stubble and fallow grounds, with here and there a late crop waiting to
be harvested; and shortly after, the narrow, irregular track that he
had been following encountered a broader and more beaten one.
Recognizing this, with some difficulty, as the "avenue" of which his
late companion had spoken, he stopped, and gazed up and down with a
look of surprise and pain.
It was bare of trees; but on either side extended a long row of live
oak stumps, the size of which showed what massive trunks and
far-reaching branches had once columned and arched it like a temple.
Here and there, some forgotten bole or bough lay and rotted upon the
very spot which it had formerly overhung with a soft canopy of verdure,
and made beautiful with pleasant play of sunshine and leaf-shadow;
while around it gathered a rank luxuriance of weeds, transmuting its
slow aristocratic decay into teeming, plebeian life. In one or two
cases, as if moved by an almost human sympathy, vines had sprung up
around the bereaved stumps, and sought to soften their hard outlines
with clinging drapery of leaves and tendrils. They had also done their
best to cover up various unsightly gaps in the long lines of ruinous
fence that divided the avenue from the open fields on either side. Yet
the final effect of these gentle touches was only to deepen the painful
impression of the scene. Where they did not reach, the bareness was so
much more bare, the dilapidation so much uglier!
The young observer felt this bareness and dilapidation to his heart's
core,--felt it all the more keenly because an image of the avenue's
pristine grandeur, derived from the surrounding fragments (or from some
other source), continually rose before his mind's eye, to heighten its
present desolation by contrast. His brow contracted as he gazed; and
the expression of his face changed rapidly from surprise to
dissatisfaction, from dissatisfaction to perplexity, from perplexity to
doubt. Once, he turned as if half-minded to retrace his steps; but the
next moment, he shook off his irresolution with a gesture of disdain,
and immediately hastened forward.
The avenue terminated in an open, circular space. Evidently, it had
once been a lawn; but it was now covered with half-obliterated furrows,
showing that at some not very remote period, it had been planted with
corn. Around it stood a number of gigantic live-oaks, heavily draped
with moss, and brooding dusky shadows under their massive boughs.
Fronting upon it, was a large mansion of dark brick, consisting of an
upright, two-story main building, with a huge, clustered chimney in the
midst, and long, low, rambling wings on either side.
The whole place had a deserted and melancholy appearance. The moss on
the live-oaks swayed slowly to and fro in the evening breeze, with a
wonderfully sombre and funereal effect; and the mansion was dark and
silent as any ruin. Not a light shone from the closed windows; not a
sound came from the deep, shadowy doorway; and the unsteady stone
steps, slippery with damp and green with moss, gave the impression of a
spot where no human foot had left its print for many years.
The young man halted at a little distance from the dark building, and
surveyed it moodily. "Can this be Bergan Hall?" he murmured. "Can
this gloomy old ruin be the open, cheery, hospitable mansion, full of
light and life, that my mother has so often described to me? It looks
a habitation for ghosts--and for ghosts only! I wonder if any living
being--"
Breaking off abruptly, he ascended the moss-grown steps, only to find
that the vines which so heavily draped the portico, had woven a thick
network across the door. It was plain that it had not been opened for
months, perhaps years. Nevertheless, not to be easily daunted, he
found and lifted the knocker. It fell with a dull lifeless sound, that
smote the young man's heart like a sudden chill. A dreary
reverberation came from within, and then died away into silence. He
knocked again, and, listening intently, he fancied that he heard the
sound of stealthy footsteps within, and a slight creaking of the floor.
But so dead a silence followed upon these imaginary sounds, that he
soon became convinced of his involuntary self-deception.
Turning from the door, he now noticed a little footpath running round
the end of one of the long wings. Committing himself to this timely
guide, he soon came in sight of the rear of the mansion, which looked
upon a sort of court; where a few ornamental shrubs still held an
uncertain tenure against the encroachments of divers sorts of lawless
and vagrant vegetation. At a little distance, was a long range of
dilapidated offices, showing upon what an almost princely scale the
housekeeping had once been administered. But this part of the premises
was not less dark, silent, and deserted, than the other.
