| | 1 | Author: | Caruthers
William Alexander
1802-1846 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Knights of the Horse-shoe  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Dear Sir—This letter will be handed to you by one of the most unfortunate
adherents of the Pretender. Start not my dear Sir—he is but one of the
Scottish jacobins, and will in no wise compromise you. The very fact of his
seeking your country is evidence enough if it were wanting, that he desires to
be at peace from the toils and dangers of political partizanship. These are
claims enough for citizenship you may think, but not warrant sufficient to
claim your personal friendship. He has these also, for he was one of those
unfortunate men who befriended and supported your late kinsman to the last.
He protests that he will in no wise compromise your Excellency with the ministry
or their adherents on your side of the water, and has begged me not to
write, but knowing that you would delight to befriend so staunch an adherent
of the unfortunate General, I have insisted on his taking a sealed packet at
all events, as it would contain other matters than those relating purely to
himself. And now for those matters. He will be accompanied by a great
many ruined families of rather a higher class than that from which your immigrants
are generally furnished—they, too, are worn out in spirit and in fortune,
with the ceaseless struggles between the hereditary claimant of the
crown and the present occupant. They see, also, breakers ahead. The
Queen's health is far from being stable, and in case of her sudden demise
there will be an awful struggle here. Are they not right then to gather up
the little remnant of their property and seek an asylum on your peaceful
shores? Your note of last night, containing an invitation to Temple Farm, from
Kate, has just been received. I will go, but for a reason, among others,
which I fear my ever kind friend, Kate, will consider any thing but complimentary—it
is because this house is haunted, and I can no longer stay in it.
Look not so grave, dear father, 'tis no ghost. I wish it was, or he was, for
it is that same tedious, tiresome, persecuting, Harry Lee. I have been most
anxiously expecting your return; but, as it seems, you have become a permanent
fixture at Temple Farm, it is but right that I should grow along side
of the parent stem. The townsfolk are even more anxious for your return
than I am. I tell them you ran away from practice, but it seems the more
you desire to run away from it, the more they run after you. Few people in
this dreary world have been able to effect so much unmixed good as you have,
and for that, I thank God. Dear Father, I have no desire to live but for your
sake, and that the short time we are to live together may not be diminished by
any act of mine, I will be with you presently. Our poor pensioners and invalids
are all doing as well as usual, and I leave them in the hands of the Rev.
Mr. Jones, who, I know, will care for them as we would. He is surely one
of God's chosen instruments for doing good in this world. He has shouldered
his cross in earnest, and devoutly does he labor to advance the Redeemer's
kingdom. “Dear Sir.—You will no doubt be surprised that I date this letter from
the county jail, instead of the barracks, but, Sir, so it is—deeply mortifying
as it is to me to state the fact. I had scarcely alighted in the capital, after
marching the soldiers to the garrison, before I was waited upon by the Deputy
Sheriff of the county, with a bail writ, (or whatever that process is called
by which the law seizes a man's person,) at the suit of Henry Lee, Esq.,
and for the very money which your Excellency was mainly instrumental in
procuring at his hands for me. You will recollect, no doubt, that as a mere
matter of form, (so the gentleman expressed it,) I gave him a note of hand
for the amount. Unfortunately I paid away part of the sum for my passage
money, and the remainder to recruit my dilapidated wardrobe, so that instant
payment was out of the question. None of my new and kind friends were
in the city. I had, indeed, hoped to find the good Doctor at home, but unfortunately
for me he was absent in the country. “Dear Sir: I owe you an apology for the very abrupt manner in which I
left your house, where I had been tacitly, as it were, left in charge of the
ladies; but the fact is, Sir, that I found the young person whom you had hastily
employed as Tutor, presumptuous and impertinent, and that I must either
degrade myself by a personal encounter with him, or leave the premises. I
chose the latter, and had hoped to have paid my respects to your Excellency
before you left the capital, but was detained by unavoidable legal business until
you had unfortunately left the city. It is useless now to enter into particulars
as to his conduct in your absence; for the evidence is now before
me, that he is such a gross impostor and swindler, that it is scarcely worth
while to inquire into minor particulars of conduct. While I was in the very
act of consulting Attorney General Clayton, (who is also my own legal adviser,)
about the steps necessary to be taken in order to repossess the funds
out of which I weakly suffer myself to be cheated, I received a ship letter by
way of York. Whom does your Excellency suppose that letter was from?
