Sea-gift

“How d’ye do, madam; a very warm day, madam,” he said, shaking her hand with one of his, and rubbing the bald place on his head with the other, as if all the heat of the day had centred there.

“It is very sultry indeed, sir,” replied mother, as he released her hand. “Reuben, hand a glass of water, or perhaps, sir, you would prefer wine?”

“Much obliged, madam, but water will do. Best for this weather, madam.”

While the water was being brought he sat down near the door and waited patiently, without deigning to notice me, as if anything connected with his profession was farthest from his thoughts.

“Who is sick, madam?” he inquired, when he had replaced the empty goblet on Reuben’s waiter.

“My son, sir,” said mother, conducting him to my lounge. “I don’t know that he is sick much, but he is feverish, and fever always frightens me.”

“And very properly, madam, for it is a sure sign that something is wrong in the system. Should always be taken in hand at once.”

He felt my pulse a long time, slipping his fingers up and down my wrist, as if he were playing the violin; then felt my forehead, touching it as he would a loaf of bread, to see if it were warm, and bade me put out my tongue. He put on his specs and bent over it, as if he were looking for a splinter, requesting mother to stand just a little out of the light, madam, and rubbing it with the end of his little finger, took off his spectacles triumphantly, and turning to mother said:

“There is no danger, madam; very slight fever; only a trifling disorder of the system. A good sized blue pill is all that I would recommend at present. If you have any blue mass in the house I will make it for you before I leave.”

The box of pil hydrarg was accordingly brought, and a cup of flour, from which he soon produced a pellet the size of a robin’s egg, which I was to swallow. There might be almost said to be only two medicines known to the physicians of eastern Carolina, so constantly are they required in their practice, and they are as certain to administer mercury or quinine as Dr. Sangrado, of Valladolid, was to let blood or give warm water. I certainly did not bless their mercurial predilections that morning, and saw the old doctor ride off with an earnest wish that he had a pill, as large as the conventional brick, to roll around his hat on his head.

He had hardly gotten out of sight when mother came to the couch with the pill in the hollow of one hand and a glass of water in the other.

“Here, son, try to swallow this. The doctor thinks it best that you should take it.”

I sat upon the side of the bed, asked for a bucket, in case of accidents, and took the pill in my hand. I found it soft, and sticky as putty, but with reckless desperation I laid it far back on my tongue, and took a great gulp of water. With a toss of my head I made a tremendous swallow, but a wad of air, many times larger than my mouth, got before the water and barred its progress down. Most of it got into my windpipe; the pill, with the flour coating washed off, and its nauseous taste revealed, rolled down against my front teeth and stuck there. Shades of Epicurus! how I heaved! Tearing it away from my teeth with my fingers I dashed it down, and vowed that no doctor’s authority could ever compel me to the attempt again.

Whether the very taste of the pill had a good effect or not, that evening I was much better, and next morning felt perfectly well.

As it was the Sabbath, I was anxious to go to church with mother, Frank and Ned, but mother feared for me to take the sultry ride, and so I was to stay at home. To my surprise Carlotta asked leave to stay at home also, though she removed the flattering unction I had laid to my heart, that she staid to be with me, by telling mother she wished to spend the morning in her room. After breakfast the carriage came round, and mother, Ned and Frank, left for the church, which was a little country appointment, about four miles distant.

As soon as they were gone Carlotta went to her room, and, taking a book, I went out doors and lay down on the grass, beneath a large cedar at one end of the house.

There are four kinds of days in the year, coming one in each season, on which I feel an unaccountable, though not unpleasant melancholy. Days when I want to get far away to myself, and muse in undisturbed loneliness. Days when Memory, not Fancy, holds her court, and scenes and faces long forgotten spring up from her dusty sepulchres, and throng her shrine and ask for tears. Days that make a prison of the Present, a worthless bauble of the Future, and lift only to our heart’s embrace the golden Past, gone from life forever! Brighter than it ever really was, its pains forgotten, only its joys remembered! Like a dead friend, it is dearer now than ever, and we weep because we cannot turn life’s current back.