The footpath still held on, however, past the court and the offices,
toward a bright light at a considerable distance, "The negro quarter!"
muttered the young man, recognizing the whereabout of one of the most
salient features of his mother's well-remembered descriptions. "At
least, I may learn there what it all means." And, quickening his
steps, he soon came upon a busy and picturesque scene.
In the midst of a large, quadrangular space, flanked on three sides by
double rows of negro-cabins, and on the fourth apparently sloping down
to a water-course, was a rough sort of threshing-mill, now idle, but
showing satisfactory results of its day's labor in a large heap of rice
by its side. A crowd of negroes, of both sexes, coarsely and uncouthly
clad, were busily filling odd, shallow baskets from this heap, which
they then poised on their heads, and bore off down the slope to some
unseen goal. There were two regular, silent files, the one coming, the
other going; and the heap of grain steadily and even swiftly
diminished. Near the mill, stood the only white person visible,--a
large, powerfully-framed man, carelessly and even shabbily dressed, yet
with the unmistakable air of ownership about him. At his left hand, a
half-naked, impish looking negro boy was holding a blazing pitch-pine
torch, by the light of which he seemed to be jotting down some sort of
memoranda in a small book.
The scene was even more strange and weird than picturesque. The dark
figures of the negroes, filing noiselessly up the shadowed slope,
suddenly grew distinct, wild, and fantastic, within the circle of
enchantment made by the flaring light of the torch, only to become dim
and spectral again when received back into the dusk. They might have
passed for embodiments of those vagaries of the mind, which come from
no one knows whither, play their fitful parts within the illuminated
circle of the imagination, and vanish as they came. The young man
would almost have taken it as a matter of course, had the whole
spectacle suddenly melted into thin air.
Yet, even in that case, he would have expected the masterful personage
aforementioned to have remained, as the one tangible link between the
phantasms and the earth. In truth, a single glance at his massive
figure, which seemed to have been hewn out of the rock, rather than
moulded from any softer material, went far to disenchant the scene.
Here was a touch of the actual, the substantial, and the dogmatic, not
to be mistaken; and serving as a clue to the reality of everything else.
Toward this personage, after a moment's scrutiny, the young man
unhesitatingly made his way, with the air of one who has found
something certain amid much that is confused, illusory, and perplexing.
He was immediately spied by the negroes, and followed by their curious
gaze; albeit, they ventured not to intermit their labor for an instant,
but contented themselves with slowly and stiffly turning their burdened
heads toward him as they marched on, and keeping their shining black
eyes fixed on him to the last, in such that the heads of the retreating
file seemed to have been set on backwards. The boy with the torch was
perhaps the most wondering, open-mouthed gazer of them all.
As yet, the master of the premises had not been made aware of the
stranger's approach; but, looking up to reprimand his torch-bearer for
inattention, he observed the imp's dumbfounded gaze, and turned to see
what had caused it.
"My uncle, Mr. Bergan, I presume," said the young man, taking off his
hat, and bowing low: "I am Bergan Arling." And he added, after a
moment, seeing that the other did not speak, "I bring you a letter from
my mother."
II.
STUDYING TO ANSWER.
Major Bergan--to give him the title by which he was known throughout
the country round--displayed no alacrity of welcome. He first scanned
his visitor closely from head to foot, and then silently extended his
hand for the letter which the young man had drawn forth from an inner
pocket.
"Hold that light here!" were his first words, in a tone deep as a
thunder-peal, and addressed not to Bergan Arling, but to the aforesaid
torch-bearer. "And quit your staring, and mind your business, or
I'll--"
The sentence died away in an inarticulate growl, but the boy was
plainly at no loss to understand its purport. With a startled look, he
fixed his eyes on the torch, and only ventured to withdraw them for an
occasional, furtive glance at the object of his curiosity. Meanwhile,
his master opened the letter, and read it deliberately from beginning
to end. The light of the torch fell full upon his face as he did so,
giving Bergan Arling an opportunity to study him, in his turn.
His face was a striking one; in youth it had doubtless been handsome.
Now, his brow was too massive, his mouth too stern, his eyes too cold,
his beard too gray and heavy, to bear any relation to mere personal
beauty. All soft lights and lines had long gone out of them; what
remained was hard, bold, and rugged, as a rocky headland in winter.