Why, sir, from Mr. Henry Hall, my cousin, the real gentleman, whose name
and character this base impostor had assumed for the lowest purposes. You
will recollect that I had written to the young man before this person appeared
at your house, informing him of my aunt's will. This letter which I
have received is in answer to that one, and states among other things that
the writer would sail in the very first vessel for this country after the one
which would bring the letter, so that by the time that this pseudo Mr. Hall
manages to release himself from prison, where I have snugly stowed him,
the real personage, whose name he has assumed, will be here to confront
him. I am delighted that I am thus able to relieve your Excellency from
the disagreeable duty of unmasking the impostor; for if your Excellency
will permit me to say so, your kindly nature had so far led you astray with
regard to this man, that you might have found it rather unpleasant to deal
with him. Leave all that to me, Sir—I will give him his deserts, be well assured;
and if he escapes with whole ears and a sound skin, he may thank
the clemency of the law, and not mine. Dear Ellen: Such a friendship as ours can bear the imposition with which
I am about to tax you. You know the sad tale of this poor Indian girl, and
how it lacerates all our hearts afresh, even to look upon her; and knowing
this, you will do all those little kindnesses for her that we cannot, and which
her situation requires. She sees that we cannot look upon her with complacency,
and now she misinterprets it. God knows we wish to wreak no vengeance
upon her for my poor brother's death. Do make her sensible of all
this. You, my dear Ellen, that know so well how to compass these delicate
offices so much better than any one else—do give her all the comfort the case
admits of, and administer such consolation as her peculiar nature requires.
Explain to her our feelings, and that they are the farthest in the world
removed from unkindness Oh, Ellen, you know what a shock we have sustained,
and will, I know, acquit us of any mawkish sensibility in the case.
I trust her entirely to your kindness and discretion. My father has just
stepped in, and anticipating my object, begged to see this note; and he now
begs me to say to you, that Wingina must be closely watched, else her brother
will contrive some subtle scheme to whisk her off again. I again resume my sweet correspondence with you, after an interval it
seems to me of an age: computed by what I have (may I not say we have)
suffered. But during all my unexampled difficulties and trials, one constant
soarce of consolation remained to me. It was your steady constancy. It is
true, that for a time, I was laboring under a delusion in regard to it, but even
during that time, you were as unwavering as before. No portion of blame
can attach to you, that I was led astray. You, my Ellen, have been like my
evening and morning star—the last ray of serene comfort at night, and the
brightest dawn of hope in the morning. From day to day, and from year to
year, have you clung to the memory of the youth to whom you plighted your
young affections—through good and through evil report—through life and in
death, (as was supposed) you have without wavering or turning aside, cherished
the first bright morning dream of youthful love. Do you know, my
Ellen, that the world scarcely believes in the reality of such early attachments
enduring to the end. The heartless throng know not, my sweet playmate, of
the little romantic world we possess within ourselves. They have all gone
astray after strange gods, and cannot believe that others will be more true and
devoted than they have been. Especially has the odium of all such failures
been laid to the charge of your sex, but I am sure unjustly. The first slight
or unkindness nearly always proceeds from the other, and this slight or unkindness
cannot be blazoned to the world—it is hidden within the recesses of
the sufferer's heart, and pride (perhaps proper maidenly pride) prevents it from
ever being known. How happy are we my Ellen, that not a shadow of distrust
has fallen out between us—if indeed I except your momentary confounding
me with the gentleman whose name I had assumed, and my temporary
mistake about my brother's marriage with you. You see I have brought
myself to write that name. While I am upon the subject of Miss Elliot's
engagement, permit me to explain one thing which I omitted in the hurry of
departure, and the confusion which attended all its exciting scenes. That
young lady though present at the masking scene at the Governor's house, and
knowing of my design to present myself in disguise, among my old associates,
was not made acquainted with the name or occupation which I would assume.
