University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.
SUMMING UP.

It is early June, and the balmy south wind is blowing
soft and warm round Redstone Hall, which, with
its countless roses in full bloom, and its profusion of
flowering shrubs and vines, looked wondrously beautiful
without, while within, the sunlight of domestic
peace is shining with no cloud to dim its brightness.
Frederic and Marian are perfectly happy, for the dark
night which enshrouded them so long has passed
away, and the day they fancy will never end has
dawned upon them at last.

Ben, too, is there, ostensibly as an overseer, but
really as a valued friend, free to do whatever he
pleases, and greatly esteemed by those whom he worships
with a devotion bordering upon idolatry. Everything
pertaining to the place he calls his, and Frederic
hardly knows whether himself or Ben is the master
of Redstone Hall. The negroes acknowledge them
both, though, as is quite natural, the aristocratic Higginses
give the preference to Frederic, while the democratic
Smitherses, with stammering Josh at their
head, warmly advocate Marster Ben, “as sayin' the
curisest things and singin' the drollest songs.”

There is no spot in the world where Ben could be so
supremely happy as he is at Redstone Hall, with Marian
and Alice; and when Frederic, on his return from
Ohio, suggested his remaining there, he evidence his
delight in his usual way, lamenting the while that his

extremely tender heart would always make him cry
just when he did not wish to.

“I was never cut out for a nigger driver,” he said;
“but I guess I can coax as much out of 'em as that blusterin'
Warren did;” and making his visit short, he
hastened back to New England, where he found no
difficulty of disposing of his grocery, and five of his
numerous family.

These last he bestowed upon different people in the
village, taking great care that none of them should go
where there were children, and numerous were his injunctions
that they should be well cared for, and suffered
to die a natural death. Marian and Alice were
destined for Kentucky, where they were welcomed
joyfully by those whose names they bore. Particularly
was the white one, with its bright, sightless eyes,
the pet of the entire household, negroes and all; while
even Bruno, who, on account of his recognition of Marian,
was now allowed more liberty than before, and
was consequently far less savage, took kindly to the
little creature, tossing it up in his huge paws, licking
its snowy face, and sometimes coaxing it into his kennel,
where it was more than once found by the delighted
Alice, sleeping half hidden under the mastiff's
shaggy mane.

Frequently on bright days could Alice and her kitten
be seen seated in a miniature waggon, which the
Yankee ingenuity of Ben had devised, and in which
he drew his blind pets from field to field, seeking out
for them the shadiest spot and watching all their
movements with a vigilance which told how dear to
him was one of them at least. In all the wide world
there is nothing Ben Burt loves half so well as the
helpless blind girl, Alice—not as he loved Marian
Grey, but with a tender, unselfish devotion, which
would prompt him at any time to lay down his life for
her, if it need must be. All the fairest flowers and
choicest fruits are brought to her. And when he sees

how she enjoys them, and how grateful she is to him,
he murmurs softly:

“Blessed bird, I b'lieve I'd be blind myself, if she
could only see.”

But Alice does not care for sight, except at times,
when she hears the people speak of Mrs. Raymond's
beauty, and she wishes she could look upon the face
whose praises so many ring. Still she is very happy
in Frederic's and Marian's love, and happy, too, with
her faithful friend, around whose neck she often twines
her arms, blessing him for all he was to Marian and
all he is to her.

Once she hoped to improve his peculiar dialect somewhat
by imparting to him a greater knowledge of
books than he already possessed, and Ben, willing to
gratify her, waded industriously through the many
volumes she recommended him to read, among which
was “Watts on the Mind.” But vain were all his efforts
to grasp a single idea, and he returned it to Alice,
saying that “he presumed it was a very excitin'
story to some, but blamed if he could make out a word
of sense from beginnin' to finis.”

“'Taint much use tryin' to make a scholar of me,”
said he, winking slyly at Marian, who was present.
“It's hard enough teachin' old dogs new tricks, and if
I's to read all there is in the Squire's library, I shouldn't
be no better off.”

Marian thought so, too, and she dropped a few well-timed
hints to Alice, who gradually relaxed her efforts
to teach one who, had he been educated, would
certainly not have been the simple-hearted, unselfish
man we now know as Ben Burt.

Away to the northward among the New England
hills there is a forsaken grave, where the inebriated
Rudolph sleeps. His thirst for revenge is over and
the forlorn girl who, in her mother's kitchen washes
the dinner dishes for college students just as she used
to when Frederic Raymond was a boarder there, has
nothing to dread from him. Mrs. Huntington's house

on the river has been sold to cancel the mortgage, and
in the city of Elms she has returned to her old vocation,
and Isabel, with her broken nose and ugly scar,
has scarcely a hope, that among her mother's boarders
there will ever one be found weak enough to offer her
his hand. An humbled, and it is to be hoped, a better
woman, she derives her greatest comfort from the
letters which sometimes come to her from Marian, and
which usually contain a more substantial token of regard
than mere words convey.

One word now of William Gordon and our story is
done. Ben had claimed the privilege of writing the
news to him, and he did it in his charactistic way, first
touching upon the note which, he said, was safe in his
wallet and sure of being paid, then launching out into
glowing descriptions of Marian's happines with Frederic.

This letter was a long time in finding Will, and the
answer did not reach Redstone Hall until the family had
returned from their summer residence at Riverside.
Then it came to them one warm November day, just
as the sun was setting, and its mellow rays fell upon
the group assembled upon the piazza. Frederic, to
whom it was directed, broke the seal and read the sincere
congratulations which his early friend had sent to
him from over the sea,—read, too, that 'mid the vineclad
hills of Bingen, in a cottage looking out upon the
Rhine, there was a fair-haired German girl, with eyes
like Marian Grey, and that when Will came next to
America he would not be alone.

“For this fair-haired German girl,” he wrote, “has
promised to come with me. I have told her of my
former love, and when last night I read to her Ben's
letter, the tears glistened in her lustrous eyes as she
whispered in her broken English tongue, `God bless
sweet Marian Grey,' and I, too, Fred, from a full
heart respond the same, God bless sweet Marian Grey,
the Heiress of Redstone Hall.”