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THE CAVALIERS OF VIRGINIA,
OR THE
RECLUSE OF JAMESTOWN.
AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE OLD DOMINION.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE KENTUCKIAN IN NEW-YORK."
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
NEW-YORK:
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS,
NO. 82 CLIFF-STREET,
AND SOLD BY THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS THROUGHOUT
THE UNITED STATES.
1835.
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1834, by HARPER &
BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern
District of New-York.
THE CAVALIERS OF VIRGINIA.
CHAPTER I.
The lightning streamed athwart the heavens in quick and vivid flashes.
One peal of thunder after another echoed from cliff to cliff, while a
driving storm of rain, wind and hail, made the face of nature black and
dismal. There was something frightfully congenial in this uproar of the
contending elements with the storm raging in Bacon's heart, as he rushed
from the scene of the catastrophe we have just witnessed. The darkness
which succeeded the lurid and sulphureous flashes was not more complete
and unfathomable than the black despair of his own soul. These vivid
contrasts of light and gloom were the only stimulants of which he was
susceptible, and they were welcomed as the light of his path! By their
guidance he wildly rushed to his stable, saddled, led forth, and mounted
his noble charger, his own head still uncovered. For once the gallant
animal felt himself uncontrolled master of his movements, fleet as the
wind his nimble heels measured the narrow limits of the island. A sudden
glare of intense light served for an instant to reveal both to horse and
rider that they stood upon the brink of the river, and a single
indication of the rider's will was followed by a plunge into the
troubled waves. Nobly and majestically he rose and sank with the
swelling surges. His master sat erect in the saddle and felt his
benumbed faculties revived, as he communed with the storm. The raging
elements appeared to sympathize with the tumult of his own bosom. He
laughed in horrid unison with the gambols of the lightning, and yelled
with savage delight as the muttering thunder rolled over his head.
There is a sublime stimulus in despair. Bacon felt its power; he was
conscious that one of the first laws of our organization,
(self-preservation,) was suddenly dead within him.
The ballast of the frail vessel was thrown overboard, and the sails were
spread to the gathering storm with reckless desperation. Compass and
rudder were alike abandoned and despised--they were for the use of those
who had hopes and fears. For himself he spread his sails and steered his
course with the very spirit of the storm itself. Nature in her wildest
moods has no terrors for those who have nothing to lose or win; no
terrors for them who laugh and play with the very elements of her
destruction; they are wildly, madly independent. It is the sublimity of
the maniac! Nevertheless there is a fascination in his reckless steps as
he threads the narrow and fearful windings of the precipice, or
carelessly buffets the waves of the raging waters. There are other
sensations of a high and lofty character in this disjointed state of the
faculties. The very ease and rapidity with which ordinary dangers are
surmounted, serves to keep up the delusion, and were it not for the
irresponsible condition of the mind, there would doubtless be impiety in
its developments. Such were Bacon's sensations as he wildly stemmed the
torrent. He imagined that he was absolved from the ordinary
responsibilities and hazards of humanity! and to his excited fancy, it
seemed as though petty fears and grovelling cautions were all that lay
between humanity and the superior creations of the universe! that power
also came with this absolution from the hopes, fears and penalties of
man's low estate. In imagination "he rode upon the storm and managed the
whirlwind." The monsters of the deep were his playmates, the ill-omened
birds of the night his fellows. The wolves howled in dreadful concord
with the morbid efforts of his preternaturally distorted faculties, as
the noble and panting animal first struck the shore with his forefeet.
Emerging from the water, he stroked down the dripping mane with a wild
and melancholy affection. The very consciousness of such a feeling yet
remaining in his soul, which he dared indulge, produced for the moment
a dangerous and kindred train of emotions. These as before led him upon
forbidden ground, and again the wild tumult of his soul revived.
Striking his heels into the animal's flanks, and bending upon his neck,
he urged him over the ground at a pace in unison with the impetuosity of
his own feelings.
