Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
CHAPTER XV Of Tom's New Master, and Various Other
Matters
Since the thread of our humble hero's life has now become interwoven with that of
higher ones, it is necessary to give some brief introduction to them.
Augustine St. Clare was the son of a wealthy planter of Louisiana.
The family had its origin in Canada.
Of two brothers, very similar in temperament and character, one had settled
on a flourishing farm in Vermont, and the other became an opulent planter in
Louisiana.
The mother of Augustine was a Huguenot French lady, whose family had emigrated to
Louisiana during the days of its early settlement.
Augustine and another brother were the only children of their parents.
Having inherited from his mother an exceeding delicacy of constitution, he was,
at the instance of physicians, during many years of his boyhood, sent to the care of
his uncle in Vermont, in order that his
constitution might, be strengthened by the cold of a more bracing climate.
In childhood, he was remarkable for an extreme and marked sensitiveness of
character, more akin to the softness of woman than the ordinary hardness of his own
sex.
Time, however, overgrew this softness with the rough bark of manhood, and but few knew
how living and fresh it still lay at the core.
His talents were of the very first order, although his mind showed a preference
always for the ideal and the aesthetic, and there was about him that repugnance to the
actual business of life which is the common result of this balance of the faculties.
Soon after the completion of his college course, his whole nature was kindled into
one intense and passionate effervescence of romantic passion.
His hour came,--the hour that comes only once; his star rose in the horizon,--that
star that rises so often in vain, to be remembered only as a thing of dreams; and
it rose for him in vain.
To drop the figure,--he saw and won the love of a high-minded and beautiful woman,
in one of the northern states, and they were affianced.
He returned south to make arrangements for their marriage, when, most unexpectedly,
his letters were returned to him by mail, with a short note from her guardian,
stating to him that ere this reached him the lady would be the wife of another.
Stung to madness, he vainly hoped, as many another has done, to fling the whole thing
from his heart by one desperate effort.
Too proud to supplicate or seek explanation, he threw himself at once into
a whirl of fashionable society, and in a fortnight from the time of the fatal letter
was the accepted lover of the reigning
belle of the season; and as soon as arrangements could be made, he became the
husband of a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and a hundred thousand dollars;
and, of course, everybody thought him a happy fellow.
The married couple were enjoying their honeymoon, and entertaining a brilliant
circle of friends in their splendid villa, near Lake Pontchartrain, when, one day, a
letter was brought to him in that well- remembered writing.
It was handed to him while he was in full tide of gay and successful conversation, in
a whole room-full of company.
He turned deadly pale when he saw the writing, but still preserved his composure,
and finished the playful warfare of badinage which he was at the moment
carrying on with a lady opposite; and, a
short time after, was missed from the circle.
In his room, alone, he opened and read the letter, now worse than idle and useless to
be read.
It was from her, giving a long account of a persecution to which she had been exposed
by her guardian's family, to lead her to unite herself with their son: and she
related how, for a long time, his letters
had ceased to arrive; how she had written time and again, till she became weary and
doubtful; how her health had failed under her anxieties, and how, at last, she had
discovered the whole fraud which had been practised on them both.
The letter ended with expressions of hope and thankfulness, and professions of
undying affection, which were more bitter than death to the unhappy young man.
He wrote to her immediately:
"I have received yours,--but too late. I believed all I heard.
I was desperate. I am married, and all is over.
Only forget,--it is all that remains for either of us."
And thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St. Clare.
But the real remained,--the real, like the flat, bare, oozy tide-mud, when the blue
sparkling wave, with all its company of gliding boats and white-winged ships, its
music of oars and chiming waters, has gone
down, and there it lies, flat, slimy, bare,--exceedingly real.
Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of
it; and in a story this is very convenient.
But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.
There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking,
visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is
commonly called living, yet to be gone
through; and this yet remained to Augustine.
Had his wife been a whole woman, she might yet have done something--as woman can--to
mend the broken threads of life, and weave again into a tissue of brightness.
But Marie St. Clare could not even see that they had been broken.
