University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

The appearance of Janet Berkeley fully justified the
high encomium which Barsfield had passed upon her
beauties; yet nothing could be more unassuming than
her deportment—nothing more unimposing than her entire
carriage. A quiet ease, a natural and seemingly
effortless movement, placed her before you, and, like
all perfect things, her loveliness was to be studied before
it could be perceived. It did not affront you by an
obtrusion of any thing remarkable. Her features were
all too much in unison with one another—too symmetrically
unique, to strike abruptly: they seemed rather
to fill and to absorb the mind of the spectator than to
strike his eye.

Her person was rather small and slender: her features,
though marked by health, were all soft and delicate.
A pale, high forehead, from beneath which a pair
of large black eyes flashed out a subdued, dewy, but
rich, transparent light—a nose finely Grecian—cheeks
rather too pale, perhaps, for expression—and a mouth
which was sweetly small and delicately full,—were the
distinguishing features of her face. Her chin, though
not prominent, did not retreat; and her neck was white
and smoothly round, as if a nice artist had spent a life
in working it to perfection. Her hair, which was long
and dark, was gathered up and secured by a white fillet,
without study, yet with a disposition of grace that seemed
to denote the highest efforts of study. It was the art
which concealed the art—the fine taste of the woman
naturally employed in adorning the loveliest object in
creation—herself. It was the fashion of the time to
pile the hair in successive layers upon the crown, until

it rose into a huge tower, Babel-like and toppling.
Janet was superior to any such sacrifice of good sense
and good taste, simply in compliance with a vulgar rage.
Her long tresses, simply secured from annoyance, were
left free to wander where they would about her neck, to
the marble whiteness of which they proved an admirable
foil; while the volume was so distributed about the head
as to prevent that uncouth exhibition of its bulk in one
quarter which is too much the sin of taste in the sex
generally. So admirably did the features, the dress, and
the deportment of Janet Berkeley blend in their proper
effects together, that the dullest sense must have felt
their united force, even though the eye might not have
paused to dwell upon any one individual beauty. Her
carriage denoted a consciousness of her own strength,
which spoke forcibly in contrast with the equally obvious
feebleness of her father's spirit. Perhaps, indeed,
it was the imbecility and weakness of his, which had
given strength and character to hers. It is not uncommon
for the good natural mind to exercise itself in those
attributes which, in others, they perceive inactive and
wanting to their owners. She had seen too many evil
results from her father's indecision and imbecility, not to
strive sternly in the attainment of the faculty in which
he was so lamentably deficient; and she had not striven
in vain. Though yet unenforced to open exercise and
exhibition of its strength by controlling and overcoming
dangers, the heart of Janet Berkeley was strong in her,
and would not have been unprepared for their encounter.
Her untroubled composure of glance, her equanimity of
manner, her unshrinking address, and the singular ease
with which, without tremour or hesitation, her parting lips
gave way to the utterance of the language she might
deem necessary to the occasion, were all so many proofs
of that strength of soul which, associated as it was with
all the grace and susceptibility of woman, made her a
creature of moral, not less than of physical, symmetry,—
the very ideal of a just conception of the noblest nature
and the gentlest sex. The deportment of Mr. Berkeley
was unconsciously elevated as he surveyed hers: such
is the influence of the pure heart and perfect character.
His pride grew lifted in the contemplation; and, timid
and tame, and without a manly spirit, as he was, he felt
that he could willingly die to serve and to preserve her.

“She is indeed a jewel, Barsfield!” said Clayton,
in a whisper, aside to his superior; “she is a jewel,—
you are a lucky man.”

“A goddess!” was the quick reply, in similar tones,
—“a goddess!—she will make Kaddipah a very heaven
in my sight.”

“Let it be a Christian heaven, then, I pray you, by
dropping that abominable heathen name.”

The other maiden, whom we have seen introduced as
Miss Duncan, was an orphan, a niece of Mr. Berkeley,
and, for the present, residing with her cousin. She was
pretty, and her eyes danced with a lively play of light,
that spoke a gay heart and cloudless disposition. Perhaps,
at the first glance, she would have been found
more imposing than Janet; there was more to strike
the eye in her features and deportment, as there was
more inequality—more that was irregular—none of that
perfect symmetry, which so harmonizes with the observer's
glance and spirit, as not often to arrest, at first, his
particular attention. A study of her face, however,
would soon disinthral, though it would not offend, the observer.
It wanted depth—profundity—character. At
a glance you beheld its resources. There was nothing
more to see; and you would turn away to her more
quiet companion, and find at every look, in every passing
shade of expression, every transition of mood, that there
was more hidden than revealed—that the casket was
rich within—that there was a treasure and a mystery,
though it might demand a power of the purest and the
highest to unlock its spells, and to remove the sacred
seal that was upon it.