The fire and gravel flew from his heels, as he bounded through the
trackless forests of the unsubdued wilderness. The frightened birds of
night, and beasts of prey, started in affright, wild at the appearance
upon the scene of one darker and wilder than themselves. The very
reptiles of the earth shrunk to their hiding places, as the wild
horseman and his steed invaded their prescriptive dominions.
Mrs. Fairfax and her daughter, according to the commands of Sir William
Berkley, were conveyed to his mansion. To them all places were now
alike. The mother after a long and death-like trance, revived to a
breathing and physical existence; but her mind was overrun with horrors.
Reason was dethroned, and her lips gave utterance to the wildest
fantasies. Events with which, and persons with whom, none of those about
her were conversant, were alluded to in all the incoherency and
unbridled impetuosity of the maniac. The depletion and anodynes of the
physician were administered in vain. The ravages upon the seat of
nervous power had rendered the ordinary remedies to the more distant
chords of communication utterly powerless. From a mild, bland, feeble
and sickly state of melancholy, she was suddenly transformed into a
frenzied lunatic. Her muscular power seemed to have received multiplied
accessions of strength. Yet there was "a method in her madness"--the
same names and scenes frequently recurred in her raving paroxysms. That
of Charles was reiterated through the wild intonations of delusion;
sometimes madly and revengefully, but more frequently in sorrow.
There was occasionally a moving and touching pathos in these latter
demonstrations--tearless it is true, but thrilling and electrifying in
the subdued whisper in which they were sometimes uttered. A flood of
pent up emotions was poured forth with a thrilling eloquence which had
their origin in the foundations of the soul. Scenes of days long past,
were revived with a graphic and affecting power, which imagination
cannot give if their mysterious source and receptacle be not previously
and abundantly stored with the richest treasures of the female heart and
mind.
Because the by-standers do not happen to be in possession of all the
previous history of the sufferer, so as to put together these melancholy
and broken relics, they are generally supposed to be the creations of a
distempered fancy.
So it was with Mrs. Fairfax; her detached reminiscences fell upon the
dull and uninstructed ears of her attendants as the wildest
hallucinations of the brain, yet there was more connexion in these
flights than they imagined. They supposed that she thought herself
conversing in her most subdued and touching moments with young Dudley,
merely because his name was frequently pronounced, and that he happened
to be present at the disastrous ceremony, which resulted so dreadfully
to all parties.
Among all these, Virginia's was the hardest lot--so delicately and
exquisitely organized, so gentle--so susceptible--so full of
enthusiasm--so rich in innocence and hope, and all so suddenly
prostrated. Bacon was nerved with the wild yet exalted heroism of
manhood in despair. Her mother was wrapt in a blessed oblivion of the
present, but she was sensitively and exquisitely alive to the past,
present and future. One fainting paroxysm succeeded to another in
frightful rapidity, for hours after she was removed to her uncle's
house.
The painful intervals were filled up with a concentration of wretched
reflections, which none but a finely organized and cultivated female
mind could conceive or endure. No proper conception of these can be
conveyed in language, unless the reader will suffer his imagination to
grasp her whole condition at once.--Beginning at the first inception of
the unsuspected passion for the noble youth who is the hero of our
tale--in her earliest infancy; and afterwards following her as it
matured and strengthened by the reflections of riper years.--Every
faculty, both perceptive and intellectual, had combined to impress his
image in the most indelible colours upon her heart. He had himself
ripened these very faculties into maturity by the most assiduous
culture, and won her esteem by the most touching, delicate, and
respectful attentions.
