nemesis

Front matter

acne

BaNR SESS SEES x ke, ae)

aptme Rt

Introduction

Tue household critic, to whom the following story was Suvmitted in its chrysalis state—7. e. in manuscript—has left here and there in the margin bold pencillings to the effect that such and such passages are “ Improbable.” Now it strikes mie as a singular circumstance that this objection is brought on! 7 against those scenes, incidents and characters, in which [ have copied with most fidelity events and persons in real lite. And I aver, furthermore, that in most of these cases, had I dared to set down the exact truth, the verdict rendered wov'd have been “Impossible,” instead of the milder form of doubt given above.

Many years since, the germ of this narrative was com. mitted to my keeping by a dear friend, who has since gone to the far, changeless Land. Much that I have written I. have gathered from MSS.—family papers, yellow with time ; for several items of information, I am indebted to persons still living, whose memories age has not clouded. I do not pretend to say that my tale is a literal transcript of the lives vf the various personages introduced, or that I have not interpolated characters and events—taken an author’s liberty wv vi NEMESIS.

with dates and dénouwements ; but that I had a broad basis of fact for the foundation, and in my superstructure, have drawn less upon the imagination than is the fashion of ‘some so-called biographers, in their veracious memoirs of modern celebrities, I may, with truth, affirm. In some scenes, the very words of the original actors have been employed, and even in the minute details of dress, equipage, etc., I havg taken great pains and pleasure in portraying things precisely as they were in the places and times described in my book.

Marion Hartanrn

Pinwaax, Judy 1830,

NEMESIS.

Chapter I

Tue fogs of a November afternoon were thickening with the chill of approaching evening. There were ominous murmurs among the pines, and the almost naked boughs of the oak and hickory shivered and sighed, as they let down, now and then, a stray leaf, to decay peacefully with the companions of its summer revels, or be trampled into the deep mire of the public road, _ which formed scarcely a break in the forest. The wheel-ruts had cut into the roots, and yehicles had grazed the trunks of the giant trees that locked arms across the highway. Yet it was no newly-opened track. The upper stratum of earth, black with richness from the deposits of a thousand autumns, was worn down to a more durable bed of stiff clay, of a granite-like smoothness and polish in dry weather—now, tenacious as wax to wheel and hoof.

A shallow creek, widening into a pond where it crossed the road, was cloaked by underbrush up to either edge of the woods, A flock of wild turkeys, headed by a portly gobbler, bearded like a despotic Turk, as he was, picked their dainty way through the stream—each pausing to wet his bill. Then, the bushes parted to afford egress to a deer—a full-grown, antlered buck, who alse stooped to slake his thirst. His lip had barely touched the water, when the graceful head was suddenly raised again. For an instant, he listened, his dark eye bright, and his limbs quivering with excitement—and a bound carried him out of sight and danger. Now, the sound that had put him to flight became audible to duller hearing. It was the measured tinkle of bells, wondrously musical in this lonely spot. Nearer and nearer it came ; drowning the sullen gurgle of the creek and the hoarse whispers in the tree-tops, until, on the rising ground, beyond the pond, appeared a wagon, long of body and heavy-wheeled ; cove ered with an arched awning of white cloth, and drawn by six horses. Strong and trained to labor as these evidently were, it was no easy task to drag along the ponderous vehicle. The broad breasts of the leaders were flecked with foam, and their legs stained above the knees with the red mud. At the pool, they checked their steady tramp, from instinct or habit. There was one prolonged thrilling peal from the bells attached to their collars, and they awaited patiently their master’s pleasure. It. seldom pleased him to move rapidly, if one might judge from the very deliberate style in which the rotund figure swung itself into the road from the sheepskin, strapped upon one of the wheelhorses, and the length of time that was consumed in stretching and rubbing the dumpy legs.

“Can I help you, Mr. Paxton?” inquired a cheerful voice from the interior of the wagon.