One of these days comes in winter, when, after a cloudy morning and noon, the sun sets cold and clear; when the wind with a hollow moan sweeps over the bare fields; when the long lines of wild ducks, clearly defined against the red sky, wind their way up the bends of the river, along whose banks the naked trees stretch their arms like the masts and yards of weird ships; when the blue birds, with their plaintive notes, huddle in the clumps of withered leaves on the oaks in the grove, and the very cows, plodding homeward, low mournfully, as if in response to Nature’s dreariness.

Another day is in Autumn, when Nature, wrapping herself in a hazy robe, seems to lift her hand and say, “Hush, do not break my slumber,” as she dozes into dreaminess. The sun himself half closes his glaring eye, and looks upon the world with a drowsy smile, and the purple sky droops upon the horizon as if Atlas were weary of his load. When the zephyrs are asleep, and the leaves on the trees are wan for want of exercise; when the crowing of the cock sounds like a yawn, and the little fly-catcher, perched, as is its custom, on a dead and leafless limb, breathes its one little song as if it was its last sigh. Such a day as Buchanan Read describes in his “Closing Scene;” the most exquisite verses ever penned by an American:

“All sights seemed mellowed and all sounds subdued,The hills seemed farther, and the streams sang low,As in a dream the distant woodman hewedHis winter log, with many a muffled blow.******“On slumbrous wings the vulture held his flight,The dove scarce heard its sighing mate’s complaint;And like a star, slow drowning in the light,The village church vane seemed to pale and faint.*******“Alone from out the stubble piped the quail,And croaked the crow through all the dreary gloom;Alone the pheasant, drumming in the vale,Made echo to the distant cottage loom.”*****

Another day for reverie is such a day as this – a summer Sabbath in the country. Sabbath is stamped on the entire premises. The negroes, bedecked in all the finery of ribbons and beads, have just trooped in long droves through the gate and gone to preaching. Down at the quarters there is one old negro sitting at the door of her cabin, with her head bowed down to her knees as she ties around it her broad yellow kerchief. Her slight motion as she does this, and the faint monotonous wail of an infant left in her care, are all the evidences of life in the long row of tenements.

The horses and mules all walk solemnly about in the clover lot, and the sheep graze under the trees in the orchard, without a bleat to disturb the serene quiet of the morning. Tiger, the great bull-dog, is lying stretched out at the door of his kennel, watching with his small bleared eyes a hen and brood that are scratching fearlessly almost in his jaws. A mocking bird, down at the old graveyard, is alone forgetful of the day, and, perched upon the very topmost bough of the willow, is burdening the air with the joyous trills of his melody.

Overhead the great blue ocean of the sky is dotted here and there with fantastic white clouds, melting into various shapes as they grandly sail across its depths.

Propping my head with my hand, I lay and gazed up at the sky and around at the beauty of the day, and gave myself up to musing. Of course my mind turned to Lulie, and the terrible blight she had given my hopes, and, as the romance of my youthful mind intensified a thousand fold the nature of my disappointment, and my feelings were already made tender by the influences of the day, my heart could only find relief in tears, and turning my face over in the long cool grass I wept till I fell asleep. I had lain thus perhaps an hour, when a little bird, hopping in the branches overhead, rained down a shower of cedar balls upon me, and I raised up to find Carlotta standing by me. She started as I looked up, and said, without any embarrassment:

“I came out to the porch a few moments since, and saw you lying so still I was afraid you might be sick. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No, thanks for your kindness, I do not need anything at all,” I replied, raising myself from the grass; “but sit down here with me, I want to talk with you.”

She hesitated a moment, then sat down near me.

“Day before yesterday, when you and mother were talking together in the hall, you thought me asleep,” I said, after a pause of some seconds – a pause that is always awkward when you are expected to say something, and do not know what to say – ”but I was not, and am now glad that I heard every word you both said.”

Her face burned for a second, then became paler than before, as she exclaimed:

“Oh! why did you not speak, and stop my unkind and hasty words. Glad, did you say? how could you be glad to know that I had purposely shunned your presence, and shrunk from your most casual approach?”

“I was glad, because I had found the key to your conduct, and then knew why you had acted so coldly towards me, and refused so persistently the friendship I longed to offer. I was glad, because I knew then that the distance between us was not caused by enmity, but your sensitive nature.”

Looking at me pleadingly with her eloquent eyes, and with a tremor in her soft voice, she said:

“Will you not appreciate my feelings, then, and forgive me?”