The resolution to adopt that name was seized upon after the departure of that
young lady and her father. Hence her supposition, on hearing that Mr. Hall
had arrived in the Colony, that it was her own Henry. I am led to think of
these things, by seeing, so frequently, this young gentleman, with whom I
was, and am, on the most intimate terms. His distress of mind is truly pitiable—he
appears like one physically alive and well, and yet dead to all hope.
Not absolutely dead to all hope either, for you should have seen how the blessed,
but dormant, faculty flashed up for a moment or two, when I told him, a
little while ago, that there was a prospect of an expedition being sent ahead of
the troops, in pursuit of the assassins and robbers who murdered our old friend
and stole his mistress. Oh, if he could be sent off upon such an expedition,
what a blessed relief the activity and excitement of the pursuit would be to
him. But the Governor, though sympathizing fully with him and me, would
not consent to it, and I must say his reasons were to me, satisfactory; not so,
however, with my poor friend; he is dissatisfied with the Governor on account
of it, and if it were not for my restraining and urgent counsel, he would start
off, single handed, in pursuit. The fact is, his apprehensions for the fate of
the poor girl, whether dead or alive, are so desponding, that the madness and
rashness of such an adventure, only add new charms to it, in his eyes, and I
can only seduce him from such wild designs by dwelling upon the known
clemency of the Indians to other females, who have for months and years
remained captives with them. I have exhausted all my recollections of the
kind, and I have put the scout, Jarvis, in possession of his dreadful secret, and
commanded him to detail all his knowledge favorable to my views. At this
very moment he is walking with Joe, among the tall pines, his melancholy
eye wandering among the stars, while Joe is telling a long story of a Mrs.
Thompson, who was taken prisoner by them and carried beyond the mountains.
I at first suspected my new forest friend, of romancing in the wildest
vein, and inventing as he went along, for the justifiable purpose, as it seemed
to me, of plucking the rooted sorrow from the heart of my friend, but I am
satisfied now that it is a true narrative, because he recounted several circumstances
about the route to the mountains, which he had before told me he had
procured from an old lady, who had been a prisoner among the Indians. Seeing
that he was, for the time, so absorbed with the story of the scout, I have
stolen away, my Ellen, to hold this sweet converse with you. If you had but
known the charming girl, about whom my friend thus mourns, you would
neither be surprised nor jealous that even I feel an anxious interest in her fate.
Think too of her sad history,—the loss of her uncle by whom she was adopted,
and upon whom she doted as a father, little less fond than the real one whom
she has now lost, also. Think, too, of the dreadful manner of their two deaths
—of her nearest and dearest kinsmen. Then bring before your mind the
highly educated, delicate and sensitive girl herself—torn from the reeking
body of her deceased parent; and borne a captive among a rude and wild people,
not one word of whose language she understands. Oh its a dreadful fate
for one like her. She is a most lovely girl in every sense of the word, and as
good as she is beautiful! I feel a double interest in her fate, because her
sad lot is so much like my own. We were first wrecked by the same disastrous
political storm—thrown upon the same shores, and among the same
people for a time. Well Bill, I'm dad shamed if I don't bust if I don't write to you a spell—the
fact is Bill, I've kept company with these here gold laced gentry so long that
I'm gettin' spiled—fact! I rubbed myself all over last night head and ears
with salt for fear on't. Yes, and if you and Charley and Ikey don't take keer,
I'll cut you when I come back. But without any joke at all about it, I've got
into the greatest mess that ever the likes of you clapped eyes on. There's
that Mr. Hall—the real genuine Mr. Hall, the one as come last; O Lord if you
could only see how he takes on—dash my flint, if I don't think he's a leetle
teched in the upper story. All day long he rides that black horse—(and he's
dressed in black you know) and looks as if he was a goin' to his grandmother's
funeral. Poor lad, they say he's got cause enough, the yaller niggers have
run away with his sweet heart, but you don't know nothin' about them sort of
tender things, Bill, its only a throwin' of pearls before swine to tell you of 'em,
else I would tell you that Mr. Hall and me is exactly in the same fix. Yes,
you and Charley may laugh, confound you, if so be you ever spell this out,
We're exactly in the same situation—the yaller niggers has run away with
my sweet heart too. You know the little Ingin gal that asked me for that
lock 'o hair, but you know al about it and what's the use of swettin' over agin.
