 | The miscellaneous works of N.P. Willis |  |
WIGWAM versus ALMACK'S.
1. CHAPTER I.
In one of the years not long since passed to your
account and mine by the recording angel, gentle reader,
I was taking my fill of a delicious American June,
as Ducrow takes his bottle of wine, on the back of a
beloved horse. In the expressive language of the
raftsmen on the streams of the West, I was “following”
the Chemung—a river whose wild and peculiar
loveliness is destined to be told in undying song, whenever
America can find leisure to look up her poets.
Such bathing of the feet of precipices, such kissing
of flowery slopes, such winding in and out of the bosoms
of round meadows, such frowning amid broken
rocks, and smiling through smooth valleys, you would
never believe could go in this out-of-doors world,
unvisited and uncelebrated.
Not far from the ruins of a fortification, said to have
been built by the Spaniards before the settlement of
New-England by the English, the road along the Chemung
dwindles into a mere ledge at the foot of a
precipice, the river wearing into the rock at this spot
by a black and deep eddy. At the height of your lip
above the carriage track, there gushes from the rock
a stream of the size and steady clearness of a glass
rod, and all around it in the small rocky lap which it
has worn away, there grows a bed of fragrant mint,
kept by the shade and moisture of a perpetual green,
bright as emerald. Here stops every traveller who is
not upon an errand of life or death, and while his
horse stands up to his fetlocks in the river, he parts
the dewy stems of the mint, and drinks, for once in
his life, like a fay or a poet. It is one of those exquisite
spots which paint their own picture insensibly
in the memory, even while you look on them, natural
“Daguerrotypes,” as it were; and you are surprised,
years afterward, to find yourself remembering every
leaf and stone, and the song of every bird that sung
in the pine-trees overhead while you were watching
the curve of the spring-leap. As I said before, it will
be sung and celebrated, when America sits down weary
with her first century of toil, and calls for her minstrels,
now toiling with her in the fields.
Within a mile of this spot, to which I had been
looking forward with delight for some hours, I overtook
a horseman. Before coming up with him I had
at once decided he was an Indian. His relaxed limbs
swaying to every motion of his horse with the grace
and ease of a wreath of smoke, his neck and shoulders
so cleanly shaped, and a certain watchful look about
his ears which I cannot define, but which you see in
a spirited horse—were infallible marks of the race
whom we have driven from the fair land of our independence.
He was mounted upon a small black horse
—of the breed commonly called Indian ponies, now
not very common so near the Atlantic—and rode with
a slack rein and air, I thought, rather more dispirited
than indolent.
The kind of morning I have described, is, as every
one must remember, of a sweetness so communicative
that one would think two birds could scarce meet on
the wing without exchanging a carol; and I involuntarily
raised my bridle after a minute's study of the
traveller before me, and in a brief gallop was at his
side. With the sound of my horse's feet, however,
he changed in all his characteristics to another man—
sat erect in his saddle, and assumed the earnest air of
an American who never rides but upon some errand;
the unexceptionable accent of the country, I presumed
I had mistaken my man. He was dark, but not
darker than a Spaniard, of features singularly handsome
and regular, dressed with no peculiarity except
an otter-skin cap of a silky and golden-colored fur, too
expensive and rare for any but a fanciful, as well as a
luxurious purchaser. A slight wave in the black hair
which escaped from it, and fell back from his temples,
confirmed me in the conviction that his blood was of
European origin.
We rode on together with some indifferent conversation,
till we arrived at the spring-leap I have described,
and here my companion, throwing his right
leg over the neck of his poney, jumped to the ground
very actively, and applying his lips to the spring, drank
a free draught. His horse seemed to know the spot,
and, with the reins on his neck, trotted on to a shallower
ledge in the river and stood with the water to
his knees, and his quick eye turned on his master with
an expressive look of satisfaction.
“You have been here before,” I said, tying my
less disciplined horse to the branch of an overhanging
shrub.
“Yes—often!” was his reply, with a tone so quick
and rude, however, that, but for the softening quality
of the day, I should have abandoned there all thought
of further acquaintance.
I took a small valise from the pommel of my saddle,
and while my fellow-traveller sat on the rock-side
looking moodily into the river, I drew forth a flask of
wine and a leathern cup, a cold pigeon wrapped in a
cool cabbage leaf, the bigger end of a large loaf, and
as much salt as could be tied up in the cup of a large
water-lily—a set-out of provender which owed its
daintiness to the fair hands of my hostess of the night
before.
The stranger's first resemblance to an Indian had
probably given a color to my thoughts, for, as I handed
him a cup of wine, I said, “I wish the Shawance
chief to whose tribe this valley belongs, were here to
get a cup of my wine.”
The young man sprang to his feet with a sudden
flash through his eyes, and while he looked at me, he
seemed to stand taller than, from my previous impression
of his height, I should have thought possible.
Surprised as I was at the effect of my remark, I did
not withdraw the cup, and with a moment's searching
look into my face, he changed his attitude, begged
pardon rather confusedly, and, draining the cup, said
with a faint smile, “The Shawanee chief thanks
you!”
“Do you know the price of land in the valley?” I
asked, handing him a slice of bread with the half
pigeon upon it, and beginning to think it was best to
stick to commonplace subjects with a stranger.
“Yes!” he said, his brow clouding over again. “It
was bought from the Shawanee chief you speak of for
a string of beads the acre. The tribe had their burial-place
on the Susquehannah, some twenty miles from
this, and they cared little about a strip of a valley
which, now, I would rather have for my inheritance
than the fortune of any white man in the land.”
“Throw in the landlord's daughter at the village
below,” said I, “and I would take it before any half-dozen
of the German principalities. Have you heard
the news of her inheritance?”
Another moody look and a very crisp “Yes,” put
a stop to all desire on my part to make further advances
in my companion's acquaintance. Gathering my
pigeon bones together, therefore, and putting them on
the top of a stone where they would be seen by the
first “lucky dog” that passed, flinging my emptied
water-lily on the river, and strapping up cup and flask
once more in my valise, I mounted, and with a crusty
good morning, set off at a hand-gallop down the river.
My last unsuccessful topic was, at the time I write
of, the subject of conversation all through the neighborhood
of the village toward which I was travelling.