All these things in detail were painfully revolved in her mind. Every
landscape, every book, every subject, reminded her most forcibly of him
whom it was now criminal to think of. Hers was the sorrow that no
sympathy could soften, no friendship alleviate. The sight of her
intimate and confidential friend drove her mad, for her presence
instantly revived the horrid recollections of the chapel. Long after the
clouds had cleared away, the thunder still roared in her ears. The
sudden slamming of a door sounded to her nervous irritability, like the
report of a cannon. Her own shadow conjured up horrible images. The most
violent and the most acute paroxysms of the human organization, however,
have a tendency to wear themselves out, when left uninterruptedly to
their own action. Such was necessarily, in some measure, the case with
Virginia; her mother's more alarming condition calling so much more
loudly for attention, and Wyanokee having fled, and Harriet's presence
proving so evidently hurtful, she was consequently left with a single
sable domestic. Essentially she was in profound solitude; and after the
first paroxysms which we have described, her mind naturally and
irresistibly fell into a train of retrospective thought. Startling and
horrifying they certainly were at first, but still the mind clung to
them. Many of the circumstances of the late disastrous meeting were to
her as yet unexplained. To these she clung as to the last remnants of
hope; they were the straws at which she grasped with the desperation of
the drowning wretch. She had at first received her mother's tacit
acknowledgment of the mysterious stranger's statement, or rather the
effect produced by that statement as irresistible confirmation of its
truth. But now she doubted the propriety of her hasty conviction. She
marvelled at the effect produced upon her mother--yet there were other
means of accounting for it. Would she not have exhibited a like
sensibility, had a like statement been made, however false, under such
circumstances?--did she not deny it, positively deny it at the moment?
Such was the train of reasoning by which her mind began to reassure
itself; and it must be recollected that she had never heard more of her
mother's history, than that she was a childless widow when her father
married her. Sufficient was left however of first impressions to render
her situation one of intense suffering and suspense. She dared not ask
for Bacon, yet a restless and gnawing anxiety possessed her, to know
whether he acknowledged the truth of the dreadful tale without a murmur,
and without investigation. But her physical organization could not keep
pace with the ever elastic mind; her gentle frame gave sensible
evidence that the late violent shocks had made sad inroads upon her
system. One chill was succeeded by another, until they were in their
turn followed by a burning fever. In this condition she fell again into
the hands of the physician, and all mental distress was soon lost in the
paramount demands of the suffering body.
Toward the hour of midnight, the storm subsided. Fragments of the black
curtain which had hung over the face of the heavens, shot up from the
eastern horizon in stupendous blue masses, every now and then
illuminated to their summits with the reflection of the raging elements
beyond. The violence of the conflict in Bacon's breast had also
subsided. He rode along the banks of the Chickahominy, his charger
dripping with wet and panting with the exhaustion of fatigue. The bridle
hung loose upon his neck, and his rider bent over his mane like a
worn-out soldier. His own locks had unbent their stubborn curls to the
driving storm, and hung about his neck in drooping masses. His silken
hose were spattered with mud, and his gay bridal dress hung about his
person in lank and dripping folds. His horse had for some time followed
the bent of his own humour, and was now leading his master in the
neighbourhood of human habitations. The boughs of the tall gloomy pines
were fantastically illuminated with broad masses of light, which ever
and anon burst from the smouldering remnants of a huge pine log fire.
Its immediate precincts were surrounded by some fifty or more round
matted huts, converging toward the summit like a gothic steeple. Around
the fire, and under a rude shelter, lay some hundred warriors, wrapped
in profound slumber while one of their tribe stood sentinel over the
camp.
When Bacon had approached within a short distance of this picturesque
group, the sentinel sprung upon his feet, and uttered a shrill
war-whoop. The horse stood still, erected his neck and pricked up his
ears, while his master folded his arms upon his breast and calmly
surveyed the scene. Those warriors who slept under the sheds near the
fire, assumed the erect attitude with a simultaneous movement, joining
in the wild chorus of the sentinel's yell as they arose.
Hundreds of men, women, and children poured from the surrounding
huts,--most of the grown males, with their faces painted in blue and red
stripes, their heads shaved close to the cranium, except a tuft of hair
upon the crown, and all armed in readiness for battle. Bacon assumed the
command of his horse and rode into the very centre of this wild
congregation,--the fore hoofs resting upon the spent embers of the fire.
He was greeted with another yell, after which the savages stood back and
viewed his strange and untimely appearance with wonder not unmixed with
awe. His bridle again fell from his hand, and his arms were crossed upon
his breast. His countenance was wild and haggard, and a flash of
maniacal enthusiasm shot athwart his pale features. His dress under
present circumstances was fantastical in the extreme.
