Tales of the Chesapeake Part 32

"'Luke,' said my mother timidly, 'Mrs.

Clendenning--Heraine--is--dead.'

"'I know it,' said I quietly.

"She seemed surprised, and interrogated me with her eyes.

"'She died at twilight yesterday,' I stated; 'as the first candles were lit in the lodge and the earliest star appeared--I heard her footsteps.'

"'At that time she pa.s.sed away,' sobbed my mother. 'Oh, Luke! you were cruel to the poor girl. Her parting prayer was made for you. To the last you stood between Heraine and heaven.'

"'At that time, mother, I was sitting at my window. Tears and thrills haunted me during the afternoon, and I was frightened in the silence and darkness. And I heard Heraine's footsteps come up the road, pa.s.s the lodge, ascend the stairs, and cross my threshold. They were like echoes rather than sounds--hollow and ghostly; and mingled with them were the deeper footfalls of my other spectre, her husband.'

"I could not inhabit my chamber now. These awful sounds drove me into the open world, where I hoped to lose them in the tread of mult.i.tudes.

I wandered to the old church on the day of the funeral, and looked upon the bier with dry and burning eyes. The pastor read of the holy Jerusalem, and said that her pure feet were walking the golden streets. But in the hushes of the sobbing I heard them close beside me, and while children were strewing her grave with flowers they followed me over the stile and through the village till I gained the fields and took to my heels in fright.

"I sought the resort of crowds, and lived amid turbulences. In busy hours I baffled my pursuers; but in the dark midnights, when only the miserable walked, I suffered the agonies of remorse and penance. The ever-flowing stream of life on London Bridge became my solace. My apartments are here, and I sit continually at an open window, leaning far forward, to catch the thunder of the tramp. I know the footfalls as of old. I see the suicide pace to and fro, to nerve herself for the deed. I hear her sleek betrayer, and detect their wretched offspring as he first essays to filch a handkerchief or a purse.

"Oh, the footfalls! the footfalls! Each tread marks a good or a wicked thought. A fiend or an angel starts beneath every heel. They write an eternal record as they go. Their voices float forever to witness against or for us. We people s.p.a.ce as we cleave it. The ground that is dumb as we spurn it has a memory and a revenge. I am more sensitive than my kind; and my penance to these monitors of my sin is but a realization of the terror which all must feel at the accusation of their footfalls."

UPPER MARLB'RO'.

Through a narrow, ravelled valley, wearing down the farmer's soil, The Patuxent flows inconstant, with a hue of clay and oil, From the terraces of mill-dams and the temperate slopes of wheat, To the bottoms of tobacco, watched by many a planter's seat.

There the blackened drying-houses show the hanging shocks of green, Smoking through the lifted shutters, sunning in the nicotine; And around old steamboat-landings loiter mules and over-seers, With the hogsheads of tobacco rolled together on the piers.

Inland from the river stranded in a cove between the hills, Lies old Marlb'ro' Court and village, acclimated to her chills; And the white mists nightly rising from the swamps that trench her round, Seem the sheeted ghosts of memories buried in that ancient ground.

Here in days when still Prince George's of the province was the queen, Great old judges ruled the gentry, gathering to the court-house green; When the Ogles and the Tayloes matched their Arab steeds to race, Judge Duval adjourned the sessions, Luther Martin quit his case.

Here young Roger Taney lingered, while the horn and hounds were loud, To behold the pompous Pinkney scattering learning to the crowd; And old men great Wirt remembered, while their minds he strove to win, As a little German urchin drumming at his father's inn.

When the ocean barks could moor them in the shadow of the town Ere the channels filled and mouldered with the rich soil wafted down-- Here the Irish trader, Carroll, brought the bride of Darnell Hall, And their Jesuit son was Bishop of the New World over all.

Here the troopers of Prince George's, with their horse-tail helmets, won Praise from valiant Eager Howard and from General Wilkinson; And (the village doctor seeking from the British to restore) Key, the poet, wrote his anthem in the light of Baltimore.

One by one the homes colonial disappear in Time's decrees.

Though the apple orchards linger and the lanes of cherry-trees; E'en the Woodyard[3] mansion kindles when the chimney-beam consumes, And the tolerant Northern farmer ploughs around old Romish tombs.