The most old-fashioned and comfortable inn on the
Susquehannah, or Chemung, was kept at the junction
of these two noble rivers, by a certain Robert Plymton,
who had “one fair daughter and no more.” He was
a plain farmer of Connecticut, who had married the
grand-daughter of an English emigrant, and got, with
his wife, a chest of old papers, which he thought had
better be used to mend a broken pane or wrap up groceries,
but which his wife, on her death-bed, told him
“might turn out worth something.” With this slender
thread of expectation, he had kept the little chest
under his bed, thinking of it perhaps once a year, and
satisfying his daughter's inquisitive queries with a
shake of his head, and something about “her poor
mother's tantrums,” concluding usually with some
reminder to keep the parlor in order, or mind her
housekeeping. Ruth Plymton had had some sixteen
“winters' schooling,” and was known to be much
“smarter” (Anglicé, cleverer), than was quite necessary
for the fulfilment of her manifold duties. Since
twelve years of age (the period of her mother's death)
she had officiated with more and more success as barmaid
and host's daughter to the most frequented inn
of the village, till now, at eighteen, she was the only
ostensible keeper of the inn, the old man usually being
absent in the fields with his men, or embarking his
grain in an “ark,” to take advantage of the first
freshet. She was civil to all comers, but her manner
was such as to make it perfectly plain even to the
rudest raftsman and hunter, that the highest respect
they knew how to render to a woman was her due.
She was rather unpopular with the girls of the village
from what they called her pride and “keeping to herself,”
but the truth was, that the cheap editions of
romances which Ruth took instead of money for the
lodging of the itinerant book-pedlars, were more
agreeable companions to her than the girls of the village;
and the long summer forenoons, and half the
long winter nights, were little enough for the busy
young hostess, who, seated on her bed, devoured tales
of high-life which harmonized with some secret longing
in her breast—she knew not and scarce thought
of asking herself why.
I had been twice at Athens (by this classical name
is known the village I speak of), and each time had
prolonged my stay at Plymton's inn for a day longer
than my horse or my repose strictly exacted. The
scenery at the junction is magnificent, but it was
scarce that. And I cannot say that it was altogether
admiration of the host's daughter; for though I breakfasted
late for the sake of having a clean parlor while
I ate my broiled chicken, and, having been once to
Italy, Miss Plymton liked to pour out my tea and hear
me talk of St. Peter's and the Carnival, yet there was
that marked retenu and decision in her manner that
made me feel quite too much like a culprit at school,
and large and black as her eyes were, and light and
airy as were all her motions, I mixed up with my propensity
for her society, a sort of dislike. In short, I
never felt a tenderness for a woman who could “queen
it” so easily, and I went heart-whole on my journey,
though always with a high respect for Ruth Plymton,
and a pleasant remembrance of her conversation.
The story which I had heard farther up the river
was, briefly, that there had arrived at Athens an Englishman,
who had found in Miss Ruth Plymton, the
last surviving descendant of the family of her mother;
that she was the heiress to a large fortune, if the
proof of her descent were complete, and that the contents
of the little chest had been the subject of a
week's hard study by the stranger, who had departed
after a vain attempt to persuade old Plymton to accompany
him to England with his daughter. This
with such repulsive coldness by my dark companion
at the spring-leap.
America is so much of an asylum for despairing
younger sons and the proud and starving branches of
great families, that a discovery of heirs to property
among people of very inferior condition, is by no
means uncommon. It is a species of romance in real
life, however, which we never believe upon hearsay,
and I rode on to the village, expecting my usual reception
by the fair damsel of the inn. The old sign
still hung askew as I approached, and the pillars of
the old wooden “stoop” or portico, were as much off
their perpendicular as before, and true to my augury,
out stepped my fair acquaintance at the sound of my
horse's feet, and called to Reuben the ostler, and gave
me an unchanged welcome. The old man was down
at the river side, and the key of the grated bar hung
at the hostess's girdle, and with these signs of times
as they were, my belief in the marvellous tale vanished
into thin air.
“So you are not gone to England to take possession?”
I said.
Her serious “No!” unsoftened by any other remark,
put a stop to the subject again, and taking myself
to task for having been all day stumbling on
mal-apropos subjects, I asked to be shown to my room,
and spent the hour or two before dinner in watching
the chickens from the window, and wondering a great
deal as to the “whereabouts” of my friend in the
otter-skin cap.
The evening of that day was unusually warm, and
I strolled down to the bank of the Susquehannah, to
bathe. The moon was nearly full and half way to the
zenith, and between the lingering sunset and the clear
splendor of the moonlight, the dusk of the “folding
hour” was forgotten, and the night went on almost as
radiant as day. I swam across the river, delighting
myself with the gold rims of the ripples before my
breast, and was within a yard or two of the shore on
my return, when I heard a woman's voice approaching
in earnest conversation. I shot forward and drew myself
in beneath a large clump of alders, and with only
my head out of water, lay in perfect concealment.
“You are not just, Shahatan!” were the first words
I distinguished, in a voice I immediately recognised
as that of my fair hostess. “You are not just. As
far as I know myself I love you better than any one I
ever saw—but”—
As she hesitated, the deep low voice of my companion
at the spring-leap, uttered in a suppressed and
impatient guttural, “But what?” He stood still with
his back to the moon, and while the light fell full on
her face, she withdrew her arm from his and went on.
“I was going to say that I do not yet know myself
or the world sufficiently to decide that I shall always
love you. I would not be too hasty in so important a
thing, Shahatan! We have talked of it before, and
therefore I may say to you, now, that the prejudices
of my father and all my friends are against it.”
“My blood”—interrupted the young man, with a
movemtn of impatience.
She laid her hand on his arm. “Stay! the objection
is not mine. Your Spanish mother, besides,
shows more in your look and features than the blood
of your father. But it would still be said I married
an Indian, and though I care little for what the village
would say, yet I must be certain that I shall love you
with all my heart and till death, before I set my face
with yours against the prejudices of every white man
and woman in my native land! You have urged me
for my secret, and there it is. I feel relieved to have
unburthened my heart of it.”
“That secret is but a summer old!” said he, half
turning on his heel, and looking from her upon the
moon's path across the river.
“Shame!” she replied; “you know that long before
this news came, I talked with you constantly of
other lands, and of my irresistible desire to see the
people of great cities, and satisfy myself whether I
was like them. That curiosity, Shahatan, is, I fear,
even stronger than my love, or at least, it is more impatient;
and now that I have the opportunity fallen to
me like a star out of the sky, shall I not go? I must.
Indeed I must.”
The lover felt that all had been said, or was too
proud to answer, for they fell into the path again, side
by side, in silence, and at a slow step were soon out of
my sight and hearing. I emerged from my compulsory
hiding-place wiser than I went in, dressed and
strolled back to the village, and finding the old landlord
smoking his pipe alone under the portico, I lighted
a cigar, and sat down to pick his brains of the little
information I wanted to fill out the story.
I took my leave of Athens on the following morning,
paying my bill duly to Miss Plymton, from whom
I requested a receipt in writing, for I foresaw without
any very sagacious augury beside what the old man
told me, that it might be an amusing document by-and-by.
You shall judge by the sequel of the story,
dear reader, whether you would like it in your book
of autographs.
Not long after the adventure described in the preceding
chapter, I embarked for a ramble in Europe.
Among the newspapers which were lying about in the
cabin of the packet, was one which contained this
paragraph, extracted from a New-Orleans Gazette.