Without waiting for a reply to his question, a young man vaulted over the saddle just vacated, and stood at the side of the fat teamster. He was an athletic, well-proportioned youth, of perhaps five-and-twenty, with a ruddy cheek, and a frank, intelligent countenance, His accent at once betrayed his New Eng.

land nativity, as did that of the wagoner the cate Virginian,

“Ym obleeged to you, Mr. Hale. If you'll be so guod as to anhitch that bucket”—pointing to a bespattered pail swinging between the hinder wheels—“ while I take this ’ere one, why, we'll git through in half the time. ‘Many hands make light work,’ as I’ve heered my ole woman say. You have got no Bbjection to hurryin’ on things a little, I reckon ?”

“None, I assure you! I am beginning to fear that night

will overtake us before we get to our journey’s end; the roads are so heavy.”

" “Don’t skeer yourself about that! But ai’t I stiff in the jints |” groaned the teamster, lifting his bucket to the leader’s mouth. “I camp to-night better’n a mile t’other side of your house, and I’m bound to be thar by dark. We ain’t more’n two miles from Mr. Argyle’s, now.”

“Do you hear that, Bessy ?” said the young man, nearing the

front of the wagon. .

A face appeared in the semi-circular pap of the canvas cover. It was a female head—girlish and pretty.

“ Did you call me, Mark ?”

“Yes. We have not quite two miles further to go, little woman. That is good news, isn’t it ?”

“Indeed it is !” she responded, joyfully. “It is getting chilly, and I am uneasy lest Kitty should catch cold.” She bent. anxiously over a bundle wrapped in a shawl, that lay across her lap. “I hope she will sleep soundly the rest of the way.”

“She'll be mighty apt to. The bells are as good as hop-tea for puttin’ the children to sleep, my ole woman says,” remarked the driver, climbing back to his place. ‘ Many’s the trip to town and back she’s been with me, with a young one on her knees, and two or three more, bigger ones, tumblin’ about over the boxes and barrels, in back thar—and she never lost a day’s work. It was sewin’, or knittin’, or cardin’ wool, or somethin’ of the sort, all the time. I tell her, she’ll take her loom along,

3 *

10 wi NEMESIS.

some day. A powerful worker, she is—if I say it, as shouldn't say it. Ain’t you goin’ to get in sir?”

“T believe not. I will walk on a little way. My legs are cramped with sitting so long.”

The bells jingled ; the massive wheels creaked, and the weary, patient animals, with bent heads and strained sinews, began the ascent of another hill.

Mark Hale sprung nimbly past them; reached the summit and ran down the further and steeper side, to find still another and a more formidable eminence before him. Upon the top of this he stopped, to watch for the reappearance of the, to him, richly-laden vehicle, for it contained his earthly all. A summary review of the circumstances which had brought him thus far from the home of his forefathers, will be all we need relate of his previous history. He was the son of a revolutionary soldier, who, at the close of the war, had returned to his native village and former trade—that of a shoemaker. In this humble calling he had labored until his death, leaving to his son very little beside an unsullied name; a plain English education, which the boy’s inherent love of study had made unusually thorough for one in his station, and an experimental knowledge of his father’s handi- ‘craft. Nothing daunted at his unflattering worldly prospects, Mark married, before he was twenty-one, a girl as poor as himself, to whom he had been attached from childhood. Bessy Bryan brought to his cottage a loving heart, a pair of willing and skillful hands, and a blind mother, for whom the young couple cared tenderly during the three years that remained to her upon earth after her removal to their home. Besides Bessy, she had ene other child, a son, considerably older than the faithful daughter, But “poor Jacob Bryan,” as his best friends called him, was an easy, good-natured fellow ; energetic without judgment, active without acuteness—just the man to work himself inte lifficulties, and trust to luck to help him out of them. By choice he became a peddler and in this capacity travelled through several of the southern States. On his first trip home, after his mother’s decease, he found his brother in-law feebly convalescent from a spell of rheumatic fever, and persuaded him to pts) him on a tour through a more genial clime.