A few moments had elapsed after the entrance of the
ladies, when a servant announced the supper to be in
readiness, after the wholesome fashion of the country.
A table was spread in an adjoining apartment, and now
awaited the guests. Barsfield would have offered his
arm to Janet, but she had already possessed herself of
her father's. Lieutenant Clayton had already secured
the company of Miss Duncan; and they were soon
seated around the hospitable board. But where was
Blonay—the despised—the deformed—the desolate?
Miss Berkeley, presiding at the head of the table, remarked
his absence, and her eye at once addressed her
father.

“The other gentleman, father?” she said, inquiringly.

“Gentleman indeed!” was the exclamation of Barsfield,
accompanied by a rude laugh, which was slightly
echoed by his companion; “Gentleman indeed! give
yourself no manner of concern on his account, Miss
Berkeley. He is some miserable overseer—a sand-lapper
from Goose Creek, of whom we know nothing,
except that Proctor, the commandant at Dorchester, has
thought proper to give him a passport to go where he
pleases.”

“He is my father's guest, sir,” was the dignified and
rebuking reply; “and we can take no exception to his
poverty, or his occupation, or the place from which he
comes. We have not heretofore been accustomed to
do so, and it would be far less than good policy now,
when the vicissitudes of the times are such, that even a
person such as you describe him to be may become not
only our neighbour, but our superior, to-morrow.”

Mr. Berkeley started from his chair in some little
confusion. He felt the truth of what his daughter said,
yet he saw that her speech had touched Barsfield to the
quick. The red spot was on the cheek of the tory, and
his lips quivered for an instant.

“Janet is right, Captain Barsfield; the hospitality of

Piney Grove must not be impeached. Its doors must
be open to the poor as well as the rich; we cannot discriminate
between them;”—and, so speaking, he hurried
out to look after the Half-Breed. He had not far to
look. To the great surprise of the old man, he found
Blonay a listener at the door of the apartment. He
must have heard every syllable that had been spoken.
He had been practising after his Indian nature, and was
not sensible of any impropriety in the act. Revolting
at the task before him, Mr. Berkeley, with as good a
grace as possible, invited the scout into the apartment—
an invitation accepted without scruple, and as soon as
given; and he sidled into a seat, much to the annoyance
of Barsfield, directly in front of him. This little
occurrence did not take place without greatly disquieting
the host. He saw that Barsfield felt the force of the
sarcasm which his daughter had uttered, and he strove,
by the most unwearied attentions on his own part, to do
away with all unpleasant feelings on the part of the tory
captain. Janet, however, exhibited no manner of change
in her deportment. She did not seem conscious of
any departure from prudence, as she certainly had been
guilty of no departure from propriety; but, when she saw
the indefatigable and humiliating industry with which her
father strove to conciliate a man whom she had good
reason to despise as well as hate, the warm colour
stole into her cheeks with a flash-like indignation, and
her upper lip took its expression from the bitter scorn in
her bosom, and curled into very haughtiness as she surveyed
the scene. The expression passed away in an
instant, however; and when, a little more composed
himself, Barsfield ventured to cast a sidelong glance at
the maiden, and saw how subdued, how gentle, how utterly
wanting in malignity were her features, he dismissed
from his mind the thought that what she had said,
so directly applying as it did to himself—he having
sprung from the dregs of the people, and such having
been his fortunes—was intended for any such application.

The angry scowl with which the tory might have regarded
the maiden, was turned, however, upon the Half-Breed;
who, as he beheld its threatening expression,
would have been glad to have taken to his heels, and to
have hidden his disquiet in the surrounding woods. But
the kind look of Janet reassured him, and he turned his
frightful and blear eyes in no other direction. His mind,
probably for the first time, seemed to take in a new sentiment
of the loveliness of virtue. Though blear-eyed,
he was not blind; and, as she did not seem to behold his
deformity, he was able to examine her beauty. In morals,
the German theory of the senses is more than half
right. The odour and the colour are in us, rather than in
the objects of our survey; and yet, unless acted upon
by external influences, the latent capacity might never expand
into energy and consciousness. To bring out this
capacity is the office of education, and this art had never
so far acted upon the Half-Breed as to show him how
much there was of a good nature dormant, and silent,
and mingled up with the evil within him. His education,
in a leading respect, was yet to begin.