The American reader will at once remember it:—
“Extraordinary attachment to savage life.—The officers
at Fort — (one of the most distant outposts
of human habitation in the west), extended their hospitality
lately to one of the young protegés of government,
a young Shawanee chief, who has been educated
at public expense for the purpose of aiding in the
civilization of his tribe. This youth, the son of a
Shawanee chief by a Spanish mother, was put to a
preparatory school in a small village on the Susquehannah,
and subsequently was graduated at —
College with the first honors of his class. He had
become a most accomplished gentleman, was apparently
fond of society, and, except in a scarce distinguishable
tinge of copper color in his skin, retained
no trace of his savage origin. Singular to relate,
however, he disappeared suddenly from the fort, leaving
behind him the clothes in which he had arrived,
and several articles of a gentleman's toilet; and as the
sentry on duty was passed at dawn of the same day by
a mounted Indian in the usual savage dress, who gave
the pass-word in issuing from the gate, it is presumed
it was no other than the young Shahatan, and that he
has joined his tribe, who were removed some years
since beyond the Mississippi.”
The reader will agree with me that I possessed the
key to the mystery.
As no one thinks of the thread that disappears in an
intricate embroidery till it comes out again on the
surface, I was too busy in weaving my own less interesting
woof of adventure for the two years following,
to give Shahatan and his love even a passing thought.
On a summer's night in 18—, however, I found myself
on a banquette at an Almack's ball, seated beside
a friend who, since we had met last at Almack's, had
given up the white rose of girlhood for the diamonds
of the dame, timidity and blushes for self-possession
and serene sweetness, dancing for conversation, and
the promise of beautiful and admired seventeen for the
perfection of more lovely and adorable twenty-two.
She was there as chaperon to a younger sister, and it
was delightful in that whirl of giddy motion, and more
giddy thought, to sit beside a tranquil and unfevered
either bewilderment or effort.
“What is it,” she said, “that constitutes aristocratic
beauty?—for it is often remarked that it is seen nowhere
in such perfection as at Almack's; yet, I have
for a half-hour looked in vain among these handsome
faces for a regular profile, or even a perfect figure. It
is not symmetry, surely, that gives a look of high
breeding—nor regularity of feature.”
“If you will take a leaf out of a traveller's book,”
I replied, “we may at least have the advantage of
a comparison. I remember recording, when travelling
in the East, that for months I had not seen an
irregular nose or forehead in a female face; and, almost
universally, the mouth and chin of the Orientals
are, as well as the upper features, of the most classic
correctness. Yet where, in civilized countries, do
women look lower-born or more degraded?”
“Then it is not in the features,” said my friend.
“No, nor in the figure, strictly,” I went on to say,
“for the French and Italian women (vide the same
book of mems), are generally remarkable for shape and
fine contour of limb, and the French are, we all know
(begging your pardon), much better dancers, and more
graceful in their movements, than all other nations.
Yet what is more rare than a `thorough-bred' looking
Frenchwoman?”
“We are coming to a conclusion very fast,” she
said, smiling. “Perhaps we shall find the great secret
in delicacy of skin, after all.”
“Not unless you will agree that Broadway in New-York
is the `prato fiarito,' of aristocratic beauty—for
nowhere on the face of the earth do you see such
complexions. Yet, my fair countrywomen stoop too
much, and are rather too dressy in their tastes to convey
very generally the impression of high birth.”
“Stay!” interrupted my companion, laying her
hand on my arm with a look of more meaning than I
quite understood; “before you commit yourself farther
on that point, look at this tall girl coming up the
floor, and tell me what you think of her, apropos to
the subject.”
“Why, that she is the very forth-shadowing of
noble parentage,” I replied, “in step, air, form—everything.
But surely the face is familiar to me.”
“It is the Miss Trevanion whom you said you had
never met. Yet she is an American, and with such a
fortune as hers, I wonder you should not have heard
of her at least.”
“Miss Trevanion! I never knew anybody of the
name, I am perfectly sure—yet that face I have seen
before, and I would stake my life I have known the
lady, and not casually either.”
My eyes were riveted to the beautiful woman who
now sailed past with a grace and stateliness that were
the subject of universal admiration, and I eagerly attempted
to catch her eye; but on the other side of
her walked one of the most agreeable flatterers of the
hour, and the crowd prevented my approaching her,
even if I had solved the mystery so far as to know in
what terms to address her. Yet it was marvellous
that I could ever have seen such beauty and forgotten
the when and where, or that such fine and unusually
lustrous eyes could ever have shone on me without
inscribing well in my memory their “whereabout”
and history.
“Well!” said my friend, “are you making out
your theory, or are you `struck home' with the first
impression, like many another dancer here to-night?”
“Pardon me! I shall find out presently, who Miss
Trevanion is—but, meantime, revenous. I will tell
you where I think lies the secret of the aristocratic
beauty of England. It is in the lofty maintien of the
head and bust—the proud carriage; if you remark, in
all these women—the head set back, the chest elevated
and expanded, and the whole port and expression,
that of pride and conscious superiority. This, mind
you, though the result of qualities in the character, is
not the work of a day, nor perhaps of a single generation.
The effect of expanding the breast and preserving
the back straight, and the posture generally
erect, is the high health and consequent beauty of
those portions of the frame; and the physical advantage,
handed down with the pride which produced it,
from mother to child, the race gradually has become
perfect in those points, and the look of pride and high-bearing
is now easy, natural, and unconscious. Glance
your eye around and you will see that there is not a
defective bust, and hardly a head ill set on, in the
room. In an assembly in any other part of the world,
to find a perfect bust with a gracefully carried head, is
as difficult as here to find the exception.”
“What a proud race you make us out, to be sure,”
said my companion, rather dissentingly.
“And so you are, eminently and emphatically
proud,” I replied. “What English family does not
revolt from any proposition of marriage from a foreigner?
For an English girl to marry a Frenchman
or an Italian, a German or a Russian, Greek, Turk, or
Spaniard, is to forfeit a certain degree of respectability,
let the match be as brilliant as it may. The first
feeling on hearing of it is against the girl's sense of
delicacy. It extends to everything else. Your soldiers,
your sailors, your tradesmen, your gentlemen,
your common people, and your nobles, are all (who
ever doubted it, you are mentally asking) out of all
comparison better than the same ranks and professions
in any other country. John Bull is literally surprised
if any one doubts this—nay, he does not believe that
any one does doubt it. Yet you call the Americans
ridiculously vain because they believe their institutions
better than yours, that their ships fight as well, their
women are as fair, and their men as gentlemanly as
any in the world. The `vanity' of the French, who
believe in themselves, just as the English do, only in a
less blind entireness of self-glorification, is a common
theme of ridicule in English newspapers; and the
French and the Americans, for a twentieth part of
English intolerance and self-exaggeration, are written
down daily by the English, as the two vainest nations
on earth.”