As before stated, she consisted of a fine figure, a pair of splendid eyes, and a
hundred thousand dollars; and none of these items were precisely the ones to minister
to a mind diseased.
When Augustine, pale as death, was found lying on the sofa, and pleaded sudden sick-
headache as the cause of his distress, she recommended to him to smell of hartshorn;
and when the paleness and headache came on
week after week, she only said that she never thought Mr. St. Clare was sickly; but
it seems he was very liable to sick- headaches, and that it was a very
unfortunate thing for her, because he
didn't enjoy going into company with her, and it seemed odd to go so much alone, when
they were just married.
Augustine was glad in his heart that he had married so undiscerning a woman; but as the
glosses and civilities of the honeymoon wore away, he discovered that a beautiful
young woman, who has lived all her life to
be caressed and waited on, might prove quite a hard mistress in domestic life.
Marie never had possessed much capability of affection, or much sensibility, and the
little that she had, had been merged into a most intense and unconscious selfishness;
a selfishness the more hopeless, from its
quiet obtuseness, its utter ignorance of any claims but her own.
From her infancy, she had been surrounded with servants, who lived only to study her
caprices; the idea that they had either feelings or rights had never dawned upon
her, even in distant perspective.
Her father, whose only child she had been, had never denied her anything that lay
within the compass of human possibility; and when she entered life, beautiful,
accomplished, and an heiress, she had, of
course, all the eligibles and non-eligibles of the other sex sighing at her feet, and
she had no doubt that Augustine was a most fortunate man in having obtained her.
It is a great mistake to suppose that a woman with no heart will be an easy
creditor in the exchange of affection.
There is not on earth a more merciless exactor of love from others than a
thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, the more jealously and
scrupulously she exacts love, to the uttermost farthing.
When, therefore, St. Clare began to drop off those gallantries and small attentions
which flowed at first through the habitude of courtship, he found his sultana no way
ready to resign her slave; there were
abundance of tears, poutings, and small tempests, there were discontents, pinings,
upbraidings.
St. Clare was good-natured and self- indulgent, and sought to buy off with
presents and flatteries; and when Marie became mother to a beautiful daughter, he
really felt awakened, for a time, to something like tenderness.
St. Clare's mother had been a woman of uncommon elevation and purity of character,
and he gave to his child his mother's name, fondly fancying that she would prove a
reproduction of her image.
The thing had been remarked with petulant jealousy by his wife, and she regarded her
husband's absorbing devotion to the child with suspicion and dislike; all that was
given to her seemed so much taken from herself.
From the time of the birth of this child, her health gradually sunk.
A life of constant inaction, bodily and mental,--the friction of ceaseless ennui
and discontent, united to the ordinary weakness which attended the period of
maternity,--in course of a few years
changed the blooming young belle into a yellow faded, sickly woman, whose time was
divided among a variety of fanciful diseases, and who considered herself, in
every sense, the most ill-used and suffering person in existence.
There was no end of her various complaints; but her principal forte appeared to lie in
sick-headache, which sometimes would confine her to her room three days out of
As, of course, all family arrangements fell into the hands of servants, St. Clare found
his menage anything but comfortable.
His only daughter was exceedingly delicate, and he feared that, with no one to look
after her and attend to her, her health and life might yet fall a sacrifice to her
mother's inefficiency.
He had taken her with him on a tour to Vermont, and had persuaded his cousin, Miss
Ophelia St. Clare, to return with him to his southern residence; and they are now
returning on this boat, where we have introduced them to our readers.
And now, while the distant domes and spires of New Orleans rise to our view, there is
yet time for an introduction to Miss Ophelia.
Whoever has travelled in the New England States will remember, in some cool village,
the large farmhouse, with its clean-swept grassy yard, shaded by the dense and
massive foliage of the sugar maple; and
remember the air of order and stillness, of perpetuity and unchanging repose, that
seemed to breathe over the whole place.
Nothing lost, or out of order; not a picket loose in the fence, not a particle of
litter in the turfy yard, with its clumps of lilac bushes growing up under the
windows.