A grim old warrior with savage aspect after staring some time intensely
at the intruder, was suddenly struck with something in his appearance,
and stepping out a few paces from the mass of his companions began to
address them in his own language, now and then pointing to the horseman,
and using the most violent gesticulations. At another time the youth
would have been not a little alarmed at certain significant signs which
the speaker used when pointing to himself. These consisted in twirling
his war club round and round, as if he was engaged in the most deadly
conflict. Then he placed his hand to the side of his head and bent it
near the earth as if about to prostrate himself, and finally pointing to
Bacon. When he had done this, several of the crowd closed in toward his
horse, and seemed intensely to examine the lineaments of his
countenance. Having satisfied themselves, they set up a simultaneous
yell of savage delight. He was quickly drawn from the saddle, his hands
tied behind him, and then placed in the centre of the assembled throng.
Their savage orgies now commenced; a procession of all the grown males
moved in a circle of some fifty feet in diameter round his person.
Several of the number beat upon rude drums, formed of large calabashes
with raw hides stretched tight and dried over the mouths; while others
dexterously rattled dried bones and shuffled with their feet to their
own music. Others chanted forth a monotonous death song; the whole
forming the rudest, wildest, and most savage spectacle imaginable.
Bacon himself stood an unmoved spectator of all these barbarous
ceremonies. He felt a desperate and reckless indifference to what might
befall him. Human endurance had been stretched to its utmost verge, and
he felt within him a longing desire to end the vain struggle in the
sleep of death. To one like him, who had in the last few hours endured
the mental tortures of a hundred deaths, their savage cruelties had no
terrors. A faint hope indeed may have crossed his mind, that some
warrior more impetuous than his comrades, might sink his tomahawk deep
into his brain in summary vengeance for the death of their chief. But
they better understood the delights of vengeance. After performing their
rude war-dance for some time, they commenced the more immediate
preparations for the final tragedy. His hands were loosed, his person
stripped and tied to a stake, while some dozen youths of both sexes
busied themselves in splitting the rich pine knots into minute pins.
These being completed, a circular pile of finely cleft pieces of the
same material was built around his body, just near enough for the fire
to convey its tortures by slow degrees without too suddenly ending their
victim. A deafening whoop from old and young announced the commencement
of the ceremony. Each distinguished warrior present had the privilege
of inserting a given number of splinters into his flesh. The grim old
savage who had first identified Bacon as the slayer of their chief,
stepped forward and commenced the operation. He thrust in the tearing
torments with a ferocious delight, not a little enhanced by the physical
convulsive movements of his victim at every new insertion. Worn out
nature however could not endure the uninterrupted completion of the
process, and the victim swooned away.
His body hung by the thongs which had bound his waist and hands to the
stake, his head drooping forward as if the spirit had already taken its
flight. He was immediately let down and the tenderest care observed to
resuscitate him, in order that they might not be cheated of their full
revenge. His head and throat were bathed in cold water and his parched
lips moistened through the medium of a gourd. At length he revived, and
strange as it may appear, to a keener consciousness of his situation
than he had felt since he left the church. All the wild horrors of his
fate stared him in the face. The savages screamed with delight at his
returning animation. Copious drafts of water were administered as he
called for them. The most intense pain was already experienced from the
festering wounds around each of the wooden daggers driven into his
flesh. Again he prayed that some of them might instantaneously reach his
heart, but his prayer was not destined to be granted. He was again
fastened to the stake, and the second in dignity and authority proceeded
to perform his share of the brutal exhibition. At this moment a piercing
scream rent the air, and all tongues were mute, all hands suspended.
