The Lost Silver of Briffault

Front matter

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ I ■ I I I ■ ■ I ■ THE LOST SILVER OF BRIFFAULT. 33p tf)e same autfjor. CLUNY MACPHERSON. A Tale of Brotherly Love. With Six Illustrations. Crown Svo, 5s. " The story is of thrilling; interest." — Literary World. "The hook, which is splendidly got up, is throughout exceedingly readable." — Perthshire Constitutional. " This singularly beautiful story."— Daily Review. " Mrs. Barr has given us a story marked by fine character sketch ing and stirring incident. The get-up of the bo^k is characteristic and elegant. " — Christian. " From beginning to end crowded with swiftly succeeding in cidents. The characters are strong and passionate, and their fortunes full of startling vicissitudes. The plot is indeed all but sensational, and the interest is often intense." — Daily Free Press.

" A graphic delineation both of the scenery and the life of Scot land, and which p bounds in moral and religious lessons of the highest value." — Christ an Leader. " A powerfully written S>*H£t^ie characters are strongly drawn, and the conversations 2.j^%iS3^T-fi^tV'iay School Chronicle. " Full of exquisite touches of ohar^ctfer and incident." — Christian World. \ 2 9 MY 86 j "Without any taint of \*hatis 'gopdy' about it, this is a well written, sensible story, sketching lhe\characters of two brothers and the development of the younger of them, wherein he outgrows certain weaknesses of early character and becomes a useful and manly man." — British Quarterly Review. London : TIODDER AND STOUGIIToN. "JUHN PRESTOS WAS WALKING SLOWLY DOWN Tills saM.s." [Pagt 163. THE LOST SILVER OF BRIFFAULT.

BY AMELIA E. BARR, }£— Author of "Jan Vedder's Wife," '* Cluny Macthhrson,'' etc. QavAavt t HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. MDCCCLXXXVI. Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. PREFACE, rpHE epoch selected for my tale is generally sup- •*- posed to be too full of unhappy memories to become the vehicle of a story. I do not think so. I know that it abounded in deeds of heroic self-de nial, and in trials bringing forth infinite patience and kindness. Nor can I have given offence to any, for the law of love and truth has guided me. Also, among the scenes I depict I spent those happy years of my life which had on them the dew of youth ; and though I dwell now among the Highlands of the Hudson, I recall, with deep affection, the beautiful land far off by the sunny Colorado.

Chapter 1. Freedom

Let us hear again The freedmen singing under Southern noons ; Amid the cotton and the sugar-cane, Or teeming rice-fields by the hot lagoons. Hear in the cabins, through the summer night, The cry of Freedom ! bursting unaware, And setting all its rapturous delight To sweet accompaniments of song and prayer. MIDSUMMER and midday— a day so hot that the crystal air trembled and quivered and glis tened, as if it were a veil of woven silver ; and the white house of the Preston ranch seemed to shrink away from it into the thick shade of the surrounding mulberry-trees ; where also the birds, faint and silent, had hid themselves. But among the vines of the veranda, the grasshoppers, with their goat-like profiles, were busily running, and across the hot sand of the yard a large snake lay prone, with every glittering coil outstretched, basking in the fiercest rays of the sun.

A woman stood just within the door, a beautiful woman, with a complexion of that warm pallor so rarely seen except in the South. Her attitude was listless and sorrowful, and her eyes were fixed upon the brilliant reptile, so luxuriously stretching itself upon the fervid ground. It roused in her neither fear, hatred, nor anger ; she felt no desire to take up Eve's quarrel against the creature. " Let it alone," she said to the Negro servant, who was going, with an eager passion of hatred, to destroy it. Intoxicated with sunshine, it was unconscious of danger ; and to dismiss death, and say, even to a snake, " Live a little longer," seemed to Cassia Preston a pleasant thing to do, and it made a faint ripple in the somber sameness of her thoughts. She turned and went toward a door at the other end of the wide hall, and opened it softly.

It showed her a room in deepest shadow, whose atmosphere was heavy with the scent of dying roses and the sickly odor of valerian. On a couch, in the dimmest corner, there was a little drift of white muslin, and above it the thin, yellow face of a woman, apparently asleep. But she stirred as Cassia stood looking at her. and said, querulously, " I want some coffee, and tell Mam my to come and rub my feet." Freedom. 9 " Mother, let me take Mammy's place. I do not think she will come." " Not come ! What nonsense. Send her here im mediately." Cassia shut the door and sat down by the fretful woman. " I can keep bad news from you no longer, mother. Mammy is her own mistress now. Our servants are free." " Free ! That is an impossibility. My servants were given me by my father. I have the papers. He told me they were made out in such a way that no one could take them from me — no one!

