 | CHAPTER I. The wigwam and the cabin |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
“They talk,” said the stranger somewhat abruptly, “They
talk of the crimes of wealthy people, and in high life. No doubt
there are very great and many wrong doers among the rich.
People in possession of much wealth, and seeing how greatly it is
worshipped, will very naturally presume upon and abuse its powers;—but
it is not among the rich only, and in the great city,
that these things happen. The same snake, or one very much like
it, winds his way into the wigwam and the cabin—and the poor
silly country girl is as frequently the victim, as the dashing lady
of the city and city fashions. For that matter she is the more
easily liable to imposition, as are all persons who occupy insulated
positions, and see little of the great struggles of busy life.
The planter and the farmer who dwell in the remote interior
find the face of the visitor too interesting, to scrutinize it very
closely. A pleasant deportment, a specious outside, a gentle and
attractive manner, will win their way in our forest world, without
rendering necessary those formal assurances, that rigid introduction,
and those guaranties of well known persons, which the citizen
requires before you partake of his bread and salt. With us,
on the contrary, we confide readily; and the cunning stranger,
whom other communities have expelled with loathing, rendered
cautious and conciliatory by previous defeat, adopts the subtlety
of the snake, and winds his way as artfully as that reptile, when
he comes among us. We have too many sad stories of this sort.
Yours is one of them. This poor girl, Ellen Ramsay, was
abused thus, as I have shown you, by this scoundrel, Stanton.
But finish your narrative. She had a short time of it, and a sad
one, I do not doubt, with a creature so heartless and so vile.”
“But a poor eleven months; and the change was too rapid,”
said young Atkins, “not to let us see that she was any thing but
happy. To-day, the gayest of all God's creatures, as much like
a merry bird in spring-time, singing over its young;—to-morrow
as gloomy and miserable as if there was neither song nor sunshine
in God's whole earth.”
“Poor thing!” exclaimed Walter.
“It was the shortest life,” said the other, “to begin so well, that
I ever saw, and the story which you have heard is pretty much
the truth.”
“But the funeral?” said Walter.
“Ah! that was not exactly as you heard it,” was the reply of
Atkins. “I was at the funeral of Ellen Ramsay, as indeed was
very nearly all the village, and I could refer you to twenty who
will tell you the matter just as it occurred. In the first place, it
is not true that any body expected Robert Anderson to be present.
He sent no message of any kind to Stanton. It was very well
known that he was sick—actually in bed, and had been so for
more than a week before the death of Ellen. People almost
thought they might go off together. There was a sort of sympathy
between them, though I don't think, from the hour of her unlucky
marriage, that the eyes of the two ever met, till they met
in the world of spirits—unless it were, indeed, in their dreams.
But they seemed to pine away, both of them, about the same time,
and though he stood it longest, he did not outlast her much.
When she died, as I tell you, he was very feeble and in bed.
Nobody ever expected him to leave it alive, and least of all that
he should leave it then, to stand among the people at her grave.
The circumstances of her marriage with Stanton, were too notorious,
and too much calculated to embitter his feelings and his
peace, to make it likely that he would be present at such a scene.
She had cast him off, slightingly, to give a preference to the more
showy stranger, and she had spoken to him in a manner not soon
to be forgiven by a man of sensibility. But he did forgive—that
I know—and his love for Ellen was unimpaired to the last. She
did not doubt this, when she married Stanton, though she expressed
herself so. That was only to find some excuses to him, if not to
her own conscience, for her conduct. I'm sure she bitterly repented
in a hurry, and be sorry for it the next minute.”
“But the funeral?” said Walter.
“Ah! true—the funeral. Well, as I was telling you, when
the coffin was brought round to the burial place—you know the
spot, among a thick grove of stunted oaks, and the undergrowth
is always kept down by old Ramsay—who should come out from
behind one of the largest old trees, but Robert Anderson. He
was pale as a ghost, and his limbs trembled and tottered as he
walked, but he came forward as resolutely as if he felt no pain
or weakness. Stanton started when he saw him. He never expected
his presence, I assure you. Every eye saw his agitation
as Robert came forward; and I tell you, there was not a person
present who did not see, as well as myself, that the husband of
the poor girl looked much paler at that moment than her sick
lover. Robert did not seem to see Stanton, or to mind him as he
came forward; indeed, he did not seem to see any body. His
eyes were fixed only on the coffin, which was carried by me,
Ralph Mason, Dick Rawlins, and I think Hiram Barker. He
did not shed a tear, which we all wondered at, for all of us expected
to see him crying like any child, because we knew how
soft-hearted he always was, and how fond he had been of Ellen.
