Читать книгу The Broken Sword; Or, A Pictorial Page in Reconstruction - D. Worthington - Страница 8

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A person on entering the library in an old-fashioned mansion, situated in the heart of a country that was very beautiful in the landscaping of nature, at eleven a. m. of the 12th of November, would have observed a venerable gentleman reclining upon an antique sofa, plainly upholstered in morocco. The gentleman was reading from a book entitled, "The Life and Speeches of Daniel Webster." The stranger might have further observed, that the right hand of the old gentleman would now and again move with some energy of expression, as if he were punctuating a particular paragraph by an emphatic dissent. If the reader had been asked for an opinion as to the character and ability of the illustrious commoner, whose views were so logically expressed in the memoir, he would have said without hesitation, that "He possessed the acumen of the wisest of statesmen, but that his opinions as a strict constructionist were extra hazardous, indeed out of harmony with the true theory of a republican form of government—a government of co-ordinate states that had entered voluntarily into a compact for a more perfect union. But (he may have continued) against the doctrine of nullification, indeed against the ordinances of secession, the irony of fate, through this great man, projected an argument whose logic was irrefutable in its last analysis. Foreshadowed events put into the mouth of Mr. Webster a menace, whose uninterpretable meaning in 1833 was clearly understood when the baleful power of the storm swept from the high seas the last privateer with its letter of marque, disbanded the last armed scout south of the breakwater of the Delaware, and broke the heart of the greatest warrior since Charlemagne; a chieftain more honored in defeat than Hannibal, or Napoleon, or Sobieski, or the great Frederick. This master craftsman in the construction corps of the Republic; whose resourceful intellect engrafted a principle as fixed and inviolable into the Constitution as fate, propelled against the equity of 'peaceful separation' the weight of an overmastering influence. This menace to the South marked the tumultuous heart-beats of the commercial North, when it contemplated the separation of indestructible states. It made of the Republic a huge camp of instruction, into which the nations of the earth were perpetually dumping their refuse populations; it girdled the South with a cincture of embattled mercenaries; it imparted to the Constitution a disciplinary vigor; it gave to partisan legislation an inspiration; it gave to centralized power an omnipotent reserve that unnerved every arm, paralyzed every tongue, and rendered organized effort abortive in the crucial struggle for Southern independence. But, sir, (and the eyes of the old man would gleam as with the light of an overpowering genius), a government created by the States, amendable by the States, preserved by the States, may be annihilated by the States."

It was one of those leaky, bleak November days, when the weather, out of temper with itself, is continually making wry faces at the rain and the forest and the cattle, that a gentleman lately arrived from the auld town of Edinboro, shook the glistening rain-drops from his shaggy talma in the great hall of Ingleside, as he observed to the host with a smile, "Thot it was a wee bit scrowie, but the weether wad be fayre in its ain gude time." It was indeed one of those leaden days that occasionally comes in the Southland with the November chills, pinching the herds that are out upon the glades and meadows, when the winds sang in the tree boughs with a strange and melancholy rhythm. A sailor passing up the forward ladder from the forecastle to observe the weather would say, with a shudder, that it was a "greasy day," and that the sky and shrouds and storm-sails were leaky. Col. Seymour, upon ordinary occasions, was a gentleman of discrimination, and his judgment of character was fairly correct. Like the true Scotch Southron, as he was, he had his own ideals, his own loves and his own idiosyncrasies. He loved Scotland and her people, her memories, her history, her renown, her trossachs, her lakes, her mountains; they were his people, and Scotland was the "ain love of his fayther and mither." He had not forgotten the language of her beautiful hills and vales, though he was a boy when, with his parents, he bade adieu to his bonny country to find a home across the water in the Old North State, so prodigal and impartial in the distribution of honors and riches to all who came with clean hands and stout hearts. So when the neat and genteel Scotchman gave his name as Hugh McAden, the old man's heart impulsively warmed towards his guest, for he knew of a verity that a McAden everywhere was a man of honor—the name, an open sesame to the hearts and homes of Scotch Americans.

"I will make you very comfortable to-day, sir," he observed, as he escorted Mr. McAden to his library. There were great hickory logs, half consumed, resting upon the antiquated brass andirons in the fire-place, giving warmth and cheer to the whole room. The stranger, rubbing his hands vigorously, for they were very cold and stiff, observed interrogatively, "You do not let the chill ond weet coom into the hoose?"