They are mine ; mine as much as the rings on my fingers," and she held out her thin hands, trembling with emotion and glittering with gems. " I heard they were free nearly a month ago. I have no doubt it is true. All of Roseland's and MacKersey's hands have left. Galveston is full of runaway Negroes ; no one dares to touch them, or challenge their right. The fields are empty ; you can't hire a man for gold. The houses are empty ; in many there is not even an old woman left to make a biscuit." " I don't believe it ! Who told you such things ? " " Sheriff Bowling. He called this morning for a little breakfast. He sold Chloe's son, you remember, and Chloe would not cook any thing for him. She said she had hurt her hand ; but would she have dared to make an excuse a month ago? He told me he was out herding his own cattle.

His men have all gone. Our isolation has been in our favor, but a man called here three days ago, and even Mam my has been changed since. She told me he was going to Corpus Christi to look for his wife, Melinda, and she added, in a very significant manner, ' Thank God, when he find her dis time, he can keep her, till black Death come along to part them.' " " If you heard talk like this a month ago, Cassia, you ought to have prevented the servants hearing it." " How ? " " You should have suffered none of them to leave the place. You should have kept every stranger off it. I would have watched night and day. Whatever are our soldiers doing ? " " There have been reverses — " " Reverses ! There are always reverses in war. Napoleon had them. Washington had them. Are we to set our slaves free for reverses ?

I shall hold mine fast until the reverses are on the other side. What good will there be in the final victory if our property is all scattered far and wide, and we can't find it again ? Keep the servants together, Cassia ; any day, to-morrow even, may bring us better news." Freedom. 11 " Better news will never come. The war is over. We have lost all, mother." " How can you say such cruel things, Cassia ? It wouldn't be just. See what I have sacrificed ! Your father killed ; your brother away fighting four years ; very likely he is killed, too ; we haven't heard from him since April ; think of all my sufferings ! And then to lose every thing ! No, it wouldn't be just or right. I will not hear it ! " "Don't cry, now, dear mother. There is no help for us in tears, and I do want your advice. The men are ugly and lazy ; instead of going to the fields they are hanging about the cabins.

The women are just the same. I asked Celia this morning about the washing, and she said she did not feel like it. She said the same last week. Every meal is cooked more and more slovenly and irregularly. There is a feeling about the place to-day that frightens me. I do believe it is the right thing to call the servants together and tell them they are free. Then I could get rid of all who refuse to work. Per haps Mammy and Chloe will stay if we give them good wages." " Give them wages ? I wont do it ! I'll die first ! Pay my own slaves to work for me ? I wont do it ! I wont do it ! They ought to be ashamed of them selves — " Cassia's face darkened. " Let us be reasonable, mother ; why should they be ashamed ? " " Born in the family — after all we have done for them," she sobbed. " Perhaps they think they could have done better for themselves."

" Are you turning against me, too ? O, Cassia, I never thought — " " Come, mother, try and face the inevitable." " To behave so badly — Mammy, too. It will kill me—" Cassia walked to the window and stood a moment despairingly before the closed blinds ; but, as her mother's sobs grew louder, she went back and soothed and kissed the petted, ailing woman into a calmer mood. Then she sought her own room, ostensibly for her siesta, but she was far too anxious and restless to sleep. Nature had not only endowed her with beautj', she had given her also a clear mind and a moral bias that was, above all other things, upright ; so that her duty, and the sense of its immediate necessity, weighed heavily on her. She frankly admitted to herself that the servants had shown a remarkable patience and restraint.

Ru mors of their approaching freedom had been in the air for months. For three weeks they had believed in Freedom. 13 its reality ; for three days they had been sure of the stupendous and glorious change in their condition. " It is no wonder they despise mother and I," she thought. " When the news first came we ought to have called them together and told them, and, as far as it was natural and possible, have rejoiced with them. Then we could have asked them to remain with us until John came home and agreed with them about their wages. But instead of that we have taken their labor as our right. I must do now what I know John would have done long ago if he had been here." But good is only half good when it is past season. She felt, when she went down stairs, that her resolve had come too late.

Already there were changes in progress, and delay had robbed duty of every grace. She wandered restlessly about the house and garden until night-fall had brought all the servants into the kitchen and cabins ; then she asked Uncle Isaac to gather them together. He was a very old man ; he had been her great-grandfather's servant. She thought if any love or gratitude could be depended upon it was surely his. Very reluctantly, and only after bitter weeping, Mrs. Preston had consented to have the tie broken in her presence. Cassia was certain it ought to be so ; she wished it to be done as gently as possible, and she wished them to carry away into new lives a kindly memory of the old one. It was a most impressive gathering. Fifty men and women, of all ages and all shades of color, were there, some with wool like snow, others in the strength of their prime and the beauty of their youth.