Within, he will remember wide, clean rooms, where nothing ever seems to be doing or
going to be done, where everything is once and forever rigidly in place, and where all
household arrangements move with the
punctual exactness of the old clock in the corner.
In the family "keeping-room," as it is termed, he will remember the staid,
respectable old book-case, with its glass doors, where Rollin's History, (NOTE: The
Ancient History, ten volumes (1730-1738),
by the French historian Charles Rollin (1661-1741).)
Milton's Paradise Lost, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and Scott's Family Bible, (NOTE:
Scott's Family Bible (1788-1792), edited with notes by the English Biblical
commentator, Thomas Scott (1747-
1821).)...stand side by side in decorous order, with multitudes of other books,
equally solemn and respectable.
There are no servants in the house, but the lady in the snowy cap, with the spectacles,
who sits sewing every afternoon among her daughters, as if nothing ever had been
done, or were to be done,--she and her
girls, in some long-forgotten fore part of the day, "did up the work," and for the
rest of the time, probably, at all hours when you would see them, it is "done up."
The old kitchen floor never seems stained or spotted; the tables, the chairs, and the
various cooking utensils, never seem deranged or disordered; though three and
sometimes four meals a day are got there,
though the family washing and ironing is there performed, and though pounds of
butter and cheese are in some silent and mysterious manner there brought into
existence.
On such a farm, in such a house and family, Miss Ophelia had spent a quiet existence of
some forty-five years, when her cousin invited her to visit his southern mansion.
The eldest of a large family, she was still considered by her father and mother as one
of "the children," and the proposal that she should go to Orleans was a most
momentous one to the family circle.
The old gray-headed father took down Morse's Atlas...
(NOTE: The Cerographic Atlas of the United States (1842-1845), by Sidney Edwards Morse
(1794-1871), son of the geographer, Jedidiah Morse, and brother of the painter-
inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse.)...out of the
book-case, and looked out the exact latitude and longitude; and read Flint's
Travels in the South and West, (NOTE: Recollections of the Last Ten Years (1826)
by Timothy Flint (1780-1840), missionary of
Presbyterianism to the trans-Allegheny West.)...to make up his own mind as to the
The good mother inquired, anxiously, "if Orleans wasn't an awful wicked place,"
saying, "that it seemed to her most equal to going to the Sandwich Islands, or
anywhere among the heathen."
It was known at the minister's and at the doctor's, and at Miss Peabody's milliner
shop, that Ophelia St. Clare was "talking about" going away down to Orleans with her
cousin; and of course the whole village
could do no less than help this very important process of talking about the
The minister, who inclined strongly to abolitionist views, was quite doubtful
whether such a step might not tend somewhat to encourage the southerners in holding on
to their slaves; while the doctor, who was
a stanch colonizationist, inclined to the opinion that Miss Ophelia ought to go, to
show the Orleans people that we don't think hardly of them, after all.
He was of opinion, in fact, that southern people needed encouraging.
When however, the fact that she had resolved to go was fully before the public
mind, she was solemnly invited out to tea by all her friends and neighbors for the
space of a fortnight, and her prospects and plans duly canvassed and inquired into.
Miss Moseley, who came into the house to help to do the dress-making, acquired daily
accessions of importance from the developments with regard to Miss Ophelia's
wardrobe which she had been enabled to make.
It was credibly ascertained that Squire Sinclare, as his name was commonly
contracted in the neighborhood, had counted out fifty dollars, and given them to Miss
Ophelia, and told her to buy any clothes
she thought best; and that two new silk dresses, and a bonnet, had been sent for
from Boston.
As to the propriety of this extraordinary outlay, the public mind was divided,--some
affirming that it was well enough, all things considered, for once in one's life,
and others stoutly affirming that the money
had better have been sent to the missionaries; but all parties agreed that
there had been no such parasol seen in those parts as had been sent on from New
York, and that she had one silk dress that
might fairly be trusted to stand alone, whatever might be said of its mistress.
