line will have begun the great book. Until Gabriel wills, it may not be
finished.
IV
It was, no doubt, but natural that the man of the world, who had
deserted such an Eden of his own designing for the ostensible excuse of
business convenience, should have resented in his sons their inherited
repugnance to the retired life.
What more formidable combatant than one's own stubbornness, turned to
confront him, in his children?
* * * * *
The broken trip from New Orleans to the Island took nearly two days,
although the crow does it easily in a few hours.
The initial munificence of chartering one of the great Mississippi
steamboats for the first stage of the journey set the pace for the
entire occasion. Host and hostess met their guests at the river landing
with carriages and cane wagons gaily bedecked with evergreens, mosses,
and dogwood branches in flower, and a merry drive through several miles
of forest brought them to the banks of the bayou, where a line of
rowboats awaited them.
The negro boatmen, two to man each skiff, wearing jumpers of the Harvard
crimson, stood uncovered in line at the bayou's edge, and as the party
alighted, they served black coffee from a fire in the open.
The negro with a cup of coffee his own hue and clear as wine is ever an
ubiquitous combination in the Louisiana lowlands. He bobs up so
unexpectedly in strange places balancing his tiny tray upon his hand,
that a guest soon begins to look for him almost anywhere after an
interval of about three dry hours, and with a fair chance of not being
disappointed.
* * * * *
When finally the party had embarked, the hostess riding in the first
boat with the governor of the State, while Harold brought up the rear
with the governor's lady, the sun was low in the west, and narrow
search-lights, piercing the wood for a brief moment, revealed a great
wonder-world of dank growths so fairly alive with creeping, flying,
darting things--chirping, calling, singing, croaking, humming, and
hooting--that when in a twinkling the light suddenly went out, many of
the women shuddered with a shrinking sense of the uncanny.
Before this intangible emotion had time to crystallize into fear,
however, each pilot who manipulated the rudder astern had drawn from
under his seat a great torch of pine and set it ablaze.
Under festoons of gray Spanish moss, often swung so low that heads and
torches were obliged to defer to them, and between flowering banks which
seemed sometimes almost to meet in the floating growths which the
dividing bows of the boats plowed under, the little crafts sped lightly
along.
Occasionally a heavy plunging thing would strike the water with a thud,
so near a boat that a girlish shriek would pierce the wood, spending
itself in laughter. A lazy alligator, sleepily enjoying a lily-pool,
might have been startled by the light, or a line of turtles, clinging
like knots to a log over the water, suddenly let go.
Streaks of darting incandescence marked the eccentric flights of a
million fireflies flecking the deep wood whose darkness they failed to
dispel; and once or twice two reflected lights a few inches apart,
suggesting a deer in hiding, increased the tremulous interest of this
super-safe but most exciting journey.
But presently, before impressions had time to repeat themselves, and
objects dimly discerned to become familiar, a voice from the leading
boat started a song.
It was a great voice, vibrant, strong, and soft as velvet, and when
presently it was augmented by another, insidiously thrown in, then
another in the next boat, until all the untutored Harvard oarsmen were
bravely singing and the dipping oars fell into the easy measure, all
sense of fear or place was lost in the great uplift of the rhythmic
melody.
At special turns through the wood ringing echoes gave back the strains.
A mocking-bird, excited by the unusual noise, poured forth a rival
disputatious song, and an owl hooted, and something barked like a fox;
but it was the great singing of the men which filled the wood.
Common songs of the plantation followed one another--songs of love, of
night and bats, of devils and hobgoblins, selected according to the will
of the leader--all excepting the opening song, which, although of the
same repertoire, was "by request," and for obvious reasons.
It was called "When de Sun Swings Low," and ran something like this:
Look out for Mister Swaller when de sun swings low--
Watch him swoop an' sway!
He keeps a mighty dippin', like he don' know whar to go,
A-saggin' every way.
He starts sort o' nimbly,
But he settles mighty wimbly
When he scurries for de chimbley
When de sun swings low.
Does you see a cloud a-risin' when de sun swings low?
Listen ef it sings.
Hit 's a swarm o' gray muskitties, 'bout a million strong or so,
A-sharpenin' up der stings.
Dey keeps a mighty filin',
An' dey tries to sing beguilin',
But de 'skitties' song is rilin'
When de sun swings low.