Well, Squire Lee, that Mr. Hall that was tried for killin' the Governor's son;
well, he says she's a ruined gal, and to hear him talk, you'd think that she
was dead and buried and he a sayin' of the funeral service over her. I tell you
Bill, these gentry are queerish folks, they don't know nothin' of human nature.
He says he wants to know if I would take another man's cast off mistress.
Now, Bill, ain't her lover dead, and could'nt I make an honest woman of her,
by a marryin' of her, I'd like to know that. But the best part of the story is
to come yit. The Governor's been axed about it, and he's all agreed, and says
moreover, that he'll settle fifty pounds a year on me, if the gal will have me.
So you see, Bill, she's a fortune. Did'nt I tell you that I was a goin to seek
my fortune, and that you had better come along. But I've talked about myself
long enough, now let me tell you something of our betters. The old
Governor, I tell you what, he's a tip top old feller, in the field. He don't know
nothing about fightin' Ingins yit, but I'll tell you, he'll catch it mighty quick;
he makes every one stand up to the rack, and as for running away from an
enemy, it ain't in his dictionary. I am told he drinks gunpowder every mornin'
in his bitters, and as for shootin,' he's tip top at that, too. He thinks nothin'
of takin' off a wild turkeys' head with them there pistols of his'n. You may'nt
believe the story about the gunpowder, but I got from old June, his shoe black,
who sleeps behind his tent, and I reckon he ought to know, if any body does.
He rides a hoss as if he rammed down the gunpowder with half a dozen ramrods.
You ought to see him a ridin' a review of a mornin'. I swang if his
cocked hat don't look like a pictur', and I'm told he's all riddled with bullets
too, and that he sometimes picks the lead out of his teeth yit. He's a a whole
team, Bill; set that down in your books. The next man to the Governor is Mr.
Frank, that I told you of a while ago; he belongs to the gunpowder breed too
he's got an eye like a eagle, and, Bill when they made a gintleman of him they
spiled one of the best scouts in all these parts. If there's any fightin' you
take my word for it, he'll have his share. Some of the men do say that he was
for upsettin' the Queen when he was to England, and that's the reason he came
over in disguise. One thing I know, he's got no airs about him; he talks to
me just as he does to the Governor, and this present writin', as the lawyers say,
is writ on his camp stool and with his pen and paper. I guess he'll find his pen
druv up to the stump. Well, I suppose you want to know what I call this
camp nigger foot for. I'll tell you, for I christened it myself. I was a followin'
of a fresh trail as hard as one of the Governor's bounds arter a buck—
when what should we light upon, but the track of of a big nigger's foot in the
mud here among em—fact! I told the Governor afore I seed the print of
the nigger's foot that they had had some spy or another at Williamsburg, else
they would'nt a know'd the waggons as had the powder in 'em. Oh, I forgot
to tell you that the yaller raskels killed one of the sentinels, and stole a heap
of powder and lead. Yes, and they had the wagon tops marked with red paint. The ink would blister the paper, could I be guilty of the hypocrisy of commencing
a letter to you with an endearing epithet, after all that is past and
gone. Indeed, it was my intention never to have addressed you again in
any manner this side of the grave. I thought you had done your worst
towards me and mine, and I was resolved, if I could not forgive, that I would
at least bear it in silence. But I was mistaken, you had not done your worst,
as this night's experience teaches me. I find that my heart yearns towards every
thing connected with the happy days of our infancy. Over many of these
you have power, and through these you can wound me grievously. I do not,
and will not, charge you with suborning one of our father's faithful servants
to his own ruin and disgrace. I leave it entirely with you and your God.—
But if even innocent, (which I trust in God you are,) yet you are responsible
for their conduct. Nay, the world, even your old associates here, hold you
now as the accessory before the fact, to this poor fellow's crime. Oh, Henry,
how have your passions led you on, from step to step, to this degradation!
