"Let her only have need of them, and it will be seen whether her sons
love her!"
Davis Barton was in more danger of conversion than his father; his
eyes were fixed ardently on Harry; his face glowed in sympathy.
"The nearest thing we have to a place with 'associations,'" I began
quickly, preventing whatever sarcastic answer may have been ready on
the Doctor's lips, "is the Shaler plantation."
"Yes," said Barton, "the Colonel was an old Revolutioner."
"The father?" asked the Doctor.
"Yes."
"To be sure. The son's title is an inherited one, like my friend
Harvey's, who, now he is beginning to get a little gray, is 'the
Judge,' I find, with everybody."
"And he looks it very well," said Barton. "I don't know whether it
will go down farther."
"And the present Colonel is a _new_ Revolutioner, probably," said the
Doctor, inquiringly.
"I suppose some people might think he only followed after his father,"
Barton answered.
We were getting on delicate ground. Barton is no trimmer, but he is
landlord of the Rapid Run. He made a diversion by inquiring after
Orphy, and the Doctor gave him the account of their journey as he had
given it to me,--yet not forgetting that he had given it to me. The
same in substantial facts, his story was amplified and varied in
details and in ornament, so that I heard it with as much interest as
if it had been the first time.
"Is musical genius of the force of Orphy's common among the negroes of
your plantations?" The Doctor addressed this question to me.
"Not common, certainly,--nor yet entirely singular. Almost all our
large plantations have their minstrel, of greater or less talent. Your
friend, Mr. Frank Harvey, has a boy on his place, who, if not equal to
Orphy, has yet a remarkable gift. Did not Mr. Harvey speak to you of
him?"
"I dare say. He had several prodigies of different kinds to exhibit to
us. But we were there so short a time! He introduced us to a
blacksmith of genius; to a specimen of ugliness supposed to be the
most superior extant,--out of Guinea; and to a few other notabilities.
But we had hardly time to see even the place itself, which really
offers a great deal to admire. I could have given a few more days to
it, but I saw that Harry was in a hurry to be off."
"I am sorry you did not see that boy. He would have taken hold of your
imagination, I think, and certainly of Harry's. Airy has seen only the
sunny side of life. He has all the _espièglerie_ of the African
child."
"Orphy has not much of that," said the Doctor.
You ought to have seen little Airy, too, Keith. He was already famous
when you were here. He is rightly named; a very Ariel for grace and
sportiveness. With the African light-heartedness, he has also
something of African pathos. In his silent smile there is a delicate
sadness,--not the trace of any pain he has known, but like the
lingering of an inherited regret. His transitions are more rapid than
belong to our race: while you are still laughing at his drollery, you
see that he has suddenly passed far away from you; his soft, shadowy
eyes are looking out from under their drooping lashes into a land
where your sight cannot follow them.
"If you were to go there again, it would be worth while to ask for
him," I said to the Doctor. "Airy Harvey is one of the wonders of our
world."
"Airy Harvey!" cried the Doctor; "does Harvey allow his servants to
bear his name? Westlake strictly forbids the use of his to his people.
But then he supplies them with magnificent substitutes. He doesn't
think any name but his own too good for them."
"Does he forbid them to take it?" asked Barton. "I heard so, but
thought it was a joke. Why, there isn't a living thing on his place
but goes by his name, down to that handsome hound that follows him,
who's known everywhere about as Nero Westlake."
Barton seemed to enjoy Westlake's failure, and so, I am afraid, did
the Doctor. He laughed heartily.
"He's rather unlucky," he said, "considering it's almost the only
thing he is particular about."
"I don't believe Mr. Harvey could change the custom either, if he
wished," I said; "but I do not think he does wish it. A name is a
strong bond."
"That's true," said the Doctor. "Harvey's a wise man; it's a means of
government."
"If I had to live under one of them," said Barton, "Westlake's
haphazard fashions would suit me better than Harvey's regular system:
a life in which everything is known beforehand tells on the nerves.
But, strangely enough, Mr. Harvey never loses one of his people, and
Westlake's are always slipping off."
"If Harvey carried on his plantation himself, as Westlake does,"
replied the Doctor, "he would be adored where now he is only loved.
