Sea-gift

Having nothing better to do, I amused myself by swinging again, though I took good care not to swing far enough to strike the side of the cliff. The sun at last went down, and darkness crept over the dismal woods. Far up above, the stars began to twinkle brightly in the sky, and far down below, the dark void grew intensely black. With a trembling dread of the dark grim night, and yet with a strange sense of security – a feeling of safety from all other dangers – I tried to go to sleep. With a faithful remembrance of the old lady’s instructions I said my prayers as well as the distraught condition of my mind would allow.

All through the long dreary night I was dozing off, only to dream that I was falling from my nest, and to awake with a cold shudder of horror.

After dreary hours of these terrors I hailed with delight the faint beams of approaching day. Brighter and brighter grew the sky, till, with a sudden flood of gold, the sun rose upon the world. What a bright, warm feeling of hope morning brings to the weary watcher! I knew that friends would soon be on the search, and I lay in constant expectation of their shouts. Nor had I long to wait; for soon the woods were ringing with their loud halloos, as they called and listened for my voice. At length I saw a party far below pick up my hat, and from their anxious grouping around it, and busy search among the rocks immediately afterwards, I knew they thought I had fallen over the precipice and was lying, a mangled corpse, somewhere near. I called and called in vain; they moved slowly hither and thither, and finally passed out of sight, carrying my hat with them.

My heart sank within me, and, burying my face in the leaves of my pillow, I sobbed and moaned most piteously. Suddenly, in the very acme of my anguish, I heard my name called aloud, and, looking up through my tears, saw half a score of friendly, anxious faces looking down from the edge of the cliff. Half ashamed of my weakness, yet still crying for joy, I shouted, and begged them for Heaven’s sake to help me out of my terrible predicament. They had no ropes with them, and it was a long way to town where they could be procured, so I could see there was an animated discussion among them in reference to the best ways and means to relief. I heard one say, in an angry tone, ‘I tell you it’s a sho’ thing. The wind hain’t never turned it, and I’ll bet my own life agin your pus, and that’s empty, that it’ll hold him for ever. Look at them ribs, man! Sheer! let her drap. I’ll be ‘sponsible for his life.’

The next instant an enormous blue cotton umbrella dropped down beside me, and a rough voice shouted, ‘Put your foot in the crook of the handle; hold her up stiff; she’ll let you down square.’

Whether the femininity of the umbrella inspired confidence, or the desperate state of my feelings urged me on, I cannot say, but getting on the edge of my nest, putting my foot in the strong oak curved handle for a stirrup, and grasping the staff firmly, I slipped from the vines, and floated slowly down, the old umbrella popping and straining as if it was going to fly to pieces. But with the exception of rubbing the edges on the rocks, and straightening out the ribs by the pressure of the atmosphere, I landed safely at the foot of the precipice, where I found the old man sobbing over my hat as if I was dead. He no sooner found that I was really unhurt than he put up his handkerchief, and cut a before long switch, with which he thrashed me soundly right the assembled throng of friends. I thought then, and still think, it was a singular way of thanking Providence for my safe delivery. This is about all I have to tell, except that the old gent had a gold handle put on the old cotton umbrella.

‘Go ahead, now, what’s-your-name; let us hear what you can do in the shape of a yarn.’

Frank drew the fruit basket to him, searched through it for the largest peach, and, hastily peeling it, threw himself back on the grass to listen to Ben.”

Ben very deliberately rose, and tossed away his quid of tobacco, took some water to cleanse his mouth, and walked to a bush near by, from which he cut a large branch with an old horn-handle knife, out of which he blew almost a pipeful of tobacco crumbs before opening the blade. Taking his seat again, he commenced to trim up his switch and to tell his story.