There were credible rumors, also, of a hemstitched pocket-handkerchief; and report
even went so far as to state that Miss Ophelia had one pocket-handkerchief with
lace all around it,--it was even added that
it was worked in the corners; but this latter point was never satisfactorily
ascertained, and remains, in fact, unsettled to this day.
Miss Ophelia, as you now behold her, stands before you, in a very shining brown linen
travelling-dress, tall, square-formed, and angular.
Her face was thin, and rather sharp in its outlines; the lips compressed, like those
of a person who is in the habit of making up her mind definitely on all subjects;
while the keen, dark eyes had a peculiarly
searching, advised movement, and travelled over everything, as if they were looking
for something to take care of.
All her movements were sharp, decided, and energetic; and, though she was never much
of a talker, her words were remarkably direct, and to the purpose, when she did
speak.
In her habits, she was a living impersonation of order, method, and
exactness.
In punctuality, she was as inevitable as a clock, and as inexorable as a railroad
engine; and she held in most decided contempt and abomination anything of a
contrary character.
The great sin of sins, in her eyes,--the sum of all evils,--was expressed by one
very common and important word in her vocabulary--"shiftlessness."
Her finale and ultimatum of contempt consisted in a very emphatic pronunciation
of the word "shiftless;" and by this she characterized all modes of procedure which
had not a direct and inevitable relation to
accomplishment of some purpose then definitely had in mind.
People who did nothing, or who did not know exactly what they were going to do, or who
did not take the most direct way to accomplish what they set their hands to,
were objects of her entire contempt,--a
contempt shown less frequently by anything she said, than by a kind of stony grimness,
as if she scorned to say anything about the matter.
As to mental cultivation,--she had a clear, strong, active mind, was well and
thoroughly read in history and the older English classics, and thought with great
strength within certain narrow limits.
Her theological tenets were all made up, labelled in most positive and distinct
forms, and put by, like the bundles in her patch trunk; there were just so many of
them, and there were never to be any more.
So, also, were her ideas with regard to most matters of practical life,--such as
housekeeping in all its branches, and the various political relations of her native
village.
And, underlying all, deeper than anything else, higher and broader, lay the strongest
principle of her being--conscientiousness. Nowhere is conscience so dominant and all-
absorbing as with New England women.
It is the granite formation, which lies deepest, and rises out, even to the tops of
the highest mountains. Miss Ophelia was the absolute bond-slave of
the "ought."
Once make her certain that the "path of duty," as she commonly phrased it, lay in
any given direction, and fire and water could not keep her from it.
She would walk straight down into a well, or up to a loaded cannon's mouth, if she
were only quite sure that there the path lay.
Her standard of right was so high, so all- embracing, so minute, and making so few
concessions to human frailty, that, though she strove with heroic ardor to reach it,
she never actually did so, and of course
was burdened with a constant and often harassing sense of deficiency;--this gave a
severe and somewhat gloomy cast to her religious character.
But, how in the world can Miss Ophelia get along with Augustine St. Clare,--gay, easy,
unpunctual, unpractical, sceptical,--in short,--walking with impudent and
nonchalant freedom over every one of her most cherished habits and opinions?
To tell the truth, then, Miss Ophelia loved him.
When a boy, it had been hers to teach him his catechism, mend his clothes, comb his
hair, and bring him up generally in the way he should go; and her heart having a warm
side to it, Augustine had, as he usually
did with most people, monopolized a large share of it for himself, and therefore it
was that he succeeded very easily in persuading her that the "path of duty" lay
in the direction of New Orleans, and that
she must go with him to take care of Eva, and keep everything from going to wreck and
ruin during the frequent illnesses of his wife.
The idea of a house without anybody to take care of it went to her heart; then she
loved the lovely little girl, as few could help doing; and though she regarded
Augustine as very much of a heathen, yet
she loved him, laughed at his jokes, and forbore with his failings, to an extent
which those who knew him thought perfectly incredible.
But what more or other is to be known of Miss Ophelia our reader must discover by a
personal acquaintance.