His rule would abound in that element of uncertainty whose charm you
appreciate so justly. But he is wisely content to reign and not to
govern."
"Mr. Harvey has a good overseer, I understand," said
Barton,--"supervisor, though, I believe it is."
"Lenox; yes. He is able, perfectly temperate, cool, inflexible, and
just."
"You have learned his character from Mr. Harvey?"
"And from what I have myself seen. The estate is really well
ordered,--all things considered; Harvey tells me it is rare that a
complaint is heard from his negroes."
"Lenox takes care of that," said Harry.
"And he ought. I walked round among the cabins with Harvey. Not a
creature but had his petition; not one but would have had his
grievance, if he had dared."
"Do you suppose they have no real grievances, then?"
"I suppose no such thing. I never saw the man yet--the grown
man--without one; and as I did not expect to meet with him here, I
didn't look for him. Harvey allows no unnecessary severity; his
plantation is governed by fixed laws, to which the overseer is
amenable as well as the slaves. Every deviation from them has to be
accounted for. He sees that his people have justice done them,--that
is to say, as far as justice ever is done on this earth. He has
wrought no miracles, and probably did not expect to work any. He has
run into no extravagances of benevolence; and I respect him for it all
the more that I know he is by nature an impetuous man. I cannot but
think our friend Shaler would have done better to follow his example
than to abandon his negroes as he has."
"He gave them something to begin their new life with," said Harry.
"So much thrown away. Just a sop to his conscience, like the rest; a
mode of excusing himself to himself for shifting off his own
responsibilities upon other people. Two thirds of his rabble are
paupers by this time."
Harry looked to me for the answer.
"They have been free four years. Two of them have fallen back on his
hands,--two out of one hundred and seventy-three. He has not abandoned
them. They still apply to him when they need advice or aid."
"I was not so much arguing about this particular case, which I don't
pretend to have much knowledge of, as reasoning upon general grounds.
I still think he would have done better to keep his slaves and try to
make something of them here."
"The law would not let him make men of them here," Harry answered.
"A great deal may be done, still keeping within the law," replied the
Doctor, "by a man more intent on doing good than on doing it precisely
in his own way."
"Even in what it allowed, the law did not protect him. Where injustice
is made law, law loses respect,--most of all with those who have
perverted it to their service. You know Mr. Westlake's maxim,--'Those
who make the laws can judge what they are made for.'"
"The power of opinion in what are called free countries," replied the
Doctor, "is indeed excessive. It has long been a question with me,
whether a single hand to hold the sceptre is not preferable to this
Briareus. But we have chosen. I am not disposed to deliver myself up,
bound hand and foot, to this fetich of public opinion. Still, a man
owes some respect to the feelings and principles of the community in
which he lives. I may think the best way of disposing of old houses is
to burn them down; but my neighbors will have something to say, and
justly."
Harry did not reply; nor did I at that time.
Tabitha appeared and bore off three chairs,--one on her head and one
in each hand. We understood the signal. Harry and I took up my
mother's couch; Barton and his son loaded themselves with two chairs
each; the Doctor lifted the arm-chair with both hands, and, holding
it out before him, led the way, somewhat impeded by his burden; and so
we moved in slow procession to the house.
In the afternoon, when Barton and his son were gone, the Doctor,
Harry, and I took a walk to the site of the old forest. We found a few
more flowers like those Harry had brought to my mother in the morning,
but nothing else that the Doctor cared for. On our way back, I told
him the story of Shaler's attempt and failure. I wonder I did not tell
it to you when you were here. But we had so much to ask and to say,
and the time was so short! I will tell it to you now.