Mrs. Preston covered her face and sobbed. Cassia, standing at her mother's side> said : " Uncle Isaac, you served my great grandfather ? " " Dat so, Miss Cassia. He was my fust master ; bought me from de slave-ship Lijah Hoole eighty-two years ago." " And you served my grandfather, also ? " " Ebery day ob his life — bery good master he was.' " And my father % " " De last t'ing de colonel do, 'fore he go to de war, was to shake hands wid me. I hold de stirrup fur him. Mighty good man de colonel ! And I nurse Mass' John, too, in dese arms — make his fust fishin' rod fur him. Four generations of de Prestons I hab served, faithful, Miss Cassia." " Isaac, you are free now. You need serve none of us any longer. Mammy, Chloe, Jeff, Scip, all of you even to little Coralie in her cradle, are free. You can all leave us to-morrow if you wish.

You need never do any thing for us again. Some of you played with father and mother ; some of you played Freedom. 15 with Master John and me. You have been very true to us. I never heard of any of you, man or woman, saying a word against the Prestons. You have also been very kind to us, very patient with us, and God knows we have tried to be very kind and patient with you. We have been one family. It is hard to part — to say ' Good-lye? " It was impossible for her to continue. Most of the men and women were sobbing with all the passionate abandon of their childlike natures ; Mammy had knelt down by Mrs. Preston's side, and was chafing and kissing her hands, and vowing " neber, neber, to leave her." Cassia stood among them, white and sorrowful, slow, large tears falling unconsciously from her eyes.

At length Uncle Isaac said : " What does de madam and Miss Cassia want us to do ? " He had slowly stepped forward, and stood in his tottering age close by his mistress's side. She stretched out her white, gemmed hand to him, and he touched it and bowed his snowy head over it with a native chivalry no art could have imitated. Cassia answered for her mother. " Uncle Isaac, we would like all of you to remain on the place, at your usual work, until Master John returns. He cannot be long now. You know what Master John is ; he will pay you the last dime of your right, if he sells the land to do it. Whatever others are getting you shall have. I promise for him. We will deal kindly and honestly by you." Isaac turned and looked at the people. There was a slight hesitation ; then Jeff, who was overseer, said : " Miss Cassia hab done make us a fair offer.

I'se gwine to take it. I kin trust Mass' John and all de Prestons, I kin." This was the universal sentiment, and Cassia, with a sense of great relief, accepted their service under its new condition. She was too truthful to affect personal sympathy with this condition, but yet she could understand the light and triumph in every face, the sudden and quite unconscious uplifting of every head, and into her heart there came a kindly thought. "Here are the keys of the storeroom, Chloe ; I am sure you would like to make an extra supper for all to-night." "Thank'ee, madam, thank'ee Miss Cassia," came from every lip, and then, with even more than their usual deference, they left the room and went back to their quarters. Cassia walked to a side window and watched them, for as soon as they were outside the house they gave way to the deep joy in their hearts.

Some of the women fell weeping on their husband's necks. A gigantic negress lifted her baby high above her head, telling it over and over, in Freedom. 17 constantly louder and shriller tones : " You'se free, Tamar! You'se free, Tamar! Free! free! free!" The young drew together in little ebony squads around the white cabins; the elder ones gathered in Chloe's big kitchen. After the first few moments of rapture it was not all joy to them. There were wives and fathers and mothers who could not help feeling that freedom had come too late for their hap piness. Their loved ones had been sold away, and they knew not where to find them. So they sat smoking and talking, almost sadly, in the big kitchen ; while Chloe, and some of the women, killed and fried chickens, boiled the ripe young ears of corn, and made the johnny-cake and coffee.

Gladly they brought out their hoarded pieces of fine linen or china, and the younger girls laid the tables for their first freedom supper. That night Chloe's kitchen was a wonderful place. The cedar logs blazed and danced in the chimney, and threw great luster across the tables, and the shifting groups of women, with their gay turbans and glinting ear-rings ; across the more somber groups of talking men, with their glowing corn-cob pipes and gleaming eyes and light blue hickory dress. Uncle Isaac had gone to his cabin to rest un til supper was ready, and it was nearly ten o'clock when Cassia saw him, leaning upon Jeff and Scip, slowly totter across the yard, in order to take his place as master of the feast. She was in her mother's room, a large, lofty apart ment, with galleries on three sides.

