A NEW LESSON IN BOTANY.
In the cool of the afternoon the Floyds and their guest took a drive,
rattling gayly on, in the old carry-all, which was the colonel's chariot
of state, over many miles of light-earthed road screened for the most
part by groves of pine.
The old gentleman discoursed to Lance a good deal about the country and
the people, and gave vent to his natural regret that the class once
dominant had yielded more and more to a hard, pushing set, who were no
doubt doing much to increase the general welfare, but lacked the graces
and the repose of the whilom aristocracy. The young Northerner's own
conviction was that the old aristocracy had succumbed to a relentless
law of nature, for which he entertained the admiration that he believed
all natural laws were entitled to; but he could not help regretting
somewhat the fate that had overcome his friends and their kind; and it
was borne in upon him strongly that so fine a flower of heredity as
Jessie appeared to be--however defective the structure of the species to
which she belonged--ought not to be involved in this decadence.
You will observe that I am giving you his thoughts in the formal and
strictly rational phraseology which it pleased him to adopt. Plainly
speaking, he was very much in love with Jessie, and did not care a rap
about natural laws or anything else, if they conflicted with her
happiness or his chances of winning her.
Meanwhile, as they passed Elbow Crook Swamp, which the road skirted for
a considerable distance, he reverted, with every appearance of absorbed
interest, to his scheme for reclaiming that tract and converting it into
a source of wealth and the means of building up a prosperous, highly
intelligent community. The swamp covered a territory of many hundreds of
acres. It was rank with cypress, evergreen, oak, and laurel, from which
parasitic gray mosses depended in endless garlands, locked in the
embrace of luxuriant vines, that hung or crept down to the edge of that
slow brown stream, the angular turnings of which gave the place its
name. The rich, alluvial soil in which all this greenery rooted held a
promise of unlimited fertility; but the only profit which men derived
from the splendid waste was found in the cane-brakes, that yielded
succulent fodder for hogs or cattle. Lance imagined in this wild expanse
a possibility of great results, which might play in well with his
humanitarian schemes. He had brooded over the matter ever since first
seeing the spot; but the commercial and educational interest attaching
thereto was not the only one that kept him thinking about it. Its
mysteriousness, its lone solemnity; the frowning masses of dense and
forbidding trees; its impenetrability in parts; the danger and
savageness of its hidden depths--all these had wrought upon and excited
him, until it became impossible for him to get the swamp out of his
mind, and he felt that it was somehow connected with his destiny.
In answer to his exposition of his schemes, the colonel, who was fond of
a classical allusion, said: "That's all very fine, Lance; but you
propose a labor beside which Hercules slaying the Lernean Hydra would be
insignificant. You know, that myth is supposed to refer to the draining
of a morass. Hercules was the first man who discovered the still
mythical disease of malaria, and tried to kill it."
But Lance was not to be discouraged by banter. When they got back to the
mansion the colonel judiciously disappeared, and the two young people
were left alone on the veranda. Lance began to talk over his theories
anew with Jessie, as they sat there just outside the window of the
morning-room whence the scent of the pine-boughs, the jessamine, and
flowering vines drifted toward them in occasional puffs of fragrant air.
"The people here need so much help, so much enlightening," he said. "I
can't give up the idea that something might be done in the way of
elevating them."
"Oh, that's only because you're so restless," said Jessie. "You come
from the North, and you find it so dull here that you have to think of
something to keep you busy."
Her lips pretended that they were smiling with indolent mockery; but she
looked so charming, and the contrast between her gray eyes and the
Spanish jauntiness of her dark hair was so attractive, that the young
man began to think opposition was the pleasantest form of encouragement.
"No," he said, quite earnestly; "I don't think it's mere restlessness. I
mean what I say, and I can't help it. And certainly it isn't dull here
for me."
He fixed his eyes for a moment on the boards of the veranda-floor, as if
meditating. Jessie, in her turn, considered him. In his loose blue
flannel suit, with a soft straw hat perched upon his thoughtful head,
but throwing no shadow on his features, to which a small brown mustache
gave additional emphasis, he certainly was handsome; she had never
denied to herself that he was handsome, but she was just now especially
impressed with the fact.