BEN’S STORY

“Your two friends, John, has both on ’em told good yarns, but they went mighty fur from home to get ’em. I’m a gwine to tell you what happened right up yonder at the house. Some time along the fust of last year mo’er took her up a house pig, to raise offen the slops and peelins. It growed and fattened a power, and was soon ‘bout the likeliest hog on the plantation, only it got so cussed tame twould’n never git outer nobody’s way, and was a continuwell being stepped on, and drug outer the house by the leg. Arter the little fool had been grown awhile, she come up one day with eleven pigs, as lively as you ever see, and pime blank like her, a squealin’ and runnin’ everywhere they hadn’t orter. I heard a riddle wonst ‘bout a pig under a gate makin’ a noise, but he ain’t a lighten-bug’s lamp to a pig when he’s hungry. The older they got the wuss they squealed, till dad said as how he could’n stand it no longer, the sow and pigs had to be moved; so me and him bilt a pen ‘bout two hundred yards from the house, and driv ’em down to it. There was a free nigger, with a yard full of children, livin’ ‘bout as fur from the pen as we did; and the fust night after we’d put ’em up, long todes bed time, I heer a pig squeal like dyin’, but I thought perhaps he’d got cut out of his suck, and I never thought on ’em agin till next morning, when I went down to feed ’em; two of the pigs was bloody behind, and, when I looked close, thare tails was gone. I knowed ‘twas the niggers, for a fried pig’s tail is the best thing a nigger knows how to eat. I tole the ole man ‘bout it soon’s I got back, and he said how we’d wait till the next mornin’. When we went to the pen agin thare was two more tails gone, and two more bloody pigs. Daddy sot on a rail sometime a studin, then he said, sudden-like:

‘Bengermin, go to the house, and fetch me a shingle an my powder horn, an the big gimblet.’

I ran off, a wond’rin’ what in the crashen the ole man was gwine to do with a gimblet and a shingle. Soon as I come back he tole me to get in the pen, and ketch one of the pigs with his tail on. When I histed one up, he tuk him and tied his tail out straight on the shingle, so it twould’n bend. He tuk the gimblet, and started in the tip end of the pig’s tail, and bored it clear out. The bloody shavins come a bilin’ up round the grooves of the gimblet, and the pig squealed till the air ‘peared to be full of hopper grasses, tryin’ to kick in my years. When daddy pulled the gimblet out, the tail looked like a holler skin quill, and would hold ‘bout a double load of powder. Daddy poured it chock full, then put a fo-penny nail, with a gun cap on the eend of it, down ‘mongst the powder, so that it’d go off if any thing totch it, and then tied it all up with horse hair. When I put him back in the pen that pig didn’t have nary a curl to his tail; it stuck out as straight and stiff as if it was a handel to tote him by. We fixed two more in the same way, and then went home. Next morning, when we went down, we found one pig dead, with his hams ready baked, and his back bone drove through his forehead six inches. His tail itself was split open like a shot fire-cracker, and bent backerds like a shelled pea hull. The other two tails had just shot straight without bustin’, but the kick of the powder had lifted up their hind legs so high they could’n git ’em down agin, and they was walkin’ round the pen on thare forefeet samer’n a circus man. When we came to zamine the pen we found three niggers’ fingers blowed off, and sticking to a rail, and little kinks of wooly hair were layin’ round as thick as if it had snowed black. Daddy and me then went up to the nigger’s house, where we found a good size boy and girl with their hands tied up, and thare heads burnt slick on top. When we asked ’em ‘bout it, the boy said the girl was a nussin the baby, and went down to the pen to keep the baby quiet, and he just went along for company like. He said they got to the pen, and was a peepin’ through the rails, when one of the pigs come to scratch hisself, and soon’s he begin to rub he busted all to pieces. They were mighty badly skeered, and, to keep ’em so, daddy tole ’em them was some thunder-tailed hogs he got from the South. We never had another hog troubled in the least, and when hog-killing time came daddy found it mighty hard to get the hands to help him. That’s the end of my yarn.”

And Ben got up and walked to the spring, where a large curved handled gourd hung on a stick cut for the purpose, and, disdaining Reuben’s offer of a glass, took the gourd, and dipping up half the spring, drank till the long crooked handle curled over his hat, and bent back like an officer’s plume in a windy parade. When he had resumed his seat on the grass all three called for my judgment, and, with an assumption of great solemnity and dignity, I proceeded to render it.