There she is, sitting now in her state- room, surrounded by a mixed multitude of
little and big carpet-bags, boxes, baskets, each containing some separate
responsibility which she is tying, binding
up, packing, or fastening, with a face of great earnestness.
"Now, Eva, have you kept count of your things?
Of course you haven't,--children never do: there's the spotted carpet-bag and the
little blue band-box with your best bonnet,--that's two; then the India rubber
satchel is three; and my tape and needle
box is four; and my band-box, five; and my collar-box; and that little hair trunk,
seven. What have you done with your sunshade?
Give it to me, and let me put a paper round it, and tie it to my umbrella with my
shade;--there, now." "Why, aunty, we are only going up home;--
what is the use?"
"To keep it nice, child; people must take care of their things, if they ever mean to
have anything; and now, Eva, is your thimble put up?"
"Really, aunty, I don't know."
"Well, never mind; I'll look your box over,--thimble, wax, two spools, scissors,
knife, tape-needle; all right,--put it in here.
What did you ever do, child, when you were coming on with only your papa.
I should have thought you'd a lost everything you had."
"Well, aunty, I did lose a great many; and then, when we stopped anywhere, papa would
buy some more of whatever it was." "Mercy on us, child,--what a way!"
"It was a very easy way, aunty," said Eva.
"It's a dreadful shiftless one," said aunty.
"Why, aunty, what'll you do now?" said Eva; "that trunk is too full to be shut down."
"It must shut down," said aunty, with the air of a general, as she squeezed the
things in, and sprung upon the lid;--still a little gap remained about the mouth of
the trunk.
"Get up here, Eva!" said Miss Ophelia, courageously; "what has been done can be
done again. This trunk has got to be shut and locked--
there are no two ways about it."
And the trunk, intimidated, doubtless, by this resolute statement, gave in.
The hasp snapped sharply in its hole, and Miss Ophelia turned the key, and pocketed
it in triumph.
"Now we're ready. Where's your papa?
I think it time this baggage was set out. Do look out, Eva, and see if you see your
papa."
"O, yes, he's down the other end of the gentlemen's cabin, eating an orange."
"He can't know how near we are coming," said aunty; "hadn't you better run and
speak to him?"
"Papa never is in a hurry about anything," said Eva, "and we haven't come to the
landing. Do step on the guards, aunty.
Look! there's our house, up that street!"
The boat now began, with heavy groans, like some vast, tired monster, to prepare to
push up among the multiplied steamers at the levee.
Eva joyously pointed out the various spires, domes, and way-marks, by which she
recognized her native city. "Yes, yes, dear; very fine," said Miss
Ophelia.
"But mercy on us! the boat has stopped! where is your father?"
And now ensued the usual turmoil of landing--waiters running twenty ways at
once--men tugging trunks, carpet-bags, boxes--women anxiously calling to their
children, and everybody crowding in a dense mass to the plank towards the landing.
Miss Ophelia seated herself resolutely on the lately vanquished trunk, and
marshalling all her goods and chattels in fine military order, seemed resolved to
defend them to the last.
"Shall I take your trunk, ma'am?" "Shall I take your baggage?"
"Let me 'tend to your baggage, Missis?" "Shan't I carry out these yer, Missis?"
rained down upon her unheeded.
She sat with grim determination, upright as a darning-needle stuck in a board, holding
on her bundle of umbrella and parasols, and replying with a determination that was
enough to strike dismay even into a
hackman, wondering to Eva, in each interval, "what upon earth her papa could
be thinking of; he couldn't have fallen over, now,--but something must have
happened;"--and just as she had begun to
work herself into a real distress, he came up, with his usually careless motion, and
giving Eva a quarter of the orange he was eating, said,
"Well, Cousin Vermont, I suppose you are all ready."
"I've been ready, waiting, nearly an hour," said Miss Ophelia; "I began to be really
concerned about you.
"That's a clever fellow, now," said he. "Well, the carriage is waiting, and the
crowd are now off, so that one can walk out in a decent and Christian manner, and not
be pushed and shoved.
Here," he added to a driver who stood behind him, "take these things."