Mrs. Preston was asleep. She had wept herself to sleep, as children do. It had been a hard few hours to her, all the more hard because Mammy had not come to rub her feet, and do the numberless little things which had become so necessary to her comfort. She would not suffer Cassia to take her place. She could not understand why Mammy should have neglected her, especially on such an occasion. "Now, when she is going to have so much — when she knew how hard it would be for me — I have no doubt, Cassia, she is talking to Harriet and Chloe, and telling them all kinds of things about me." Poor Mammy ! she was locked in her own cabin. She was down on her knees, telling God, God only, how hard her duty was. Telling him again about the three sons and the one young pretty daughter that were — she knew not where.

Asking him to send from among his legions of angels just one — one of the humblest — with a message from her heart to theirs. " Dey kin come back to me now, Lord," she pleaded ; " gib dem de heart to do it, and show 'em de way." Her children had been her first thought. She had Freedom. 19 quite forgot madam until just before Cassia saw Uncle Isaac go to the kitchen with Jeff and Scip ; yet she had fully intended to do her usual duties, and when she rose from her knees and remembered them, her heart reproached her, and she went quickly to madam's room. Cassia met her at the door. Her sad, anxious face troubled Mammy. " I clean forgot, Miss Cassia. I did, sure. I wont do so any more." " She missed you very much, Mammy." " I'se mighty sorry. I'll stay wid her now." " No, no ; I will remain to-night.

Go and be glad with the rest, Mammy. You ought to be." Yet though she had told Mammy to go, she watched her across the yard with a feeling of desertion. All the foundations of her life were shaken, and what was to come next she could not even imagine. Though her mother slept heavily, she found it impossible to rest. As the moon rose high the breeze from the gulf came with it. She pushed aside the tangle of the jasmine, and leaned over the gallery to catch the cool freshness, as it fluttered the lon° streamers of gray moss, and talked soughfully with the vast pecans and thick mulberries. She could hear down in the cabins the confused noise of a tumult that was altogether joyful ; broken laughter, little cries, the echo of conversation, the movement of feet, the rattle of dishes. She tried to put herself in the place of those holding such glad festival, and to feel something of their wonder and their gratitude.

But it was impossible for her, all at once, to grasp the feelings and thoughts which beat against her consciousness, like waves against the shore, leaving only a drift of things behind them. With dropped hands, and a soul weary and heavy with emotion, she sat listening. Perhaps she fell asleep, for when she moved it was with a start, and the midnight hour was softly striking on her mother's little Swiss clock. The wind had ceased, and the hot, still air was full of low whispers of song that swelled gradually into a burst of triumphant melody. She could not resist it. " This thing can never, never, never happen again while the world lasts ! I will at least be a witness to the joy of it." With this thought she went to an open window which overlooked the yard. Uncle Isaac sat in the full moonlight ; the rest of the liber ated servants were on the ground around him, or upon the door-steps of the nearest cabins.

But Scip stood by his side, and it was his voice, in a low, in tense, whispering song, that had first startled her : " Go down, Moses, Go down, Moses, Go down Moses, Freedom. 21 Go down into Egypt, And tell King Pharaoh To let my people go ! " With every line the man's soul gathered a passion of feeling that no words can translate ; and at the last one every voice joined in a chorus of the same gradual gathering of sound and feeling : "Let my people go I Let my people go ! Let my people gol " The majority of Negroes are fine improvisers, and in the same manner Scip went over the whole story of the liberation of Israel in Egypt. He was black as ebony, but as he stood there, in his grand massive manhood, and stretching out his bare arm, began : " Stretch out de rod, Stretch it ober de river," Cassia was troubled, and her heart was full of a sympathy that she would not try to analyze.

" Moses shout and Miriam sing I " Then Scip's sister, Hannah, and his wife Sadie, chanted the verses with him. till he gave the key-line to the last jubilant chorus : "Hallelujah, Moses I Hallelujah! Pass ober de Red Sea ! Pass ober de Red Sea ! Pass ober de Red Sea I " In the bright moonlight the scene had a weird and mystical grandeur, and though the meeting did not quite break up until the pathos of the setting moon was over it, aud the gray dawn creeping up the eastern slope, Cassia lingered at the window, watching and listening until the last half-dozen went slowly to their separate cabins, singing softly : " 0 Peter, go ring dem bells I Peter, go ring dem bells 1 Peter, go ring dem bells ! I heard from heabeu to-day 1 My Lord, what a morning I My Lord, what a morning 1 My Lord, what a morning 1 It is one of the saddest conditions of humanity that it cannot carry its loftiest enthusiasms into its daily work ; nay, that they very often make daily work a hard and dreary thing.

