Tales of the Chesapeake Part 29

"Stay!" said Miss Dunlevy; "he staggers in his seat as if he were about to fall. A page has run to him with a letter. He reads it. Elk, for Heaven's sake, go to his help! He is dying!"

There was a rush of members about the new chairman of committee.

Confusion reigned upon the floor of Congress. The lobby brother had apprehended it all. He cleared the gallery at a run, pa.s.sed a familiar doorkeeper like a dart, and raised his senior to his breast.

"Arty," he whispered, "may Heaven forgive me! I repent of my folly and wickedness, and entreat you to speak to me!"

"Heaven has forgiven you, Elk MacNair!" muttered the spent Congressman. "Your father's friend has spared your fame and my feelings at the expense of his fortune. It has taken the bank of Jabel Blake--the dream of his life--to save you from a dishonored name, and to give you a wife too worthy for you!"

He put a piece of paper in the lobbyist's hands. It said:

"Arthur, I have given you the last gift in my power--a costly and a dear one--to keep your brother from disgrace, and to save you both remorse. I have bought the ---- claim, and destroyed it, but Ross Valley has lost the bank.

"JABEL BLAKE."

V.

On the terrace of the Capitol, while all this was occurring, a gaunt, gigantic, aged figure might have been seen, looking away into the city basking in the plain at his feet, with almost the bitterness of prophecy. He carried an old worn carpet-bag, and a railroad ticket appeared in his hat-band. It was Jabel Blake, shaking the dust of the capital city from his feet!

To him the soft and purple panorama brought no emotions, as pride of country or aesthetic a.s.sociations; and even the bracing savor of the gale upon the eminence seemed laden, to his hard regard, with the corruptions and excesses of a debauched government and a rank society.

The river, to him, was but the fair sewer to this sculptured sepulchre. The lambent amphitheatre of the inclosing ridges was like the wall of a jail which he longed to cross and return no more. He saw the dark granite form of the Treasury Department, and groaned like one whose heart was broken there. The bank of Ross Valley was never to be!

Jabel thought in one instant of the inquiries which should be addressed to him on his return, the prying curiosity of the hamlet, the strictures of his neighbors and laborers, the exultation of his enemies, the lost chance of his cherished village to become the mart of its locality and dispense from its exchequer enterprise and aid to farms and mines and mills.

"The good G.o.d may make it up to my children some day," he said; "but the bank is never to be in the life of old Jabel Blake!"

So Jabel went home and met with all obtuseness the flying rumors of the country. His worst enemies said that he had fallen from grace while in Was.h.i.+ngton, and "bucked" with all his bonds against a faro bank. His best friends obtained no explanation of his losses. He kept his counsel, grew even sterner and thriftier than he had ever been, and only at the Presbyterian church, where he prayed in public frequently at the evening meetings, were glimpses afforded of his recollections of Was.h.i.+ngton by the resonant appeals he made that the money-changers might be lashed out of the temples there, and desolation wrought upon them that sold doves.

There was no bank at Ross Valley, but people began to say that old Jabel Blake had particles of gold in the flinty composition of his life, and that his trip to Was.h.i.+ngton had made him gentler and wider in his charities. He was attentive to young children. He encouraged young lovers. He lifted many errant people to their feet, and started them on their way to a braver life of sacrifice. And fortune smiled upon him as never before. His mills went day and night, stopping never except on Sabbaths. The ground seemed to give forth iron and lime wherever he dug for it. The town became the thriftiest settlement in the Allegheny valleys, and Jabel Blake was the earliest riser and the hardest delver in the State.

It happened at the end of two years that rheumatism and an overstrained old age brought Jabel Blake to bed, and a flood, pa.s.sing down the valley, aroused him, despite advice, to his old indomitable leaders.h.i.+p against its ravages. He returned to his rest never to arise; for now a fever laid hold upon the old captain, and he talked in his delirium of Judge Dunlevy and his bank, and he was attended all the while by Arthur MacNair.