"I'll go and see to his putting them in," said Miss Ophelia.
"O, pshaw, cousin, what's the use?" said St. Clare.
"Well, at any rate, I'll carry this, and this, and this," said Miss Ophelia,
singling out three boxes and a small carpet-bag.
"My dear Miss Vermont, positively you mustn't come the Green Mountains over us
that way.
You must adopt at least a piece of a southern principle, and not walk out under
all that load.
They'll take you for a waiting-maid; give them to this fellow; he'll put them down as
if they were eggs, now."
Miss Ophelia looked despairingly as her cousin took all her treasures from her, and
rejoiced to find herself once more in the carriage with them, in a state of
preservation.
"Where's Tom?" said Eva. "O, he's on the outside, ***.
I'm going to take Tom up to mother for a peace-offering, to make up for that drunken
fellow that upset the carriage."
"O, Tom will make a splendid driver, I know," said Eva; "he'll never get drunk."
The carriage stopped in front of an ancient mansion, built in that odd mixture of
Spanish and French style, of which there are specimens in some parts of New Orleans.
It was built in the Moorish fashion,--a square building enclosing a court-yard,
into which the carriage drove through an arched gateway.
The court, in the inside, had evidently been arranged to gratify a picturesque and
voluptuous ideality.
Wide galleries ran all around the four sides, whose Moorish arches, slender
pillars, and arabesque ornaments, carried the mind back, as in a dream, to the reign
of oriental romance in Spain.
In the middle of the court, a fountain threw high its silvery water, falling in a
never-ceasing spray into a marble basin, fringed with a deep border of fragrant
violets.
The water in the fountain, pellucid as crystal, was alive with myriads of gold and
silver fishes, twinkling and darting through it like so many living jewels.
Around the fountain ran a walk, paved with a mosaic of pebbles, laid in various
fanciful patterns; and this, again, was surrounded by turf, smooth as green velvet,
while a carriage-drive enclosed the whole.
Two large orange-trees, now fragrant with blossoms, threw a delicious shade; and,
ranged in a circle round upon the turf, were marble vases of arabesque sculpture,
containing the choicest flowering plants of the tropics.
Huge pomegranate trees, with their glossy leaves and flame-colored flowers, dark-
leaved Arabian jessamines, with their silvery stars, geraniums, luxuriant roses
bending beneath their heavy abundance of
flowers, golden jessamines, lemon-scented verbenum, all united their bloom and
fragrance, while here and there a mystic old aloe, with its strange, massive leaves,
sat looking like some old enchanter,
sitting in weird grandeur among the more perishable bloom and fragrance around it.
The galleries that surrounded the court were festooned with a curtain of some kind
of Moorish stuff, and could be drawn down at pleasure, to exclude the beams of the
sun.
On the whole, the appearance of the place was luxurious and romantic.
As the carriage drove in, Eva seemed like a bird ready to burst from a cage, with the
wild eagerness of her delight.
"O, isn't it beautiful, lovely! my own dear, darling home!" she said to Miss
Ophelia. "Isn't it beautiful?"
"'T is a pretty place," said Miss Ophelia, as she alighted; "though it looks rather
old and heathenish to me." Tom got down from the carriage, and looked
about with an air of calm, still enjoyment.
The ***, it must be remembered, is an exotic of the most gorgeous and superb
countries of the world, and he has, deep in his heart, a passion for all that is
splendid, rich, and fanciful; a passion
which, rudely indulged by an untrained taste, draws on them the ridicule of the
colder and more correct white race.
St. Clare, who was in heart a poetical voluptuary, smiled as Miss Ophelia made her
remark on his premises, and, turning to Tom, who was standing looking round, his
beaming black face perfectly radiant with admiration, he said,
"Tom, my boy, this seems to suit you." "Yes, Mas'r, it looks about the right
thing," said Tom.
All this passed in a moment, while trunks were being hustled off, hackman paid, and
while a crowd, of all ages and sizes,--men, women, and children,--came running through
the galleries, both above and below to see Mas'r come in.
