her
round, fresh lips, smooth as a peony-leaf, were parted in a wide
laugh, over teeth large and yellow-white, like the grains on an ear of
corn. She wore a loose tunic of blue-gray stuff, which reached to the
middle of her legs, covered with grass stains and patches of mould.
Her bare feet, somewhat broadened by walking, were well-shaped, the
great toe standing apart from the others, the strong, round ankles,
although scratched and bruised, perfectly symmetrical. Her arms, bare
almost to the shoulder, were like those with which in imagination we
complete the Milo. Eyes, round and colored like the edges of broken
glass, looked out boldly from under her long black eyebrows. Her nose
was straight and well cut, but set impertinently.
As she picked up the muddy level she laughed boisterously and wiped it
on her frock.
"Thank you," said Gilman, and then, after a second's hesitation,
added: "Where are you going? Perhaps I can give you a lift on your
way? Will you get in?"
"Well, a done keer ef a do," she said, still staring at him.
She got in and took the level on her knee, then burst out laughing
again--
"A reckon yuh wonders what a'm a haw-hawin' at?" she asked, suddenly.
"Well, a'll tell yuh! 'Tiz case a feels jess like this hyuh
contrapshun o' yourn. A haint hed a bite sence five this mawnin', and
a've got a bubble in th' middle o' me, a ken tell yuh!"
She opened her flexible mouth almost to her ears, showing both rows of
speckless teeth, and roaring mirthfully again.
"I've got some sandwiches, here--won't you have one?" said Gilman.
"Dunno--what be they?" she asked, rather suspiciously, eyeing him
sidewise.
He explained to her, and she accepted one, tearing from it a huge
semi-circle, which she held in her cheek while exclaiming:
"Murder! hain't that good, though? D'yuh eat them things ev'y day? Yuh
looks hit! You're a real fine-lookin' feller--mos' ez good-lookin' ez
Bill."
"Who is Bill?" asked Gilman, much interested in this, his first
conversation with a genuine savage.
"Bill? he's muh pard, an' muh brother, too. I come down hyuh tuh git
him a drink o' water, but a hain't foun' a spring yit."
"No, there isn't one in several miles," said Gilman.
"Hyuh!" she cried. "Lemme git out." . . . And she was out, with the
bound of a deer. "You g'long," she said; "a'm sorry a rode this far
wi' you. You'll larf 'bout muh bar foots, an' this hyuh rag o' mine,
wi' them po' white trash an' niggers. Whar you fum, anyhow? You hain't
a Fuginia feller. A kin tell by yo' talk. You called roots 'ruts'
jess now, an' yuh said we'd 'sun' be whar them other fellers be. Whar
you fum?"
"From Massachusetts," said Gilman.
"S'that another langidge fuh some name a knows?"
"No--it's the real name of another State."
"Well, hit's 'nuff tuh twis' a body's tongue, fuh life, so a done
blame yuh s'much fuh yo' funny talk. Mawnin'." And she began to swing
herself upon a great lichen-crested boulder by the roadside. . . . . .
Gilman was naturally curious as to the type of the young barbarian
whom he had met on his drive to Black Creek, and, during a pause in
his work, he told a young fellow named Watkins of his adventure, and
asked him to what class the girl belonged.
"I reckon, sir, she was a sang-digger," said Watkins, laughing.
"They're a awful wild lot, mostly bad as they make 'em, with no more
idea of right an' wrong than a lot o' ground-horgs."
"But what is a 'sang-digger'?" asked Gilman, more and more curious.
"Well, sir, sang, or ginseng, ez the real name is, is a sorter root
that grows thick in the mountains about here. They make some sorter
medicine outer it. I've chawed it myself for heartburn. It's right
paying, too--sang-digging is, sir; you ken git at least a dollar a
pound for it, an' sometimes you ken dig ten pounds in a day, but
that's right seldom. Two or three pounds a day is doin' well. They're
a awful low set, sir, sang-diggers is. We call 'em 'snakes'
hereabouts, 'cause they don't have no place to live cep'in' in winter,
and then they go off somewhere or ruther, to their huts. But in the
summer and early autumn they stop where night ketches 'em, an' light a
fire an' sleep 'round it. They cert'n'y are a bad lot, sir. They'll
steal a sheep or a horse ez quick ez winkin'. Why, t'want a year ago
that they stole a mighty pretty mare o' mine, that I set a heap by,
an' rid off her tail an' mane a-tearin' through the brush with her.
She got loose somehow an' come back to me. But they stole two horses
for ole Mr. Hawkins, down near Fallin' Springs, an' he a'in't been
able to git 'em back. There's awful murders an' villainies done by
'em. But some o' them sang-digger gals is awful pretty. . . . Yes,
sir, I reckon she was a sang-digger, sure enough."
[This wild creature of the woods was treated kindly by Gilman and his
wife, and she finally sacrificed herself to save Mrs. Gilman.]
FOOTNOTE:
[49] By permission of the author, and publishers, the Town Topics
Publishing Co., N. Y.
GRACE KING.
GRACE KING was born in New Orleans, the daughter of William W. King,
and has made a reputation as a writer of short stories depicting
Creole life. Her "Balcony Stories" are like pictures in their vivid
intensity.
WORKS.
Monsieur Motte.
Earthlings.
Balcony Stories.