Oh, de woods is all conversin' when de sun swings low--
Bird an' beast an' tree;
Dey all communes together in de languages dey know,
An' sperits rise to see.
De nightmares prances,
An' de will-o'-wisp dances,
When de moonlight advances
An' de sun swings low.
But most naive and characteristic of them all perhaps was "Ol' Marse
Adam."
Ole Mister Devil took a walk in Paradise--
Lady Mis' Eve she's a-walkin', too--
Hoped to meet Mars' Adam, she was steppin' mighty nice--
Lady Mis' Eve she's a-walkin', too.
Dis was 'fo' de fig-time, so my lady picked a rose--
Lady Mis' Eve she's a-walkin', too--
An' she helt it 'g'inst de sunlight, as she felt de need o' clo'es--
Lady Mis' Eve she's a-walkin', too.
Den she shuk 'er yaller ringlets down an' 'lowed dat she was dressed--
Lady Mis' Eve, she's a-walkin', too--
Mister Devil he come quoilin'--everbody knows de rest--
Lady Mis' Eve she's a-walkin', too.
Then, changing to a solemn, staccato measure, it went on:
Ole Marse Adam! Ole Marse Adam!
Et de lady's apple up an' give her all de blame.
Greedy-gut, greedy-gut, whar is yo' shame?
Ole Marse Adam, man, whar is yo' shame?
Ole Marse Adam! Ole Marse Adam!
Caught de apple in 'is neck an' made it mighty so'e,
An' so we po' gran'chillen has to swaller roun' de co'e.
Ole Marse Adam, man, whar is yo' shame?
Ole Marse Adam! Ole Marse Adam!
Praised de lady's attitudes an' compliment 'er figur'--
Didn't have de principle of any decent nigger.
Ole Marse Adam, man, whar is yo' shame?
It was a long pull of five miles up the winding stream, but the spirit
of jollity had dispelled all sense of time, and when at last the
foremost boat, doubling a jutting clump of willows, came suddenly into
the open at the foot of the hill, the startling presentment of the white
house illuminated with festoons of Chinese lanterns, which extended
across its entire width and down to the landing, was like a dream of
fairyland.
It was indeed a smiling welcome, and exclamations of delight announced
the passage of the boats in turn as they rounded the willow bend.
The firing of a single cannon, with a simultaneous display of
fireworks, and music by the plantation band, celebrated the landing of
the last boat.
Servants in the simple old-fashioned dress--checked homespun with white
accessories, to which were added for the occasion, great rosettes of
crimson worn upon the breast--took care of the party at the landing,
bringing up the rear with hand-luggage, which they playfully balanced
upon their heads or shifted with fancy steps.
The old-time supper--of the sort which made the mahogany groan--was
served on the broad back "gallery," while the plantation folk danced in
the clearing beyond, a voice from the basement floor calling out the
figures.
This was a great sight.
Left here to their own devices as to dress, the negroes made so dazzling
a display that, no matter how madly they danced, they could scarcely
answer the challenge of their own riotous color schemes.
Single dancers followed; then "lad_y_es and gentiles" in pairs, taking
fantastic steps which would shame a modern dancing-master without once
awakening a blush in a maiden's cheek.
The dancing was refined, even dainty, to-night, the favorite achievement
of the women being the mincing step taken so rapidly as to simulate
suspension of effort, which set the dancers spinning like so many tops,
although there was much languid posing, with exchange of salutations and
curtsying galore.
Yet not a twirl of fan or dainty lift of flounce--to grace a figure or
display a dexterous foot--but expressed a primitive idea of high
etiquette.
The "fragments" left over from the banquet of the upper porch--many of
them great unbroken dishes, meats, game, and sweets--provided a great
banquet for the dancers below, and the gay late feasters furnished
entertainment, fresh and straight from life, to the company above, for
whose benefit many of their most daring sallies were evidently thrown
out--and who, after their recent experiences, were pleased to be so
restfully entertained.
Toasts, drunk in ginger-pop and persimmon beer innocent of guile, were
offered after grace at the beginning of the supper, the toaster stepping
out into the yard and bowing to the gallery while he raised his glass
or, literally, his tin cup--the passage of the master's bottle among the
men, later in the evening, being a distinct feature.
