The Land of Long Ago Part 4

Suppose a child should read the story of Beauty and the Beast, and straightway a fairy G.o.dmother should appear, saying, "Now, let us go to the palace of the Beast." If you can fancy that child's feelings, you will know how I felt when I stepped into the old buggy to go to Schuyler Hall.

It was a gray September afternoon. The air was warm and still, and the earth lay weary, thirsty, and patient under a three-weeks drouth. Dust was thick over the gra.s.s, flowers, and trees along the roadside, and on the weed-grown fields that had brought forth their harvest for the sons of men and now, sun-scorched and desolate, seemed to say, "Is this the end, the end of all?"

Over the horizon there was a soft haze like smoke from the smoldering embers of summer's dying fires, and in the west gloomed a cloud from which the thunder and the lightning would be loosed before the midnight hour; and after the rain would come a season of gentle suns, cool dews, and frosts scarce colder than the dew--not spring, but a memory of spring--when the earth, looking back to her May, would send a ripple of green over the autumn fields, and, like thoughts of youth in the heart of age, the clover and the dandelion would spring into untimely bloom.

"Things look sort o' down-hearted and discouraged, don't they?" said Aunt Jane, echoing my thought. "But jest wait till the Lord sends us the latter rain, and things'll freshen up mightily. There's plenty o'

pretty weather to come betwixt now and winter-time. Now, child, you jump out and open the gate, like I used to do in the days when I was young and spry."

Old Nelly crept lazily up the long avenue, and my eyes were fixed on the house of legend that lay at its end.

"Houses and lands are jest like pieces o' money," observed Aunt Jane.

"They pa.s.s from one hand to another, and this old place has had many an owner since Brother Wilson's day. The man that owns it now is a great-nephew of old Peter Cyartwright, and him and his wife's mighty proud of the place."

"Do they object to strangers coming to see it?" I asked as we neared the giant cypress-tree in front of the porch.

"La, child," laughed Aunt Jane. "Ain't this Kentucky? Who ever heard of a Kentuckian objectin' to folks goin' through his house! We'll jest walk in at the front door and out at the back door and see all that's to be seen, up-stairs and down."

As she spoke we heard the voice of the hostess bidding us welcome to Schuyler Hall, and, fresh from the fairy-land of Aunt Jane's memories, I walked into one of the scenes of the story, the house that was a wedding fee.

There was a hint of baronial grandeur in the lofty ceilings, the heavy walnut wainscoting and oaken floors, the huge fireplaces with their tall mantels; and underneath the evident remodeling and repairing one saw the home and the taste of a vanished generation, the same that had witnessed the building of Monticello, for the hand that wrote the Declaration of Independence had drawn the plans for the house that was a wedding fee.

From room to room I went, pleasing myself with fancies of the man who had never bowed the knee to Mammon. My feet were on the floors that he had trod. By this worn hearthstone he had knelt, night and morn, to the G.o.d who had given him the desire of his heart. From this doorway he had looked upon the broad acres that were his by grace of a generous adversary, the tribute of one n.o.ble nature to another. In the long, low-ceiled bedchamber above the stately lower rooms he had slept the sleep of one whose conscience is void of offense toward G.o.d and his fellow man, and through the dormer-window that looked toward the rising of the sun his soul had pa.s.sed out in its flight to the stars.

Dusty and flowerless, the garden paths wandered to right and left, but not one did I miss in my pilgrimage; for who could know what shrines of remembrance might lie hidden in that drift of leaves, withered and fallen before their time? Perhaps the minister's hand had planted the clump of tansy and the bed of sage, and well I knew that here in the night hours he had met his Maker, and his garden had been to him as that paradise where Adam walked with G.o.d.

Near the house was a spring to whose waters came the Indian and the deer before the foot of the pioneer had touched Kentucky soil. Rising from sources too deep to be affected by the weather of earth, no drouth ever checks its flow, no flood increases it, and here I knelt and drank to the memory of a day that is not dead nor can ever die.

Again on the threshold of the old house I paused and looked back into the shadowy hall. Ah, if the other world would for a moment give up its own that I might see them "in their habit as they lived," the Cavalier squire, the Puritan minister, the bride whose womanly worth was but faintly shadowed forth in the princely gift of a house and land! But no presence crossed the dim perspective within, and the only whisper I heard was the wind in the cypress-tree. The past had buried its dead, and soon their habitation, like themselves, would be but a memory and a name.

In that mansion used to be Free-hearted hospitality; His great fires up the chimney roared, The stranger feasted at his board.