Mark came back to his native place, well and strong, and fired _ by ambitious visions of the advantages to be gained by emigration. Without a complaint, and, so far as her husband saw, without a tear, Bessy packed up the limited number of movables she could take such a distance, and bidding farewell to the friends of her childhood and to her parents’ graves, said in spirit, if not in words, to him who was now her only stay in life, ‘‘ Whither thou goest, I will go.” Her husband’s observation and inquiries during his former journey enabled him to fix without delay upon a location. When his plans of removal were definitively made, he wrote to a fellow-northerner, a resident now of the neighborhood he had chosen as the Canaan of his exodus, whose acquaintance he had made while at the South, and requested him to -proeure a house for him. As good fortune ordered, this person had on hand a ‘‘commodious cottage” to rent out, he acting as agent for its owner, a gentleman now travelling abroad. A. bargain was concluded by letter, and this spot our young couple were approaching on this murky afternoon.

Mark’s adventurous and sanguine spirit did not flag under the discouraging aspect of the weather and the change in the country he remembered as so beautiful in the flush and glory of the spring-time. He acknowledged indeed, to himself, that he would not have been so easily fascinated by the situation he had selected, had he beheld it first in circumstances similar to the present; but. since the irrevocable step was taken, his choice made with a full conviction that he was acting wisely, in reference to his own future, and that of those dearest to him, he gallantly resolved ta abide by it, cheerfully. There was but one shade of solicitude upon his heart, and this, although banished from his face, as the lumbering wagon rocked and groaned up the hill, lent a softer tenderness to his voice, as he addressed his wife :

“This is not just the country you expected to see, from my description—is it, Bessy ?”

The troubled look in her eyes accorded illy with the smile she forced to her lips.

“Tt will look better in the spring and summer, I dare say But, Mark, dear, where do the people live? I have seen but one house in the last ten miles.”

“They don’t live near the main road,” said the driver ; “it’s too public. We all down South belongs to the modest sort.”

A laughing gleam from Mark’s eye brought a real smile to his wife’s countenance. He knew that she was thinking with him, that they had met but two teams and three foot-passengers, during six hours’ travel upon the reute, objected to as ‘ too public.”

“'There are by-roads leading to the plantations, crossing this in all directions, you see, Bessy. We shall be at no loss for neighbors, even if they are a little further off than those we have been accustomed to at our old home. Very kind people you will find them to be, too,” he added.

Bessy bowed her head at the mention of their old neighborhood, She seemed intent upon drawing the wrappings about Kitty’s curly bead; but his own memory was too truthful for him to doubt the cause of the dimness, he was sure was over her eyes. Resuming his seat beside her, he put his arm around her waist, and both were quiet and thoughtful for a while.

And for that while, neither beheld the unfamiliar and actual scene in their sight. They gazed fondly instead, upon a little white cottage, a story and a half in front, sloping down in the rear until a tall man could hardly stand beneath the eaves ; and the great apple-tree shading the kitchen window; upon th¢ broad door-step, where they had played at houskecping wher ‘ehildren, themselves ; where the bride had sat in the summer twilight to watch for her husband’s coming ; where the youthful mother had dandled her babe, and the young father sustained its tottering trial-steps. There, on pleasant days, was set the grand mother’s arm-chair, and the sunshine fell warmly through the elm boughs overhead, a welcome bath to the trembling limbs and form, although her eyes could not perceive its brightness ; and over it, in a tearful silence, unbroken, except by the tread of bearers and mourners, neighbors and friends—synonyms among that simple people—bore to her final rest the mortal remains of the aged pilgrim—thank Heaven, sightless no longer! The light of love, the baptism of tears had made that worn, grey stone a sacred spot to the wanderers. In the yard, they never dreamed was not ‘‘ modest,” because it lay along the village street, were flowers and trees of their own planting. Henceforth strangers were to enjoy their fragrance and shade. The bees tenanting the row of hives, in the possession of which Bessy had esteemed herself passing rich, would hum and store honey just as busily, now that she would not profit by their hordes.

The church green was a convenient and inviting picture to one seated in the cottage door ; with the weeping elms trailing over the roof and latticing the windows of the ancient building, whose heavy frame and brown oaken pews had been brought from England—the villagers were fond of relating. On either side, and behind it, lay its founders and the majority of the congregations _ that had gathered within it prior to the present generation; the . memory of their names and worthy deeds kept alive, less by the quaint stones that marked their pillows, than through the tralitions treasured and told with love and pride, by their descend: vnts.