Foremost among them was a highly-dressed young mulatto man, evidently a very
distingue personage, attired in the ultra extreme of the mode, and gracefully waving
a scented cambric handkerchief in his hand.
This personage had been exerting himself, with great alacrity, in driving all the
flock of domestics to the other end of the verandah.
"Back! all of you.
I am ashamed of you," he said, in a tone of authority.
"Would you intrude on Master's domestic relations, in the first hour of his
return?"
All looked abashed at this elegant speech, delivered with quite an air, and stood
huddled together at a respectful distance, except two stout porters, who came up and
began conveying away the baggage.
Owing to Mr. Adolph's systematic arrangements, when St. Clare turned round
from paying the hackman, there was nobody in view but Mr. Adolph himself, conspicuous
in satin vest, gold guard-chain, and white
pants, and bowing with inexpressible grace and suavity.
"Ah, Adolph, is it you?" said his master, offering his hand to him; "how are you,
boy?" while Adolph poured forth, with great fluency, an extemporary speech, which he
had been preparing, with great care, for a fortnight before.
"Well, well," said St. Clare, passing on, with his usual air of negligent drollery,
"that's very well got up, Adolph.
See that the baggage is well bestowed. I'll come to the people in a minute;" and,
so saying, he led Miss Ophelia to a large parlor that opened on the verandah.
While this had been passing, Eva had flown like a bird, through the porch and parlor,
to a little boudoir opening likewise on the verandah.
A tall, dark-eyed, sallow woman, half rose from a couch on which she was reclining.
"Mamma!" said Eva, in a sort of a rapture, throwing herself on her neck, and embracing
her over and over again.
"That'll do,--take care, child,--don't, you make my head ache," said the mother, after
she had languidly kissed her.
St. Clare came in, embraced his wife in true, orthodox, husbandly fashion, and then
presented to her his cousin.
Marie lifted her large eyes on her cousin with an air of some curiosity, and received
her with languid politeness.
A crowd of servants now pressed to the entry door, and among them a middle-aged
mulatto woman, of very respectable appearance, stood foremost, in a tremor of
expectation and joy, at the door.
"O, there's Mammy!" said Eva, as she flew across the room; and, throwing herself into
her arms, she kissed her repeatedly.
This woman did not tell her that she made her head ache, but, on the contrary, she
hugged her, and laughed, and cried, till her sanity was a thing to be doubted of;
and when released from her, Eva flew from
one to another, shaking hands and kissing, in a way that Miss Ophelia afterwards
declared fairly turned her stomach. "Well!" said Miss Ophelia, "you southern
children can do something that I couldn't."
"What, now, pray?" said St. Clare. "Well, I want to be kind to everybody, and
I wouldn't have anything hurt; but as to kissing--"
"***," said St. Clare, "that you're not up to,--hey?"
"Yes, that's it. How can she?"
St. Clare laughed, as he went into the passage.
"Halloa, here, what's to pay out here?
Here, you all--Mammy, Jimmy, Polly, Sukey-- glad to see Mas'r?" he said, as he went
shaking hands from one to another.
"Look out for the babies!" he added, as he stumbled over a sooty little urchin, who
was crawling upon all fours. "If I step upon anybody, let 'em mention
it."
There was an abundance of laughing and blessing Mas'r, as St. Clare distributed
small pieces of change among them.
"Come, now, take yourselves off, like good boys and girls," he said; and the whole
assemblage, dark and light, disappeared through a door into a large verandah,
followed by Eva, who carried a large
satchel, which she had been filling with apples, nuts, candy, ribbons, laces, and
toys of every description, during her whole homeward journey.
As St. Clare turned to go back his eye fell upon Tom, who was standing uneasily,
shifting from one foot to the other, while Adolph stood negligently leaning against
the banisters, examining Tom through an
opera-glass, with an air that would have done credit to any dandy living.
"Puh! you puppy," said his master, striking down the opera glass; "is that the way you
treat your company?
Seems to me, Dolph," he added, laying his finger on the elegant figured satin vest
that Adolph was sporting, "seems to me that's my vest."