Shaler did not wish to burn down the old house, nor even to pull it
down. He wished to renew and remodel it so slowly and so cautiously
that those who were in it should hardly be aware of change until they
learned it by increase of comfort. He was not a self-centred, but a
very public-spirited man. He had a great ambition for his State. He
wished it to be a model of prosperity, material and moral. He saw that
its natural advantages entitled it to take this position. The most
practical of reformers, he began with himself. He found fault with
nobody; he preached to nobody; he meant to let his plantation speak
for him. His plan was simply to substitute inducement for
coercion,--to give his men a healthy interest in their labor by
letting them share the profits,--in short, to bring them under the
ordinary motives to exertion. This does not appear to you a very
original scheme, nor, probably, a very dangerous one. He entered upon
it, however, with great precautions, having due regard to law, and, as
he thought, to opinion. He did not pay his people wages, nor even make
them presents in money. He gave them better food, better clothes,
better houses, letting their comforts and luxuries increase in exact
proportion to their industry. The result was what he had hoped,--or
rather, it was beyond his hopes. The pecuniary advantage was greater
and more speedy than he had expected. He did not boast himself. He
waited for his abundant crops, his fine gardens and orchards, and his
hard-working people to bring him enviers and imitators. The report, in
fact, soon spread, that Shaler was trying a new system, and that it
was succeeding. Neighbors came to inspect and inquire,--first the
near, then the more distant. Shaler forgot his caution. He was an
enthusiast, after all. He saw proselytes in his guests. He laid bare
his schemes and hopes. These aimed at nothing less than the conversion
of the whole State, through his success, to more enlightened views;
thence, a revisal of the laws, a withdrawal of the checks on
benevolent effort; and finally, the merging of slavery in a new
system, which should have nothing of the past but the tradition of
grateful dependence on the part of the employed and of responsibility
on that of the employer, rendering their relation more kindly and more
permanent.
Among his visitors and hearers were generous men to be moved by his
ideas, and wise men to appreciate their practical fruit; but the
sensitiveness of delicate minds, and the caution of judicious ones,
withholding from prompt speech and action, too often leave the sway in
society to men of small heart, narrow mind, and strong, selfish
instincts. Such never hesitate. Their sight is not far enough or
strong enough to show them distant advantages or dangers. Their
nearest interest is all they inquire after. These men combine easily;
they know each other, and are sure of each other. The sensitive shrink
aside and let them pass on; the prudent deliberate until the moment
for arresting them has gone by. Men who are both good and brave come
singly, and, for the most part, stand and fall alone.
"Great Tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,
For Goodness _dares_ not check thee!"
Shaler had not miscalculated so much as the result would seem to show:
the opinion of the majority was perhaps with him; but the only voices
raised were against him. The storm had already gathered thick about
him before he was aware of its approach. The first intimations were
not violent. He was admonished that his course was disapproved,--was
advised to let things slip back quietly into the old track, and that
so his eccentricities would be forgotten. This mildness failing, he
was told that he was endangering the welfare of the community,--and,
lastly, that he would incur peril himself, if he persisted. He was not
a man to be driven from his ground by threats, nor by loss or
suffering which he was to bear alone. His cattle died; his horses fell
lame; his barns and store-houses took fire. He ignored the cause of
these disasters and kept quietly on, still hoping to overcome evil
with good. His great strength and courage, with his known skill in the
use of arms, deterred from personal violence. But there were surer
means: his people were subjected to annoyance and injury,--and,
moreover, were accused of every offence committed within a circuit of
twenty miles. His duty as their protector obliged him to give way: he
took the only course by which he could provide for their welfare.
"I have no quarrel with Shaler," said the Doctor, after he had heard
the story, which I gave him much less at length than I have told it to
you. "I have no quarrel with Shaler. He had a right to do what he
would with his own. I only ask the same liberty for my friend Harvey,
and for those who, like him, accept their lot as it is given to them."
"Mr. Harvey is not happy," said Harry, seriously. "There are lines of
pain on his face. I do not think he accepts his lot."
"Well, submits to it, then,--the next best thing."
"Hardly even submits. I think he begins to doubt himself."
"He is of the age for doubting himself. It is at twenty that we are
infallible. To be sure, some happy men are so all their lives. Shaler,
I dare say, wouldn't have a doubt of his own wisdom, if the whole
hundred and seventy-three were starved or hanged. If there are marks
of care on Harvey's face, reasons might be found for it without
inventing for him an uneasy conscience."
"I think he envies Shaler, and would follow his example, if he had the
resolution. It is strange to see a brave man under such a thraldom."
"If Frank Harvey wants courage, it is something new."
"There are men who have courage to face a foe, but not to stand up
against a friend."
"Certainly, in such a project, he would have his wife's family to
count with, to say nothing of his own children. I fancy he would
hardly find a co-adjutor in Fred. You know Fred Harvey, Harry; he was
at school with you in Paris. What sort of a fellow was he then?"
