If Arthur could speak to me now, and could know that ere long I shall be bereft of the last of my kindred, I am sure he would say to me with a smile, "Sweet Alice, your loving heart has been my own all these sad years, but we cannot marry here, though we may be sweethearts. You require a manly heart in which you may place your burdens, and a manly bosom upon which you may recline your tired, wearied head; strong arms that shall shield you from every peril. Think of me at the nuptial hour and know that I shall give you away at the altar with my blessing and smile."
Thus ran the current of her meditation. Thus in her fancy she was scattering over the flagstones, in the nave of the old church, a sheen as of pure gold. Tired out with these thoughts she fell asleep in her chair, and her dreams were sweet and refreshing until she was awakened by a gentle rap upon the door which announced the presence of her father.
Ned had now been installed as the butler at Ingleside. Clarissa observing as he assumed his untried office, "Dat Ned was more spryer und cud fend fur hesef bettern oman fokses. What cud wun lone lorn oman do ef de carpet-sackers shud come back sho nuff. Old marser ort to fort ob dis fo now."
The valuable estate of Burnbrae, an adjoining plantation, had fallen under the auctioneer's hammer for unpaid taxes and an overdue mortgage. The old owner had struggled with adverse fate to preserve it for his children, in the same plight it had descended to him from his ancestors; saving and excepting reasonable wear and tear and other unavoidable casualties. This large estate of more than two thousand acres had been purchased by Judge Bonham with its impedimenta of freed slaves that had been dumped into its cellars like offal by the Freedman's Bureau.
This incident alone was a sad commentary upon the times. From affluence to penury the descent had been sheer and without the fault of Mr. Baring the owner. Judge Bonham said to him however that he should not want, and that he might remain where he was at least for the present. The purchasing of this property was the occasion of a visit from that distinguished proprietor to Colonel Seymour at Ingleside. Judge Bonham had been a distinguished lawyer and jurist, and in the very best of times had highly dignified his profession by a seat upon the Superior Court bench. He was, however, confronted now by a condition and not a theory. He had interviewed from time to time the authors of his text books, digests and reports, but from their dead lips came no satisfactory response to the question, "What shall be done with these poor negroes?" Thrust out of their home nests like unfledged eaglets, their very sustenance precarious and their condition the most pitiable and squalid. Idlers and vagrants, watching like a shipwrecked crew hopelessly for succor, when there is none to come.
It happened that the judge and the Colonel were in confidential communication for more than an hour, and doubtless the subject was exhaustively examined and reviewed, as if it were under a microscope. The judge, had been a widower for a few years, was a man of quite dignified presence, and perhaps fifty-five years of age. He had seen Alice but once before, at the Memorial exercises at the cemetery, and to-day he contemplated the southern beauty as if he were looking upon the face of Beatrice Cenci as it smiles upon the throngs from the gallery at Florence. Her exquisite grace, her extraordinary beauty, rekindled instantly the fire that had burned down into dead ashes so many years ago.
He asked himself the question, "Can I be in love? Have I been ensnared by the pretty fowler, enmeshed by the witcheries, the fascinations of this royal and unsophisticated beauty?" And all this done and accomplished without the movement of a finger upon her part.
"You, Livy Bonham, almost in the sere leaf, a veteran of fifty-four years, striking the flag to a feebly manned battery of bewitching blue eyes before it has opened fire! Impossible! Impossible!" This exclamation was just loud enough for the Colonel to overhear, who enquired of the judge, "what it was that was impossible?"
"Ah, I was thinking if I couldn't persuade the negroes to vacate my premises, that was all."