The first toast was offered to the ladies--"Mistus an' Company-ladies";
and the next, following a suggestion of the first table, where the host
had been much honored, was worded about in this wise:
"We drinks to de health, an' wealth, _an'_ de long life of de _leadin'
gentleman_ o' _Brake Island_, who done put 'isself to so much pains an'
money to give dis party. But to make de toast accordin' to manners, so
hit'll fit de gentleman's visitors long wid hisself, I say let's drink
to who but 'OLE MARSE ADAM!'"
It is easy to start a laugh when a festive crowd is primed for fun, and
this toast, respectfully submitted with a low bow by an ancient and
privileged veteran of the rosined bow, was met with screams of delight.
V
A resourceful little island it was that could provide entertainment for
a party of society folk for nearly a fortnight with never a repetition
to pall or to weary.
The men, equipped for hunting or fishing, and accompanied by several
negro men-servants with a supplementary larder on wheels,--which is to
say, a wagon-load of bread, butter, coffee, condiments, and wines, with
cooking utensils,--left the house early every morning, before the ladies
were up.
They discussed engineering schemes over their fishing-poles and
game-bags, explored the fastnesses of the brake, eavesdropped for the
ultimate secret of the woods, and plumbed for the bayou's heart,
bringing from them all sundry tangible witnesses of geologic or other
conditions of scientific values.
Most of these "witnesses," however, it must be confessed, were
immediately available for spit or grill, while many went--so bountiful
was the supply--to friends in the city with the cards of their captors.
There are champagne bottles even yet along the marshes of Brake Island,
bottles whose bellies are as full of suggestion as of mud, and whose
tongueless mouths fairly whistle as if to recount the canards which
enlivened the swampland in those halcyon days of youth and hope and
inexperience.
Until the dressing-hour, in the early afternoons which they frankly
called the evening, the young women coddled their bloom in linen cambric
night-gowns, mostly, reading light romance and verse, which they quoted
freely under the challenge of the masculine presence.
Or they told amazing mammy-tales of voudoo-land and the ghost-country
for the amused delectation of their gentle hostess, who felt herself
warmed and cheered in the sunshine of these Southern temperaments. It
seemed all a part of the poetry and grace of a novel and romantic life.
Here were a dozen young women, pretty and care-free as flowers, any one
of whom could throw herself across the foot of a bed and snatch a
superfluous "beauty-sleep" in the midst of all manner of jollity and
laughter.
Most of them spoke several languages and as many dialects, frequently
passing from one to another in a single sentence for easy subtlety or
color, and with distinct gain in the direction of music.
Possibly they knew somewhat of the grammar of but a single tongue beside
their own, their fluency being more of a traditional inheritance than an
acquisition. Such is the mellow equipment of many of our richest
speakers.
Not one but could pull to pieces her Olympe bonnet and nimbly retrim it
with pins, to match her face or fancy--or dance a Highland fling in her
'broidered nightie, or sing--
How they all did sing--and play! Several were accomplished musicians.
One knew the Latin names of much of the flora of the island, and found
time and small coins sufficient to interest a colony of eager
pickaninnies to gather specimens for her "herbarium."
Without ever having prepared a meal, they could even cook, as they had
soon amply proven by the heaping confections which were always in
evidence at the man-hour--bon-bons, kisses, pralines, what not?--all
fragrant with mint, orange-flower, rose-leaf, or violet, or heavy with
pecans or cocoanut.
In the afternoon, when the men came home, they frequently engaged in
contests of skill--in rowing or archery or croquet; or, following
nature's manifold suggestions, they drifted in couples, paddling
indolently among the floating lily-pads on the bayou, or reclining among
the vines in the summer-houses, where they sipped iced orange syrup or
claret sangaree, either one a safe lubricator, by mild inspiration or
suggestion, of the tongue of young love, which is apt to become tied at
the moment of most need.
[Illustration: "Sipped iced orange syrup or claret sangaree"]
With the poems of Moore to reinforce him with easy grace of words, a
broad-shouldered fellow would naively declare himself a peri, standing
disconsolate at the gate of his lady's heart, while she quoted Fanny
Fern for her defense, or, if she were passing intellectual and of a
broader culture, she would give him invitation in form of rebuff from
"The Lady of the Lake," or a scathing line from Shakspere. Of course,
all the young people knew their Shakspere--more or less.