“I do appreciate your feelings,” I said, with warmth, “and, appreciating them, have nothing to forgive. I have been pained that you seemed to mistrust me; that the love and devotion my brother’s heart would fain have offered, was put aside, and that you wrapped yourself in such a robe of icy reserve; but I understand it all now, and you may trust me to use all my efforts to prevent the recurrence of any occasion that would cause you mortification or regret.”

“Thank you, my kind brother, for your consideration of my feelings,” she returned, warmly; “but let me add a word before we leave the subject: My annoyance has not been caused by the fact that your name, as yours, was coupled with mine, but that the very kindness of your family in taking me under their roof, is made, in the estimation of others, an obligation that places me at your disposal;” and the pride of her high-born soul burned in her glorious eyes, as she spoke.

“Well, we understand each other now,” I said, soothingly, “and let us make this agreement – that whenever we are unobserved we will be trustful and confiding, as brother and sister should be, but when occasion demands we will be reserved and distant, without offence.”

“I agree most cordially,” she said, “and will henceforth place an implicit confidence in you as my truest friend.”

She motioned as if to go, but it was so pleasant – something so new – to converse with her, to watch the play of her beautiful features, to catch the light of her great dark eyes, as she looked into my face as if to see my words, that I strove to detain her.

“Do not leave me yet, Carlotta. My heart is very sad today. Will you let me unburden it to you? It seems silly, I know, but I do so long to have some one to confide in; some one I can trust as I can you.”

“You may trust me, John,” she said, hesitating as she called my name for the first time.

After a pause, I said, biting a blade of grass with my lips —

“I had been weeping, Carlotta, when you came to me – weeping because the beautiful day made me sad.”

“You sad? you weeping? you, who are so full of life and gaiety!” she said, looking at me with surprise; then adding, in a tone of deep sadness, as she thought of herself, “alas! what cause can you have for tears, in such a happy home, surrounded by those you hold most dear.”

“What better cause for tears than disappointed love? Carlotta, I have loved Lulie since I could remember, and if ever one life can be bound in another mine has been in her’s, and yet she does not love me. From her own lips I have learned this bitter truth. I could bear up had I one gleam of hope; but all is dark, and far worse than the extinction of hope is the knowledge that she loves another. Oh, heaven! how it grinds me to the earth to feel that he, who is most unworthy, should receive her smiles; that a love I would give my life for is wasted on one who regards it as the trifle of a day.”

I paused and looked gloomily up at the bright blue sky, where a fleecy Delos floated.

“I, too, think her love is wasted on Frank Paning,” said Carlotta, as I looked again at her face. “He may admire her beauty, and no doubt feels flattered by her preference, but he does not love her as she thinks he does. It will be a sad day with her when she learns the truth.”

“Yes,” I replied, savagely; “she will then know what I feel.”

“Do not speak harshly of her, John, for while she loves Frank Paning, yet I believe she esteems you more.”

“But how can you speak for her feelings?” I asked, with a faint touch of a sneer in my tone.

“Because she has told me all,” she replied coolly.

“A perjured little – ”

“Hush!” she exclaimed, looking at me reprovingly. “Do not judge her too hastily. She only told me part; I inferred the rest. Her heart seemed as if it would break the night after you went fishing together, and, when I sought to know the cause of her grief, she would only say she had made you unhappy. Hers is a fond, true heart, and I only wish it were given away more worthily.”

“But what do you know of Paning’s sentiments?” I asked with some surprise. “Perhaps he may be very devoted to her.”

“I have very good reasons for knowing,” she said, with a peculiar smile; “but yonder are some of the negroes returning from church. I must go in and have dinner arranged before the carriage returns.”

She went into the house and left me wondering what she could mean. Can she love him, too, I thought, and is it because she herself has his heart that she knows Lulie has it not?

I began to grow desperate with the thought of my rival’s second conquest, when the sound of the carriage diverted my attention, and mother, Frank and Ned came into the house.

“Oh, you needn’t have dinner for us,” said Frank to Carlotta, as he drew a glass of ice-water for himself, and drank it. “We have already dined sumptuously.”

Mother nodded her head as Carlotta looked at her inquiringly. “Yes, my dear, we’ve had dinner. Mrs. Bemby invited us to her table, and of course we could not refuse.”

“How did you like the sermon, Ned, and what kind of people were there?” I asked. “Tell me all about it.”

