I went day after day to see her,—of course, at her own request: with the same odd, half-rebuked feeling with which I opened the Indian mound,—only that which was to be unearthed from this grave was of far more interest to a man of the world, and much less holy, than the poor savages' cache with their dead in it. I did not broach the subject of the Steadmans, hoping to obtain some clew to a weak point in her nature which could be touched and roused to sympathy. I never found it. I think she enjoyed my visits. I was fresh from the world from which she had long been shut out, brought its breath with me, was eager and appreciative. As a reward, she poured out an exhaustless store of anecdote. Her times had covered a broad field, and one of glaring contrasts; not an Indian war back to the Colonial era with which she was not familiar; she remembered the first proclamation of the Declaration of Independence; had known Paine, Lafayette, and Lee; sat on the side of the court-room devoted to Burr's adherents during his trial at Richmond, a young and brilliant beauty, while her husband faced her on the other; talked of Benton, Clay, Webster, then political leaders, as "those young men,—promising, but crude, Sir! crude!" I afterwards learned the estimation these men had for her.
"I never passed her house," said Mr. C——, "without stopping to pay my respects to her. She had a powerful intellect in her younger days.—power enough to make men overlook her coarseness. Many of our caucuses were held in her drawing-rooms; she could keep a secret better than most men; but she was too fond of petty sarcasm and intrigue to be effective in any cause. We respected her, too, for her mental strength only; in her most brilliant days, she was selfish and a miser."
The manner in which this latter trait of avarice showed itself, and its struggle with her finer taste, were ludicrous enough,—for instance, in her cheap servant's gown and old jewelry. One day she took me up to a large chamber, filled with chests of drawers, in which were stowed away the dresses she had worn for half a century.
"Every year I put away two, made in the current mode. I like to turn them over, as you do to look at pictures, perhaps?"—unfolding heavy velvets, brocades, and then, out of spicy red boxes, lifting fold after fold of yellow old lace, daintily as a mother would caress a baby's limbs.
But this woman never had children.
"It will be a precious legacy for some young beauty," I said, thoughtlessly. "A warning one, too."
"Legacy? You look far ahead, young Sir!" her bony old hands shaking, as she shut the boxes and locked them wickedly.
Yet in one of these upper rooms she had her tombstone,—a shaft of Carrara marble, with a base containing niches, which she filled in her younger and more generous days with finely wrought figures, but lately with plaster groups purchased from itinerant image-vendors.
It was with little hope of success, therefore, that I broached the subject of the Steadmans on the last day of my stay. I did it, however, resolutely, affecting not to see that the old woman's face grew set at the first mention of their names. She sat stiffly erect, and permitted me to finish without a word of interruption. I did what I could,—showed how a little present help would enable the brothers to start in life utterly different men from their present selves,—stated in plain terms the peril in which the woman stood, and the immediate necessity for aid.
"But little, Madam," I said,——"not more than the value of that least ring on your finger, but immediate. It will save her life, in all probability."