One night, in a little spell of relief, Jabel Blake opened his eyes and said,

"Arty, I dreamed old Jabel Blake was in heaven, and that he had founded a bank there!"

"Jabel," said the young Congressman, "you must have some treasure laid up there, old friend. And not only in heaven, but in this world also.

Look on this happy family redeemed by your sacrifice!"

Jabel Blake opened his eyes wider, and they fell upon Judge Dunlevy.

"This is a great honor," he said; "Ross Valley brings her great citizen back."

"No!" cried the Judge, "it is you, Jabel, who have brought us all to your bedside to do ourselves honor. Here are Elk MacNair and my daughter, who owe all their fortune to your fatherly kindness, and who have come to repay you the uttermost farthing. Providence has appreciated your sacrifice. They bring for your blessing, my grandson, and the name they have given him is Jabel Blake."

"Jabel," said General MacNair, "take with our full hearts this money.

It has been honestly earned with the capital of your bank. We return it that you may fulfil the dream of your life!"

Jabel Blake took the money, and a smile overspread his face. His hard lineaments were soft and fatherly now, and their tears attested how well he was esteemed. He drew Elk MacNair's ear to his lips, and said feebly, and with his latest articulate breath,

"General, you owe me two years' interest!"

They laid Jabel Blake away by his fathers, and on the day of the funeral Ross Valley was crowded like a shrine.

POTOMAC RIVER.

Brave river in the mountains bred, And broadening on thy way, So stately that thy stretches seem The bosom of the bay!

Thy growth is like the nation's life, Through which thy current flows-- Already past the cataracts And widening to repose.

Thy springs are at the Fairfax stone, Thy great arms northward course, They join and break the mountain bars With ever rallying force; But in thy nature is such peace, The beaten mountains yield, And lie their riven battlements Within thy silver s.h.i.+eld.

Through battle-fields thy runnels wind, In fame thy ferries s.h.i.+ne; Thy ripples lave the ancient stones On Freedom's boundary line; Where every slave the border crossed, A living host repa.s.s'd, And of the sentries of thy fords, John Brown shall be the last!

Yet, O Potomac! of thy peace Somewhat let faction feel, And Northern Pilgrims patient hear Of Mosby and MacNeill.

The long trees bloom where Stuart cross'd, And weep where Ashby bled, And every echo in thy hills Seems Stonewall Jackson's tread.

The love we bore in other days No difference can bar, And truce was kept at Vernon's grave However rolled the war.

Like thee, oh river! human states By many a rapid rage, Before they reach the deeper tides And gla.s.s the perfect age.

Brief is the span since Calvert's huts Were still the Indian's sport, And Braddock's columns stumbled on The borderer Cresap's fort, Till now the tinted hills grow fond Around yon marble height, Where Freedom calmly rules a realm That tires her eagle's flight.

And still the wild deer sip thy springs, The wild duck haunt thy coves, And all the year the fisher fleets Bask o'er thine oyster groves; The strange new ba.s.s thy trout pursue.

And where the herring sp.a.w.n, The blue sky opens to let through Thine own majestic swan.

Haste, Nature! Raze yon s.h.i.+ftless halls, Where pride penurious bides, The while the richness of the hills Runs off to choke the tides; Where every negro cabin stood A freeman's hearthside warm, And broad estates of bramble wood Expunge in many a farm!

Fill and revive these fair arcades, O race to Freedom born!

The tinkling herds that roam the glades, The barge's mellow horn, The lonesome sails that come and go Repeat the wish again: The ardent river yearns to know Not memories, but MEN!

TELL-TALE FEET.