"I liked him."
"I was not ill-pleased with him, when I saw him in Paris four years
ago. A fine-looking fellow; formed manners; modest enough, too. I
thought he would fill his place in the world creditably. Did you see
much of him, Harry, after you left school?"
"For a year I saw him constantly. We went to the same lectures at the
Jardin des Plantes."
While this conversation was going on, a reminiscence had been waking
in my mind.
"Did you ever take a journey with Frederic Harvey?" I asked Harry.
"Yes, into Brittany."
"Were you at a Trappist monastery with him?"
"At La Meilleraie. We passed a night there."
It was clear. I had been present once at a conversation between
Frederic and his sister, in which he spoke of his companion on this
journey into Brittany more warmly than I had ever heard him speak of
any other man, and yet with a discrimination that individualized the
praise, and made it seem not only sincere, but accurate. This
conversation interested me very much at the time; but, as I had no
expectation of seeing the person who was the subject of it, his name
passed from me.
I was glad to hear Harry say he liked Frederic Harvey. It would have
been hard, if he had not. And yet I am not sure that I like him very
much myself. I am grateful for the preference he shows for my society;
but I cannot meet as I would his evident desire for intimacy. How true
is what South says:--"That heart shall surrender itself and its
friendship to one man, at first view, which another has long been
laying siege to in vain"!
MONDAY, April 8, 1844.
Those full days must still furnish these.--My walk with Harry was the
first of last Monday's pleasures. Roaming over our fields with him, I
found myself now in one, now in another European scene; and
everywhere, hardly speaking of himself, he set his individual stamp on
every object he called up before me. He had seen and felt with his own
eyes and heart; and everywhere had been disclosed for him those
special sympathies which Nature and the works of genius hold for each
separate human soul.
Florence will always be dear to me among Italian cities because it was
so dear to Harry. He has taught me to love, beside those greatest
names in Art familiar to us all from infancy, and which we have
chiefly in mind when we long for _Europe_, others less universally
cherished, and for which I had before only a vague respect which I
should have found it hard to justify.
Rome is no longer for me merely the Rome I have read of. With the
distant historic interest is now mingled one near and familiar.
Harry's favorite spots are already mine. I would walk on the green
turf where the altar to Hercules stood, in that oldest time when
monuments were raised to benefactors, and not yet to oppressors. I
would bring away an ivy-leaf from the ruined heap, the ever "recent"
tomb of the young Marcellus. I would gather white daisies on the path
along which Saint Agnes was borne to the grave, which was to become a
shrine. I cannot, but you will for me. And you will find the little
chapel on the Appian Way which marks the place consecrated in popular
tradition as that where Peter, escaping, met Christ "going up to Rome
to be crucified again," and turned back to meet his martyrdom. You
will look up from the Ponte Molle to the beautiful blue Italian sky,
where the symbol of suffering appeared as the sign of victory.
When you are in Europe, old Europe, do not carry about with you among
the monuments of its past all the superiorities of the nineteenth
century. Respect the legend. Our age does not produce it, but it is
the part of our inheritance we could least do without. Be reverent
before the monuments of the early Christian martyrs: they are true
shrines. With the people they have not yet lost their sacredness, and
have not yet lost their use. Faith in something stronger than violence
and nobler than rank is kept alive by the homage paid to the
courageous defiers of older usurpations and oppressions.
When we came in, we found the Doctor in excellent spirits and in
excellent humor. He had not been idle that morning. He had been at
work over his pressed flowers, and, owing to the dry weather of the
last two days, had had no trouble with them. I proposed to take him,
after breakfast, to a piece of marsh land where I thought he might
find something to interest him.
Harry again left the table first. He had made an engagement with Karl
and Fritz. We were to find him at the place where they were at work,
which was almost on our way. The Doctor wanted an hour or two more for
his flowers. While he was busy with them, I occupied myself with the
books which Harry had brought me.
We set off for the marshes. We walked the first part of the way in
silence, or nearly so, only exchanging now and then an observation on
the weather or scenery, not very earnest. "How we miss Harry Dudley!"
I was just saying within myself, when the Doctor made the same
exclamation aloud. I wanted nothing better than to hear him talk of
Harry again. I saw he was ready, and turned to him with a look of
expectation which he understood.