They had their fortunes told in a half-dozen fashions, by withered old
crones whose dim eyes, discerning life's secrets held lightly in
supension, mated them recklessly _on suspicion_.
Visiting the colored churches, they attended some of the novel services
of the plantation, as, for instance, a certain baptismal wedding, which
is to say a combined ceremony, which was in this case performed quite
regularly and decorously in the interest of a coal-black piccaninny,
artlessly named Lily Blanche in honor of two of the young ladies present
whom the bride-mother had seen but once out driving, but whose gowns of
flowered organdy, lace parasols, and leghorn hats had stirred her sense
of beauty and virtue to action.
Although there was much amusement over this incongruous function, the
absence of any sense of embarrassment in witnessing so delicate a
ceremony--one which in another setting would easily have become
indelicate--was no doubt an unconscious tribute to the primitive
simplicity of the contracting parties.
And always there were revival meetings to which they might go and hear
dramatic recitals of marvelous personal "experiences," full of
imagery,--travels in heaven or hell,--with always the resounding human
note which ever prevails in vital reach for truth. Through it all they
discerned the cry which finds the heart of a listener and brings him
into indissoluble relation with his brother man, no matter how great the
darkness out of which the note may come. It is universal.
The call is in every heart, uttered or unexpressed, and one day it will
pierce the heavens, finding the blue for him who sends it forth, and for
the listener as well if his heart be attuned.
Let who will go and sit through one of these services, and if he does
not come away subdued and silent, more tender at heart, and, if need be,
stronger of hand to clasp and to lift, perhaps--well, perhaps his mind
is open only to the pictorial and the spectacular.
* * * * *
There is no telling how long the house-party would have remained in
Paradise but for the inexorable calendar which warned certain of its
members that they would be expected to answer the royal summons of Comus
at the approaching carnival; and of course the important fact that
certain bills from the legislature affecting the public weal were
awaiting the governor's signature.
A surprising number of marriages followed this visit, seeming to confirm
a report of an absurd number of engagements made on the island.
There is a certain old black woman living yet "down by the old basin" in
French New Orleans, a toothless old crone who, by the irony of
circumstance, is familiarly known as "Ol' Mammy Molar," who "remembers"
many things of this time and occasion, which she glibly calls "de
silveringineer party," and who likes nothing better than an audience.
If she is believed, this much too literal account of a far-away time is
most meager and unfaithful, for she does most strenuously insist that,
for instance, there was served at the servants' table on that first
night--
But let her have her way of it for a moment--just a single breath:
"Why, honey," she closes her eyes as she begins, the better to see
memory behind them. "Why, honey, de champagne wine was passed aroun' to
de hands all dat indurin' infair in _water-buckets_, an' dipped out in
_gou'd dippers-full_, bilin' over so fast an' fizzin' so it'd tickle yo'
mouf to drink it. An' Marse Harol' Le Duc, he stood on a _pi_anner-stool
on de back gallery an' th'owed out gol' dollars by de hatful for any of
us niggers to pick up; an' de guv'ner, ol' Marse Abe Lincolm, he fired
off sky-rockers an' read out freedom papers.
"An' mids' all de dance an' reveltry, a bolt o' thunder fell like a
cannon-ball outen a clair sky, an' we looked up an' lo an' beholst, here
was a vision of a big hand writin' on de sky, an' a voice say, '_Eat up
de balance ef anything is found wantin'_!' an' wid dat, dey plunged in
like a herd o' swine boun' for de sea, an' dey devoured de fragmints an'
popped mo' corks, an' dipped out mo' champagne wine, an' de mo' dey
dipped out champagne wine, de mo' dey 'd dance. An' de mo' dey 'd dance,
de mo' de wine would flow."
Possibly the old woman's obvious confusion of thought has some
explanation in the fact of the presence of the governor of the State,
who, introduced as a high dignitary, did make a little speech late that
night, thanking the colored people in terms of compliment for their
dancing; and any impression made here was so quickly overlaid by the
deeper experiences of the war that a blending can easily be explained.