“Stop!” said my fair listener, who was beginning
to smile at my digression from female beauty to national
pride, “let me make a distinction there. As the
English and French are quite indifferent to the opinion
of other nations on these points, and not at all
shaken in their self-admiration by foreign incredulity,
theirs may fairly be dignified by the name of pride.
But what shall I say of the Americans, who are in a
perpetual fever at the ridicule of English newspapers,
and who receive, I understand, with a general convulsion
throughout the states, the least slur in a review,
or the smallest expression of disparagement in a tory
newspaper. This is not pride, but vanity.”
“I am hit, I grant you. A home thrust that I wish
I could foil. But here comes Miss Trevanion, again,
and I must make her out, or smother of curiosity. I
leave you a victor.”
The drawing of the cord which encloses the dancers,
narrowed the path of the promenaders so effectually,
that I could easily take my stand in such a
position that Miss Trevanion could not pass without
seeing me. With my back to one of the slight pillars
of the orchestra, I stood facing her as she came
down the room; and within a foot or two of my position,
yet with several persons between us, her eye
for the first time rested on me. There was a sudden
flush, a look of embarrassed but momentary curiosity,
and the beautiful features cleared up, and I saw, with
vexatious mortification, that she had the advantage
of me, and was even pleased to remember where we
had met. She held out her hand the next moment,
compression of the lips, she leaned over, and
said in a voice intended only for my ear, “Reuben!
take the gentleman's horse!”
My sensations were very much those of the Irishman
who fell into a pit in a dark night, and catching
a straggling root in his descent, hung suspended by
incredible exertion and strength of arm till morning,
when daylight disclosed the bottom, at just one inch
below the points of his toes. So easy seemed the
solution—after it was discovered.
Miss Trevanion (ci-devant Plymton) took my arm.
Her companion was engaged to dance. Our meeting
at Almack's was certainly one of the last events either
could have expected when we parted—but Almack's
is not the place to express strong emotions. We
walked leisurely down the sides of the quadrilles to
the tea-room, and between her bows and greetings to
her acquaintances, she put me au courant of her
movements for the last two years—Miss Trevanion
being the name she had inherited with the fortune
from her mother's family, and her mother's high but
distant connexions having recognised and taken her
by the hand in England. She had come abroad with
the representative of her country, who had been at
the trouble to see her installed in her rights, and had
but lately left her on his return to America. A house
in May Fair, and a chaperon in the shape of a card-playing
and aristocratic aunt, were the other principal
points in her parenthetical narration. Her communicativeness,
of course, was very gracious, and indeed
her whole manner was softened and mellowed down,
from the sharpness and hauteur of Miss Plymton.
Prosperity had improved even her voice.
As she bent over her tea, in the ante-room, I could
not but remark how beautiful she was by the change
usually wrought by the soft moisture of the English
air, on persons from dry climates—Americans particularly.
That filling out and rounding of the features,
and renewing and freshening of the skin, becoming
and improving to all, had to her been like Juno's
bath. Then who does not know the miracles of
dress? A circlet of diamonds whose “water” was
light itself, followed the fine bend on either side backward
from her brows, supporting, at the parting of her
hair, one large emerald. And on what neck (ay—
even of age) is not a diamond necklace beautiful?
Miss Trevanion was superb.
The house in Grosvenor Place, at which I knocked
the next morning, I well remembered as one of the
most elegant and sumptuous in London. Lady L—
had ruined herself in completing and furnishing it,
and her parties “in my time” were called, by the most
apathetic blasé, truly delightful.
“I bought this house of Lady L—,” said Miss
Trevanion, as we sat down to breakfast, “with all its
furniture, pictures, books, incumbrances, and trifles,
even to the horses in the stables, and the coachman
in his wig; for I had too many things to learn, to
study furniture and appointments, and in this very
short life, time is sadly wasted in beginnings. People
are for ever getting ready to live. What think you?
Is it not true in everything?”
“Not in love, certainly.”
“Ah! very true!” And she became suddenly
thoughtful, and for some minutes sipped her coffee in
silence. I did not interrupt it, for I was thinking of
Shahatan, and our thoughts very possibly were on the
same long journey.
“You are quite right,” said I, looking round at the
exquisitely-furnished room in which we were breakfasting,
“you have bought these things at their intrinsic
value, and you have all Lady L—'s taste, trouble,
and vexation for twenty years, thrown into the bar
gain. It is a matter of a lifetime to complete a house
like this, and just as it is all done, Lady L—retires,
an old woman, and you come all the way from a
country-inn on the Susquehannah to enjoy it. What
a whimsical world we live in!”
“Yes!” she said, in a sort of soliloquizing tone,
“I do enjoy it. It is a delightful sensation to take a
long stride at once in the art of life—to have lived for
years believing that the wants you felt could only be
supplied in fairy-land, and suddenly to change your
sphere, and discover that not only these wants, but a
thousand others, more unreasonable, and more imaginary,
had been the subject of human ingenuity
and talent, till those who live in luxury have no wants—
that science and chymistry and mechanics have left
no nerve in the human system, no recess in human
sense, unquestioned of its desire, and that every desire
is supplied! What mistaken ideas most people
have of luxury! They fancy the senses of the rich
are over-pampered, that their zest of pleasure is always
dull with too much gratification, that their
health is ruined with excess, and their tempers spoiled
with ease and subserviency. It is a picture drawn by
the poets in times when money could buy nothing but
excess, and when those who were prodigal could only
be gaudy and intemperate. It was necessary to practise
upon the reverse, too; and hence all the world is
convinced of the superior happiness of the ploughman,
the absolute necessity of early rising and coarse
food to health, and the pride that must come with the
flaunting of silk and satin.”
I could not but smile at this cool upset of all the
received philosophy of the poets.
“You laugh,” she continued, “but is it not true
that in England, at this moment, luxury is the science,
of keeping up the zest of the senses rather than
of pampering them—that the children of the wealthy
are the healthiest and fairest, and the sons of the aristocracy
are the most athletic and rational, as well as
the most carefully nurtured and expensive of all classes—that
the most costly dinners are the most digestible,
the most expensive wines the least injurious, the
most sumptuous houses the best ventilated and wholesome,
and the most aristocratic habits of life the most
conducive to the preservation of the constitution and
consequent long life. There will be excesses, of
course, in all spheres, but is not this true?”
“I am wondering how so gay a life as yours could
furnish such very grave reflections.”
“Pshaw! I am the very person to make them. My
aunt (who, by-the-way, never rises till four in the afternoon)
has always lived in this sublimated sphere,
and takes all these luxuries to be matters of course,
as much as I take them to be miracles. She thinks
a good cook as natural a circumstance as a fine tree,
and would be as much surprised and shocked at the
absence of wax candles, as she would at the going one
of the stars. She talks as if good dentists, good milliners,
opera-singers, perfumers, etc., were the common
supply of nature, like dew and sunshine to the
flowers. My surprise and delight amuse her, as the
child's wonder at the moon amuses the nurse.”