"I am going to tell you something curious," he said, lifting his eyes
unexpectedly, so that she turned hers quickly toward the garden. He had
evidently arrived at the result of his meditation. "It has several times
occurred to me," he continued, "that my interest in this locality may
have a queer, remote sort of origin that no one would ever suspect."
"Why, what's that?" asked Jessie, in a dreamy tone, feeling sure now
that he could not be going to speak of her, since she was neither
"queer" nor "remote."
Thereupon Lance went on to relate to her the legend of Gertrude Wylde
and Guy Wharton, as well as he could from the stories which he
remembered to have heard half jestingly repeated in his father's
household. "I am directly descended from Guy Wharton," he stated, in
conclusion, "but my name is different, because the male line died out
and my father belonged to the posterity of one of the daughters. It's
true, all that romance happened a hundred miles or more from here, way
up by Roanoke, and I didn't think of it in the least when I started to
make this visit; but, some way or other, the thing has come back into my
mind, and I begin to fancy that by an occult law of thought it may
account for my interest in this place--at least, partly."
Jessie was absorbed by his narration, as her attentiveness and her eager
interruptions had shown; but what she said was: "It must be a very
occult law indeed." She also emitted a little impertinent laugh, which
she did not mean to be impertinent.
Lance was somewhat taken aback. "I dare say it's all foolishness," he
admitted; "and there are other elements of interest which are much more
obvious."
She was sorry to have brought such confusion upon him, and hastened to
revive the conversation.
They got to talking about the negroes; and Lance, alluding to the scene
that morning, proceeded to speculate on the problem of the colored race.
"There is something very fine in their relation to you," he said, "but
it belongs to a phase that has passed away. They ought to be educated,
too."
"I'm sure," Jessie answered, "we educate them as much as we can. Didn't
you see me give Scip a book? And I've helped to cultivate Aunt Sally's
aesthetic tastes by letting her have my pink frock. What more can you
ask?"
"You insist upon making fun of me," said Lance, forcing a smile, though
a trifle mortified by her lack of enthusiasm. "But you know I'm right."
"Indeed I don't know it!" exclaimed Miss Jessie, vigorously. "You want
to change everything, but you can't tell what you would get by the
change. You would like to cut down those splendid old trees in the
swamp, and turn it into fresh vegetables and berries for New York. But
the trees are much nobler than the berries, or even wild-flowers."
"Oh no, I beg your pardon; they're not!" said Lance. "Most of the trees
around here are simply monsters. They represent rude, primitive types of
vegetation; they are the earliest specimens of Nature's effort to
produce flowering plants. Why, the common ox-eye daisy is a far more
refined product than they."
"Oh, dear me," cried Jessie, "I never heard that. How much you know! But
I like daisies, too; I don't want any of these things destroyed."
"They sha'n't be, then," Lance declared, with offhand omnipotence.
After that, he branched out into an informal lecture on the
relationships of various plants and flowers, trying, in the sketchy way
that he had learned from cheerfully popular books of science, to give
her some conception of the evolution of new types and the persistence of
old ones in the flora of the earth, together with the manifold delicate
ties of kinship between the different existing forms.
"Then, they are all one big family!" said Jessie, her face lighting with
a sympathy that Lance reverently recorded as being maternal. She was as
much pleased as if she had discovered a new set of thoroughly desirable
relatives. "But oh, Mr. Lance," she added, quickly reflecting, "doesn't
that prove that all these types have got to exist? You say that after
one crude attempt has been followed by a better development, specimens
of the old sort continue--like the pine trees. Now, it seems to me that
it's just the same with the human family. We're all related, but we're
very unlike; and while some of us have gone on improving, the others
have stayed just as they were. The negroes and the poor whites around
here are our monsters--for you say the pine trees are monsters--but if
we have the pines, why shouldn't we have the others?"