Can you be the proud boy that I once knew as an affectionate brother? But
I will not be weak; my object in writing is merely a matter of business. I
have a proposition to make to you—it is that you abandon your home and
country forever. Start not, but listen to me. You know that you will be
largely indebted to me for the yearly proceeds of my property, every cent of
which you have drawn, and which I understand you will not be able to repay,
without sacrificing your own property. Now, I propose to give you a clear
quittance for the whole of it, if you will sail for Europe before my return, and
take poor Cæsar with you. I know that you can find means to liberate him—
indeed, I do not think the Governor himself will be much displeased to find
this scheme carried into effect upon his return. Reflect well upon it, and may
God forgive you for your past errors. I shall never cease to pray not only for
that, but that I may myself learn to grant you that tree and full forgiveness
which I daily ask him for myself. Dear Frank.—But a few days have elapsed since your departure, yet it
seems an age. Short as the time is, however, I must write now in compliance
with my promise, or lose all opportunity of writing, until the expedition is on
its return. The courier who takes this, it is hoped, will overtake you near the
foot of the mountains. First and foremost, then, I must be selfish enough to
begin at home. Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, and I
suppose the pen writeth. You will, I am sure, be surprised to learn that my
father seems to miss your society even more than I. After your departure,
he would sit up for hours, wrapped up in his own thoughts. At first I did not
heed this particularly, because he often does so, when any of his patients are
sick unto death; but I soon found that my caresses—a successful remedy
generally—were entirely unheeded; and once I saw a tear stealing down
his dear and venerable face. I could submit tacitly no longer, but begged him
to tell me what disturbed him. He said he was beginning to find out my
value just as he was about to lose me. “Dear father,” said I “I will never,
never leave you. We have been too long all in all to each other!” Was I
not right, Frank, in giving him this assurance, and will you not doubly assure
him, when you come back? I know you will. “How can you make any such
promise, my child,” he asked, “when you have given your whole heart and
soul to another?” Now, was not this a strange speech for the good old man
to make? Do you not discover a little—just a little—jealousy in it? I
thought I did, and I laughed at the idea, though the tears were coursing each
other down his cheeks faster than ever; and I taxed him with the strange
manifestation. “Well,” said he, “have you not been wife, and daughter,
and companion, and comforter, and nurse, and every thing to me—and how
can I live, when all that gives life and cheerfulness to my house is gone?