“Yet you call this dull unconsciousness the perfection
of civilized life.”
“I think my aunt altogether is not a bad specimen
of it, certainly. You have seen her, I think.”
“Frequently.”
“Well, you will allow that she is still a very handsome
woman. She is past fifty, and has every faculty
in perfect preservation; an erect figure, undiminished
delicacy and quickness in all her senses and
tastes, and is still an ornament to society, and an attractive
person in appearance and conversation. Contrast
her (and she is but one of a class) with the
women past fifty in the middle and lower walks of life
in America. At that age, with us, they are old
Their teeth are gone or defective from neglect, their
faces are wrinkled, their backs bent, ther feet enlarged,
their voices cracked, their senses impaired, their relish
in the joys of the young entirely gone by. What
makes the difference? Costly care. The physician
has watched over her health at a guinea a visit. The
dentist has examined her teeth at twenty guineas a
year. Expensive annual visits to the seaside have renewed
her skin. The friction of the weary hands of
her maid has kept down the swelling of her feet and
preserved their delicacy of shape. Close and open
carriages at will, have given her daily exercise, either
protected from the damp, or refreshed with the fine
air of the country. A good cook has kept her digestion
untaxed, and good wines have invigorated without
poisoning her constitution.”
“This is taking very unusual care of oneself, however.”
“Not at all. My aunt gives it no more thought
than the drawing on of her glove. It is another advantage
of wealth, too, that your physician and dentist
are distinguished persons who meet you in society,
and call on you unprofessionally, see when they are
needed, and detect the approach of disease before
you are aware of it yourself. My aunt, though `naturally
delicate,' has never been ill. She was watched
in childhood with great cost and pains, and, with the
habit of common caution herself, she is taken such
care of by her physician and servants, that nothing
but some extraordinary fatality could bring disease
near her.”
“Blessed are the rich, by your showing.”
“Why, the beatitudes were not written in our times.
If long life, prolonged youth and beauty, and almost
perennial health, are blessings, certainly, now-a-days,
blessed are the rich.”
“But is there no drawback to all this? Where
people have surrounded themselves with such costly
and indispensable luxuries, are they not made selfish
by the necessity of preserving them? Would any
exigence of hospitality, for instance, induce your aunt
to give up her bed, and the comforts of her own room,
to a stranger?”
“Oh dear, no!”
“Would she eat her dinner cold for the sake of
listening to an appeal to her charity?”
“How can you fancy such a thing?”
“Would she take a wet and dirty, but perishing
beggar-woman into her chariot on her way to a dinner-party,
to save her from dying by the roadside?”
“Um—why, I fear she would be very nearsighted
till she got fairly by.”
“Yet these are charities that require no great effort
in those whose chambers are less costly, whose
stomachs are less carefully watched, and whose carriages
and dresses are of a plainer fashion.”
“Very true!”
“So far, then, `blessed are the poor!' But is not
the heart slower in all its sympathies among the rich?
Are not friends chosen and discarded, because their
friendship is convenient or the contrary? Are not
many worthy people `ineligible' acquaintances, many
near relations unwelcome visiters, because they are
out of keeping with these costly circumstances, or
involve some sacrifice of personal luxury? Are not
people, who would not preserve their circle choice
and aristocratic, obliged to inflict cruel insults on
sensitive minds, to slight, to repulse, to neglect, to
equivocate and play the unfeeling and ungrateful, at
the same time that to their superiors they must often
sacrifice dignity, and contrive, and flatter, and deceive—all
to preserve the magic charm of the life you
have painted so attractive and enviable?”
“Heigho! it's a bad world, I believe!” said Miss
Trevanion, betraying by that ready sigh, that even
while drawing the attractions of high life, she had not
been blind to this more unfavorable side of the picture.
“And, rather more important query still, for an
heiress,” I said, “does not an intimate acquaintance
with these luxurious necessities, and the habit of
thinking them indispensable, make all lovers in this
class mercenary, and their admiration, where there is
wealth, subject, at least, to scrutiny and suspicion?”
A quick flush almost crimsoned Miss Trevanion's
face, and she fixed her eyes upon me so inquisitively
as to leave me in no doubt that I had inadvertently
touched upon a delicate subject. Embarrassed by a
searching look, and not seeing how I could explain
that I meant no allusion, I said hastily, “I was thinking
of swimming across the Susquehannah by moonlight.”
“Puck is at the door, if you please, miss!” said
the butler, entering at the moment.
“Perhaps while I am putting on my riding-hat,”
said Miss Trevanion, with a laugh, “I may discover
the connexion between your last two observations. It
certainly is not very clear at present.”
I took up my hat.
“Stay—you must ride with me. You shall have
the groom's horse, and we will go without him. I
hate to be chased through the park by a flying servant—one
English fashion, at least, that I think uncomfortable.
They manage it better where I learned
to ride,” she added with a laugh.
“Yes, indeed! I do not know which they would
first starve to death in the backwoods—the master for
his insolence in requiring the servant to follow him,
or the servant for being such a slave as to obey.”
I never remember to have seen a more beautiful
animal than the highbred blood-mare on which my
ci-devant hostess of the Plymton inn rode through
the park gates, and took the serpentine path at a free
gallop. I was as well mounted myself as I had ever
been in my life, and delighted, for once, not to fret a
hundred yards behind; the ambitious animal seemed
to have wings to his feet.
“Who ever rode such a horse as this,” said my
companion, “without confessing the happiness of
riches! It is the one luxury of this new life that I
should find it misery to forego. Look at the eagerness
of his ears! See his fine limbs as he strikes forward!
What nostrils! What glossy shoulders!
What bounding lightness of action! Beautiful Puck!
I could never live without you! What a shame to
nature that there are no such horses in the wilderness!”
“I remember seeing an Indian pony,” said I, watching
her face for the effect of my observation, “which
had as many fine qualities, though of a different
kind—at least when his master was on him.”
She looked at me inquiringly.
“By-the-way, too, it was at your house on the Susquehannah,”
I added, “you must remember the
horse—a black, double-jointed—”
“Yes, yes! I know. I remember. Shall we
quicken our pace? I hear some one overtaking us,
and to be passed with such horses as ours were a
shame indeed.”
We loosed our bridles and flew away like the wind;
but a bright tear was presently tossed from her
dark eyelash, and fell glittering on the dappled shoulder
of her horse. “Her heart is Shahatan's,” thought
I, “whatever chance there may be that the gay honorable
who is at our heels may dazzle her into throwing
away her hand.”
Mounted on a magnificent hunter, whose powerful
and straightforward leaps soon told against the lavish
and high action of our more showy horses, the Hon.
