Maria Heywood was accordingly summoned to the consultation—made acquainted with her father's position, and the necessity for his instant departure from that section of the country—and finally told that with her it rested to decide, not only whether he should go alone, but if they accompanied him, whether it should be to Europe, or to the Far West.
“Rest with me to decide!” exclaimed the warm-hearted girl as she threw herself into her mother's arms. “Oh, how good of you both thus to consult me, whose duty it is to obey. But do not think that it is any privation for me to leave this. I cannot claim the poor merit of the sacrifice. I have no enjoyment in cities. Give me the solitude of nature, books, and music, and I will live in a wigwam without regret.”
“Dear enthusiast,” said Mrs. Heywood, pressing her fondly to her heart; “I knew well in what spirit would be your answer. You decide then for the Far West?”
“Oh, yes, dear mamma! the Far West for me—no Europe. Give me the tall, dense forests of our own noble land! I desire no other home—long have I pictured to myself the vast lakes—the trackless woods and the boundless prairies of that region of which I have read so much, and now,” she concluded, with exaltation, “my fondest wishes will be realized, and I shall pass my life in the midst of them. But, dear papa, to what particular spot do we go?”
“To Chicago, my noble girl! It is the remotest of our Western possessions, and quite a new country. There I may hope to pass unheeded, but how will you, dear Maria, endure being buried alive there, when so many advantages await you here?”
“Only figuratively, papa,” she replied with a pensive smile stealing over her fine intellectual features. “Have no fear for me on that score, for depend upon it, with so much natural beauty to interest, it will be my own fault, if I suffer myself to be buried alive. What think you, dear mamma?”
“I think with you, my child,” replied Mrs. Heywood, looking approvingly at her daughter, “that it is our duty, as it assuredly will be our pleasure to accompany your father wherever he may go.”
It was now arranged that Mr. Heywood, furnished with a considerable sum of money in gold, should set out alone on the following night for their new destination, and make the necessary preparations for their reception, while his wife, through her agent, should endeavor to dispose of the estate. As it would require some time for this, and as the arrangements at Chicago could not well be completed within several months, it was settled that they should meet at Albany, early in the following autumn, where they should proceed to take possession of their new abode. For his better security and freedom from interruption, Mr. Heywood, while travelling, was to assume a feigned name, but his own was to be resumed immediately after his arrival at Chicago, for neither he nor his family could for a moment think of increasing the suspicion of guilt, by continuing a name that was not their own; and, finally, as a last measure of precaution, the free servants of the establishment, had, with the exception of Catharine, whom they were to take with them, been discharged, while a purchaser having fortunately been found, the slaves, with the estate, were handed over to a new master, proverbial for his kindness to that usually oppressed race. By these means they found themselves provided with funds more than adequate to all their future wants, the great bulk of the sum arising from the sale of the estate being vested in two of the most stable banks of the Union.
With the money he took with him, carefully deposited in his saddlebags, for he performed the whole of the journey on horseback, Mr. Heywood had caused the cottage already described, to be built and furnished from Detroit, in what, at that period, and so completely at the ultima thule of American civilization, was considered a style of great luxury. He had, however, shortly prior to his setting out for Albany, purchased several hundred acres of land, about two miles up the Southern branch of the Chicago, leaving instructions with Le Noir, whom he had engaged for a long term of service, to erect upon it a log building and outhouses. This he had been induced to do from that aching desire for physical exertion which had been familiar to him from boyhood, and which he felt could never be sufficiently indulged within the limited compass of the little village itself—subjected as he must be to the observation of the curious and the impertinent. He returned from Albany after a few months' absence, in the autumn of 1809, bringing with him his friends who occupied the cottage, while he himself obtained their assent that he should inhabit the farm house, completed soon after his return. Here he cut with his own hands, many a cord of the wood that his servants floated down in rafts, not only for his own family, but to supply the far more extensive wants of the garrison, with which, however, he had little or no intercourse, beyond that resulting from his business relations.
Such was the condition of things at the period at which our narrative has opened. Maria Heywood had now been three years an occupant of the cottage, and within that time solitude and habits of reflection had greatly matured her mind, as years had given every womanly grace to her person. The past had also tended much to form her character, upon which the development of physical beauty so often depends. At her first debut into society at Charleston, in her fourteenth year—an age that would have been considered premature, but for the rapidity with which form and intellect are known to ripen in that precocious climate—she had received, but listened with indifference to the vapid compliments of men whose shallowness she was not slow to detect, and whose homage conveyed rather a fulsome tribute to her mere personal beauty, than a correct appreciation of her heart and understanding. Not that it is to be inferred that she prided herself unduly upon this latter, but because it was by that standard of conduct chiefly, that she was enabled to judge of the minds of those who evinced so imperfect a knowledge of the female heart, when, emerging from the gaiety of girlhood, it passes into the earnestness of womanly feeling.