The rude strength which was the marked characteristic of his form,
repeated itself emphatically in his face. Comparing it with the mental
portrait, carefully touched and retouched by his mother's hand, which
Bergan had carried in his mind since childhood, he felt that the one
resembled the other only as a tree in autumn, stripped bare of its
foliage and its blossoms, resembles the same tree in its gracious
summer bloom and verdure. Little trace of the frank, proud lineaments,
the warm, yet generous temper, of that ideal picture, was to be found
in this harsh, stubborn, sarcastic face; the face of a man long given
over to the hardening influences of a solitary and a selfish life. In
short, Major Bergan confirmed anew the old truth that no man can live
long for himself alone, shutting out all gentler ties and amenities,
and driving straight at his own practical ends, unmindful of either the
ways, the opinions, or the feelings of others, without reaping his due
reward in a loss of moral health, and a gradual decay of all his finer
sensibilities and higher instincts.
The only point wherein the real man resembled the ideal one, was in a
certain ineffaceable pride of birth, showing itself not only in his
port, but darkening his harsh features with a heavy shade of hauteur.
Yet a smile might do much to light up and soften the Major's face; and
the smile came when he had finished the letter, and did its work all
the more effectually because it was a somewhat sad one.
"Forty and two years," said he, musingly, "since Eleanor went! Yet I
can see her now, with her bright face and her arch ways! She was the
sunshine of the old Hall; it has never been the same place since she
left it. And she would hardly know it, if she were to come back now!
But times change; and we are fools if we do not change with them.
Well, my boy! I'm glad to see you, and that is not what I would say to
many,--I'm not much in the way of having visitors. But Eleanor's son
is heartily welcome to the old place."
He took his nephew's hand, shook it cordially, and continued to hold it
in a vice-like grasp, while he once more attentively scanned the young
man's features.
"You are a true Bergan," he said, at length, "I'm glad to see that!
And you have her eyes, too. Ah, what eyes they used to be! as soft and
bright as any fawn's! Well! well! it's no use to think of the old
times--they can't come back. But I am right glad to see you, my boy;
and I take it very kind of Eleanor to have sent you to me. Is she much
changed?"
"I suppose so," said Bergan, smiling,--"that is, since you knew her.
She has not changed greatly during my remembrance. She is a
young-looking woman yet, for her years; her eyes are still bright, and
her cheeks rosy. Our western climate and life have agreed with her
well. Yet I cannot fancy her a young lady."
"Ah, but you shall see her as a young lady! There's a portrait of her
in the old house, taken not long before she went away, that does
everything but speak and move. Indeed, I used to imagine that it did
both, when I had it in my quarters out here, as I did for a time. But
it gave me the blues so, to look at it, and think how things used to
be, and see how they had altered, that I finally sent it back to its
old place in the portrait gallery. But how did you get here, at this
hour?"
"I walked from Savalla, leaving my baggage--except this portmanteau--to
come on by stage to-morrow."
"Walked! A nice little tramp of thirteen miles or more! Why in the
name of sense didn't you ride?"
"I was too late for the stage, and could not readily find a hack. To
be sure, I wasted but little time in looking for one; I do not mind
walking, I am used to it."
"That may do very well for the West. But you'll lose caste, my boy, if
you walk here. You must have a horse."
"When I can afford it," replied the young man, lightly shrugging his
shoulders. "Meanwhile, doubtless I shall find my western habit useful,
if vulgar. But I am not prepared to admit that it is vulgar. A young
English nobleman, who spent some months in our neighborhood, was a
practised walker; he thought nothing of fifteen or twenty miles, on
occasion. And if it was 'caste' for him, why not for me?"
"Humph! we Southerners boast a good deal of our English ancestors, but
we don't feel called upon to imitate them!"
With the softening recollections of his youth, the Major had also laid
aside his unwonted gentleness of manner; and the freezing satire of his
last words, though it was doubtful whether he meant it for himself or
his nephew, pained the young man's ear. Instinctively he dropped the
discussion.
"I forgot to mention," said he, "that I did not walk quite the whole
distance. A queer old character whom I overtook, insisted upon giving
me a lift to Berganton."
"To Berganton! What had you to do with Berganton, I should like to
know?"