It was a dangerous indulgence of fancy on Mark’s part, and ha felt the ill effects of his indiscretion in the dreariness that fell upon him, like the November fog, and the struggle it cost him ta maintain a show of composure, much less of gaiety, when the teamster, pointing with his long whip, remarked, “ Yonder’s your house, Mrs. Hale |”

Bessy leaned forward eagerly, as did Mark.

“Where ?” asked both.

“ Just ’cross that field, in that clump of trees. a

“ That !” said Bessy, incredulous. ‘ Mark ! can it be ?”

“Tt must be, dear, Mr. Paxton told me that he knew the place, and had heard through Mr. Sancroft, that we had rented it.”

“Tt ain’t so sniptious as you expected, I reckon,” said the wagoner. “It’s pretty ’nough situation, but it may be, you'll find the house sort o’ out of order. Mr. Argyle, he built it for his overseer, and the man lived in it six months, orso. Then Mr. Argyle took it into his head that it was too far off from his place, and Mr. Frisbie’s old mother, who kept house for him died, so he’d no reason to stay there any longer, and was willin’ to do what his employer wanted, which was, to have everything under his own eye. Let him alone for ‘making every edge cut,’ as my ole woman says. And Mr. Sancroft—his agent—he’s just as sharp

-and close. Maybe, as you are a Yankee, he’ll favor you. He came from Connecticut—where they make clocks, you know.”

“T hope I shall need no favoring at his hands !” returned Mark, with some stiffness. Then ashamed of his boastful pride, he eontinued, pleasantly, “TI guess we shall not quarrel, if I pay my vent, and don’t worry him for too many repairs.”

“Oh! you'll get on!” But the honest face “ reckoned” there might be other causes of dissatisfaction.

“The old gentlemar '. Argyle is mighty well off,” he said, sheering away from the agent. ‘He owns nigh upon two thousand-acres of land, and niggers more’n enough to work it, and hag money a plenty besides, they say. But for all that, a shillin’ piece looks as big to him as it does to you or me. His wife was

_ 8 different kind—free-handed as he’d let her be ; good to poor

folks, and one of the religiousest ladies you ever seen. Her darters don’t take after her, I’ve heered tell. Master Malcolm— he looks like her, and behaves like her, too—much as a wild boy can like a perfect lady, as she was. But deary me! as my ole woman says, ‘It takes many sorts of people to make a world,’ und ‘boys will be boys.’”

“T thought the family were not at home,” said Mark, more to cover Bessy’s silence, and to prevent any attempts at consolation from Mr. Paxton, should he notice her, than from interest in his landlord’s domestic affairs.

“So they aint |. The old gentleman, he’s in Scotland, whar his father came from, and he, too, for that matter, when he was a child. The two darters, they’re at the North, somewhar, at school. Thar warnt no schools in Virginny fine enough for them. They’re highflyers, I tell you! Master Malcolm’s at college in Williamsburg.”

- “The house is shut up, then ?”

“« All but the housekeeper’s rooms. Whoa! gee! what are you about thar? You see”—to Mark—“ they aint used to goin’ in here.”

The elephantine wagon slowly and painfully, as it were, turned into a side road, better than that which they had heretofore travelled, inasmuch as it was a gravelly soil, and its ruts were less deep. A few hundred yards brought them to the house they had seen across the field. It was built of hewn logs; one story in height, with a door and a window in front. There was no inclosed yard or garden, and the half dozen fine oaks that embowered it in » summer, were now no improvement to its desolate appearance.

“ Here we are, Bessy, dear |”

Mark held up his strong arms with a look that was pitying in its affection, when he meant it should be joyous. “ Welcome ta our hut in the backwo ds !” as he lifted her to the ground.

Bessy had alighted ankle-deep in the dead leaves, and for a moment, their rustle was his only reply. Then, she took her child from the wagoner’s arms, and presented it for its father’s kiss.

“ Mamma and Kitty are very glad to get home at last !” she said, smiling bravely.