The din of the day is quiet now, and the street is deserted. The last baccha.n.a.l reeled homeward an hour ago. The most belated cabman has pa.s.sed out of hearing. The one poor wretch who comes nightly to the water-side has closed her complaint; I saw her shawl float over the parapet as she flung her lean arms against the sky and went down with a scream. Here, in the busiest spot of the mightiest city, there is no human creature abroad; but footsteps are yet ringing on the desolateness. They are heard only by me. There are two of them; the first light, timorous, musical; the other harsh and heavy, as if shod with steel. I recognize them with a thrill; for they have haunted me many years, and they are speaking to me now. The one is soothing and pleading, and it implores me to write; but the second is like the striking of a revengeful knell. "Confession and Pardon," says the one; "Horror and Remorse," echoes the other. They tinkle and toll thus every midnight, when my hour of penance arrives and I have tried to register my story. It is almost finished now. Let me read the pages softly to myself:

"My life has been a long career of suffering. The elements, whose changes and combinations contribute to the pleasure of my species, have arrayed themselves against me. I am fas.h.i.+oned so delicately that the every-day bustle of the world provokes exquisite and incessant pain. Embodied like my fellows, my nerves are yet sensitive beyond girlishness, and my organs of sight, smell, and hearing are marvellously acute. The inodorous elements are painfully odorous to me. I can hear the subtlest processes in nature, and the densest darkness is radiant with mysterious lights. My childhood was a protracted horror, and the noises of a great city in which I lived shattered and well-nigh crazed me. In the dead calms I shuddered at the howling of winds. I fancied that I could detect the gliding revolution of the earth, and hear the march of the moon in her attendant orbit.

"My parents loved me tenderly, and, failing to soothe or conciliate me, they removed from the busy city to a secluded villa in the suburbs. Those labors which necessitated abrupt or prolonged sound were performed outside our grounds. The domestics were enjoined to conduct their operations with the utmost quietude. Carriages never came to the threshold, but stopped at the lodge; the drives were strewn with bark to drown the rattle of wheels; familiar fowls and beasts were excluded; the pines were cut down, though they had moaned for half a century; the angles of the house were rounded, that the wind might not scream and sigh of midnight, and the flapping of a shutter would have warranted the dismissal of the servants. Thick carpets covered the floors. My apartments lay in a remote wing, and were surrounded with double walls, filled with wool, to deaden communication. Goodly books were provided, but none which could arouse fears or pa.s.sions. Fiery romances were prohibited, and histories of turmoil and war, with theology and its mournful revelations, and medicine, which revived the bitter story of my organism. My library was stocked with dreamy and diverting compositions--old Walton, the pensive angler; the vagaries of ancient Burton, and the placid essayists of the Addisonian day. Of poets I had Cowper and Wordsworth, who loved quiet life and were the chroniclers of domestic men and manners. Pictures of shadowy studios and calm lakes, unfrequented coverts and sleepy wayside inns, covered my wall. The tints of tapestry, panel, and furniture were subdued, and the suns.h.i.+ne which mellowed a stained window was softened by an ingenious arrangement of shades and refractors. Art opposed her quaintest contrivances against the intense and violent moods of Nature, and my retirement was secure from the inroads of all except my careful guardians.

"But I was still unhappy, and the prey of vivid fancies. This privacy suggested the great world without, where men were wrestling with dangers. I imagined s.h.i.+ps upon stormy seas, and whirlwinds around mountain-homes; the chaos of cities, the rout of armies, dim arctic solitudes, where the icebergs tumbled apart and the frozen seas split asunder. They had banished painful occurrences, but the sensitive organism could not be destroyed, and I bore up until almost insane, struggling to be cheerful when stunned and dazzled. At last, when my mother stole into my room one day--it was October, I think, for I could hear the tiniest leaves dropping to the gra.s.s far below--I laid my head wearily in her lap and covered my ears with my hands. My eyes were filled with tears.

"'My dear mother, I cannot bear this life. I suffer as of old, though there be not a mote across the sun nor a breath in the air. If my mind could be led from these consciousnesses, I might be calm.'