"No indeed," replied the Colonel with a broad smile, "these inflictions are for other folks, whose liberty is upon the highways and in the forests in such weather."

"Ah, for ither fauk; maybe the naygurs," laughingly suggested the Scotchman.

"Yes, you can hear the guns in the woods, where they are hunting cattle not their own. You can see drunken squads marching upon the roads upon such a day."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "ond do ye call this free America? May-be ye hae no goovernment as ye haed lang syne, ond no law ither."

The Colonel assured the gentleman that public affairs were at sixes and sevens, and the negroes now held the mastery over their former owners, and their discipline was not over indulgent.

"Ond do the naygurs make the laws for sic as you?" he enquired in a startled way.

"Oh yes," replied the Colonel, quite seriously.

"Alack-a-day!" exclaimed the astonished man. "The deil take sic a goovernment, ond the deil tak sic a coontry, ond the deil tak the naygurs! Coom to Edinboro, mon, where there is not o'ermuch siller, but where ivery mon is his ain laird, ond his hoose is his ain hame. Ye ken fine that I am a stranger hereaboot. Ond will the naygurs harm a poor mishanalled mon like me?" he enquired in alarm. The Colonel, with an effort to conceal his mirth, reassured his friend that no harm would come to him.

"Ond wad ye say," the Scotchman interrupted, "that amang the naygurs ond sic a government, that a puir body wad hae the protection o' his ain queen?" he again asked, with his fears still unsubdued. The amiable host, shaking from an effort at self-control, again remarked that the carpet-bag government had made no attempt at personal violence upon strangers, and that he was as safe here as in his own city of Edinboro; and the Scotchman laughed away his fears.

"Sic an auld fule!" he exclaimed in great glee. "I am hardly masel in these lowlands," the Scotchman continued, as the conversation changed into more agreeable channels. "Ye hae na moontains ond bonnie hills hereaboot," he continued, as he looked from the window upon the low-lying fields and meadows.

"But, my friend," replied the Colonel, "if you will abide with me for awhile you will quite forget your mountains, for there is a charm and freshness in the landscape here when you become familiar with it."

"I am sure of thot," quickly answered the guest; "but ye ken fine that a puir body must abide in his ain hame. What wad a man do in th' Soothland wi' his beezeness in Edinboro?" And the Scotchman smiled as he asked the unanswerable question. "Ah, well," the Colonel replied with an assumed dignity, "you would do as we do."

"Ond what is thot?" asked the Scotchman.

"Swear and vapor from early morn to dewy eve."

"Ah! thot wad na do, thot wad na do," he replied, horrified at such a suggestion, "The meenister in holy kirk wad discipline a puir body, ond the deil wad be to play. I guess I'll gang hame agen ond do as ilka fauk do in th' auld toon."

The Colonel had not been so happy in many a day as with the plain, matter-of-fact Scotchman, in a sense, a type and representative of his own people, and a man who could speak so eloquently of the fadeless glory of old Scotland.

"Hae ye nae gude wife ond bairns?" he enquired.

"Yes, an invalid wife and an only child, sir," said the Colonel, as tears began to gather in his eyes. "My only son, sir, was slain in battle some years ago."

"Ond was it for sic a goovernment as ye hae noo, that ye gaed up your bonnie lad to dee?" he asked quite innocently.

The old man bowed his head in silent grief. He could not answer, and he walked across the room and looked out upon the murky sky—a funereal coverlid, it appeared, laid over the grave of poor Harry.

"Puir lad," uttered Mr. McAden, half aside, as he drew his handkerchief across his face and gazed abstractedly into the blazing fire. It was quite an interval before the Colonel was able to subdue this paroxysm of grief that had quite overcome him, and, availing himself of the earliest opportunity to excuse himself, withdrew from the room. To Mr. McAden the moment was fraught with sincere sorrow. He had unwittingly opened the sluice-way at the veteran's heart, and great tides, crimsoned, as it seemed, with the blood of poor Harry, were pouring into it. He could find no surcease only in the oft-repeated exclamation of reproach.

"Sic an auld fule! Sic an auld fule! But I thocht the mon was o'er happy in the love of his gude wife ond the bairn. Haed I thocht thot the lad had deed in battle, I wad na gaed him sic a sair thrust in his auld heart."

The Colonel retired to his own chamber to repair the injury that had been done to his feelings, and presently he returned with a smiling face, accompanied by his daughter, and he said, introducing her.