“The sermon was very good in its way,” said Ned, “and the people somewhat amusing; but you must get Frank to give you full details. I could not do the subject justice.”

I could do nothing else but ask Frank for the narration, though I was not particularly anxious to hear his voice.

“Well,” replied Frank, nothing loth to do the talking, “long before we got to the church we began to pass crowds of people who were walking thither; the men dressed in long sack coats of homespun, with immensely loose pants and dusty shoes, most of them carrying in their arms bare-legged, white-headed babies, who were employed in looking backwards over their fathers’ shoulders, and mostly gnawing very large fat biscuits; the women were arrayed in bright flowered calico robes, which they kicked up behind at every step. They all had stick tooth brushes in their mouths, and long-tailed fly bonnets, which they carried in their hands. Then we passed others who, a little better off, were riding in red painted wagons, drawn by rope-harnessed mules, which trotted along so briskly, under the kindly influences of overgrown boys and hickory sticks, that the folks in the body were jolted from side to side of their split bottomed chairs. Then we overtook the cumbrous carriages of the well-to-do farmers, with heavy-headed, clumsy-footed horses, the low boots full of fodder, and large trunks full of dinner, strapped on behind. As many of these and other vehicles as we passed, yet when we got to the church we found the grove full of horses, buggies, carriages and wagons, and so many people out doors that I began to fear the preacher would have no congregation.

“At the foot of every tree in sight was a group of men engaged in the solemn occupation of whittling twigs and spitting. When we got to the door of the church, which was a large barn-looking structure, we found it full, and with difficulty got seats near the door. Such a mixture of people I never saw before. Here a silk by the side of cotton check, a broadcloth coat touching a copperas striped one, and a silk hat resting in the window with one of wheat straw, bound with green ribbon. As I could see very little but the backs of the people’s heads, I cannot tell much about the congregation, except that the men for the most part had very long and very dry hair, which they wore bushy, while the women had theirs plaited in two strings and crossed like wicker-basket handles. The girls wore straw hats trimmed with ribbons, whose colors were of the rainbow that we may imagine would appear on a cloudy day. The elderly ladies wore bonnets that looked as if Noah’s wife had made them for pastime while she was in the ark, and had fitted them on the goat’s head for the want of a better block. The preacher himself was queer looking, and had a monotonous drawling tone.” (Here Frank got up in the floor to imitate his style.) “Ah! my brethren and sistern-er, where are we to-day? ‘Ere we are in the narrer road.”

“Tut, tut, Frank,” said mother, quickly, “that will never do. Jest about the people if you want to, but remember the sanctity of the pulpit.”

“But it does not matter, Mrs. Smith, if we have a little fun at their expense; they don’t belong to our church, and he wasn’t preaching to us.”

“It makes no difference,” said mother, rising to go down to the dining room; “he was preaching the Gospel of Christ, and, however defective his sermon, we should not ridicule it.”

“I’ll show some other time,” said Frank, as mother left the room. “But where was I? Oh, the preacher. Well, when the sermon was finished we all went out, and Mrs. Ben or Bem something soon found us, and insisted that we should eat with her.

“All over the grove the white cloths were being spread like gigantic snow flakes, and almost as numerous. Scores of negroes and ladies were unpacking great boxes, containing biscuit, rolls, cakes, ham, fowls, pickles, apples and peaches, and everybody was asking everybody else to dine with them. There was a good sized crowd at Mrs. Bemby’s table when we went up. They were not introduced, but they all made us room, and bowed confusedly. Mrs. Smith knew and spoke to several of them while we took our part out in staring.

“Mrs. Bemby begged us to help ourselves, and every one acted on her kind suggestion with quite a zest. Country belles, pulling off their cotton gloves, alternated the bites at chicken and bread so rapidly and successfully that they were soon sucking the bones like candy, while the beaux cut symmetrical squares out of corn bread sandwiches, and played the flute on long ears of roasted corn, with unctuous smiles and impeded attempts at conversation with chewed words. Mr. and Mrs. B – did not eat anything, but served the table, with cordial entreaties to all to spare not; Mrs. B – distributing the bread and sweetmeats with a lavish hand, and Mr. B – cutting the meats – his mode of dealing with a ham being very unique as well as effective. Standing it up on one end, and holding the hock in one hand, he sawed the knife across it like an Italian playing the fiddle, producing far more satisfactory results, however, than all the army of diminutive violinists Italy has sent forth. That great gawk of a Ben, instead of helping was perched on a wagon, idly kicking the wheels with his feet as he munched on an apple, and gravely winking at Ned and myself, in acknowledgment of acquaintance. Altogether the dinner was excellent, and, after our ride to the church, and our boredom in it, was particularly relished. There, I have talked enough; get Ned to tell you the balance.”