The sound proceeded from the extreme right of the encampment. Here a
larger hut than the rest stood in solitary dignity apart from the
others, like an officer's _marquee_ in a military encampment. In a few
moments the rude door was thrust aside and an Indian female of exquisite
proportions rushed to the scene of butchery, and threw herself between
the half immolated victim and his bloodthirsty tormentors. Upon her head
she wore a rude crown, composed of a wampum belt tightly encircling her
brows, and surmounted by a circlet of the plumes of the kingfisher,
facing outwards at the top. Around her waist was belted a short frock of
dressed deer-skin, which fell in folds about her knees, and was
ornamented around the fringed border with beads and wampum. Over her
left shoulder and bust she gracefully wore a variegated skin dressed
with the hair facing externally; from this her right arm extended, bare
to the shoulder, save a single clasp at the wrist; and she carried in
her hand a long javelin mounted at the end with a white crystal. The
remaining parts of her figure exhibited their beautiful proportions
neatly fitted with a pair of buck-skin leggins, extended and fringed on
the seam with porcupine quills, copper and glass ornaments. Similar
decorations were visible on her exquisitely proportioned feet and
ankles. Thrusting her javelin in the ground with energy, and proudly
raising her head, she cast a withering glance of scorn and indignation
upon the perpetrators of the cruelty. Her address, translated into
English, was to the following purport: "Is it for this," and she pointed
to Bacon's bleeding wounds, "that I have been invested with the
authority of my sires? Was it to witness the perpetration of these
cruelties that I have been almost dragged from the house of my pale
faced friends? Scarcely has the fire burned out which was kindled to
celebrate my arrival among you, before it is rekindled to sacrifice in
its flames him who redeemed me from captivity. Is this the return which
Chickahominies make for past favours? If so, I pray you to tear from my
person these emblems of my authority among you."
She was immediately answered by the old warrior who had commenced the
tortures; "Did not the long knife[1] slay the chief of our nation?"
[Footnote 1: This term originated in Virginia.]
He was answered by a yell of savage delight from all the warriors
present. Wyanokee (for it was she, as the reader has no doubt already
surmised) continued, "Ay, he did slay King Fisher and his son--but were
they not unjustly attempting to take away the property of the pale
faces? and did they not commit the deed against their solemn promise and
treaty, and after they had smoked the pipe of peace? For shame,
warriors and men--would ye turn squaws, and murder a brave and noble
youth because he had fought for his own people and for the preservation
of his own life?"
Her harangue was not received with the submission and respect which she
expected--many murmured at her defence, and claimed the death of the
captive as a prescriptive right and an act of retributive justice. She
advanced to cut the cords which bound the prisoner, but twenty more
powerful arms instantly arrested her movement. Tomahawks were raised in
frightful array, while deep and loud murmurs of discontent, and demands
for vengeance rent the air. She placed herself before the captive, and
elevating her person to its utmost height, and extending her hands
before him as a protection, she cried, "Strike your tomahawks here, into
the daughter of your chief, of him who led you on to battles and to
victory, but harm not the defenceless stranger." The principal warriors
held a consultation as to the fate of the prisoner. It was of but short
duration, there being few dissenting voices to the proposition of the
old savage, already mentioned as principal spokesman of the party. They
soon returned and announced to their new queen that the council of the
nation had decreed the prisoner's death. "Never, never!" exclaimed the
impassioned maiden, "unless you first cleave off these hands with which
I will protect him from your fury. Ha!" she cried, as a sudden thought
seemed to strike her; "there is one plan of redemption by your own laws.
I will be his wife!" A deep blush suffused her cheeks as she forced the
reluctant announcement from her lips. An expression of sadness and
disappointment soon spread itself over the countenances of the
revengeful warriors, for they knew that she had spoken the truth.
Another council was immediately held; at which it was determined that
their youthful queen, might according to the usages of the nation, take
the captive for her husband, in the place of her kinsman who was slain.
When this was proclaimed, Wyanokee slowly and doubtingly turned her eyes
upon Bacon to see whether the proposition met a willing response in his
breast. A single glance sufficed to convince her that it did not.
Instantly, however, recovering her self-possession, she cut the cords
and led him to her hut, where after having been reinvested with the sad
remnants of his bridal finery, we must leave him for the night.