"O! Master, this vest all stained with wine; of course, a gentleman in Master's
standing never wears a vest like this. I understood I was to take it.
It does for a poor ***-fellow, like me."
And Adolph tossed his head, and passed his fingers through his scented hair, with a
grace. "So, that's it, is it?" said St. Clare,
carelessly.
"Well, here, I'm going to show this Tom to his mistress, and then you take him to the
kitchen; and mind you don't put on any of your airs to him.
He's worth two such puppies as you."
"Master always will have his joke," said Adolph, laughing.
"I'm delighted to see Master in such spirits."
"Here, Tom," said St. Clare, beckoning.
Tom entered the room.
He looked wistfully on the velvet carpets, and the before unimagined splendors of
mirrors, pictures, statues, and curtains, and, like the Queen of Sheba before
Solomon, there was no more spirit in him.
He looked afraid even to set his feet down. "See here, Marie," said St. Clare to his
wife, "I've bought you a coachman, at last, to order.
I tell you, he's a regular hearse for blackness and sobriety, and will drive you
like a funeral, if you want. Open your eyes, now, and look at him.
Now, don't say I never think about you when I'm gone."
Marie opened her eyes, and fixed them on Tom, without rising.
"I know he'll get drunk," she said.
"No, he's warranted a pious and sober article."
"Well, I hope he may turn out well," said the lady; "it's more than I expect,
though."
"Dolph," said St. Clare, "show Tom down stairs; and, mind yourself," he added;
"remember what I told you." Adolph tripped gracefully forward, and Tom,
with lumbering tread, went after.
"He's a perfect behemoth!" said Marie. "Come, now, Marie," said St. Clare, seating
himself on a stool beside her sofa, "be gracious, and say something pretty to a
fellow."
"You've been gone a fortnight beyond the time," said the lady, pouting.
"Well, you know I wrote you the reason." "Such a short, cold letter!" said the lady.
"Dear me! the mail was just going, and it had to be that or nothing."
"That's just the way, always," said the lady; "always something to make your
journeys long, and letters short."
"See here, now," he added, drawing an elegant velvet case out of his pocket, and
opening it, "here's a present I got for you in New York."
It was a daguerreotype, clear and soft as an engraving, representing Eva and her
father sitting hand in hand. Marie looked at it with a dissatisfied air.
"What made you sit in such an awkward position?" she said.
"Well, the position may be a matter of opinion; but what do you think of the
"If you don't think anything of my opinion in one case, I suppose you wouldn't in
another," said the lady, shutting the daguerreotype.
"Hang the woman!" said St. Clare, mentally; but aloud he added, "Come, now, Marie, what
do you think of the likeness? Don't be nonsensical, now."
"It's very inconsiderate of you, St. Clare," said the lady, "to insist on my
talking and looking at things.
You know I've been lying all day with the sick-headache; and there's been such a
tumult made ever since you came, I'm half dead."
"You're subject to the sick-headache, ma'am!" said Miss Ophelia, suddenly rising
from the depths of the large arm-chair, where she had sat quietly, taking an
inventory of the furniture, and calculating its expense.
"Yes, I'm a perfect martyr to it," said the lady.
"Juniper-berry tea is good for sick- headache," said Miss Ophelia; "at least,
Auguste, Deacon Abraham Perry's wife, used to say so; and she was a great nurse."
"I'll have the first juniper-berries that get ripe in our garden by the lake brought
in for that special purpose," said St. Clare, gravely pulling the bell as he did
so; "meanwhile, cousin, you must be wanting
to retire to your apartment, and refresh yourself a little, after your journey.
Dolph," he added, "tell Mammy to come here."
The decent mulatto woman whom Eva had caressed so rapturously soon entered; she
was dressed neatly, with a high red and yellow turban on her head, the recent gift
of Eva, and which the child had been arranging on her head.
"Mammy," said St. Clare, "I put this lady under your care; she is tired, and wants
rest; take her to her chamber, and be sure she is made comfortable," and Miss Ophelia
disappeared in the rear of Mammy.