It will be putting out the light of mine eyes—for my Ellen, all is dark
and dreary, when your shadow does not fall within the range of these
fast failing orbs.” According to promise, you see I have begun to write you a letter—and
one dozen have I commenced before, but tore them up, because I did not
know exactly what word to prefix to your name. First I tried plain Bernard—that
looked too cold and abrupt; and then Mr. Moore—and that appeared
too business like and formal; and then I began without any prefix at
all. At last, I went to Ellen in my distress, and she rated me roundly for
being ashamed to salute with an endearing epithet a man to whom I had promised
my hand, and given my heart. Nor was that all—she took me to task
for still wrapping myself up in that reserve which the world compels us to
wear, instead of endeavoring, as is my duty, (you know I call her Mrs. Duty,)
to establish an unreserved confidence between us, and to learn and betray at
the same time all those peculiarities of thought and feeling which go to make
up our identity. As I told her, that is the very thing which I dread. My Dear, Sir—At length we have scaled the Blue Mountains, but
not without a sharp skirmish with the savages, and many of them, I am
sorry to say, were of those who so lately received our bounty, and were
besides objects of such deep solicitude to us. All our labors, my dear
Sir, towards civilizing and christianizing even the tributaries, have been
worse than thrown away. Mr. Boyle's splendid scheme of philanthropy is
a failure, and we, his humble agents, have no other consolation left, but
a consciousness of having done our duty, with a perseverance which
neither scorn nor scepticism could not turn aside. Let it not be
said hereafter, that no effort was made in Virginis to treat the Aborigines
with the same spirit of clemency and mildness which was so successful
in Pennsylvania. Far greater efforts have been made by us, than was
ever made in that favored colony. The difference in the result is no
doubt owing to the fact, that the subjects with whom we have had to
deal were irretrievably spoiled before they came under our charge—not
so with those of Pennsylvania. I mention these things to you, because you
know that it was my determination when I sat out, to cross the mountains,
peaceably if I could, and forcibly if I must. The latter has been the alternative
forced upon me. From almost the very moment of setting out, our
steps have been dogged, and our flanks harrassed by these lawless men, and
more than one murder has been committed upon our sentries. But of
these things we can converse when we meet. I suppose you are anxious to
hear something of the country, which I have so long desired to see with my
own eyes. Well, Sir, the descriptions given to us at Temple Farm by the
interpreter were not at all exaggerated, and were, besides, wonderfully accurate
in a geographical point of view. It is indeed true enough that there are
double ranges of mountains, and that the sources of the Mississippi do not
rise here. We are now in a valley between these ranges, with the western
mountains distinctly in view, and the eastern ones immediately in our rear.
This valley seems to extend for hundreds of miles to the northeast and south-west,
and may be some fifty or sixty broad. I learn from my prisoners that
it has been mostly kept sacred by the Indians as a choice hunting ground, and
has not been the permanent residence of any of them, but that they came
and squatted during the hunting season. All this the interpreter kept (very
wisely, as he thought, no doubt) to himself. We have not yet seen the
miraculous boiling and medicinal springs, nor the bridge across the mountains;
but parties of exploration are daily going out, and such extravagant
accounts as they give of the game, and the country, and the rivers, and the
magnificent prospects, beggar my pen to describe. I can see enough, my dear
Sir, from the heights in my near neighborhood, to know that it is one of the
most charming retreats in the world. I do not hesitate to predict that a
second Virginia will grow up here, which will rival the famed shores of the
Chesapeake; but the products will be different, and the people must be different;
for it is a colder region. We have already had nipping frosts, and some
ice upon the borders of the streams. I am once more writing from a couch of some pain and suffering, but thank
God not like the last from which I addressed you that dismal letter, which I
then supposed would be my last. I have no such apprehensions now. My
wounds are in a fair way, and I am even permitted to walk about this large
tent—(the Governor's marquee) and above all, I am permitted to write to you. My Dear Sir: I have received your letter of the 5th inst., and in reply to it,
can only say what I some years past said to my friend George W. Summers,*
*The Hon. Geo. W. Summers, the present representative in Congress, from the Kenawha District,
in Virginia.
on the subject of your letter. I said to him, that I had seen in the possession
of the eldest branch of my family, a Golden Horse-Shoe set with garnets,
and having inscribed on it the motto: “Sic juval transcendere montes,” which
from tradition, I always understood was presented by Governor Spotswood, to
my Grandfather, as one of many gentlemen who acompanied him across the
mountains. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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