The River's Children Part 7

The call is in every heart, uttered or unexpressed, and one day it will pierce the heavens, finding the blue for him who sends it forth, and for the listener as well if his heart be attuned.

Let who will go and sit through one of these services, and if he does not come away subdued and silent, more tender at heart, and, if need be, stronger of hand to clasp and to lift, perhaps--well, perhaps his mind is open only to the pictorial and the spectacular.

There is no telling how long the house-party would have remained in Paradise but for the inexorable calendar which warned certain of its members that they would be expected to answer the royal summons of Comus at the approaching carnival; and of course the important fact that certain bills from the legislature affecting the public weal were awaiting the governor's signature.

A surprising number of marriages followed this visit, seeming to confirm a report of an absurd number of engagements made on the island.

There is a certain old black woman living yet "down by the old basin" in French New Orleans, a toothless old crone who, by the irony of circ.u.mstance, is familiarly known as "Ol' Mammy Molar," who "remembers"

many things of this time and occasion, which she glibly calls "de silveringineer party," and who likes nothing better than an audience.

If she is believed, this much too literal account of a far-away time is most meager and unfaithful, for she does most strenuously insist that, for instance, there was served at the servants' table on that first night--

But let her have her way of it for a moment--just a single breath:

"Why, honey," she closes her eyes as she begins, the better to see memory behind them. "Why, honey, de champagne wine was pa.s.sed aroun' to de hands all dat indurin' infair in _water-buckets_, an' dipped out in _gou'd dippers-full_, bilin' over so fast an' fizzin' so it'd tickle yo'

mouf to drink it. An' Ma.r.s.e Harol' Le Duc, he stood on a _pi_anner-stool on de back gallery an' th'owed out gol' dollars by de hatful for any of us n.i.g.g.e.rs to pick up; an' de guv'ner, ol' Ma.r.s.e Abe Lincolm, he fired off sky-rockers an' read out freedom papers.

"An' mids' all de dance an' reveltry, a bolt o' thunder fell like a cannon-ball outen a clair sky, an' we looked up an' lo an' beholst, here was a vision of a big hand writin' on de sky, an' a voice say, '_Eat up de balance ef anything is found wantin'_!' an' wid dat, dey plunged in like a herd o' swine boun' for de sea, an' dey devoured de fragmints an'

popped mo' corks, an' dipped out mo' champagne wine, an' de mo' dey dipped out champagne wine, de mo' dey 'd dance. An' de mo' dey 'd dance, de mo' de wine would flow."

Possibly the old woman's obvious confusion of thought has some explanation in the fact of the presence of the governor of the State, who, introduced as a high dignitary, did make a little speech late that night, thanking the colored people in terms of compliment for their dancing; and any impression made here was so quickly overlaid by the deeper experiences of the war that a blending can easily be explained.

There was a shower of coins--"picayunes" only--thrown during the evening by the master, a feature of the dance being to recover as many of them as possible without breaking step. So the old woman's memory is not so far afield, although as a historian she might need a little editing. But such even as this is much of the so-called "history" which, bound in calf, dishonors the world's libraries to-day.

It is so easy, seeing cobwebs upon a record,--cobwebs which may not be quite construed as alphabet,--to interpret them as hieroglyphics of import, instead of simply brus.h.i.+ng them away, or relegating them, where they belong, to the dusky domain of the myth out of which we may expect only weird suggestion, as from the mold of pressed rosemary, typifying remembrance dead.

The house-party, which in this poor retrospect seems to have devoted itself almost wholly to pleasure, was nevertheless followed by immediate work upon the project in behalf of which it was planned.

With this main motive was also the ulterior and most proper one in Harold's mind of introducing his wife in so intimate a fas.h.i.+on to some of the important members of society, who would date life-friends.h.i.+ps from the pleasant occasion of helping him to open his own door to them.

Some thousands of dollars went into the quicksands of the marshes before the foundations were laid for the arch of a proposed great bridge, beneath which his boats should sail to their landing. With the arrogant bravado of an impulsive boy challenged to action, he began his arch first. Its announcement of independence and munificence would express the position he had taken. Sometimes it is well to put up a bold front, even if one needs work backward from it.

Harold moved fast--but the G.o.ds of war moved faster!

Scarcely had a single column of solid masonry risen above the palmetto swamp when Fort Sumter's guns sounded. The smell of gunpowder penetrated the fastnesses of the brake, and yet, though his nostrils quivered like those of an impetuous war-horse, the master held himself in rein with the thought of her who would be cruelly alone without him. And he said to himself, while he reared his arch: "Two out of three are enough! I have taken their terror island for my portion. They may have garlands upon my bridge--when they come sailing up my ca.n.a.l as heroes!"

But the next whiff from the battleground stopped work on the arch. The brothers had fallen side by side.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The brave, unthinking fellow, after embracing his beloved, dashed to the front"]

Madly seizing both the recovered swords, declaring he would "fight as three," the brave, unthinking fellow, after embracing his beloved, put one of her hands in Hannah's and the other in Israel's, and, commending them to G.o.d by a speechless lift of his dark eyes, mounted his horse and dashed, as one afraid to look back, to the front.

VI

Every one knows the story of "poor Harold Le Duc"--how, captured, wounded, he lay for more than a year on the edge of insanity in a Federal hospital. Every one knows of the birth of his child on the lonely island, with only black hands to receive and tend it, and how the waiting mother, guarded by the faithful two, and loved by the three hundred loyal slaves who prayed for her life, finally pa.s.sed out of it on the very day of days for which she had planned a great Christmas banquet for them in honor of their master's triumphant return.