"I told you I had known Harry all his life; and so I have. But our
friendship began when he was about five years old. The time before
that has left me only a general remembrance of his singular beauty
and a certain charming gayety that seemed to lighten the air all about
him. But I went one day to his father's house in the country with some
friends I wanted to introduce there,--strangers. There was no one at
home, the man who answered our knock said, except---- He stepped back,
and there came forward this lovely child, who received us in due form,
regretted his father's absence, conducted us in, ordered refreshments
for us, and, in short, did the honors of the house with the ease and
courtesy of a man of society, and, at the same time, with a sweet,
infantile grace not to be described. I was content with Young America
that day. Harry and I have been intimates ever since then. We had our
little differences from the first, just as we have now. I thought my
twenty years' advantage in experience gave me a right to have my
judgments accepted without being examined; but he took a different
view of my claims. When I went out to his father's, I always used to
look the little fellow up,--in the garden, or in the barn, or wherever
he might be. As soon as I appeared, his eyes took a merry sparkle, as
if he knew there was good sport ahead: and so there was, for both of
us. He maintained his side with an originality and quaint humor that
made a debate with him a very entertaining exercise. Some of his
childish sayings have stayed in my mind, though many wiser things
have passed out of it."
The Doctor enjoyed his thoughts a little while; and then, with a
graver, and something of a confidential tone,--
"If Harry should talk to you about his future, do not encourage that
little vein of Quixotism that runs in his blood."
"The enterprise of the Pilgrim Fathers was somewhat Quixotic,--was it
not?"
"Certainly it was; you would not have found me among them."
Again a silence, which I left the Doctor to break.
"At any rate, I need not begin to disturb myself already. He will not
enter upon active life before he has prepared himself well. That I
know. And preparation, as he understands it, involves long work and
hard. But I sometimes almost think in good earnest that he has come
into the world in the wrong age. He is made for great times, and he
has fallen on very little ones. These are the days of the supple and
the winding, not of the strong and the straightforward."
"Since he has been sent to these times," I answered, "without doubt
his part in them has been marked out for him."
Dr. Borrow's brow lowered. It seemed he had a misgiving that the part
allotted to Harry might not be that which he himself would have
assigned to him.
Here some flowers at a little distance caught the Doctor's eye, and he
ran off to examine them. They were not to his purpose, and were left
to nod and wave away their life unconscious that a great danger and a
great honor had been near them. When he came back, the cloud had
passed. He began talking pleasantly, and still on the subject on which
I most wished to hear him talk.
Harry has not always been an only son. He had once a brother, to whom
he was fondly, even passionately, attached. After his brother's death,
a deeper thoughtfulness was seen in him. He was not changed, but
matured and strengthened.
"You still see the fun look out of his eyes at times," said the
Doctor, "and his laugh has a quality that refreshes and refines for us
again the meaning of the good old word 'hearty'; but mirthfulness is
no longer so marked a characteristic in him as it once was."
When we came in sight of the little plantation prophetically known as
"The Grove," I could not help calling the Doctor's attention to it. He
took a much more flattering interest in it than you did, I must tell
you. He turned his steps towards it immediately, commended the spaces
which made full allowance for growth, and, seating himself on one of
the benches,--according to you, such premature constructions,--gave me
a dissertation on soils, very entertaining and very profitable. When
he had finished, I would gladly have carried him back to the subject
from which the sight of my trees had diverted us, but I felt that this
required a little skill: I had known him repelled by a question of too
incautious directness from a topic on which he would have been
eloquent, if he had led the way to it himself. However, as soon as we
were once walking forward on our former path again, his thoughts, too,
returned to the old track. Our intimacy had ripened fast on the common
ground of sympathy we had found in the grove. He was more expansive
than before, and revealed a latent gentleness I had begun to suspect
in him. He went on to tell of Harry's infancy and childhood, and to
relate instances of his early daring, self-reliance, and generosity of
heart,--smiling, indeed, a little at himself as he did so, and casting
now and then towards me a glance of inquiry, almost of apology, like
one who is conscious of being indiscreet, but who cannot resolve to
refrain. I could not but observe that the anecdotes related with most
pleasure illustrated that very side of Harry's character which gave
the Doctor uneasiness.