Dead leaves everywhere ! but in the corners of the zigzag fence that bounded the road on one side, and against the walls of the house, they were heaped highest, while, in the road itself, there whirled along, ever and anon, a twittering shower of them, before the wind, like a flock of frightened birds.

“The door is open, I see,” said Mark, pushing it wider.

“Never had no lock on it, I reckon |” was the reply of the wavoner. “If you’re ready, we’ll tumble out your things. I wish I could stay and help you get to rights, but I must be travelling.”

Bessy bestowed a glance upon the dismal interior of the dwelt ing ; then turned away, and gathering a pile of the dry leaves at the leeward end of the house, she deposited her child upon the’ soft cushion, tucked a blanket snugly about her, tied her hood more tightly under the little chin, and gave her aid in remoying the lighter articles of their luggage. There were not many parcels, and the work was soon done. ;

After infinite trouble, whoa-ing and gee-ing, and baeking in the clearing around the cabin, the horses, and the moving mountain attached to them, faced the main road onee more.

“J wish you luck |” said the driver, heartily, when he had received his fare, and the thanks of his late passengers, .

Even his dull imagination recognized the forlorn expression of the picture before him ; the heap of household goods that could furnish but scantily the rude hut that made the background ; the group standing among the withered leaves; the child, blue with cold, and terrified by the strangeness of its surroundings, clinging to its mother’s neck ; the wife, pale and wistful, her lips closed firmly, to repress the emotion that might seem to reproach him who had brought her hither ; the sturdy husband, perplexed and _ serious, under the weight of the responsibility he had assumed, but never before felt so heavily as at this moment ;. and over all, the darkening grey of the low clouds.

“Vl call in when I pass this way agen,” adventured the team-. ster, by way of alleviation to their discomfort. “ Don’t get homesick—no more’n you can help, I mean, of course. ‘ Put the best foot foremost,’ as my ole woman says. ‘ What’s done can’t be helped !? as I’ve heered her say a hundred times, I reckon. Wish she was here! She’d tell you just what to do—get you all straight in less than no time.”

That night, as he slept in his, four-wheeled tent, his horses tethered about it, and his bull-dog at his feet, doing double duty as guard and foot-stove, he was awakened by the roar of the rain on the canvas cover.

_ “Tm afeered they’re having a hard time of it !” he muttered, rolling his huge body over for another nap. “ Better have stayed where they come from, if twas Yankee-land |”

CHAPTER II. “Now, then, Bessy, for work !”

Mark ended the mournful pause, during which both had listened to the last dying tinkle of the distant bell that sounded like a farewell message from the civilized world. With a deep inspiration, he cast off despondency and homesickness.

“We will not be down-hearted, dear, while we are left to one another, and Kitty is spared to comfort us both. Suppose we examine the inside of what, forlorn as it looks, we will make a home of by and by.”

It was a heavy draught upon Bessy’s loving faith in her hus band’s word to credit the possibility of this latter clause, as she stood in the centre of the principal room, and gazed around her. The walls were tolerably sound—that is, there were not many fissures that admitted the outer air and light, but the inner plastering had crumbled and fallen in a number of places, displaying the shingles and sticks with which the edifice was “ chinked.” The bare beams, black with dirt and smoke, as was also the floor, were overlaid by loose planks, forming a loft, gained from below, by a rough ladder from which half the rounds were missing. The fire-place nearly filled up one end of the apartment, and the daylight glimmered down its capacious mouth upon ashes and charred pieces of firewood, extinct months before. A row of shelves, to the left of the chimney, constituted all the furnicure and culinary conveniences of the establishment, and these wre only undressed planks, supported by pegs driven into the logs

“This is the kitchen, I guess,” said Bessy, opening a door leading to a back room.

But it had neither fireplace nor stove. A small, unglazed window allowed unobstructed passage to the wind, and the gaping cracks above, below, and at the sides of another door, completed the process of ventilation. This, too, Bessy unclosed, and beheld about an acre of ground that seemed to have known tillage and inclosure at some remote date. Not far from the house, and, each at the foot of a tree, were the remains of a hencoop and pig-sty.

