CHAPTER XXXIX. — THE NEW HOME.
With these revived suspicions, half stifled, but still struggling in my bosom, did I commence my journey for the West. My arrangements were comprehensive, but simple. I had procured a second-hand travelling carriage and fine pair of horses from an acquaintance, at a very moderate price—a price which, I well knew, I should easily get for them again on reaching my place of destination. I was my own driver. I had no money to spare in purchasing what might be dispensed with. A single trunk contained all the necessary luggage of my wife and self. What was not absolutely needed by the wayside was sent on by water. This included my books, desks, Julia's painting materials, and such other articles of the household, as were of cost and not bulky. I had previously written—as I may have stated already—to my friend Kingsley. He was to procure me temporary lodgings in the town of M—-. I left much to his judgment and experience. He had once before been in Alabama and having interests there, had made himself familiar with everything in that region, necessary to be known. I put myself very much in his hands. I was too anxious to get away to urge any difficulties or make any troublesome requisitions. He was simply to procure me an abiding-place in some private family—if possible in the suburbs—until I should be able to look about me. Economy was insisted upon. I had precious little money to spare, and even the spoils of my one night's visit to the gaming-house, were of no small help in sustaining me in my determination to remove. I had not applied them previously. I confess to a feeling of shame when I was compelled by necessity at last to use them. I had saved something already from my professional income, and I procured an advance on my furniture which was left for sale. I had calculated my expenses in removing and for one year's residence in M—, and was prepared, so far as poor human foresight may prepare itself, to keep want from our doors at least for that period. I trusted to good fortune, my own resources, and the notorious fact that, at that day, there were few able lawyers in M—, to secure me an early and valuable practice. I carried with me letters from the best men in the community I had left. But I carried with me what was of more value than any letters, even though they be written in gold. I carried with me methodical habits and an energy of character which would maintain my resolution, and bear me through, to a safe conclusion, in any plan which I should contemplate. Industry and perseverance are the giants that cast down forests, drain swamps, level mountains, and create empires. I flattered myself that with these I had other and crowning qualities of intellect and culture. Perhaps it may be admitted that I had. But of what avail were all when coupled with the blind heart? Enough—I must not anticipate.
Filled with the exciting fancies engendered by the affair of the last night, I commenced my journey. The day was a fine one; the sun cheery and bright without being oppressive; and soon, gliding through the broad avenues, lined with noblest trees, which conducted us from the city to the forests, we had the pleasant carol of birds, and the lively chirp of hopping insects.
I was always a lover of the woods; green shady dells, and winding walks amidst crowding foliage. I cared little for mere flowers. A garden was never a desire in my mind. I could be pleased to see and to smell, but I had no passion for its objects. But the trees—the big, venerable oaks, like patriarchs and priests; the lofty and swaggering pines in their green helmets, like warriors of the feudal ages—these were forms that I could worship. I may say, I loved trees with a real passion. Flowers, and the taste for flowers seemed to me always petty; but my instincts led me to behold a sneaking and most impressive grandeur, in these old lords of the forest, that had been the first, rising from the mighty mother to attest the wondrous strength of her resources, and the teeming glories of her womb.
Now, however, they did not fill my soul with earnest reachings, as had ever been the case before. They soothed me somewhat, but the eyes of my mind were turned within. They looked only at the prostration of that miserable heart which was torturing itself with vague, wild doubts—guessing and conjecturing with an agonizing pain, and without the least hope of profit. I could not drive from my thoughts, the vexing circumstances of the last night in the city; and, for the first day of our journey, the hours moved with oppressive slowness. Objects which I had formerly loved to contemplate and always found sweet and refreshing, now gave me little pleasure and exacted little of my attention; and I reached our stopping-place for the night with a sense of weariness and stupor which no mere fatigue of body, I well knew, could ever have occasioned.
But this could not last. The elasticity of my nature, joined with the absence of that one person whom I had now learned to regard as my evil genius, soon enabled me to shake off the oppressive doubts and sadness which fettered and enfeebled me. Once more I began to behold the forests with all the eyes of former delight and affection, and I was conscious, after the progress of a day or two, of periods in which I entirely lost sight of William Edgerton and all my suspicions in the sweet warmth of a fresh and pleasing contemplation.