"This sir, is my daughter, Alice."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. McAden, rising with extended hand, "The lassie is like the sire, Coonel. I can see the fayther in her een."

"And the counterpart of her mither in all except the een," replied her father.

"You ond the gude wife ond the lassie must coom to Edinboro, Coonel; ye ken fine thot her rooyal men ond weemen are i' th' groond noo, ond there are memorials here ond there in the auld kirk-yards where their puir bodies are laid, but our men ond weemen still are vera fayre ond gentle, ond we niver put our een upon a naygur. Ond, now thot I can abide nae langer wi' ye, will ye nae tell me a wee bit o' the history o' our ain fauk in the Soothland, for ye ken fine thot the auld anes wad be askin aboot this ane ond thot ane, in fine all aboot the Scotch in your ain coontry, when I gae hame to Edinboro."

The subject referred to by the Scotchman was full of a picturesque interest, and no man in the Southland took a higher delight in imparting such information as he could command, than Colonel Seymour. Turning his old arm-chair so that he could observe his guest more closely, he began:

"The characteristics of these people are ineffaceably impressed upon our civilization. Indeed they are as deeply grounded into the religious and social soil of North Carolina, as though they had taken root like the rhododendron under the rocks and in the fissures of our hills and mountains. The Scotch-Irish American, with gigantic strides, has at last sat himself down upon the loftiest pinnacle of our 19th century civilization. He has never yielded to oppression; he has never compounded with evil. These brave people, bringing hither the virtues of their fathers as well as their own, have given North Carolina its most luminous page. They made the earliest industry of the Cape Fear—the industry of colonization. It was an industry that sought to provide homes for the people, and to dignify labor and life in the midst of surroundings that taxed every resource of action, and the ultimate verge of human daring; an industry that employed the plainest instruments—the axe to hew down the forest, and the plow to turn the furrow. Their primitive sires in these early settlements did not control those powerful auxiliaries that now multiply the skill of man; nor did they enjoy the aristocracy of the recognized power of wealth. They cared nothing for mammonism, that some philosophical crank has defined to be a physical force that makes men invertebrates. Here was life with the struggle of pioneers; a struggle for place rather than for position; for homes rather than castles, that prepared the intellect for a higher development, and man for ultimate power. The victory of the axe and plow were the pre-ordained antecedents to the victory of the forum and pulpit, and the triumph over the crude obstructions of nature was the divine prophecy of undisciplined toil. Out of the ruggedness of such an epoch came forth a condition of virtue and integrity; of honest and honorable convictions; of sincere patriotism; of a race of men who looked to themselves only, and originated within this scant domain the literature of economic life. It was here that the domestic sentiment displayed its captivating charm. Nowhere on earth was there a more generous love for children, and whenever this attribute of the heart appears, the prophetic benediction of Christ, as childhood lay in His hallowed arms, is fulfilled. Here was social life, too, in its freedom, picturesqueness and animation, without demoralizing conditions. Away northward and southward, bays and rivers stretched their wedded waves, hills holding in their dead grasp the secrets of centuries; the ancient miracles of fire and water where chaos had been transfixed in its primeval heavings; all these were here subject to the mighty mastery that men should eventually exert, and side by side with humble homes, arose schools and churches—emblems of the power and purity of the people. Here the ambassadors of Christ were persuasive with tongue, fervent in spirit; they felt that their religion was more ancient than government, higher than any influence; more sacred than any trust; a religion that was benevolence in its gentlest mood, courage in its boldest daring, affection in its intensest power; philanthropy in its widest reach; patriotism in its most impassioned vigor; reason in its broadest display; the mighty heart that throbbed through every artery; fed every muscle; sped the hidden springs of an electric current through every nerve. Such were and are "oor ain fauk in th' Soothland."

"Ah, I ken fine," replied the Scotchman with enthusiasm, "that your forebears came from the hielands, and yoor knowledge of the gude fauk in yoor ain coontry quite surprises me. Did ye not say that yoor fayther ond mither came from Edinboro?" he inquired with animation.

"Yes," replied the Colonel, "in the good old days; and they lie buried side by side in the little cemetery over the hill yonder, where I shall rest after a wee bit."

"These are bonnie lands hereaboot, but there is mony a glade in auld Scotland where a puir body may sleep as tranquilly," said the Scotchman with feeling, "ond when I dee my sepulchre shall be near the auld hame where there are no naygurs ond no sic a goovernment, in th' shadow o' th' auld kirk o' my fayther ond mither."