There was a shower of coins--"picayunes" only--thrown during the evening
by the master, a feature of the dance being to recover as many of them
as possible without breaking step. So the old woman's memory is not so
far afield, although as a historian she might need a little editing. But
such even as this is much of the so-called "history" which, bound in
calf, dishonors the world's libraries to-day.
It is so easy, seeing cobwebs upon a record,--cobwebs which may not be
quite construed as alphabet,--to interpret them as hieroglyphics of
import, instead of simply brushing them away, or relegating them, where
they belong, to the dusky domain of the myth out of which we may expect
only weird suggestion, as from the mold of pressed rosemary, typifying
remembrance dead.
* * * * *
The house-party, which in this poor retrospect seems to have devoted
itself almost wholly to pleasure, was nevertheless followed by immediate
work upon the project in behalf of which it was planned.
With this main motive was also the ulterior and most proper one in
Harold's mind of introducing his wife in so intimate a fashion to some
of the important members of society, who would date life-friendships
from the pleasant occasion of helping him to open his own door to them.
Some thousands of dollars went into the quicksands of the marshes before
the foundations were laid for the arch of a proposed great bridge,
beneath which his boats should sail to their landing. With the arrogant
bravado of an impulsive boy challenged to action, he began his arch
first. Its announcement of independence and munificence would express
the position he had taken. Sometimes it is well to put up a bold front,
even if one needs work backward from it.
Harold moved fast--but the gods of war moved faster!
Scarcely had a single column of solid masonry risen above the palmetto
swamp when Fort Sumter's guns sounded. The smell of gunpowder penetrated
the fastnesses of the brake, and yet, though his nostrils quivered like
those of an impetuous war-horse, the master held himself in rein with
the thought of her who would be cruelly alone without him. And he said
to himself, while he reared his arch: "Two out of three are enough! I
have taken their terror island for my portion. They may have garlands
upon my bridge--when they come sailing up my canal as heroes!"
But the next whiff from the battleground stopped work on the arch. The
brothers had fallen side by side.
[Illustration: "The brave, unthinking fellow, after embracing his
beloved, dashed to the front"]
Madly seizing both the recovered swords, declaring he would "fight as
three," the brave, unthinking fellow, after embracing his beloved, put
one of her hands in Hannah's and the other in Israel's, and, commending
them to God by a speechless lift of his dark eyes, mounted his horse and
dashed, as one afraid to look back, to the front.
VI
Every one knows the story of "poor Harold Le Duc"--how, captured,
wounded, he lay for more than a year on the edge of insanity in a
Federal hospital. Every one knows of the birth of his child on the
lonely island, with only black hands to receive and tend it, and how the
waiting mother, guarded by the faithful two, and loved by the three
hundred loyal slaves who prayed for her life, finally passed out of it
on the very day of days for which she had planned a great Christmas
banquet for them in honor of their master's triumphant return.
The story is threadbare. Everyone knows how it happened that "the old
people," Colonel and Madame Le Duc, having taken flight upon report of a
battle, following their last son, had crossed the lines and been unable
from that day to communicate with the island; of the season of the
snake-plague in the heart of the brake, when rattlers and copperheads,
spreading-adders, moccasins, and conger-eels came up to the island,
squirming, darting, or lazily sunning themselves in its flowering
grounds and lily-ponds, some even finding their way into the very beds
of the people; when the trees were deserted of birds, and alligators
prowled across the terraces, depredating the poultry-yard and even
threatening the negro children.
In the presence of so manifold disaster many of the negroes returned to
voodooism, and nude dances by weird fires offered to Satan supplanted
the shouting of the name of Christ in the churches. A red streak in the
sky over the brake was regarded as an omen of blood--the thunderbolt
which struck the smoke-stack of the sugar-house a command to stop work.
Old women who had treated the sick with savory teas of roots and herbs
lapsed into conjuring with bits of hair and bones. A rabbit's foot was
more potent than medicine; a snake's tooth wet with swamp scum and dried
in the glare of burning sulphur more to be feared than God.
War, death and birth and death again, followed by scant provender
threatening famine, and then by the invasion of serpents, had struck
terror into hearts already tremulous and half afraid.
The word "freedom" had scarcely reached the island and set the air
vibrating with hope, commingled with dread, when the reported death of
the master came as a grim corroboration of the startling prospect.
All this is an open story.