Charles — (the gentleman who had engrossed the
attention of Miss Trevanion the night before at
from his saddle, was taking pains to address conversation
to her in a tone not meant for my ear. As the
lady picked out her path with a marked preference
for his side of the road, I of course rode with a free
rein on the other, rather discontented, however, I
must own, to be playing Monsieur de Trop. The
Hon. Charles, I very well knew, was enjoying a temporary
relief from the most pressing of his acquaintances
by the prospect of his marrying an heiress, and
in a two years' gay life in London I had traversed his
threads too often to believe that he had a heart to be
redeemed from dissipation, or a soul to appreciate the
virtues of a high-minded woman. I found myself,
besides, without wishing it, attorney for Shahatan in
the case.
Observing that I “sulked,” Miss Trevanion, in the
next round, turned her horse's head toward the Serpentine
Bridge, and we entered into Kensington Gardens.
The band was playing on the other side of the
ha-ha, and fashionable London was divided between
the equestrians on the road, and the promenaders on
the greensward. We drew up in the thickest of the
crowd, and presuming that, by Miss Trevanion's tactics,
I was to find some other acquaintance to chat
with while our horses drew breath, I spurred to a little
distance, and sat mum in my saddle with forty or
fifty horsemen between me and herself. Her other
companion had put his horse as close by the side of
Puck as possible; but there were other dancers at
Almack's who had an eye upon the heiress, and their
tête-à-tête was interrupted presently by the how-d'ye-do's
and attentions of half a dozen of the gayest men
about town. After looking black at them for a moment,
Charles — drew bridle, and backing out of
the press rather unceremoniously, rode to the side of
a lady who sat in her saddle with a mounted servant
behind her, separated from me by only the trunk of a
superb lime-tree. I was fated to see all the workings
of Miss Trevanion's destiny.
“You see what I endure for you!” he said, as a
flush came and went in his pale face.
“You are false!” was the answer. “I saw you
ride in—your eyes fastened to hers—your lips open
with watching for her words—your horse in a foam
with your agitated and nervous riding. Never call
her a giraffe, or laugh at her again, Charles! She is
handsome enough to be loved for herself, and you
love her!”
“No, by Heaven!”
The lady made a gesture of impatience and whipped
her stirrup through the folds of her riding-dress till it
was heard even above the tinkling triangle of the band.
“No!” he continued, “and you are less clever than
you think, if you interpret my excitement into love.
I am excited—most eager in my chase after this woman.
You shall know why. But for herself—good
heavens!—why, you have never heard her speak!
She is never done wondering at silver forks, never
done with ecstatics about finger-glasses and pastilles.
She is a boor—and you are silly enough to put her
beside yourself!”
The lady's frown softened, and she gave him her
whip to hold while she reimprisoned a stray ringlet.
“Keep an eye on her, while I am talking to you,”
he continued, “for I must stick to her like her shadow.
She is full of mistrust, and if I lose her by the
want of attention for a single hour, that hour will cost
me yourself, dearest, first and most important of all,
and it will cost me England or my liberty—for failing
this, I have not a chance.”
“Go! go!” said the lady, in a new and now anxious
tone, touching his horse at the same time with
the whip he had just restored to her, “she is off!
Adieu!”
And with half a dozen attendants, Miss Trevanion
took the road at a gallop, while her contented rival
followed at a pensive amble, apparently quite content
to waste the time as she best might till dinner. The
handsome fortune-hunter watched his opportunity
and regained his place at Miss Trevanion's side, and
with an acquaintance, who was one of her self-selected
troop, I kept in the rear, chatting of the opera,
and enjoying the movement of a horse of as free and
admirable action as I had ever felt communicated,
like inspiration, through my blood.
I was resumed as sole cavalier and attendant at
Hyde Park gate.
“Do you know the Baroness —?” I asked, as
we walked our horses slowly down Grosvenor Place.
“Not personally,” she replied, “but I have heard
my aunt speak of her, and I know she is a woman of
most seductive manners, though said to be one of
very bad morals. But from what Mr. Charles —
tells me, I fancy high play is her only vice. And
meantime she is received everywhere.”
“I fancy,” said I, “that the Hon. Charles — is
good authority for the number of her vices, and begging
you, as a parting request, to make this remark
the key to your next month's observation, I have the
honor to return this fine horse to you, and make my
adieux.”
“But you will come to dinner! And, by-the-by,
you have not explained to me what you meant by
`swimming across the Susquehannah,' in the middle
of your breakfast, this morning.”
While Miss Trevanion gathered up her dress to
mount the steps, I told her the story which I have
already told the reader, of my involuntary discovery,
while lying in that moonlit river, of Shahatan's unfortunate
passion. Violently agitated by the few words
in which I conveyed it, she insisted on my entering
the house, and waiting while she recovered herself
sufficiently to talk to me on the subject. But I had
no fancy for match-making or breaking. I reiterated
my caution touching the intimacy of her fashionable
admirer with the baroness, and said a word of praise
of the noble savage who loved her.
2. CHAPTER II.
In the autumn of the year after the events outlined
in the previous chapter, I received a visit at my residence
on the Susquehannah, from a friend I had never
before seen a mile from St. James's street—a May-fair
man of fashion who took me in his way back from
Santa Fe. He stayed a few days to brush the cobwebs
from a fishing-rod and gun which he found in
inglorious retirement in the lumber-room of my cottage,
and, over our dinners, embellished with his trout
and woodcock, the relations of his adventures (compared,
as everything was, with London experience exclusively)
were as delightful to me as the tales of
Scheherezade to the calif.
“I have saved to the last,” he said, pushing me the
bottle, the evening before his departure, “a bit of romance
which I stumbled over in the prairie, and I
dare swear it will surprise you as much as it did me,
for I think you will remember having seen the heroine
at Almack's.”
“At Almack's?”
“You may well stare. I have been afraid to tell
you the story, lest you should think I drew too long
a bow. I certainly should never be believed in London.”
“Well—the story?”
“I told you of my leaving St. Louis with a trading
party for Santa Fe. Our leader was a rough chap,
big-boned, and ill put together, but honestly fond of
fight, and never content with a stranger till he had
refused at first to take me into his party, assuring me
that his exclusive services and those of his company
had been engaged at a high price, by another gentleman.
By dint of drinking `juleps' with him, however,
and giving him a thorough `mill' (for though
strong as a rhinoceros, he knew nothing of `the science'),
he at last elected me to the honor of his friendship,
and took me into the party as one of his own
men.
“I bought a strong horse, and on a bright May
morning the party set forward, bag and baggage, the
leader having stolen a march upon us, however, and
gone ahead with the person who hired his guidance.