“The object, gentlemen, of a wonderful story, or yarn, as it is vulgarly called, is not only to excite wonder, but also to evoke a pleasant surprise by discovering relations between dissimilar or contrary things, which we did not think of as possibly existing. If these dissimilars or contraries are too far apart for the mind to recognize any possible relation, then the narration becomes unpleasantly absurd, and we shrink from contemplating it. If, however, apparently improbable relations are brought out in a way that renders them possible, we are surprised and pleased with the discovery. Hence, the most exaggerated narrations are not always the most entertaining, and we derive most pleasure from hearing or reading those stories where improbabilities are unexpectedly brought within the range of possibility, or if beyond it, the fact is ingeniously concealed by possible concomitants. Thus, Munchausen’s descent from the moon by a rope of cut straw is not half so pleasant a story as the firing his gun by sparks drawn from his eye with his fists. So, were you to tell an audience that you saw a mole move a mountain no one would be pleased or surprised, as the mind would have no effort to pronounce it entirely false; but if you should say you saw a fly trained to play a tune by buzzing his wings from the top to the bottom of a wine glass, the minds of your hearers would be pleasantly occupied for a while in eliminating the true from the false, and your story would be applauded.

Ned, to-day, in his story, erred by placing his relations too far apart. A spider and an elephant! There is no exercise of ingenuity in detecting the falsity of the statement, and the story, from its very improbability, is almost out of the range of competition for the prize. Frank has so mixed his that I scarcely know how to render an opinion in regard to it. The impossible parts are utterly so, and the possible are so easily probable we are not surprised. To Ben, then, I award the prize, as having produced the most entertaining story, exciting pleasant surprise in each development, and discovering possibilities in the most unthought of relations.”

“Oh! blow your philosophic nonsense, John,” said Frank, handing Ben the bottle of brandy; “you got it out of a book, and I’m the devil’s apprentice if I didn’t earn the brandy fairly.”

Ben proffered us the bottle, but Ned and I declined. Frank, however, took it, and, with more swagger than swallow, turned it up to his mouth. Ben poured himself out a glassful, and the bottle was set aside for a smoke. Frank drew forth his cigars, Ben his pipe. Strange to say, I dreaded more to appear squeamish before Ben, whom I looked upon as an inferior, than I did either of the others, and with a blush for my weakness took a cigar. Ned declined again, for which Frank called him Parson Conscience, and we proceeded to light. Oh, dire beginning of troubles! I first bit off the end of my cigar, and could not get the end out of my mouth. I sputtered and spit, and twisted my face into more hideous contortions than Medusa ever wore, but I could not eject that little crumbling fragment of tobacco. Now under my tongue, now in the roof of my mouth, and now going down like a pill. I finally had to take it out disgracefully with my fingers. Getting over that, I lit the cigar – a hard black cigar – and commenced to smoke. With the exception of the pain I experienced from crossing my eyes to look at the end of my cigar, I got on very well for several puffs, then I found that I could not expel all the smoke from my mouth, a little would remain and get up my nose or go down into my lungs. I expectorated, too, very constantly, so that my throat became so insufferably dry, I swallowed just once to relieve it, and oh! the bitter, burning taste that went groping down to my stomach! Clear my throat as I would I could not get it up; more and more bitter it became with each succeeding puff. And now a singular sensation came on; a cloud of swan’s down, or carded tow steeped in this same nauseating bitterness, seemed slowly ascending up into my brain, and piling up in sickening oppression just behind my eyeballs, so that I felt a constant desire to close them and roll them inward to see this feathery pain. I felt no interest in the conversation and was absent in all my replies to questions addressed to me, but I tried to look careless and at ease. I even took off my hat and leaned back against a tree, as if in a high state of enjoyment, and tried to flip off the ashes from my cigar with the air of an old smoker. Not understanding this sleight-of-hand practice, my third finger passed so slowly under the burning end that it came out the other side loaded with ashes, and ornamented with a large white blister.

“Smith, how do you like your weed?” said Frank, blowing out a cloud of smoke, holding his cigar daintily between his fore and middle fingers.

“Very much ‘ndeed,” I said faintly; “‘tis very fragrant.”

The tow or down now pressed so hard and bitterly upon my eyeballs that it confused my vision. Frank, Ned and Ben were continually changing places, and their conversation seemed to belong to a different period of my life. Objects were still enough when I gazed steadily at them, but when I winked and then looked, they would seem to be in different places. I tried closing my eyes for relief, but the great downy mass of nausea crowding my brain was almost visible, and I was glad to open them again. Still the bitter, burning taste in my mouth kept going down into my stomach, yet lingering with its sickening flavor on my palate. A cold perspiration stood on my forehead and hands, and I felt that I was looking deadly pale. I made an attempt at a yawn to conceal my faint voice, and said:

“I believe I will take a nap. Wake me if the fish bite.”