Something of this—nay, perhaps, the most of it, was due to my wife herself. There was a change in her air and manner which sensibly affected my heart. I had treated her coldly at first, but she had not perceived it; at least she had not suffered it to influence her conduct; and I was equally pleased and surprised to behold in her language, looks, and deportment, a degree of life and buoyant animation, which reminded me of the very champagne exuberance and spirit of her youth. Her eyes flashed with a sense of freedom. Her voice sounded with the silvery clearness of one, who, long pent up in the limits of a dungeon, uses the first moment of escape into the forests to delight himself with song. She seemed to have just thrown off a miserable burden;—and, as for any grief—any sign of regret at leaving home and tics from which she would not willingly part—there was not the slightest appearance of any such feeling in her mind, look, or manner. Kindly, considerately, and sweetly, and with a cheery smile in her eyes, and a springing vigor in the accents of her voice, she strove to enliven the way and to expel the gloom which she soon perceived had fastened itself upon my soul. Her own cares, if she had any, seemed to be very slight, and were utterly lost in mine. She spoke of our new abiding-place with a hearty confidence; that it would be at once a home of prosperity and peace; and, altogether convinced me for the time that the sacrifice must be comparatively very small, which she had made on leaving her birth-place. I very soon wondered that I should have fancied that William Edgerton was ever more to her than the friend of her husband.
Our journey was slow but not tedious. Had our progress been only half so rapid, I should have been satisfied. It was love alone that my heart wanted. I craved for nothing but the just requital of my own passion. I had no complaint, no affliction, when I could persuade myself that I had not thrown away my affections upon the ungrateful and undeserving. Assured now of the love of the beloved one, all the intense devotion of my soul was re-awakened; and the deepest shadows of the forest, gloomy and desolate as they were, along the waste tracts of Georgia and Alabama—in that earlier day—enlivened by the satisfied spirit within, seemed no more than so many places of retreat, where security and peace, combining in behalf of Love, had given him an exclusive sovereignty.
The rude countryman encountered us, and his face beamed with cheerfulness and good humor. The song of the black softened the toils of labor, in the unfinished clearings; and even the wild red man, shooting suddenly from out the sylvan covert, wore in his visage of habitual gravity, an air of resignation which took all harshness from his uncouth features.
Such, under the tuition of well-satisfied hearts, was our mutual experience of the long journey which we had taken when we reached the end of it. This we did in perfect safety. We found our friend, Kingsley, prepared for and awaiting us. He had procured us pleasant apartments in a neat cottage in the suburbs, where we were almost to ourselves. Our landlady was an ancient widow, without a family. She occupied but a single apartment in her house, and left the use of the rest to her lodgers. This was an arrangement with which I was particularly gratified. Her cottage lay half way up on the side of a hill which was crowned with thick clumps of the noblest trees. Long, winding, narrow foot-paths, carried us picturesquely to the summit, where we had a bird's-eye view of the town below, the river beyond—now darting out from the woods and now hiding securely beneath their umbrage—and fair, smooth, lawn-looking fields, which glowed at the proper season with the myriad green and white pinnies of corn and cotton. At the foot of the cottage lay a delightful shrubbery, which almost covered it up from sight. It was altogether such a retreat as a hermit would desire. It reminded me somewhat of the lovely spot which we had left. A pleasant walk of a mile lay between it and the town where I proposed to practice, and this furnished a necessity for a certain degree of exercise, which, being unavoidable, was of the most valuable kind. Altogether, Kingsley had executed his commission with a taste and diligence which left me nothing to complain of.
He was delighted at my coming.
“You are nearer to me now,” he said; “will be nearer at least when I get to Texas; and I do not despair to see you making tracks after me when I go there.”
“But when go you?”
“Not soon. I am in some trouble here. I am pleading and being impleaded. You are just come in season to take up the cudgels for me. My landrights are disputed—my titles. You will have something of a lawsuit to begin upon at your earliest leisure.”
“Indeed! but what's the business?”
He gave me a statement of his affairs, placed his papers in my hands, and I found myself, on inspecting them, engaged in a controversy which was likely to give me the opportunity which I desired, of appearing soon in cases of equal intricacy and interest. Kingsley had some ten thousand dollars in land, the greater part of which was involved in questions of title and pre-emption, presenting some complex features, and likely to occasion bad blood among certain trespassers whom it became our first duty to oust if possible. I was associated with a spirited young lawyer of the place; a youth of great natural talent, keen, quick intellect, much readiness of resource, yet little experience and less reading. Like the great mass of our western men, however, he was a man to improve. He had no self-conceit—did not delude himself with the idea that he knew as much as his neighbor; and, consequently, was pretty certain to increase in wisdom with increase of years. He had few prejudices to get over, and though he knew his strength, he also knew his weakness. He felt the instinct of natural talent, but he did not deceive himself on the subject of his deficient knowledge. He was willing to learn whenever he could find a teacher. His name was Wharton. I took to him at once. He was an ardent, manly fellow—frank as a boy—could laugh and weep in the same hour, and yet was as firm in his principles, as if he could neither laugh nor weep. As an acquaintance he was an acquisition.
Kingsley was delighted to see me, though somewhat wondering that I should give up the practice at home, where I was doing so well, to break ground in a region where I was utterly unknown. He gave me little trouble, however, in accounting to him for this movement. It was not difficult to persuade him—nay, he soon persuaded himself—that something of my present course was due to his own counsel and suggestion. To a man, like himself, to whom mere transition was pleasure, it needed no argument to show that my resolve was right.