Bonne Maman.
Bayou L'Ombre.
History of Louisiana.
LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE.
A BALCONY STORY.
(_From the Century Magazine_,[50] Jan., 1893.)
That was what she was called by everybody as soon as she was seen or
described. Her name, besides baptismal titles, was Idalie Sainte Foy
Mortemart des Islets. When she came into society, in the brilliant
little world of New Orleans, it was the event of the season, and
after she came in, whatever she did became also events. Whether she
went, or did not go; what she said, or did not say; what she wore, and
did not wear--all these became important matters of discussion, quoted
as much or more than what the President said, or the governor thought.
And in those days, the days of '59, New Orleans was not, as it is now,
a one-heiress place, but it may be said that one could find heiresses
then as one finds type-writing girls now.
Mademoiselle Idalie received her birth and what education she had on
her parent's plantation, the famed old Reine Sainte Foy place, and it
is no secret that, like the ancient kings of France, her birth
exceeded her education.
It was a plantation, the Reine Sainte Foy, the richness and luxury of
which are really well described in those perfervid pictures of
tropical life, at one time the passion of philanthropic imaginations,
excited and exciting over the horrors of slavery. Although these
pictures were then often accused of being purposely exaggerated, they
seem now to fall short of, instead of surpassing, the truth. Stately
walls, acres of roses, miles of oranges, unmeasured fields of cane,
colossal sugar-house--they were all there, and all the rest of it,
with the slaves, slaves, slaves everywhere, whole villages of negro
cabins. And there were also, most noticeable to the natural, as well
as visionary eye--there were the ease, idleness, extravagance,
self-indulgence, pomp, pride, arrogance, in short the whole
enumeration, the moral _sine qua non_, as some people considered it,
of the wealthy slaveholder of aristocratic descent and tastes.
What Mademoiselle Idalie cared to learn she studied, what she did not
she ignored; and she followed the same simple rule untrammeled in her
eating, drinking, dressing, and comportment generally; and whatever
discipline may have been exercised on the place, either in fact or
fiction, most assuredly none of it, even so much as in a threat, ever
attainted her sacred person. When she was just turned sixteen,
Mademoiselle Idalie made up her mind to go into society. Whether she
was beautiful or not, it is hard to say. It is almost impossible to
appreciate properly the beauty of the rich, the very rich. The
unfettered development, the limitless choice of accessories, the
confidence, the self-esteem, the sureness of expression, the
simplicity of purpose, the ease of execution,--all these produce a
certain effect of beauty behind which one really cannot get to measure
length of nose, or brilliancy of the eye. This much can be said; there
was nothing in her that positively contradicted any assumption of
beauty on her part, or credit of it on the part of others. She was
very tall and very thin with small head, long neck, black eyes, and
abundant straight black hair,--for which her hair-dresser deserved
more praise than she,--good teeth of course, and a mouth that, even in
prayer, talked nothing but commands; that is about all she had _en
fait d'ornements_, as the modistes say. It may be added that she
walked as if the Reine Sainte Foy plantation extended over the whole
earth, and the soil of it were too vile for her tread.
Of course she did not buy her toilets in New Orleans. Everything was
ordered from Paris, and came as regularly through the custom-house as
the modes and robes to the milliners. She was furnished by a certain
house there, just as one of a royal family would be at the present
day. As this had lasted from her layette up to her sixteenth year, it
may be imagined what took place when she determined to make her début.
Then it was literally, not metaphorically, _carte blanche_, at least
so it got to the ears of society. She took a sheet of note-paper,
wrote the date at the top, added "I make my début in November," signed
her name at the extreme end of the sheet, addressed it to her
dressmaker in Paris, and sent it. . . . . .
That she was admired, raved about, loved even, goes without saying.
After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New
Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her: and
she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the most
exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris
gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring herself to
listen to a proposal patiently; whistling to her dogs, in the middle
of the most ardent protestations, or jumping up and walking away with
a shrug of the shoulders, and a "Bah!"
Well! every one knows what happened after '59. There is no need to
repeat. The history of one is the history of all. . . . . . . . .
It might have been ten years according to some calculations, or ten
eternities,--the heart and the almanac never agree about time,--but
one morning old Champigny (they used to call him Champignon) was
walking along his levee front . . . when he saw a figure approaching.
He had to stop to look at it, for it was worth while. The head was
hidden by a green barege veil, which the showers had plentifully
besprinkled with dew; a tall thin figure. . . . She was the teacher of
the colored school some three or four miles away. "Ah," thought
Champigny, "some Northern lady on a mission." . . . Old Champigny
could not get over it that he had never seen her before. But he must
have seen her, and, with his abstraction and old age, not have
noticed her, for he found out from the negroes that she had been
teaching four or five years there. And he found out also--how, it is
not important--that she was Idalie Sainte Foy Mortemart des Islets.
_La grande demoiselle!_ He had never known her in the old days, owing
to his uncomplimentary attitude toward women, but he knew of her, of
course, and of her family. . . . .
Only the good God himself knows what passed in Champigny's mind on the
subject. We know only the results. He went and married _la grande
demoiselle_. How? Only the good God knows that too.
FOOTNOTE:
[50] By permission of the author, and publishers, The Century Co.,
N. Y.
WAITMAN BARBE.
~1864=----.~