By the high white gravelled turnpike trails the sunken, copse-grown route, Where the troops of Ross and c.o.c.kburn marched to victory, and about, Halting twice at Upper Marlb'ro', where 'tis still tradition's brag, That 'twas Barney got the victory though the British got the swag.

But the Capital, rebuilded, counts 'mid towns rebellious this-- Standing in the old slave region 'twixt it and Annapolis; And the cannons their embrasures on the Anacostia forts Open tow'rd old ruined Marlb'ro' and the dead Patuxent ports.

[Footnote 3: "The Woodyard," the finest brick mansion on the western peninsula of Maryland, the seat of the Wests, twelve miles from Was.h.i.+ngton, burned down a few years ago by the unaccountable ignition of the great beam of wood over the big chimney-place, which had stood there for nearly 200 years. Either seasoned by the fire or fired by spooks, it caught in the night, and a heap of imported bricks stood next morning in place of The Woodyard.]

Still from Was.h.i.+ngton some traveller, tempted by the easy grades, Through the Long Old Fields continues cantering in the evening shades, Till he hears the frogs and crickets serenading something lost, In the aguey mists of Marlb'ro' banked before him like a frost.

Then the lights begin to twinkle, and he hears the negroes' feet Dancing in the old storehouses on the sandy business street, And abandoned lawyers' lodges underneath the long trees lurk, Like the vaults around a graveyard where the court-house is the kirk.

He will see the sallow old men drinking juleps, grave and bleared-- But no more their household servants at the court-house auctioneered; And the county clerk will prove it by the records on his shelves, That the fathers of the province were no better than ourselves.

PREACHERS' SONS IN 1849.

When I admit that these reminiscences are real, it will at once be inferred that I am a preacher's son. The general reputation of my cla.s.s has been bad since the day of Eli; but I affirm and maintain that reason does not bear out this verdict, however obstinate experience may be. For why should the best parents have the worst children? and that our itinerant sires were G.o.dly and self-sacrificing men the most prodigal of their boys must confess. No flippant or errant example rises before me when I take my father's portrait in my hand and recall the humility and heroism of his life. A stern and angular face, out of whose saliences look two ruddy windows, lit by a steadfast cheerfulness, is thinly thatched by hairs of iron-gray, and around the long loose throat a bunch of frosted beard sparkles as if the painter's pencil had fastened there in reverence. I do not need to study the bent, broad shoulders and thin sinewy limbs to measure the hardness and steepness of his path; he climbed it like a bridegroom, humming quaint s.n.a.t.c.hes of hymns to lull his human waywardnesses, and all the fever and errantry of our own vain career shrink abashed before his high devotion.

That I have turned out a rover is not odd; for the travelling preacher's son is cradled upon the highway. Three months after my birth we "moved" a hundred miles; by my sixteenth year we had made eleven migrations.

We children little sympathize with our weak and sickly mother on these occasions, but look forward to a change of abode as something very novel and desirable. We count the days between Christmas and April, after which the annual "Conference" a.s.sembles in the distant city, and we see our father, in his best black suit, quit the parsonage door with an anxious face, cut to the heart by his wife's farewell, "May they give you a good place, Thomas!"

Then come letters--one, two, three: "The bishops are friendly;" "The Presiding Elder has promised to do the best for us that he can;" "The influential Doctor Bim has praised our missionary sermon, and Brother Click, the Secretary, has applauded our Charge's large subscription to the _Advocate_;" "Our character has pa.s.sed even the severe approval of the great theologian, Steep;" "Take courage, my dear, and hope for the best!"

The members.h.i.+p, meanwhile, are dropping in by couples to say kindly words to our mother, whom they pity, and it is rumored that they are collecting a purse to help us on our way. At last our father returns, striving to hide his solicitude in a smile, for no fate to which they could consign himself would scathe that grisly servant of his Master; but for his family, who do not altogether share the spirit of his mission, he has a little fear. He kisses us all in order, from the least to the biggest, commencing and ending with our mother, and playfully prevaricates as to our "appointment," the name of which we noisily demand, until his wife says timidly,

"Where do they send us, Thomas?"

He tries to smile and trifle, but the possibility of her discontent gives him so great pain that we children perceive it.

"How would you like to go to Greensburg?"

"Not _Greensburg_!" she says, with a sudden paleness.

"Isn't it a good circuit?" he says smilingly; "they paid the last preacher three hundred dollars, and his marriage fees were a hundred more. They say he saved fifty dollars a year!"