It was fine fun at first, as I have told you, to gallop
away over the prairie without fence or ditch, but I
soon tired of the slow pace and the monotony of the
scenery, and began to wonder why the deuce our
leader kept himself so carefully out of sight—for in
three days' travel I had seen him but once, and then
at our bivouac fire on the second evening. The men
knew or would tell nothing, except that he had one
man and a packhorse with him, and that the `gentleman'
and he encamped farther on. I was under promise
to perform only the part of one of the hired carriers
of the party, or I should soon have made a push to
penetrate `the gentleman's' mystery.
“I think it was on the tenth day of our travels that
the men began to talk of falling in with a tribe of Indians,
whose hunting-grounds we were close upon,
and at whose village, upon the bank of a river, they
usually got fish and buffalo-hump, and other luxuries
not picked up on the wing. We encamped about
sunset that night as usual, and after picketing my
horse, I strolled off to a round mound not far from the
fire, and sat down upon the top to see the moon rise.
The east was brightening, and the evening was delicious.
“Up came the moon, looking like one of the duke
of Devonshire's gold plates (excuse the poetry of the
comparison), and still the rosy color hung on in the
west, and turning my eyes from one to the other, I at
last perceived, over the southwestern horizon, a mist
slowly coming up, which indicated the course of a
river. It was just in our track, and the whim struck
me to saddle my horse and ride on in search of the
Indian village, which, by their description, must be on
its banks.
“The men were singing songs over their supper,
and with a flask of brandy in my pocket, I got off unobserved,
and was soon in a flourishing gallop over the
wild prairie, without guide or compass. It was a silly
freak, and might have ended in an unpleasant adventure.
Pass the bottle and have no apprehensions,
however.
“For an hour or so, I was very much elated with
my independence, and my horse too seemed delighted
to get out of the slow pace of the caravan. It was as
light as day with the wonderful clearness of the atmosphere,
and the full moon and the coolness of the
evening air made exercise very exhilarating. I rode
on, looking up occasionally to the mist, which retreated
long after I thought I should have reached the
river, till I began to feel uneasy at last, and wondered
whether I had not embarked in a very mad adventure.
As I had lost sight of our own fires, and might miss
my way in trying to retrace my steps, I determined to
push on.
“My horse was in a walk, and I was beginning to
feel very grave, when suddenly the beast pricked up
his ears and gave a loud neigh. I rose in my stirrups,
and looked round in vain for the secret of his improved
spirits, till with a second glance forward, I discovered
what seemed the faint light reflected upon the smoke
of a concealed fire. The horse took his own counsel,
and set up a sharp gallop for the spot, and a few min
utes brought me in sight of a fire half concealed by a
clump of shrubs, and a white object near it, which to
my surprise developed to a tent. Two horses picketed
near, and a man sitting by the fire with his hands
crossed before his shins, and his chin on his knees,
completed the very agreeable picture.
“`Who goes there?' shouted this chap, springing
to his rifle as he heard my horse's feet sliding through
the grass.
“I gave the name of the leader, comprehending at
once that this was the advanced guard of our party;
but though the fellow lowered his rifle, he gave me a
very scant welcome, and motioned me away from the
tent-side of the fire. There was no turning a man out
of doors in the midst of a prairie; so, without ceremony,
I tethered my horse to his stake, and getting
out my dried beef and brandy, made a second supper
with quite as good an appetite as had done honor to
the first.
“My brandy-flask opened the lips of my sulky friend
after a while, though he kept his carcass very obstinately
between me and the tent, and I learned that the
leader (his name was Rolfe, by-the-by), had gone on
to the Indian village, and that `the gentleman' had
dropped the curtain of his tent at my approach, and
was probably asleep. My word of honor to Rolfe that
I would `cut no capers' (his own phrase in administering
the obligation), kept down my excited curiosity,
and prevented me, of course, from even pumping the
man beside me, though I might have done so with a
little more of the contents of my flask.
“The moon was pretty well overhead when Rolfe
returned, and found me fast asleep by the fire. I awoke
with the trampling and neighing of horses, and, springing
to my feet, I saw an Indian dismounting, and Rolfe
and the fire-tender conversing together while picketing
their horses. The Indian had a tall feather in his cap,
and trinkets on his breast, which glittered in the moonlight;
but he was dressed otherwise like a white man,
with a hunting-frock and very loose large trowsers.
By the way, he had moccasins, too, and a wampum
belt; but he was a clean-limbed, lithe, agile-looking
devil, with an eye like a coal of fire.
“`You've broke your contract, mister!' said Rolfe,
coming up to me; `but stand by and say nothing.'
“He then went to the tent, gave an `ehem!' by
way of a knock, and entered
“`It's a fine night!' said the Indian, coming up to
the fire and touching a brand with the toe of his moccasin.
“I was so surprised at the honest English in which
he delivered himself, that I stared at him without answer.
“`Do you speak English?' he said.
“`Tolerably well,' said I, `but I beg your pardon
for being so surprised at your own accent that I forgot
to reply to you. And now I look at you more closely,
I see that you are rather Spanish than Indian.'
“`My mother's blood,' he answered rather coldly,
`but my father was an Indian, and I am a chief.'
“`Well, Rolfe,' he continued, turning the next instant
to the trader, who came toward us, `who is this
that would see Shahatan?'
“The trader pointed to the tent. The curtain was
put aside, and a smart-looking youth, in a blue cap
and cloak, stepped out and took his way off into the
prairie, motioning to the chief to follow.
“`Go along! he won't eat ye!' said Rolfe, as the
Indian hesitated, from pride or distrust, and laid his
hand on his tomahawk.
“I wish I could tell you what was said at that interview,
for my curiosity was never so strongly excited.
Rolfe seemed bent on preventing both interference and
observation, however, and in his loud and coarse voice
commenced singing and making preparations for his
supper; and, persuading me into the drinking part of
was too sleepy to feel either romance or curiosity;
and leaving the moon to waste its silver on the wilderness,
and the mysterious colloquists to ramble and
finish their conference as they liked, I rolled over on
my buffalo-skin and dropped off to sleep.
“The next morning I rubbed my eyes to discover
whether all I have been telling you was not a dream,
for tent and demoiselle had evaporated, and I lay with
my feet to the smouldering fire, and all the trading
party preparing for breakfast around me. Alarmed at
my absence, they had made a start before sunrise to
overtake Rolfe, and had come up while I slept. The
leader after a while gave me a slip of paper from the
chief, saying that he should be happy to give me a
specimen of Indian hospitality at the Shawanee village,
on my return from Santa Fe—a neat hint that I
was not to intrude upon him at present.”
“Which you took?”
“Rolfe seemed to have had a hint which was probably
in some more decided shape, since he took it for
us all. The men grumbled at passing the village without
stopping for fish, but the leader was inexorable,
and we left it to the right and `made tracks,' as the
hunters say, for our destination. Two days from there
we saw a buffalo—”
“Which you demolished. You told me that story
last night. Come, get back to the Shawanees! You
called on the village at your return?”