"I was not aware that the road had been changed; I supposed that I must
needs pass through the village on my way to Bergan Hall. I intended to
stay there over night, and come to you early in the morning,--I did not
think it right to descend upon you suddenly, late at night. But
finding myself unexpectedly on the road hither, and almost in sight of
the Hall, I regarded it as an indication of Providence not to be
misunderstood."
"And well you did!" returned the Major, with rude emphasis, "well you
did! I should have taken it as a direct insult if my sister's son had
slept anywhere in this region, but on the old place. I wish I could
say, under the old roof," he went on, in a friendlier tone, "but that
leaks like a sieve, and I quitted it long ago. Of course, it might
have been mended; but, to tell the truth, the old house was much too
big and gloomy and damp and disagreeable to keep bachelor's hall in
comfortably, and I was glad to get out of it. Besides, I'd had all
sorts of trouble with my overseers, and I decided that the only way to
have things managed to my mind was to manage them myself. In order to
do that, it was necessary to be on the spot. So I fixed up my
overseer's cottage into a snug little box for myself, where I'm as
cosey and comfortable as a rat in a rice-heap. But come in, and see
for yourself how it looks. Jip, you rascal! why don't you take your
young master's portmanteau?"
The torch-boy caught the portmanteau, and Bergan followed his uncle
into a small cottage at one corner of the quadrangle, so situated as to
command a view both of the mill and the cabins. The room into which he
was ushered was plainly but comfortably furnished. A fire of
pitch-pine knots blazed on the hearth, reddening the rough walls and
the bare floor with its pleasant glow. A slipshod negress, with a gay
turban, was busy laying the table for supper. The effect was, upon the
whole, cheery, and ought to have been especially so to a tired and
hungry traveller; yet Bergan looked around him with a manifest air of
disappointment. His uncle noticed it, and remarked, apologetically,
"You would prefer to see the Hall, eh? Well, you shall see it in the
morning, and I reckon you'll agree with me that it's anything but a
cheerful-looking abode. Though, if I had known that a nephew of mine
was coming to keep me company, I don't know but I should have stayed
there."
The negress now signified that supper was on the table, the food having
been brought in, ready cooked, from the nearest cabin; and Major Bergan
pointed to a chair opposite his own.
"Sit down, Harry, and fall to. Your tramp must have given you a right
sharp appetite."
"Thank you. But, uncle, my name is Bergan, not Harry."
"Not Harry!" repeated the Major, sharply,--"I should like to know the
reason why! Didn't your mother write that she had named you for me?"
"Yes, certainly. But she regarded you as the head of the family, and
in giving me the family name--"
"She named you for the whole breed--my degenerate half-brother and
all!" interrupted the Major, bringing his clenched fist down upon the
table with a force that threatened to demolish it. "I tell you what it
is, sir, I shall not stand any half-way work! If you are named after
me, you've got to go the whole figure. Harry Bergan Arling you are,
and Harry Bergan Arling you shall be,--at least as long as you stay in
these parts."
The imperious tone of this speech was by no means agreeable to Bergan's
ear; it was not without an effort that he replied, pleasantly;--
"Call me what you like, uncle. I shall not refuse to answer to any
name that you are pleased to give me."
Major Bergan was evidently much gratified. "That's right, my
boy!--we'll shake hands upon that!" he exclaimed, heartily. "I'm glad
to see that Eleanor has raised her son in the good old fashion of
submission to elders. Bless my soul! I thought it was entirely
obsolete. Young men round here know more at twenty than the fathers
that begot them. As for obedience, they leave that to the negroes."
The meal was abundant and substantial. It consisted of a single
course, of bacon, vegetables, and corn-bread, very simply, not to say
rudely, served. It would seem that the master of the feast cared no
more for refinements of table than of manner. Here, as elsewhere, were
to be seen the pernicious effects of his solitary mode of life. He ate
greedily; he forgot his duties as host, or they came but tardily to his
remembrance; he fell into fits of abstraction, and started as from a
dream at the sound of his nephew's voice. Yet tokens were not wanting
that he had once been well versed in the art of external manners. At
intervals, answering involuntarily, as it were, to the touch of
Bergan's fine, natural courtesy, the gentlemanly instincts of earlier
days revived, and flung a momentary grace around his words and actions.
