University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

Some caprice determining Sarah to refurnish the house,
she asked Parke to accompany her on a journey. She
desired him to recollect how many years the furniture
had lasted, and hoped that what she intended to buy
would last as long. They were absent a week. Before
their return, there were two arrivals in Crest, which
excited some interest — that of the bark Unicorn,
whaler, of which Sam Rogers was mate, and the
schooner Emily, which brought as passengers a family
from the South, consisting of a mother and two
daughters, named Lang. The captain's story concerning
them was meagre in its details, but the gossips of
Crest were obliged to content themselves with it, as
nothing more could be obtained. He said that Mrs.
Lang's passage was engaged, when he was in port at
Savannah, by an elderly planter from the interior, who
made inquiries respecting the eligibility of the small
towns on the coast of New England as a place of residence,
and decided upon Crest. What relation he was
to his passengers, the captain did not discover; but he
guessed he was a wise old cove to send them to the
North.

The glitter of negro blood was in Mrs. Lang's eyes,
and the negro modulation in her voice; her complexion
was a deep yellow, and she wore a wig of dark, straight
hair. Though past middle age, her carriage was still

splendid. She had been a lithe, sinewy, gay savage,
but her day was over; a double expression was dominant
in her face now—of weariness, from some long-continued
strain, and of repose, because of safety attained.
Her manners reflected the hut, the boudoir,
and the Methodist gatherings of plantation slaves.

Her daughters, Clarice and Charlotte, sixteen and
eighteen years of age, were handsome. Clarice had a
brilliant swarthy complexion, shining, curly, black hair,
large black eyes, with a vindictive sparkle, and manners
which were a mixture of the sulky and the vivacious.
Charlotte reminded one of the Calla Ethiopia, she was
so tall, slender, bending, and graceful, her complexion
so smooth and opaque, and the curves of her face so
beautiful. Her lips were always parted, her wistful
light-blue eyes widely opened, and her straight, silky,
chestnut hair disordered. She impressed those who saw
her with a pitying admiration, a wondering regret, and
a mysterious doubt. Mrs. Lang hired a cottage on the
outskirts of Crest, in a little by-street, which Jason had
cut and graded, intending to build a row, but never had,
and set up housekeeping, without hiring assistance, or
introducing herself to her remote neighbors. Some,
calling her “nigger,” wondered if she expected that
anybody would associate with her and her daughters,
if she did, she would find herself mistaken, and kept in
a repellant attitude, in case she should make an advance;
then relaxed that indignant pride, and began to suffer
from a lively curiosity regarding the habits of the
family, and, finally, made an attempt at acquaintance,
which was met with the coldest response. Others heard
of the arrival of the Langs with the same indifference

that they heard of the arrival of a circus, or a lecturer
on the lost arts or poetry; among these was Sarah, who,
when Elsa told her the news, on the night of her return,
was too much engrossed in her new purchases to pay
much attention to it.

“I walked up that way, while you were gone,” said
Elsa, “and I saw Mrs. Lang; she wears a wig, because
she is ashamed of her woolly hair.”

“Oh, Elsa,” said Philippa, “do you wonder that a
woman with white blood in her veins should try to hide
the black?”

“A nigger is a nigger, and the Lord means to keep
him so. I have no patience with the race; and it seems
as if He hadn't, sometimes, by the way things go on
here and in Africa.”

“Mother,” asked Parke, “didn't you buy something
for Elsa?”

“Yes, a new front; what the shopkeepers called a
`ventilated front.' You needed one badly, Elsa.”

“Goodness!” she exclaimed, putting up her hand to a
rusty false band of hair that wouldn't stay on her forehead,
“did you think of me, Sarah?”

“Poor Mrs. Lang!” said Parke, comically.

“Now, Parke, you need not twit me; but I must say
that youngest daughter of Mrs. Lang, who came here to
see Mr. Auster about the house they have hired of him, is
the most lovely creature I ever laid my eyes on. She
beats Theresa Bond out and out.”