“Yes, and an odd place it was. We came upon it
from the west, Rolfe having made a bend to the westward,
on his return back. We had been travelling all
day over a long plain, wooded in clumps, looking very
much like an immense park, and I began to think that
the trader intended to cheat me out of my visit—for
he said we should sup with the Shawanees that night,
and I did not in the least recognise the outline of the
country. We struck the bed of a small and very beautiful
river, presently, however, and after following it
through a wood for a mile, came to a sharp brow
where the river suddenly descended to a plain at least
two hundred feet lower than the table-land on which
we had been travelling. The country below looked
as if it might have been the bed of an immense lake,
and we stood on the shore of it.
“I sat on my horse geologizing in fancy about this
singular formation of land, till, hearing a shout, I
found the party had gone on, and Rolfe was hallooing
to me to follow. As I was trying to get a glimpse of
him through the trees, up rode my old acquaintance
Shahatan, with his rifle across his thigh, and gave me
a very cordial welcome. He then rode on to show me
the way. We left the river, which was foaming among
some fine rapids, and by a zig-zag side-path through
the woods, descended about half way to the plain,
where we rounded a huge rock, and stood suddenly in
the village of the Shawanees. You can not fancy any
thing so picturesque. On the left, for a quarter of a
mile, extended a natural steppe, or terrace, a hundred
yards wide, and rounding in a crescent to the south.
The river came in toward it on the right in a superb
cascade, visible from the whole of the platform, and
against the rocky wall at the back, and around on the
edge overlooking the plain, were built the wigwams
and log-huts of the tribe, in front of which lounged
men, women, and children, enjoying the cool of the
summer evening. Not far from the base of the hill
the river reappeared from the woods, and I distinguished
some fields planted with corn along its banks,
and horses and cattle grazing. What, with the pleasant
sound of the falls, and the beauty of the scene altogether,
it was to me more like the primitive Arcadia
we dream about, than anything I ever saw.
“Well, Rolfe and his party reached the village presently,
for the chief had brought me by a shorter cut,
and in a moment the whole tribe was about us, and
the trader found himself apparently among old acquaintances.
The chief sent a lad with my horse
down into the plain to be picketed where the grass was
better, and took me into a small hut, where I treated
myself to a little more of a toilet than I had been accustomed
to of late, in compliment to the unusual
prospect of supping with a lady. The hut was lined
with bark, and seemed used by the chief for the same
purpose, as there were sundry articles of dress and
other civilized refinements hanging to the bracing-poles,
and covering a rude table in the corner.
“Fancy my surprise, on coming out, to meet the
chief strolling up and down his prairie shelf with, not
one lady, but half a dozen—a respectable looking gentleman
in black (I speak of his coat), and a bevy of
nice-looking girls, with our Almack's acquaintance in
the centre—the whole party, except the chief, dressed
in a way that would pass muster in any village in England.
Shahatan wore the Indian's blanket, modified
with a large mantle of fine blue cloth, and crossed over
his handsome bare chest something after the style of
a Hieland tartan. I really never saw a better made or
more magnificent looking fellow, though I am not sure
that his easy and picturesque dress would not have improved
a plainer man.
“I remembered directly that Rolfe had said something
to me about missionaries living among the Shawanees,
and I was not surprised to hear that the gentleman
in a black coat was a reverend, and the ladies the
sisterhood of the mission. Miss Trevanion seemed
rather in haste to inform me of the presence of `the
cloth,' and in the next breath claimed my congratulations
on her marriage! She had been a chieftainess
for two months.
“We strolled up and down the grassy terrace, dividing
our attention between the effects of the sunset on
the prairie below and the preparations for our supper,
which was going on by the light of pine-knots stuck
in the clefts of the rock in the rear. A dozen Indian
girls were crossing and recrossing before the fires,
and with the bright glare upon the precipice, and the
moving figures, wigwams, &c., it was like a picture of
Salvator Rosa's. The fair chieftainess, as she glided
across occasionally to look after the people, with a step
as light as her stately figure would allow, was not the
least beautiful feature of the scene. We lost a fine
creature when we let her slip through our fingers, my
dear fellow!”
“Thereby hangs a tale, I have little doubt, and I
can give you some data for a good guess at it—but as
the `nigger song' has it—
Black-eyed pease, or bread and butter?”
“We had everything the wilderness could produce
—appetites included. Lying in the track of the trading-parties,
Shahatan, of course, made what additions
he liked to the Indian mode of living, and except that
our table was a huge buffalo-skin stretched upon stakes,
the supper might have been a traveller's meal among
Turks or Arabs, for all that was peculiar about it. I
should except, perhaps, that no Turk or Arab ever saw
so pretty a creature as the chief's sister, who was my
neighbor at the feast.”
“So—another romance.”
“No, indeed! For though her eyes were eloquent
enough to persuade one to forswear the world and turn
Shawanee, she had no tongue for a stranger. What
little English she had learned of the missionaries she
was too sly to use, and our flirtation was a very unsatisfactory
pantomime. I parted from her at night in
the big wigwam, without having been out of ear-shot
of the chief for a single moment; and as Rolfe was in
exorable about getting off with the daybreak the next
morning, it was the last I saw of the little fawn. But
to tell you the truth, I had forty minds between that
at her.
“The big wigwam, I should tell you, was as large
as a common breakfast-room in London. It was built
of bark very ingeniously sewed together, and lined
throughout with the most costly furs, even the floor
covered with highly-dressed bear-skins. After finishing
our supper in the open air, the large curtain at the
door, which was made of the most superb gold-colored
otters, was thrown up to let in the blaze of the pine
torches stuck in the rock opposite, and, as the evening
was getting cool, we followed the chieftainess to her
savage drawing-room, and took coffee and chatted till
a late hour, lounging on the rude, fur-covered couches.
I had not much chance to talk with our old
friend, but I gathered from what little she said that
she had been disgusted with the heartlessness of London,
and preferred the wilderness with one of nature's
nobility to all the splendors of matrimony in high-life.
She said, however, that she should try to induce Shahatan
to travel abroad for a year or two, and after that,
she thought their time would be agreeably spent in
such a mixture of savage and civilized life as her fortune
and his control over the tribe would enable them
to manage.”
When my friend had concluded his story, I threw
what little light I possessed upon the undeveloped
springs of Miss Trevanion's extraordinary movements,
and we ended our philosophizings on the subject by
promising ourselves a trip to the Shawaness some day
together. Now that we are together in London, however,
and have had the benefit of Mrs. Melicent's additional
chapter, with the still later news that Shahatan
and his wife were travelling by the last accounts in the
east, we have limited our programme to meeting them
in England, and have no little curiosity to see whether
the young savage will decide like his wife in the question
of “Wigwam versus Almack's.”
| The miscellaneous works of N.P. Willis | |