“What dirty people they must have been!” said our New England girl, with a curl of her pretty mouth. ‘‘ I don’t wonder that Mr. Argyle wanted to have them under his own eye !”

“We will show them a different style of living,” returned Mark. ‘ Next summer, we will have a fence and a garden, and chickens, and a pig. You have enough Irish blood in you te make the porker a necessary appendage to your family ; but we need not have his sty directly under our chamber window. Instead of that, we will plant roses and morning-glories.”

Bessy was passionately fond of flowers, and she looked brighter at the mere imagination. .

Mark followed up his advantage. ‘‘And we have all the winter for getting things straight within-doors. The first step is to make a fire. There are dry sticks in plenty for the kindling. Fuel is not scarce hereabouts, however pressed we may be for other comforts.”

The hearth was speedily cleared, and a fire crept brightly among the crackling twigs, then caught the larger logs Mark had vicked up about the premises. While her father and mother were bringing in their boxes and bundles, Miss Kitty sat upon a roll of bedding, laid against the wall, for her accommodation, still muffled in the shawls that concealed her entirely, excepting a pair of cherry lips and neat little nose, straight and sensible, and two black eyes, that saw and wondered at everything ; especially were they attracted by the merry leaping blaze that grew redder and stronger as the evening became darker. She would have liked to be nearer to it, but ‘‘mamma” had bade her sit still, and babies thought it no hardship to obey their parents in those days of primitive ignorance, when the hint that Solomon and Paul were ‘“ old fogies,” would have been regarded as irrevorently presumptuous.

Thus, it was not until the last package was brought in, and the rickety door excluded some of the unwholesome dampness, that Kitty was promoted to ‘‘mamma’s” knee, and her wrappings removed, with a kiss and word of praise to the “ best little girl in the country.” If the mother had added, “and one of the prettiest,” it must have been a critical taste indeed that found fault with her partial judgment. Short, sunny-brown ringlets covered ahead, formed with the elegance of outline and proportion that gave her mother, although but a shoemaker’s wife, the air of aristocratic breeding. ‘The father’s smile rarely left the black eyes, and the fervid Irish blood, of which he had spoken, colored the round cheek.

“Mamma !” said the little three-year-old, ‘‘ where is this ?”

“This is home, my daughter,” replied Bessy, steadily.

Another dubious look at floor and ceiling, and the confused mass of articles that busied her father ; and the lip curled just as the tidy housewife’s had done, at the proximity of the pig-pen to the back door.

“T don’t like it, mamma! ’Tisn’t clean |”

“ Her mother all over! the particular little minx Y laughed

Mark. _ Bessy answered more seriously. ‘“ But when it is clean, you will find it a nice place, Kitty. Mamma will fix a seat for you, and give you a piece of bread and butter. Then you will sit still, -and.let me help papa—will you not ?”

REMESBI8. aI

“Yes, ma’am,” sighed she, meckly ; and while the work of anpacking went on, she remained quietly perched upon a chest, munching the hard biscuit that was to be her supper.

“ Papa,” she said, at length, ‘may I please have a drink of water ?”

“ Certainly, my darling.”

“ But where is the well?” exclaimed Bessy. ‘I have not thought of it once! How singular that I should have forgotten it !”

“The spring is at the bottom of the hill, behind the house,” answered Mark. ‘I will step out and get a pailful of water.”

“T thought perhaps the overseer’s family managed to live without it,” said Bessy, mischievously. “JT am sure the supply must . be very small.”

“TJ will find enough for Kitty, and for our cup of tea,” replied Mark, lighting one of the pitchpine torches, with which he had supplied himself, in conformity with a suggestion of his friend, the wagoner. ;

Bessy stooped again over the box of housekeeping utensils and crockery. The next thing that came to hand was drawn forth with the utmost care. Kitty’s eyes flashed recognition.

> “ Grandmamma’s clock !” she cried. ‘‘ Where did it come from? Oh, mamma, do make it strike !”

As much to gratify herself as her child, Bessy set it up on one of the shelves, and applied the key. The works were all in order. The lively pendulum commenced its “ tickety-tick 1” and as Mark entered, the shrill bell rang out seven o’clock, for Bessy could only guess at the hour.