She clapped her hands, in her glee at the argument she had discovered;
and it must be admitted that Lance was nonplussed by her swift sagacity.
"But then you must remember," he said, after pausing, "that the human
creation has a much greater capacity for growth than the vegetable; and
we ought to help it forward in its growth. There's Sylvester De Vine as
an example. See how he's rising above his condition! I take the greatest
interest in that young fellow, and I believe I'm bound to assist him as
far as I can."
"Yes, that's true," Jessie acknowledged. "But it's very nice to have all
these contrasts. I don't want them abolished."
Lance could not but be aware that he didn't want them abolished, either.
Would he have been willing to obliterate all the differences that
existed between Jessie and the majority of the surrounding population?
Did he want all other women to be just like her? On the contrary, the
reason why he preferred her was that she represented a higher
development, a "more specialized" form, an exception to the common mass
of inferior beings.
"You're right," he said. "It _is_ nice to have the contrasts. I admit
myself vanquished."
In her triumph Jessie rose from the cane chair where she had sat
reclining. "Oh, how splendid!" she cried. "I never expected such a
victory. I must find pa, and tell him how I've vanquished you."
Lance also rose, but to detain her. "Don't go yet," he said; "I have
something else to say. You have conquered me in another way, too, and I
want to hear from you whether you will accept my surrender." In saying
this he drew a little closer, and gazed with earnest expectancy into her
face.
The sudden stillness and frightened silence with which Jessie at first
met his advance were not exactly what one would expect in a conqueror.
After an instant, however, she regained her self-possession. Her natural
merriment and archness returned as she asked, with her head leaning
sideward: "Is the surrender unconditional, Mr. Lance?"
"No. There is one condition, of supreme importance. Ah! Miss Jessie, you
understand. Will you listen to me?"
"I can't promise, but I'll try," said Jessie, in a faltering tone.
Imperceptibly, as it were, she resumed her place in the chair, and
waited. The sun was declining; a faint rumor of odd clucking cries came
from the turkey-field at the end of the grounds; but otherwise the air
was still, and a spicy coolness stole in to them from the
pine-plantations and the distant Sound. "Now tell me," she said, softly.
You may be sure Lance eagerly complied. With an eloquence that had never
been his before, he told her what he thought of her; how he loved her,
and wished her to be his wife. In his confession he likewise mingled
unpremeditated touches about the daisies and the pines, and all that
marvel of nature of which they had been talking; and he made her see how
to him she was the culminating blossom of creation.
"If you could only guess," he ended, hopeless of conveying all that he
wished to, "what a delight your presence is to me--how it is almost
enough just to look at you and watch every movement that you make!"
So fine and frank was Jessie's maiden mind, that she no longer thought
of concealment. "Why, then you know," she answered, with the surprise of
a child, "exactly how I feel about _you_!"
I do not care to describe what happened after that; for in the first
place it belongs only to those two lovers, and in the second place I
know it could not be described without tarnishing the pure beauty of it.
In the long interchange of confidences that followed their union, Lance
was moved to tell Jessie of the woman he had seen in the moonlight, the
night before. "Strange, that she should have made me think of you and of
the old Wharton story, isn't it? Who do you suppose she could have
been?"
"I can't imagine," said Jessie. "Perhaps you had a moonstroke; isn't
there such a thing? Or, perhaps it was a ghost."
When they came in to tea they found the colonel carefully dozing over
the market columns of his newspaper. "May I go and get the ring?"
whispered Lance, who had owned to her the secret of his hopeful
purchase.
Jessie gave a silent assent. He returned quickly, and slipped the emblem
on to her finger.
"Mr. Lance has been telling me the most wonderful things!" said Jessie
to her father, as they sat at table. "All about flowers and legends and
ghosts."
She was holding up a cup at that instant, for the servant to take, and
the colonel noticed the sparkle of the new ring on her hand. His eyes
threw back an answering sparkle; he gazed fondly at his daughter for an
instant, and then, with forgiving kindness, at Lance.