At first, we thought his not crying was because of his anger at
being so ill-treated, which was natural enough; but what he said
afterwards soon did away with that notion. He came close to my
side, and put his hand on the lid of the coffin near the name, and
though he said not a single word to us, we seemed to understand
that he meant we should stop till he read it. We did stop, and
he then read the plate aloud, something in this manner—`Ellen'
—and then he stopped a little as he came to the word `Stanton'—
and you could see a deep red flush grow out upon his cheek and
forehead, and then he grew pale as death—and held upon the
coffin as if to keep himself from falling—then he seemed to muster
up strength, and he read on, in very deliberate and full accents,
as if he had thrown all his resolution into the effort—`Ellen
Stanton!' These words he repeated twice, and then he passed
on to the rest—`Wife of George Stanton, born April 7, 1817.
Died,'—Here he stopped again, poor fellow! as if to catch his
He could only say—`Died. Died!' and there he stopped like a
man choking. By this time, Stanton came up close to him and
looked at us, as if to say `Why don't you go forward—why do
you suffer him to stop you'—but he said nothing. Robert did not
seem to mind or to notice him, but, with another effort, recovering
his strength and voice, he read on to the end—`Died March 27,
1836—AGED EIGHTEEN YEARS, ELEVEN MONTHS AND NINETEEN
DAYS.' Old John Ramsay by this time came up, and stood between
him and Stanton. He looked up from the coffin, first at
one and then at the other—and said quietly—without any appearance
of anger or passion:”—
“This, Mr. Ramsay, is your daughter, Ellen—she was to have
been my wife—she was engaged to me by her own promise, and
you gave your consent to our marriage. Is not this true, Mr.
Ramsay?”
“True,” said the old man very mildly, but with a deep sigh
that seemed to come from the bottom of his soul;—“but you know,
Robert,—”
Then it was that Robert seemed to lose himself for a moment.
His eye brightened with indignation and his speech came quick.
“I know that she is here!” he exclaimed—“here, in her coffin,
dead to you, your daughter—dead to me, my wife—your Ellen!
my Ellen!—My Ellen—my poor Ellen!” And then he sobbed
bitterly upon the coffin. I believe that most of the persons present
—and all had crowded round us—sobbed too. But I could not
see them, for my own heart was overflowing. The interruption
did not continue long. Robert was the first to recover himself.
He had always a right idea of what was proper; and no doubt,
just then, he felt, that, according to the world's way of thinking,
he was doing wrong in stopping the dead in its last progress to the
place of rest. He raised up his head from the coffin plate, and
said to us, speaking very slowly, for his breath seemed only to
come in sobs, and then after great efforts—
“Do not think, my friends, when I speak of the pledges Ellen
Ramsay made to me, that I am come here to utter any reproaches
of the dead, or to breathe a single syllable of complaint against the
blessed creature, who was always a sweet angel, now looking up
hear, any harm of a woman that I have always looked upon as
the purest and truest-hearted creature under the sun. No!
in telling you of this pledge, I come here only to acquit her of
any wrong, or evil thought, or action, when she ceased to think it
binding upon her. It is to say to you at her grave, for you all
knew that we were to be married, that, as I never gave her any
reason for believing me to be false, or more unworthy of her heart
than when she promised it to me, so, also, I believe that nothing
but some such persuasion could have made her deprive me of it.