Karl and Fritz were employed that day in clearing a piece of ground
overgrown with brushwood. We had found them at their work in our
morning walk, and Harry had promised to come back and take a hand in
it. It was an animated scene that the Doctor and I came upon. Before
we reached it, we heard a pleasant clamor of voices and laughter. My
German boys are faithful workers, and generally cheerful ones; but now
they carried on their task with an ardor and an hilarity which doubled
their strength, and gave them an alertness which I had thought was not
of their race.
"Will you let me finish my stint?" Harry cried, as soon as we were
near enough to answer him. The merry light in his eye and the gleeful
earnestness of his manner brought up to me the little boy of whom the
Doctor had been talking to me. He was taking the lead. He could not
have been practised in the work; but the strong sweep of his arm, his
sure strokes, did not speak the novice. He directed and encouraged his
assistants in familiar and idiomatic German, which made me feel that
my carefully composed sentences must be somewhat stilted to their
native ears.
Old Hans found himself there, too, drawn by I don't know what
attraction,--for a share in this work did not belong to his day's
plan. He was not taking a principal part in it; he had a hatchet in
his hand and chopped a little now and then in a careless and fitful
way, but he was chiefly occupied in observing the amateur, whose
movements he followed with an admiration a little shaded by
incredulity. He stood like the rustic spectator of an exhibition of
legerdemain, his applause restrained by the displeasure of feeling
himself the subject of an illusion.
But over the boys Harry's ascendancy was already complete: not only
did their bush-scythes keep time with his, but their voices, when they
answered him, and even when they spoke to each other, were more gently
modulated,--their very laugh had caught something of the refinement of
his. When afterwards in my talks with him he unfolded, among his plans
for the future, a favorite one of leading a colony to some yet
unsettled region, I felt, remembering this scene, that he was the man
for it.
Hans was won over before we left him. When we arrived, he had searched
my face with a look which, at the same time that it asked my opinion
of the stranger, gave me to understand that he himself was not one to
be dazzled by outward show. As we were going, his eye caught mine
again: he gave me a nod of satisfaction, which said that he had at
last made up his mind, and that it was one with my own. Perhaps he had
been aided in coming to a decision by the care with which Harry
delivered up to him the tools he had been using, and by the frank
pleasure with which the volunteer woodman received the words of
approbation which the veteran could not withhold.
I cannot write you the whole of last Monday's journal to-night. I came
in late. The weather is fine again, and I took a long day in the field
to make up for lost time.
TUESDAY, April 9, 1844.
We were on our way from the thicket to the marshes.
The Doctor had a successful morning. The tin case was always opening
and closing for some new treasure. Noon found him in high good-humor.
I did not propose to go home for dinner. It had been arranged with
Tabitha that we should take it on the little knoll known in our level
region as Prospect Hill. We found two baskets in the shade of its two
trees. Harry and I unpacked them, the Doctor superintending and
signifying coöperation by now and then putting his thumb and finger to
the edge of a dish or plate on its way to the turfy table. Harry
filled our bottle from the cool spring that bubbles up at the foot of
the mound. There was a log under one of the trees, affording seats for
three, but we left it to the Doctor, and took our places on the
ground, fronting him, on either side of the outspread banquet.
We talked of plans for the coming week. I told over our few objects of
modest interest, and the names of such of our neighbors as could lay
claim to the honor of a visit from Dr. Borrow, or could in any degree
appreciate his society. The nearest of these was Westlake.
"We have been at Westlake's," said the Doctor; "we passed a day and
night with him. He pressed us to stay longer, and I was very well
amused there; but Harry looked so plainly his eagerness to be on, and
his fear lest I should allow myself to be persuaded, that I put your
hospitable neighbor off with a promise to give him another day, if we
had time, after we had been here. Harry has all along wanted to secure
the visit here as soon as possible, for fear something or other should
interfere with it. I believe, if I had proposed it, he would even have
put off going to the Harveys, old friends as they are. You must know
that you have been his load-star from the first."
Very much pleased, yet surprised, I looked at Harry. His color
deepened a little as he answered, "I have heard Selden speak of you;
but it was after we met Mr. Shaler that I had so great a desire to
know you."