The feeling in the Preston household when the sun rose, and another day was to begin, was one of lassitude and even crossness. Usually Mammy brought madam and Cassia a cup of strong coffee to their rooms about six o'clock ; but it was long after seven when she appeared, and madam had become irritable and tearful, for want of her usual stimulant. An ordinary servant might have been reproved for negligence ; but the re lation between mistress and liberated slave was as Freedom. 23 yet extraordinary and undetermined. Madam was silent and injured ; Mammy resented the attitude as unsympathetic and exacting. As for Cassia, she had a most unhappy day. She saw that, at noon, the cows were still in the pens unmilked ; and the breakfast cooking in the cabins. The men were lounging about the kitchen, the women visiting each other and quite neglectful of their regular duties.

Nor was this state of affairs to be wondered at. With the average intellect of children, they had also their ready propensity to make a holiday. And no one could deny that their circumstances excused the holiday feeling. It was per fectly natural that the first meaning of freedom to them, should be a condition of freedom from labor. They were weary, also, with the excitement of the night, and to a majority of them had come, for the first time in their lives, a care and an anxiety about the future. Chloe's remark, as she fried the rice cakes for breakfast : " I'se not gwine to stay here. I'se neber feel free on dis place, " had only voiced the feeling dominant in most hearts. To dare to leave the place ! To dare to take all their belong ings with them, and go into the nearest town, and find a home for themselves !

This was the general ambitious desire ; and yet they knew so little of the world ; they had such an exaggerated idea of its dangers, and were so thoroughly under their heredi tary fear of the dominant race, that the undertaking was a momentous one, full of real anxieties, and of many shadowy dangers. For three days Cassia bore, with admirable patience, the hourly provocations of her position. Then it be came clear to her that the men had no intention of working the farm. They were simply idling around, waiting for something to turn up. They had many hopes of houses and lands of their own ; they had been told that when the victorious army entered Texas with the provisional government, something extraordinary would be done for them. They were simple as children, and they believed that, at the very least, the property of their old masters would be divided among them ; and most had fully determined in their own minds what particular portion should be their own.

" I was born'd on de place, and I'se got a right to some of it," said Mammy to Chloe ; " if dey'll gib me de down stairs and de cows and de chickens, I kin git along fust rate ; and I'se not gwine to hab de madam 'sturbed at all ; she's welcome as sunshine to her ole room." "I'se gwine to La Salle, sister Cinda," answered Chloe ; " I'se got folks dar, and I'se sick of dis place. I don't feel free wid Miss Cassia's voice in my ear, Freedom. 25 and dat weary tinkle, tinkle of de madam's little bell. I jist hates it. I'se gwine to La Salle ; plenty of big houses roun' dar, and, please God, I'll git my share in some ob dem." There was no general noisy leave-taking, but one by one the servants stole away, usually in the night. And every day there was some change in their man ner, which pained and angered Cassia.

A certain latitude of speech had always been permitted them, as well as a familiarity which had its rise in the family character of the tie, as it had existed ; but when they became simply " hired servants," this fa miliarity, intensified by their ignorant conception of the rights freedom gave them, was an offense. One hot afternoon, as Cassia lay languidly fanning herself under the mosquito netting, Mammy entered hurriedly. " Miss Cassia," she said, " Uncle Isaac's granddaughter has done come fur him. She says de ole man's all de kinfolks she's got, and she's boun' to hav' him." " O, Isaac is going, too, is he ? Very well." " He'd like fur to see you, Miss Cassia, 'fore he goes 'way." " I don't suppose he really cares ; but I can come." She spoke coldly and rose with reluctance. The old man stood beside a little ox wagon, into which all his earthly goods had already been packed.

A middie-aged mulatto woman was standing beside it. Her face was not at all pleasant or conciliating, but through sheer force of habit, and quite in despite of her inclination, she dropped Cassia a courtesy. Isaac extended his bony wrinkled hand, and said, " Good bye, missee ! De Lord bless you ebermore. I'se been in de fambly eighty-two years ! Pretty hard to go 'way from it, now." " Don't go, uncle. You have your cabin, and are as welcome now, as ever, to all you need." " Judy wants me. I'm an ole man. I 'tended to go to heaben from de little cabin I love ; but freedom done bring in changes, many changes, Miss Cassia. I was born'd free, and now I shall die free, bless de Lord ! I asked him for dis ting — tire him out, askin' fur it — and now I'se kind ob sorry 'bout it." " Sorry to die free?