“Who the d—l,” he exclaimed, “would like always to be in the same place? Such a person is a mere cipher. We establish an intellectual superiority when we show ourselves superior to place. A genuine man is always a citizen of the world. It is your vegetable man that can not go far without grumbling, finding fault with all he sees, talking of comforts and such small matters, and longing to get home again. Such a man puts me in mind of every member of the cow family that I ever knew. He is never at peace with himself or the world, but always groaning and thrusting out his horns, until he can get back to his old range, and revel in his native marsh, joint-grass, and cane-tops. Englishmen are very much of this breed. They go abroad, grumble as they go, and if they can not carry their cane-tops with them, afflict the whole world with their lamentations. I take it for granted, Clifford, that this step to Alabama, is simply a step toward Texas. Your next will be to New Orleans, and then, presto, we shall see you on the Sabine.”
“I hope not,” said my wife. “You have got us into such comfortable quarters here, Mr. Kingsley, that I hope you will do nothing to tempt my husband farther. Go farther and fare worse, you know. Let well enough alone.”
“Oh. I beseech you!—two proverbs at a time will be fatal to one or other of us. Perhaps both. But he can not fare worse by going to Texas.”
“He will do well enough here.”
“Perhaps.”
“Recover your lands, for example, as a beginning.”
“Ah! now you would bribe me. That is certainly a suggestion to make me keep my tongue, at least until the verdict is rendered. 'Till then, you know, I shall make no permanent remove myself.”
“But do you mean to go before the trial?” I asked.
“Yes, for a couple of months or so. I should only get into some squabble with my opponents by remaining here; and I may be preparing for all of us by going in season. I will look out for a township, Mrs. Clifford, on the edge of some beautiful prairie, and near some beautiful river. Your husband has a passion for water prospects, I can tell you, and would become a misanthrope without them. I am doubtful if he will be happy, indeed, if not within telescope distance from the sea itself. I don't think that a river will altogether satisfy him.”
“Oh yes, THIS must;” and as she spoke she pointed to the fair glassy surface of the Alabama, as it stretched away, at intervals, in broad glimpses before our eyes.
“Well, we shall see; but I will make my preparations, nevertheless, precisely as if he were not likely to be content. I have formed to myself a plan for all of you. I must make a dear little colony of our own in Texas. We shall have a nest of the sweetest little cottages, each with its neat little garden. In the centre we shall have a neat little playground for our neat little children; on the hill a neat little church; in the grove a neat little library; on the river a neat little barge; and over this neat little empire, you, Lady Clifford, shall be the neat little empress.”
“Dear me! what a neat little establishment!”
“It shall be all that, I assure you; and it shall have other advantages. You shall have a kingdom free from taxes and wars. There shall be no law-givers but yourself. We shall have no elections except when we elect our wives, and the women shall be the only voters then. We shall have no custom houses—everything shall be free of duty;—we shall have no banks—everything shall be free of charge;—we shall have no parson, for shall we not be sinless?”
“But what will you do with the neat little church?”
“Oh! that we shall keep merely to remind us of what is necessary in less fortunate communities.”
“Very good; but how, if you have no parsons, will you perform the marriage ceremony?”
“That shall be a natural operation of government. The voters having given their suffrages, you shall determine and declare with whom the majority lies, and give a certificate to that effect. The first choice will lie with the damsel having the highest number of votes; the second with the next; and so on to the end of the chapter; and then elections are to take place annually among the unmarried—the ladies being the privileged class as I said before. You will keep a record of these events, the names of parties, and so forth; and this record shall be proof, conclusive to conviction, against any party falling off from his or her duties.”
“Quite a system. I do not deny that our sex will have some new privileges by this arrangement.”
“Unquestionably. But you have not heard all. We shall have no doctors, for we shall have no diseases in the beautiful world to which I shall carry you. We shall have no lawyers, for we shall have no wrangling.”
“Indeed; but what is my husband to do then?”
“Why, he is your husband. What should he do? He takes rank from you. You are queen, you know. He will have no need of law.”
“There's reason in that; but how will you prevent wrangling where there are men and women?”
“Oh, by giving the women their own way. The government is a despotism—you are queen—surely you will make no further objection to so admirable a system?”
In good-humored chat like this, in which our landlady, Mrs. Porterfield—a lady who, though fully sixty-five years of age, was yet of a cheery and chatty disposition—took considerable part, our first evening passed away. Though fatigued, we sat up until a tolerably late hour, enlivened by the frank spirit of our friend, Kingsley, and inspired by the natural feeling of curiosity which our change of situation inspired It was midnight before we solicited the aid of sleep.