I got up and tried to walk to a little hillock a few steps off; but at every step the ground seemed to rise in a steep hill or sink into a fearful declivity before my feet, and I staggered like a drunken man.

“Hello, Smith; has the cigar got you? I thought you had better pluck.”

I was too faint to answer, but fell down, with my head hid by a tree, and with many death-like heavings sank into a drowsy unconsciousness. When I awoke it was late in the afternoon, and all was still around me. Staggering to my feet I heard the distant hum of voices, and taking a deep draught of the cool spring water to slake my feverish thirst, I walked unsteadily down to the creek, where I found my companions fishing with fine success. My vision was not sufficiently restored to admit of my angling, so I sat on the fence and yawningly watched the others till it was time to go home. With well filled baskets Ben, Frank and Ned walked along merrily, while I stalked on miserably, with a throbbing in my temples and an awkward consciousness of being ashamed of everybody, and especially of myself.

At supper I drank a little tea, and, pleading a headache, hurried up to my room. As soon as the servants had been served, mother came up stairs to look after me. She found me with some fever and symptoms of violent cold. A kiss when she came into the room told her I had been smoking, and she smiled as she passed her hand gently over my head, and said:

“John, you have been smoking to-day, and, from your restless, impatient look, you expect a long lecture, but I will wait before I say what I have to say on the subject. I want you to get to sleep now. It is so warm I will open the window, and take out the lamp to prevent the insects coming in, and I hope you will become composed.”

She left the room, and I began that hardest of all tasks – trying to go to sleep. An intensely hot night! just light enough out doors to make a checked square of the window; not a leaf quivering; not a sound without but the incessant quavers of the katydids; down stairs the noise and mirth of merry converse!

Tossing from side to side of the bed; now shaking up my pillow, then reversing my position, and lying with my head at the foot board; then stretching directly across the bed, with my hands hanging down over the sides; in all positions I vainly sought a cool place. The very sheets, except that they were wrinkled, seemed to have just come from under the iron; and even the mahogany of the foot board, when I laid my cheek against it, felt tepidly disagreeable. At last, after trying every conceivable position on the bed, I fell asleep with my feet pressed against the cool wall, and while watching a firefly that had gotten into the room, and was flashing his tiny lamp hither and thither as he flitted along the ceiling, trying to escape. My slumber was uneasy and fitful, and I was dreaming of strange oppressions and sensations, and continually waking, to hear the laughter and mirth down stairs.

Perhaps conscience added a thorn to my pillow; but I could remember no definite sin I had committed. The cigar was surely not wrong, for father, and a great many others who were good, smoked. I could not then analyze my moral nature and detect the wrong, but years have since shown me ‘twas in the lack of moral courage, in the yielding to what I was ashamed of, simply because I was ashamed to refuse.

Very young men deem the cigar an important adjunct to manhood, and when they smoke to look manly, the oath and glass are not far off. A good rule in forming this almost national habit is to light your first cigar before father or mother without a blush, and the harm resulting will be solely physical.

CHAPTER XV

Father and Lulie have been gone an hour; father on his way to Havana, Lulie returning to Wilmington. Frank and Ned have gone with them over to town. I am lying on a lounge in the hall, and mother and Carlotta are sitting near me, arranging flowers for the parlor vases. Lulie got off without much trouble with the assistance of mother’s tact; Ned expressing great surprise, while Frank was almost rude in his solicitations to her to remain. Dear little darling, how tenderly she bade me farewell, whispering as she pressed my hand, “Don’t be hurt at my leaving, John, ‘tis for your sake as much as mine!”

My eyes are closed, and mother and Carlotta think I am asleep, but through a scarcely lifted lid I am watching Carlotta, feasting my eyes on her beautiful face and form. She is sitting just inside the hall door, with a lap full of flowers, and though I cannot see her face, I gaze on an arm and hand that Phidias might dream of, but never carve.

