Unexpected as the shock was to Marston, he bore it with seeming coolness, as if dreading the appearance of the man who had taken advantage of the moment to bring him under obligations, more than he did the amount to be discharged. Arising from the table, he took Lorenzo by the hand, saying:—"Veil your trouble, Lorenzo! Let the past be forgotten, bury the stigma in your own bosom; let it be an example to your feelings and your actions. Go not upon the world to wrestle with its ingratitude; if you do, misfortune will befall you-you will stumble through it the remainder of your life. With me, I fear the very presence of the man who has found means of engrafting his avarice upon our misfortunes; he deals with those in his grasp like one who would cut the flesh and blood of mankind into fragments of gain. Be firm, Lorenzo; be firm! Remember, it is not the province of youth to despair; be manly-manliness even in crime lends its virtue to the falling." At which he bid him good night, and retired to rest.
The young man, more pained at his uncle's kindness,—kindness stronger in its effects than reproof,—still lingered, as if to watch some change of expression on his uncle's countenance, as he left the door. His face changed into pallid gloominess, and again, as if by magic influence, filled with the impress of passion; it was despair holding conflict with a bending spirit. He felt himself a criminal, marked by the whispers of society; he might not hear the charges against him, nor be within the sound of scandal's tongue, but he would see it outlined in faces that once smiled at his seeming prosperity. He would feel it in the cold hand that had welcomed him,—that had warmly embraced him; his name would no longer be respected. The circle of refined society that had kindly received him, had made him one of its attractions, would now shun him as if he were contagion. Beyond this he saw the fate that hovered over his father's and his uncle's estates;-all the filial affection they had bestowed upon him, blasted; the caresses of his beloved and beautiful sister; the shame the exposure would bring upon her; the knave who held him in his grasp, while dragging the last remnants of their property away to appease dishonest demands, haunted him to despair. And, yet, to sink under them-to leave all behind him and be an outcast, homeless and friendless upon the world, where he could only look back upon the familiar scenes of his boyhood with regret, would be to carry a greater amount of anguish to his destiny. The destroyer was upon him; his grasp was firm and painful. He might live a life of rectitude; but his principles and affections would be unfixed. It would be like an infectious robe encircling him,—a disease which he never could eradicate, so that he might feel he was not an empty vessel among honourable men. When men depicted their villains, moving in the grateful spheres of life, he would be one of their models; and though the thoughtlessness of youth had made him the type haunting himself by day and night, the world never made a distinction. Right and wrong were things that to him only murmured in distrust; they would be blemishes exaggerated from simple error; but the judgment of society would never overlook them. He must now choose between a resolution to bear the consequences at home, or turn his back upon all that had been near and dear to him,—be a wanderer struggling with the eventful trials of life in a distant land! Turning pale, as if frantic with the thought of what was before him, the struggle to choose between the two extremes, and the only seeming alternative, he grasped the candle that flickered before him, gave a glance round the room, as if taking a last look at each familiar object that met his eyes, and retired.
CHAPTER V. — THE MAROONING PARTY.
A MAROONING pic-nic had been proposed and arranged by the young beaux and belles of the neighbouring plantations. The day proposed for the festive event was that following the disclosure of Lorenzo's difficulties. Every negro on the plantation was agog long before daylight: the morning ushered forth bright and balmy, with bustle and confusion reigning throughout the plantation,—the rendezvous being Marston's mansion, from which the gay party would be conveyed in a barge, overspread with an awning, to a romantic spot, overshaded with luxuriant pines, some ten miles up the stream. Here gay fˆtes, mirth and joy, the mingling of happy spirits, were to make the time pass pleasantly. The night passed without producing any decision in Lorenzo's mind; and when he made his appearance on the veranda an unusual thoughtfulness pervaded his countenance; all his attempts to be joyous failed to conceal his trouble. Marston, too, was moody and reserved even to coldness; that frank, happy, and careless expression of a genial nature, which had so long marked him in social gatherings, was departed. When Maxwell, the young Englishman, with quiet demeanour, attempted to draw him into conversation about the prospects of the day, his answers were measured, cold, beyond his power of comprehending, yet inciting.
To appreciate those pleasant scenes-those scenes so apparently happy, at times adding a charm to plantation life-those innocent merry-makings in spring time-one must live among them, be born to the recreations of the soil. Not a negro on the plantation, old or young, who does not think himself part and parcel of the scene-that he is indispensably necessary to make Mas'r's enjoyment complete! In this instance, the lawn, decked in resplendent verdure, the foliage tinged by the mellow rays of the rising sun, presented a pastoral loveliness that can only be appreciated by those who have contemplated that soft beauty which pervades a southern landscape at morning and evening. The arbour of old oaks, their branches twined into a panoply of thick foliage, stretching from the mansion to the landing, seemed like a sleeping battlement, its dark clusters soaring above redolent brakes and spreading water-leaks. Beneath their fretted branches hung the bedewed moss like a veil of sparkling crystals, moving gently to and fro as if touched by some unseen power. The rice fields, stretching far in the distance, present the appearance of a mirror decked with shadows of fleecy clouds, transparent and sublime. Around the cabins of the plantation people-the human property-the dark sons and daughters of promiscuous families-are in "heyday glee:" they laughed, chattered, contended, and sported over the presence of the party;-the overseer had given them an hour or two to see the party "gwine so;" and they were overjoyed. Even the dogs, as if incited by an instinctive sense of some gay scene in which they were to take part, joined their barking with the jargon of the negroes, while the mules claimed a right to do likewise. In the cabins near the mansion another scene of fixing, fussing, toddling, chattering, running here and there with sun-slouches, white aprons, fans, shades, baskets, and tin pans, presented itself; any sort of vessel that would hold provender for the day was being brought forth. Clotilda, her face more cheerful, is dressed in a nice drab merino, a plain white stomacher, a little collar neatly turned over: with her plain bodice, her white ruffles round her wrists, she presents the embodiment of neatness. She is pretty, very pretty; and yet her beauty has made her the worst slave-a slave in the sight of Heaven and earth! Her large, meaning eyes, glow beneath her arched brows, while her auburn hair, laid in smooth folds over her ears and braided into a heavy circle at the back of her head, gives her the fascinating beauty of a Norman peasant. Annette plays around her, is dressed in her very best,—for Marston is proud of the child's beauty, and nothing is withheld that can gratify the ambition of the mother, so characteristic, to dress with fantastic colours: the child gambols at her feet, views its many-coloured dress, keeps asking various unanswerable questions about Daddy Bob, Harry, and the pic-nic. Again it scrambles pettishly, sings snatches of some merry plantation song, pulls its braided hat about the floor, climbs upon the table to see what is in the basket.
Passing to the cabin of Ellen Juvarna, we see her in the same confusion which seems to have beset the plantation: her dark, piercing eyes, display more of that melancholy which marks Clotilda's; nor does thoughtfulness pervade her countenance, and yet there is the restlessness of an Indian about her,—she is Indian by blood and birth; her look calls up all the sad associations of her forefathers; her black glossy hair, in heavy folds, hangs carelessly about her olive shoulders, contrasting strangely with the other.
"And you, Nicholas! remember what your father will say: but you must not call him such," she says, taking by the hand a child we have described, who is impatient to join the gay group.
"That ain't no harm, mother! Father always is fondling about me when nobody's lookin'," the child answers, with a pertness indicating a knowledge of his parentage rather in advance of his years.