The story is threadbare. Everyone knows how it happened that "the old people," Colonel and Madame Le Duc, having taken flight upon report of a battle, following their last son, had crossed the lines and been unable from that day to communicate with the island; of the season of the snake-plague in the heart of the brake, when rattlers and copperheads, spreading-adders, moccasins, and conger-eels came up to the island, squirming, darting, or lazily sunning themselves in its flowering grounds and lily-ponds, some even finding their way into the very beds of the people; when the trees were deserted of birds, and alligators prowled across the terraces, depredating the poultry-yard and even threatening the negro children.

In the presence of so manifold disaster many of the negroes returned to voodooism, and nude dances by weird fires offered to Satan supplanted the shouting of the name of Christ in the churches. A red streak in the sky over the brake was regarded as an omen of blood--the thunderbolt which struck the smoke-stack of the sugar-house a command to stop work.

Old women who had treated the sick with savory teas of roots and herbs lapsed into conjuring with bits of hair and bones. A rabbit's foot was more potent than medicine; a snake's tooth wet with swamp sc.u.m and dried in the glare of burning sulphur more to be feared than G.o.d.

War, death and birth and death again, followed by scant provender threatening famine, and then by the invasion of serpents, had struck terror into hearts already tremulous and half afraid.

The word "freedom" had scarcely reached the island and set the air vibrating with hope, commingled with dread, when the reported death of the master came as a grim corroboration of the startling prospect.

All this is an open story.

But how Israel and Hannah, aided in their flight by a faithful few, slipped away one dark night, carrying the young child with them to bear her safely to her father's people, knowing nothing of their absence, pending the soldier's return--for the two never believed him dead; how, when they had nearly reached the rear lands of the paternal place, they were met by an irresistible flood which turned them back; and how, barely escaping with their lives, they were finally rowed in a skiff quite through the hall of the great house--so high, indeed, that Mammy rescued a family portrait from the wall as they pa.s.sed; how the baby slept through it all, and the dog followed, swimming--

This is part of the inside history never publicly told.

The little party was taken aboard a boat which waited midstream, a tug which became so overcrowded that it took no account of pa.s.sengers whom it carried safely to the city. Of the poor forlorn lot, a few found their way back to the plantations in search of survivors, but in most instances, having gone too soon, they returned disheartened.

Madame Le Duc, who, with her guests and servants, had fled from the homestead at the first warning, did not hear for months of the flight of the old people with her grandchild, and of their supposed fate. No one doubted that all three had perished in the river, and the news came as tardy death tidings again--tidings arriving after the manner of war news, which often put whole families in and out of mourning, in and out of season.

VII

There is not s.p.a.ce here to dwell upon Harold's final return to Brake Island, bent and broken, unkempt,--disguised by the marks of sorrow, unrecognized, as he had hoped to be, of the straggling few of his own negroes whom he encountered camping in the wood, imprisoned by fear.

These, mistaking him for a tramp, avoided him. He had heard the news _en route_,--the "news," then several years old,--and had, nevertheless, yielded to a sort of blind, stumbling fascination which drew him back to the scene of his happiness and his despair. Here, after all, was the real battle-field--and he was again vanquished.

When he reached the homestead, he found it wholly deserted. The "big house," sacred to superst.i.tion through its succession of tragedies, was as Mammy and Israel had left it. Even its larder was untouched, and the key of the wine-cellar lay imbedded in rust in sight of the cob-webbed door.

It was a sad man, prematurely gray, and still gaunt--and white with the pallor of the hospital prison--who, after this sorrowful pilgrimage to Brake Island, appeared, as from the grave, upon the streets of New Orleans. When he was reinstated in his broken home, and known once more of his family and friends, he would easily have become the popular hero of the hour, for the gay world flung its gilded doors open to him.

The Latin temperament of old New Orleans kept always a song in her throat, even through all the sad pa.s.sages of her history; and there was never a year when the French quarter, coquette that she was, did not shake her flounces and dance for a season with her dainty toes against the lower side of Ca.n.a.l Street.

But Harold was not a fellow of forgetful mind. The arch of his life was broken, it is true, but like that of the bridge he had begun--a bridge which was to invite the gay world, yes, but which would ever have dominated it, letting its sails pa.s.s under--he could be no other than a worthy ruin. Had his impetuous temper turned upon himself on his return to the island, where devastation seemed to mock him at every turn, there is no telling where it might have driven him. But a lonely mother, and the knowledge that his father had died of a broken heart upon the report of his death, the last of his three sons--the pathetic, dependence of his mother upon him--the appeal of her doting eyes and the exigencies of an almost hopeless financial confusion--all these combined as a challenge to his manhood to take the helm in the management of a wrecked estate.

It was a saving situation. How often is work the great savior of men!

Once stirred in the direction of effort, Harold soon developed great genius for the manipulation of affairs. Reorganization began with his control.

Square-shouldered and straight as an Indian, clear of profile, deep-eyed, and thoughtful of visage, the young man with the white hair was soon a marked figure. When even serious men "went foolish over him,"

it is not surprising that ambitious mothers of marriageable daughters, in these scant days of dearth of men, should have exhibited occasional fluttering anxieties while they placed their broken fortunes in his hands.