It was like the sunbeams that occasionally glimmer out over a cloudy
landscape, attracting the gaze even more surely than any full blaze of
splendor, yet causing a certain impatience, as if they ought either to
kindle into satisfactory brightness, or be wholly extinguished. The
rudeness of his ordinary manner was only thrown into bolder relief by
these flashes of a half-extinct good breeding.
To meet the demands of thirst, a bottle of brandy, and another of
water, stood by Major Bergan's plate; which, after filling his own
glass, he pushed over to his nephew.
"There, Harry! that is what will put new life into you, after your
journey."
"Thank you; but I seldom use brandy."
"A little too strong for you, eh?" returned the Major, indulgently.
"Well, there's a stock of wine in the cellar of the Hall,--I reckon
some of it must be fifty or sixty years old, it has been there ever
since I can remember,--I'll send for a bottle or two of that." And he
uplifted a stentorian call of "Jip," which brought that
urchin-of-all-work to the door, in breathless haste.
"Uncle,"--began Bergan, but the Major was thundering out minute
directions about cellars, and keys, and tiers, and labels, and either
could not, or would not, hear.
"I am sorry that you have given yourself the trouble," said Bergan,
when quiet was restored. "I do not care for wine."
Major Bergan set down his glass, and looked at his nephew sternly and
gloomily. "Don't tell me that you are a mean-spirited teetotaller," he
growled. "I can't say how I might take it. There never was a milksop
in the family yet."
"No, I am hardly that. But I am not accustomed to use spirituous
liquors of any sort. And I certainly do not need them. I am in
perfect health; I hardly know what it is to feel tired."
"I wish I didn't!" muttered his uncle, a little less savagely. "I'm
pretty hearty, for my years, to be sure. But an ache gets into my
bones now and then, just to remind me that I am not so young as I was
once. And the best thing to rout it is a good glass of brandy. Better
take one?"
"Not if you will be so good as to excuse me," replied Bergan, with a
smile so frank, and a gesture so courteous, that the Major was
irresistibly mollified.
"A guest's wish is a command," said he, with one of his rare glimmers
of courtesy. "But here comes the wine! I really cannot excuse you
from that,--at least, I should be very loath to do so. I'll even join
you in a glass. Here's to your mother's health and happiness!--you
won't refuse to drink that, not on the place where she was raised."
If Bergan was annoyed by his uncle's persistency, he forebore to show
it. But, having duly honored the toast, he pushed his glass aside, and
declined every invitation to have it refilled.
"Well, well," said his uncle, at last, in a tone of resignation, "we
won't quarrel about it now. But I see that your education is
incomplete, and I shall take it upon myself to finish it. If I don't
teach you to drink like a gentleman, in a month, I shall know that you
are no true Bergan, in spite of your looks."
Bergan only smiled.
"Your temperance is the one thing I don't like about you," pursued his
uncle, filling his own glass to the brim. "Ah, yes, there's one
more;--your mother writes that you have studied law, and mean to
practise it."
"Yes; I received my license just two months ago."
"Humph! it's well named! 'License,' indeed! Licensed to lie, cheat,
steal,--or, at least, to help others to do so, which amounts to the
same thing. No, no, Harry; it may be well to know law enough to keep
from being imposed upon, but a Bergan can't stoop to practise it.
Lawyers are, without exception, a set of miserable, lying, sneaking
pettifoggers. You could drop the souls of a dozen into a child's
thimble, and they'd rattle in the end of it after she had put it on her
finger."
Bergan's cheek flushed a little, but he was more impressed by the comic
than the provoking side of his uncle's dogged prejudice, and he only
answered, good-humoredly;--
"I am sorry that you should have had occasion to think so badly of the
profession. I shall feel that it is incumbent upon me to make you
change your opinion."
"Never!" growled Major Bergan, with an oath. "You would find it easier
to lift the Gibraltar rock on the point of a needle. Unless," he
added, after a moment, "you can tell me how to make a suit lie against
Godfrey Bergan. I've been trying it for ten years, and I've spent
money enough to buy another plantation as large as this."
"My uncle Godfrey!" exclaimed Bergan, in much surprise. "Why, what has
he done?"