While I acquit her, therefore, of having done me any intentional
injustice, I tell you, in the presence of her heavenly spirit, which
knows the truth of what I declare, that she has been abused by
some false slanderer, to do me wrong, and herself wrong, and
to—”
By this time Stanton put in, and stopped whatever more Robert
had to say. He had been getting more and more angry as
Robert went on, and when he came to that solemn part about the
slanderer, and lifted his hands to heaven and looked upward with
the tears just beginning to come into his eyes, as if he did really
see the spirit of Ellen at the moment above him, then Stanton got
quite furious. Those words clinched him in the sore part of his
soul; and he made round the coffin towards where Robert stood,
and doubled his fists, and spoke hoarsely, as if he was about to
choke.
“And who do you mean slandered you to her?” he cried to
Robert, “who! who!”
His face was as black as night, and his features, usually so
soft and pleasing to the eyes of the young women, now looked
rather like those of a devil than of a mortal man. We thought he
would have torn the poor young man to pieces, but Robert did not
seem at all daunted. I suppose if we had not been there, and
had not interfered so quickly, there would have been violence;
and violence upon a frail, dying creature like Robert, would have
been the most shocking cruelty. But Maxcy jumped in between
them, and John Ramsay, Ellen's youngest brother, stepped forward
also, and we all cried “shame,” and this drove Stanton back,
but he still looked furious and threatening, and seemed to wish
seemed to mind him less than the poor fellow who had most reason
to fear. Robert had a bold and fearless spirit, and there was a
time, before he grew sickly and religious, when he would have
grappled with him for death and life before the altar itself. But
he was now subdued. He did not seem to mind his enemy, or
indeed, any thing, but the coffin on which he hung. He did not,
I really think, hear Stanton speaking at all, though, for a few
moments, the fellow bullied pretty loud, and not a syllable that he
said escaped any body else. His soul seemed to be in the coffin.
His eyes seemed to try to pierce the heavy lid of pine, and the
dark crape, and the shroud; and one would think, from the eager
and satisfied gaze, that he had succeeded in doing so. No doubt
his mind deluded him, and he thought so—for you could hear him
whispering—“Ellen! dear Ellen!” Then he gave way to us,
and reading the plate, he said—“But eighteen—but eighteen.
But—it is all well now! all well!” He suffered us then to go
forward, and followed close, and made no objection, and said no
more words. While we let the coffin down, he stood so nigh, that
the earth shelved with him, and he would have gone in with it,
for he made no resistance, if we had not caught him in our arms
and dragged him from the brink. But we could not soon get him
from the spot. When all was done, he did not seem to mind that
the rest were going, but stood looking down as earnestly as if he
could still read the writing through six feet of earth. Stanton,
too, did not seem willing to go, but we very well knew it was for
no love he had for the poor girl that he wished to remain; and
Maxcy whispered to me that he would bring him off before he
left the ground, for fear he might do some harm to Robert, who
was no fighter, and was too feeble to stand one so strong. This
he did, and after he was gone I tried to get Robert away also. It
was some time before I did so, and then it seemed he went with
me only to get rid of my presence, for he was back at the grave
as soon as night set in, and there he might be found every evening
at the same hour, just about sunset, for several months afterwards—for
he lingered strangely—until they brought him to sleep
besied her. Though sick, and pining away fast, the poor fellow
never let an evening go by, whatever weather it might be, without
after the funeral, old Mrs. Anderson called me into her cottage as
I was riding by, and said she would show me something. She
took me up into her son's room, a little chamber in the loft, and
what should it be but a head-board, that the dying lad had sawed
out with his own hands, from a thick plank, and had smoothed,
and planed, and painted, all in secret, so that he could print on it
an inscription for the poor girl's grave; and you would be surprised
to see how neatly he had worked it all. The poor old woman
cried bitterly all the time, but you could still see how proud
she was of her son. She showed me his books—he had more than
a hundred—and she sighed from the bottom of her heart when she
told me it was the books that has made him sickly.
“But he will read,” she said, “say all I can; though he knows
it's a-doing him no good. `Ah, mother,' he says, when I tell
him about it, `though it may shorten my life to read, it will
shorten my happiness not to read, and I have too little happiness
now left me to be willing to lose any of it.' And when he speaks
so,” said the old woman, “I can't blame him, for I know it's all
true. But I blame myself, Mr. Atkins, for you see it was all of
my doing that he got so many books, and is so fond of them. I
loved to see him learning, and made him read to me so constantly
of an evening, and it did my heart so much good to think that
one day my Robert might be a great lawyer, or a parson, for I
could see how much smarter he was than all the other boys of
the village—and so I never looked at his pale cheeks, and had no
guess how poorly he was getting, till, all of a sudden, he was
laid up, on my hands, and pining away every hour, as you now
see him. Things looked better for a while when he got fond of
Ellen Ramsay, and she of him. But that Stanton, ever since he
came among us, Robert has gone backward, and I shan't wonder
if it's not very long before he wants his own tombstone!”