"Miss Jessie refers to an old family history," the young man hastily
explained. "I mean the Wyldes and Whartons. It wouldn't seem so
wonderful to you, sir."
The colonel threw himself back in his chair, with raised eyebrows. "The
Wyldes!" he exclaimed. "You never told me you knew _my_ family history.
How does it happen? Or is it, perhaps, only a coincidence of name? By
George, it strikes me as _very_ wonderful!"
As Lance, in his turn, showed equal astonishment, it became necessary
for him to ask questions; and, by a rapid interchange of replies, they
arrived at an extraordinary revelation. The colonel raked out from his
library a dingy and ruinous old "family tree," by which ocular
demonstration was given of his descent from a branch of the identical
Surrey Wyldes that the Gertrude of Lance's story belonged to. Puzzling
out the different lines on the old diagram, which represented a trunk
and branches, with here and there a big circle like some impossible
fruit or an abnormal knot in the wood of the "tree"--the said knots or
circles representing fathers of families--they ascertained that the Miss
Wylde whose life-current had long ago blended with that of the Floyds
was a first cousin of Gertrude Wylde, who had been Guy Wharton's
lady-love.
The colonel glowed with interest and enthusiasm. "I never came upon
anything more thrilling," he declared, roundly.
"But you never said a word about the Wyldes," said Jessie, to Lance. "If
you had, I could have told you there was some connection between us and
them."
"I didn't think of it," he assured her, "because there was a sort of
doubt in my mind whether the girl was English or an Indian--as I told
you. But I knew the name of Wylde was mixed up with the affair, anyhow;
and the more I reflect upon it, the more clearly it comes back to me
that Gertrude Wylde was the woman whom Guy Wharton came to this country
to find, and who was lost here."
They referred once more to the "family tree," and detected there, surely
enough, a small branch terminating suddenly with the names of Matthew
Wylde and his daughter Gertrude, accompanied by the inscription:
"Emigrated to America, 1587."
The colonel, much excited, now brought forth a faded tome devoted to the
history of North Carolina. Turning its pages, he unearthed the record of
Raleigh's expedition and the search-party that came after it. But the
names of the emigrants, of course, were not given.
"I remember," said he, musingly, "that I read of this incident, years
ago, and was struck with it. But I should never have imagined that it
concerned a collateral branch of my own ancestry. How singular! The
Floyds immigrated to this country long after that time, and yet here am
I, their representative, who have spent my life in this spot, so near
where Gertrude Wylde disappeared from civilization--and I never knew of
it!"
The discovery supplied them with a theme for meditation and remark, that
lasted the rest of the evening.
Jessie bestirred herself, in the midst of a revery which had enveloped
all three, after they had talked for some time, saying: "How much it's
like the flowers! We're all one great family--at least, _nearly_ one."
"Yes," echoed Lance, "nearly one!"
She blushed, and rose to say good-night.
After she had gone, the colonel came to Lance and, drawing his arm
around him, said: "God bless you, my boy--and her. I see how it is, and
I'm satisfied."
"So am I," said Lance; "except that no man is good enough for her."
What a night that was! Did ever darkness close round a pair more happy
than Lance and Jessie? The great heavens seemed to Lance the only canopy
that overhung his slumbers; for the thoughts and images that filled his
dreaming brain rose beyond the barriers of roof and wall, and included a
vast realm of peaceful joy, in which the stars burned ever mildly. He
had taken a spray of the yellow jessamine with him to his room. He
fancied that its fragrance repeated to him all night long, in
untranslatable sweetness, the name so like its own and now so dear to
him: "Jessie--Jessie--Jessie." And the knowledge that she was a late
comer in the line of the woman whom his ancestor had loved, contributed
still another element to his trance of silent rejoicing.
Yet, through the whole delicious maze of happiness, he was aware of a
surmise which had not presented itself while he had been awake. It was
this: since Jessie had the Wylde blood in her veins, and the woman whom
he had met by the shore so strongly suggested a resemblance to Jessie,
might there not be some hidden bond between them, dating from the lost
Gertrude?