“There is no more to tell,” said Ned, as mother called to us from the basement to come down and eat watermelons. “I can corroborate all that Frank has told, except his account of the sermon. That was very good, and much to the point, though it was plain and without ornament.”

I went down with the rest, but was afraid, for my fever’s sake, to indulge in melons. If you would know whether it was any temptation to me or not, imagine a sultry afternoon, a cool breezy basement, four or five large melons, just from the ice house, like a row of victims with a knife in each pink frozen heart!

I felt tired of hearing them talk and seeing them eat, so I took my hat and strolled down to Mr. Bemby’s to find Ben, and enjoy a talk with him. He was nowhere in sight, and I tapped at the door. At Mrs. Bemby’s “Come in!” I opened the door, and instead of Ben found three strange ladies, who were discussing with profound interest the events of the day.

“Come in, honey; you look mighty feeble yet; how do you feel to-day?” said Mrs. Bemby, kindly, as she met me. “This is Col. Smith’s son, Mrs. Bailey and Miss Viney Dodge; Col. Smith’s son! Mrs. Dodge,” she shouted in the ear of the oldest and most withered of the three ladies, who was armed with an orchestra looking instrument in the shape of an immense ear trumpet. Mrs. Bemby had to put her mouth right down to the opening, and shout my name out twice before she and I became acquainted. I shook hands with the old and bowed to the young lady, who gave me a curtesy in return that shoved her chair back almost out of range of her reseating figure. Her figure was very stumpy; her complexion very sallow; her hair very sandy, and her skin very freckled. Her hands were covered with half fingered blue gloves, and were employed, one in lying in her lap, the fingers folded and the thumb stiffly erect, as a sentinel over their repose; the other in holding, in as compressed a ball as possible, a dingy cotton handkerchief, which she constantly used, after a premonitory snuffle, by rubbing her nose very hard upwards, as if she wished to elevate its depressed point.

Mrs. B – informed me that Ben would be in shortly, and I took the chair she offered and looked at the visitors; they looked at each other, and then there was a silence of some seconds.

“You beedn sorter poorly, haidn’t you?” said Mrs. Dodge, adjusting her trumpet and leaning towards me.

“Yes, ma’am!” I shouted, making my reply more affirmative by a number of up and down motions of my head.

“Umphum! Haidn’t had the summer complaint, is you? You look a little thidn.”

I transversed the motion of my head very rapidly, and signed the negative many times.

“A leetle lodomy, drapped in ellum bark tea’s mighty good for it;” and the old lady, satisfied with her catechism, turned her trumpet and her interrogative features toward the others.

Mrs. Bemby remarked having seen mother and the others at church that morning. Mrs. Bailey then took up the thread of the discourse where I had broken it off by entering.

“As I was a saying, sister Bemby,” she resumed, “it does me a sight of good to listen to Brother Weekly’s preaching. He is so searchin’ to the sinners and comfortin’ to the saints. His sermins are well pinted, too, and not writ, neither. I jist know in my soul, d’liver me from a writ sermin.”

“Umph?” said Mrs. Dodge, in a prolonged note of inquiry, levelling her dread instrument on the speaker. Mrs. Bailey very kindly screamed the words into her ear.

“Ah, yes, I knowed ‘twas good this mordn-ing, tho’ I couldn’t hear, for I sorter felt it. Brother Weekly is always powerful in his lastly, and whedn I see old Udncle Jacob Sawney slap Sister Brewer in the back, and old Miss Parkidns twiss her cheer roudn to the wall, and git my Viney here to untie her specks, so she could rub her eyes, I knowed he was a having great freedobm; and thedn he got a leetle louder, and I thought I heerd him say: ‘He’ll meet us at the gate, Hisself;’ and somethidng told me in my heart he meadnt the Lord, and I wadnted to go just thedn, for ‘pears to me I’d be more welcome like ef He told me to come in.”