"Oh, Thomas, I thought I had fort.i.tude, but this--"

"Is only to test your faith," he cries. "A poor preacher's wife should be willing to go anywhere--even to Greensburg; but that is not our appointment, dear; we move to Swan Neck."

Then the fun begins in earnest. The church people come to look at our contribution bedquilts, and help us pack up the blue earthenware. The legs of the prodigious box, yclept a milk chest, are summarily amputated and laid away in it, with the parental library, which, we are sorry to say, is equally doubtful in point of both ornament and use. The good gossips slyly peep into the covers of Matthew Henry, and regard their retiring pastor as a more learned man than they had suspected, while the black letter-press of Lorenzo Dow, and John Bunyan, and Fox's "Book of Martyrs" touches them like so much necromancy. The faithful old clock, whose disorders are crises in our humdrum pastoral year, is stopped and disjointed, much to our marvel, and all the spare straw in the barn is brought to protect the large gilt-edged cups and saucers, which say upon their edges, "To our pastor," and "To our pastor's wife." The thin rag carpets are folded away; the potatoes in the bin are sold to Brother Bibb, the grocer, and to a very few of the select sisters we present a can of our preserved quinces, with directions how to prepare them. Poor Em., the black domestic, drops so many tears upon the parlor stove as she carries it out to the wagon that the fresh blackening she has so industriously given it goes for nothing; for Em. is to be discharged, and the fact troubles her, though a preacher's servant has little to eat and plenty to do.

At last the old parsonage is quite bare and deserted, though our successors, box and baggage, have moved in upon us, much to the annoyance of the females, who see with jealousy that the new arrival gets the lion's share of attention, and that Brother Tipp, whose cla.s.s-book we took from him, and who has backbitten us ever since, is courteous as a dancing-master with our rival. We shall talk for six years to come--that is, our mother--of Bangs's, the new-comer's, impudence in feeding his horse on our oats, and shall never speak of him as Brother Bangs, but simply call him _Bangs_, emphasized. We are not even sure that he will not turn his poultry loose before ours has been secured, and we boys, with great zeal, run down the roosters and ducks, giving them, if the truth must be told, longer chase than is necessary. The aged muscovy, we are sorry to say, lames himself in the retreat, and the only goose on the premises hides among Powell's, the neighbor's, so that we cannot tell which from which. However, the property is tied up at last in the several wagons; Sister Phoenix's lunch has been eaten, and our father, the itinerant, in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, stands up, with pain and perspiration on his brow, to bid his flock good-by.

"Now, brethren," he says, with a quiver at his throat, "my time is pa.s.sing; I have finished the work appointed for me to do. Renew the kindnesses you have done me and my little ones upon the good steward who is to replace me. My heart weeps to cut the bonds which have held us so long together; but in this world I am a pilgrim and a stranger.

Let us all pray!"

As his shrill, broken voice goes up in a mingled wail and hosanna, we children peep by stealth into the working faces of the bystanders, and our own grow tearful, till our little sister cries aloud, and our mother falls into some fond matron's arms.

Immediately our wagons are on the way. The cl.u.s.tering village roofs and the church spire sink down behind. We are too full of excitement to share the silence of our elders, and the pa.s.sing objects while us to laughter and debate.

Swan Neck is a representative circuit. It lies, as everybody knows, somewhere upon the Eastern sh.o.r.e--that landmark and stronghold of Methodism. The parsonage is in Crochettown, the county-seat, and the circuit comprises half a dozen churches down the neck, among the pine forests and on the bay side. Our father tells our mother on the way of the advantages of the place, till we take it to be quite a metropolis.

He says that Wiggins, whom we succeed, gives a first-rate account of it. One of the members (Judd) is a judge, and our church, in short, rules the roast thereabout, and makes the Episcopalians stand around, not to speak of the Baptists, who try as usual to edge us out.

The boys ask with glowing cheeks if there is a river at Crochettown, and are thrown into ecstasy by the reply that a large steamboat touches there twice a week, and that there is a drawbridge. We are less interested in the statement that the schools are good, but hear with delight the history of one Dumple, an innkeeper, who persecutes our church and sells quant.i.ties of "rum" to our young men. William, the son of Wiggins, our predecessor, was once seen in the bar-room and reported to his father, who fetched him home by _posse comitatus_, and found that he smelled strongly of soda water.