Poor old woman! I saw in a corner, half hidden behind an
old trunk in the youth's chamber, what it was evident she had
not seen, a head board, the very fellow to that which he had been
making for Ellen!—but I said nothing to her at the time. When
they were found after his death—for he said nothing of them
while he lived—they were both neatly finished, with a simple but
It was this—
Robert Anderson.”
“You tell me of a remarkable young man,” said Walter—
“and he was but twenty when he died?”
“No more!”
“We will go and look upon his grave.”
“You will see the head board there, but that for Ellen was
never put up—Stanton would not allow it.”
“Ah! but we shall mend that. I will pluck that scoundrel's
comb. Is the head-board preserved?”
“It is: his mother keeps it in his chamber, standing up beside
his little book-case; but see, yonder is Stanton now. He is on
his way to Ramsay's house. They do not live together. He
boards at a little farm-yard about a mile from the village. They
say that there has been a quarrel between him and his brother-in-law,
young John Ramsay, something about his sister's property.
There are eleven negroes which were owned by young
John and herself, in their own right, from the grand-mother's gift,
which they have suffered the old man to work until now. Stanton
wants a division, and young John tried to persuade him not
to touch them till his death, which must happen before long, he
sharing as before from the crop. But Stanton persists, and the
young fellow did not stop to tell him that he thought him a cruelly
base fellow. This is the report. It is very certain that they are
separate now, and there is a difference between them.”
“Very likely on the score of the negroes. But we will save
them to the old man, and drive him from a spot which he had
made wretched.”
“Can you do this? Are your proofs sufficient?”
“Ample.”
“You are yourself a lawyer?”
“Yes! But I shall have the assistance, if necessary, of Col.
Dawson, whom probably you know.”
“A first rate gentleman, and one of our best lawyers.”
“I bring letters to him—have already seen him on the subject,
Would I had been with you a year ago. Could I have traced
him, this poor girl had not been his victim. I should at least
have driven the snake from this one cabin.”
“Yes, if you had come a year ago, poor Ellen would have
been saved. But nothing could have saved the poor young man.
The rot was in the heart of the tree.”
“Yet!” said the other, putting his hand upon the arm of Atkins
—“though the tree perished, it might have been kept green to
the last. Some hurts might have been spared it. The man
who died in hope, might not have found it necessary to declare, at
the last moment, that he had utterly lived in wo. Yes—a little
year ago, we might have done much for both parties.”
“You will do great good by your coming now. The poor old
man loves his negroes as he does his children. They say he
looks upon the giving up the eleven to be sold, like a breaking up
of the establishment. His son says it will hurry him to the grave.
This was what he said to Stanton, which led to the quarrel.
Stanton sneered at the young man, and he, being pretty passionate,
blazed out at him in a way that pretty soon silenced the fellow.”
“This class of reptiles are all, more or less, cowards. We must
not burn daylight, as, if they consent to a division, the scoundrel
may make off with his share. Let us go forward,” continued
the speaker, with a show of feeling for which Atkins could not
well account—“I long to tread upon the viper—to bruise his
head, and above all to tear the fangs from his jaws. You
will, if Stanton be there, draw the old man aside and introduce
me to him, with some quiet hint of what I may be able
to do.”
“You say you have the papers with you?”
“Ay, ay,—here,”—striking his bosom—“I have here that
which shall confound him! Fear not! I do not deceive you. At
least I cannot deceive myself. I too have wrongs that need
avenging—I and mine! I and mine! Remember, I am Mr.
Jones from Tennessee—I must surprise and confound the fellow,
and would see how the land lies before I declare myself.”
| CHAPTER I. The wigwam and the cabin | |