In Beaver Cove and Elsewhere

by Miss Matt Crim

"'Lijy!" he called imploringly, "'Lijy, 'Lijy, mind what you say!"

'Lijy looked across at him.

"I will mind the truth, 'Zeki'l." He turned to the congregation.

"I come here with good recommendations, brethren; I am a deacon o' the church; you have faith in my integrity, my honor." An approving murmur went up. "If a dozen thieves were to stop at my house there'd be no suspicion against me." He paused, passed his hand over his face, then looked up again. "Years ago there were two brothers in this State who grew up together happy and contented. The elder one was always a little wild, and would get drunk sometimes, even after he'd married and had a family to look after, but the younger was the steadiest, best boy in the settlement. One night the elder brother, in a fit of drunken recklessness, stole a horse from the camp of a Kentucky drover, an' nobody found it out but his brother, who undertook to return the horse, an' was arrested. He took the guilt, he stood the trial, an' went to the penitentiary. He lost his good name, the girl he loved, his home, everything in the world an honest man values. He served his time, an' instead o' comin' home to be a reproach to his cowardly brother, he, when free, went away into a strange settlement to live. An' by an' by his brother moved there too, an' his conscience hurt him more an' more as he saw what a sad, lonesome life the convict lived. He was prosperous, he enjoyed the confidence of his fellow-men, while the other was shunned, and regarded with distrust." Emotion checked his utterance for a moment; then he turned and pointed to 'Zeki'l. "Brethren, look at that man; look without prejudice or suspicion, an' you'll not see guilt in his face nor on his conscience. There never lived a truer hero than 'Zeki'l Morgan. Nobody should know it better than I, for I am the brother whose crime he suffered for."

Then he walked across the floor to 'Zeki'l's side in the midst of the deepest silence which had ever fallen upon a congregation in Zion Hill church.

WAS IT AN EXCEPTIONAL CASE?

The Capelles were Louisianians, of French descent, and before the war lived in New Orleans, occasionally visiting their plantations on Red River. But Anthony Capelle was killed in the battle of Vicksburg, and after the surrender Mrs. Anthony Capelle sold the Red River plantations for about half their value, placed her New Orleans property in the hands of a lawyer, gathered up some of her household stuffs, books, and other things she prized, and with her little daughter Madeline, and one old negro who had spent his life in the service of the Capelles, removed to Marietta, Georgia. Those were days of change and great confusion, and she disappeared from New Orleans and the knowledge of old friends without calling forth comment or question, and she was received into the social life of Marietta in the same way. It was not the time to sit in judgment on one's neighbors—to probe for secret motives or purposes. A common woe made all akin. From a merchant and planter who wished to sell out and go west to recuperate his broken fortunes, Agnese Capelle bought a house and lot on the northeast side of the town, and with her small family settled quietly down. It was a picturesque old house, built after the colonial fashion, and set back from the street in the seclusion of an oak grove. In the early spring the graveled walks were bordered with jonquils and mountain pink, and from April to December the roses bloomed along the garden fence and around the piazza.

The tumult following the war died away. People ceased to go about with a helpless, bewildered look as they learned to adjust themselves to the new conditions of life, and realized that the negro could no longer be regarded as a slave, but as a free citizen, with all the rights and privileges of citizenship. The laws of the country made white and black equal, but there was some bitter triumph in the consciousness that unwritten social laws would hold them forever apart, two distinct races, one degraded by color and past servitude. On the surface of life the agitations and thrills of the strong undercurrents ceased to make much impression; they had sunk too deep. The country at large settled to outward peace, and from politics and social questions attention turned to commerce and manufacture, to the development of rich mineral resources, and to literature. But the years passed quietly enough over the Capelles. They were so strongly fixed in their pride and prejudices against social equality that they pursued their own gentle, even way, untouched by the convulsions and throes of fierce indignation around them. Their servants were treated with kindness and consideration, and when the old man who had clung to them with unbroken faith through slavery and freedom died, they wept over him, and felt that a noble friend had been lost, though also a negro and a servant. And Madeline developed into womanhood, beginning her education at her mother's knee, and finishing it at a college in Virginia.

She was gifted above the average girl in wit and beauty, and possessed not only fascinating, lovely manners, but the tenderest heart and the finest sympathies. She was a girl of ardent temperament, but refined and delicate in all her tastes, and pure in thought and aspiration. She had strong convictions and opinions of her own, read and reflected more than the ordinary Southern girl, and loved music passionately. The simplest strain could make her eyes kindle, her color come and go, in a sort of silent rapture, and the pathos of a negro song moved her heart deeply. In person she was slightly above medium height, and held her head with an imperial grace not at all unsuitable to her youth and her French ancestry. Her hair was burnished brown, with a crisp wave in it, her eyes blue-gray and brilliant. But she lacked the clear, thin, transparent skin usually accompanying such hair and eyes, the blood pulsing through it pink as a rose. Hers was soft as velvet, with an opaque creamy tint, and the faintest suggestion of color, ordinarily. She had scores of friends, and in her own small family circle was looked upon as the most beautiful and lovable girl in the world. In Agnese Capelle's love for this fair daughter there was a passionate protective tenderness, a subtle quality one would have called pity, had not such a thing seemed absurd in connection with Madeline. While not betraying any undue anxiety over her marriage and settlement in life, she studied each suitor that appeared on the scene, and if eligible, gave him a gracious welcome. But Madeline's heart remained in her own possession until she met Roger Everett.

Marietta was just attracting the attention of the Northern invalid and also the Northern capitalist. A few delicate, weak-lunged people had found their way to it, and a company of enterprising men had projected a railroad to pass through the north Georgia mountains, across the Blue Ridge, and into North Carolina and Tennessee. Along the line of this road marble quarries were being opened and gold and talc mines discovered; but Marietta still preserved its provincial ways and appearances, its best houses the old colonial mansions, its churches overgrown with ivy, Cherokee-rose hedges bounding the pastures and gardens on the outskirts of the town, and inclosing the neglected-looking graveyard. Its picturesque hills were overshadowed by Kennesaw Mountain, with the solitary peak of Lost Mountain rising far to the south, and the dim, broken outline of the Blue Ridge range bounding the northern horizon. The hills and the mountains are still there, but the town has caught the spirit of progress sweeping with electrical effect over the South. Handsome modern residences are springing up, hotels and boarding-houses are being opened, and on the northeast side of the town a beautiful national cemetery has been laid out, where the Union soldiers who fell in the battles around Atlanta lie buried. The public square is still the scene of lively traffic in the fall, when the streets are crowded with wagons heavily loaded with cotton, the farmers, white and black, standing around, clothed in jeans and homespun, while the buyers go about thrusting sampling-hooks into the great bales to test the quality of the cotton and to determine its market value. But these brown, tobacco-chewing countrymen jostle the New Yorker, the Bostonian, and, indeed, people from all parts of the Union, seeking health and fortune.