Her muslin sleeve was turned up to her shoulder, to be out of the way, and the flesh, soft and snowy, swelled out from the richly worked undersleeve, and almost imperceptibly tapered to the elbow, with here and there a tiny thread of blue, winding its way under the transparent skin. At the elbow two dimples showed where the liquid flesh eddied round the curve, and a slope of perfect grace carried it to the wrist; here no knots disfigured, no roughness marred it, but, smooth and delicate, the wrist became a fitting bridge between such a hand and arm. Her hair, caught back by a crimson velvet band, fell in a dark shower over her shoulders; not the wiry ringlets, nor the hard straight locks that all are familiar with, but in soft undulating waves it fell, as if fairies were trembling the silken strands. Her profile was exquisite, and the beautiful proportion of each feature, and the delicate tints that overspread them, formed altogether a picture that has rarely been surpassed for loveliness. The peculiar witchery of the face, as I gazed upon it, was enhanced by an occasional frown and arch of the pencilled brow, as she endeavored to draw a refractory thread through the stems of the flowers.

Mother, at last speaking, broke the spell that bound me.

“Carlotta, darling, Col. Smith told you of the letter he received from your father’s agent in Havana, did he not?”

“He told me of it, and also showed me the letter. Papa always thought his agent very trusty, and I suppose Col. Smith will find everything arranged properly.”

After another pause, mother asked again:

“Who is this cousin who claims the estate?”

“He is mother’s half nephew. He was always a great favorite with papa, and staid almost half his time with us, though his home was on the other side of the island. Papa used to promise him, when I was a very little girl, that I should be his wife, but he was so much older than I, I could never love him.”

Though my fealty to Lulie was unchanged, I could not help thinking what a splendid thing it would be to have the promise of such a love as hers.

“But,” continued mother, shaking the dew from a flower as she placed it with the others, “would you not marry him when you are grown, to get back so much wealth and riches. Remember, he has your father’s will, making him the sole heir in case of your death, and he has also the affidavit of the captain of the vessel in which you sailed, that yourself and father were both lost, and could not possibly have been saved.”

“I would despise him,” she said, scornfully, snapping a stem as she spoke, “if he tried to get anything wrongfully. But Col. Smith has all papa’s papers with him, and Cousin Herrara is too noble, I know, to do anything mean or sordid!”

She brushed the rose leaves from her lap, and placed the bouquet she had arranged in the basket of a Parian marble porter on the mantel; then coming back to mother, she kneeled down by her side, and laying her cheek sideways on mother’s knee, with that peculiar winning way of her’s, said softly:

“I hope Col. Smith will be able to save me something to repay you all for your goodness to me, for I cannot stay under your roof as a charity outcast, and it would kill me to leave you now, I have learned to love you so.”

“My dear child,” said mother, laying her hand on her soft, dark hair, “the very idea of compensating us for the greatest pleasure of our lives! Colonel Smith has gone to Havana solely on your account. Thank heaven we have as much as we want, and you may feel that you have a daughter’s place in our household, and will never, never be a burden. Who knows,” she added, playfully patting her head and glancing toward my couch, “but what you may be a daughter, indeed, to us one of these days.”

“Oh, Mrs. Smith,” said Carlotta so earnestly, that I opened my eyes in time to see the scarlet tinge of her cheeks, “you do not know how you hurt me when you say that. ‘Twould make me hate the very thought of your son, whom I now esteem so much, to think that I was taken into your family to please him; that I was being raised to suit his fancy; that my character was being moulded after his model of a woman; that it was being constantly said of me, as I have heard it said: ‘Mrs. Smith is training her up for her son.’ Will I not shrink from his very presence when I feel that he looks upon me as his to love or not, just as he likes?”

“My dear child,” said mother, looking surprised, “my words were almost without meaning. Forgive me, and I will endeavor to prevent any allusion, in this house at least, that may wound your feelings.”

I here turned over, and moving my arms about showed signs of waking. This put an end to the conversation. Mother coming to the couch found me with considerable fever, and becoming alarmed sent Reuben off after the doctor. In truth I did feel a little badly, though I had been so interested in the conversation that I had not thought of my feelings. My eyeballs were hot and red, and felt as if they were full of sand; my breath burnt my nostrils as it came out, and my tongue was dry and coated. An hour of feverish restlessness elapsed before we heard the doctor’s horse plodding up the avenue in a slow jog-trot, the fastest speed known to the medical fraternity. The doctor himself was equally deliberate in tying him to the rack, crossing the stirrups over the back of the saddle with the utmost care, and finally marching up the steps as if he was a pall-bearer at a funeral. He laid his hat on the seat in the porch, put his gloves in the crown, and laid his riding switch across them, as if it was to guard them. He at length advanced into the house and met mother.