“Does she?” Parke asked, with an air of interest
“She is to be pitied, then.”

“Look at the shells Sam Rogers brought me.” And
Philippa brought out a box for Parke to inspect. He

regretted that he had not known of the gift, so that he
might have brought a little cabinet to place them in,
and said he must visit Sam that night.

“I'll make you one,” said Jason, who had not said a
word of the Langs, though he knew more of them than
Elsa did, for he had seen them several times in reference
to rent and repairs.

“Jason, I believe you have a longing to follow your
old trade,” said Sarah.

“It amuses me to play with edged tools,” he answered.

“The kings somewhere,” said Parke, “learn trades, so
that if their kingdoms upset, or they are compelled to
abdicate, they can earn their living. Who was it made
baskets?”

“That is the case with me,” remarked Jason, “all but
the kingdom.”

“This is the first time, Parke,” Elsa observed, “that
I have had a specimen of your college learning. I conclude
you got that story there.”

“Put on your false front, Elsa, and don't be troublesome.”

“Theresa Bond should have stayed longer, to see our
new things,” she continued.

“She will have the chance any time to enjoy my
choice,” Sarah answered. “I do not wish to have the
house renovated for fifty years. Whoever will disturb
it, disturbs me, dead, or alive.”

Elsa reflected upon this remark afterwards, and did
not wonder at Jason's saying “all but the kingdom.”
Nobody had ever succeeded in standing against Sarah,
except Osmond Luce. Jason, Philippa, and Parke were
under her sway. If a struggle should ever come between

her and Parke, he would either give up and die,
or she would harry him to death.

Parke made himself quite irritable during the renovation;
that is, he contradicted her once or twice, and
looked annoyed because Philippa showed so much indifference
about any change in her own room. One day
he brought a letter from Theresa for her to read, which
contained some suggestions he had asked for, concerning
her taste.

“I do not want to read it,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Theresa writes me, you know.”

“So I supposed; but she does not answer my questions
in your letters, does she?”

“She might as well, though.”

“To save postage?”

Something wild flew into her eyes, which he saw.
All the sallow tints in her face disappeared like magic,
and a line of fire ran into her lips.

“What is it?” he asked. “You mean to convince me
that she cannot manage me alone? Why must I have
so much done for me, Philippa?”

If she had possessed the least subtlety of feeling at that
moment, she would have given up the contest she waged;
but she only thought of what she was herself, and how
he should know it.

“Theresa has talked with you, of course, about me?”
he asked again.

“I talked with her.”

“Where is the distinction?”

“Parke, you do not understand yourself.”

“Nor you. I thought you liked Theresa. Do you

want me to break with her? I have only not to answer
her letter.”

“I do like her.”

“Come, let us go and ride. The afternoon is fine.”

“Shall you answer the letter?”

“I'll take the ride first.”

The horses were at the gate in a few minutes, and
Parke turned them in the direction of one of the necks
of the bay. Philippa was foolish enough to feel happy
again. There could not come a time, she believed, when
her life with Parke would cease. It would not be in the
nature of any circumstance that could happen to him
that she would not, in some way, be involved in it, and
influential with it. As for him, there was something in
the atmosphere that made his spirits rise—something
more with every mile that made them equable, fair, and
full. The vast white clouds that moved in the blue sky,
and let fall darting shadows over the still and solitary
landscape—the mild sea-wind, rustling the faded corn-leaves
on their dry stalks—the grasshoppers, singing
their last songs in the warm turf—the purple and yellow
flowers and red grass in the ditch—the low, level fields,
dipping to the shore, beyond which he caught glimpses
of the sea—the tranquil twilight of an old pine woods,
whose needles filled up the sandy ruts, whose tops of
vital green covered a gray skeleton army of trunks—the
maples, whose leaves are the couriers of the frost—the
flickering birches, dropping pale-yellow leaves—the triedged,
shining grass of the salt-marshes—the whir of
the brown birds—the umber-colored brooks, with their
borders of cool sand—one and all belonged to the pleasant
condition of his mind.