Fair and stately are the dwellings that shelter this latest generation, and by their side such mansions as Schuyler Hall seem only moldering, ghost-haunted reminders of the past. But those who dwelt in them are immortal, and though walls of flesh and walls of stone alike crumble to dust, there shall never lack a heart to treasure and a pen to record the virtues of the men and women of those early times, who, in reverence and in honor, founded and built the "old Kentucky home."

III

THE COURTs.h.i.+P OF MISS AMARYLLIS

[Ill.u.s.tration]

III

THE COURTs.h.i.+P OF MISS AMARYLLIS

"It's curious," said Aunt Jane meditatively, "how, when old people go to lookin' back on the way things was when they was young, it appears like everything was better then than it is now. Strawberries was sweeter, times was easier, men was taller, and women prettier. I ain't say in' a word against your looks, child; you're as good-lookin' as the best of 'em nowadays, but I reckon there ain't any harm in me sayin' that you don't quite come up to Miss Penelope and Miss Amaryllis. I git to thinkin' about them two, and I wish I could see 'em by the side o' the women that folks call pretty nowadays so I could tell whether they really was prettier or whether it's jest an old woman's notion."

"Who was Miss Amaryllis?" I asked. "If she matched her name she must have been a beauty."

Aunt Jane smiled delightedly and gave an a.s.senting nod. "Miss Amaryllis was Miss Penelope's sister," she said. "They was first cousins to d.i.c.k Elrod, that married Annie Crawford, and their father was Judge Elrod, Squire Elrod's brother. The old judge was a mighty learned sort of a man. He spent most of his time readin' and writin', and he had a room in his house with nothin' in it but books, clear from the floor to the ceilin', and some of 'em he never allowed anybody but himself to touch, he thought so much of 'em. And next to his books it was his two daughters. Folks used to say that the judge's wife was right jealous of his books and of Miss Penelope and Miss Amaryllis.

"Maybe you know, child, where the old judge got the names for his daughters. The only names I'm used to are the good old family names that come out o' the Bible, and some people said Penelope and Amaryllis couldn't be called Christian names, because they sounded so heathenish, and the judge's wife she objected to 'em because, she said, they was too long for folks to say. But the old judge wouldn't hear to anybody's shortenin' the children's names. Says he, 'If you give a child a plain name it'll be likely to turn out a plain man or a plain woman. But,' says he, 'I've given my children fine names, and I expect them to grow up into women that'll become their names.' And I reckon they did, for two prettier women you never saw, and their names seemed to suit 'em exactly. And as for their bein' too long, I always liked to say 'em and hear people say 'em. Penelope and Amaryllis--why, they're jest as easy to say as Mary and Marthy, and I always thought they sounded like fallin' water or the singin' of a bird, Amaryllis especially."

Aunt Jane paused here and laid down her work. She had reached a difficult point in the story, and there must be time for thought.

"Now, how in the world am I goin' to tell you how Miss Amaryllis looked?" she said, with an accent of gentle despair. "Why, it's as hard as tryin' to tell about that yeller rose that grew in old lady Elrod's gyarden. There never was such a rose as that, and there never was such a gyirl as Miss Amaryllis, or Miss Penelope either, for that matter. The judge was always havin' their pictures painted, and there was one, no bigger around than that, set in gold. If I jest had it to show you! But I reckon that picture o' Miss Amaryllis is lyin' in a grave somewhere on the other side o' the ocean. Mighty near every woman has somethin' pretty about her; one'll have pretty eyes and another'll have a pretty color, but Miss Amaryllis was pretty every way. I ricollect once I was pa.s.sin' along Main Street, one County Court day, and the old judge's carriage was standin' in front o' Tom Barker's dry-goods store, and Miss Amaryllis was leanin' back against the cus.h.i.+ons, and her hand was layin' on the carriage door, and she had a ring on one of her fingers with a yeller stone in it; the sun was s.h.i.+nin' on it and, I declare to goodness, from that day to this I never see a white lily with the yeller heart and the dust like grains o' gold inside of it that I don't think o' Miss Amaryllis's hand and Miss Amaryllis's ring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MISS PENELOPE AND MISS AMARYLLIS.

_Page 80._]

"They both had golden hair, Miss Penelope and Miss Amaryllis, but Miss Penelope had gray eyes like a dove's, and Miss Amaryllis had brown ones with dark lashes. I reckon it was Miss Amaryllis's eyes and hair that made her what she was. You can find plenty o' women with brown eyes and brown hair, but when you find one with brown eyes and golden hair, why, it's somethin' to ricollect. And then, there was her voice.

You've heard me tell many a time about Miss Penelope's voice, and Miss Amaryllis had one that was jest as sweet, but hers was low and deep where Miss Penelope's was clear and high. Miss Amaryllis played on the guitar, and summer nights they'd sit out on the portico and sing together, and the old judge used to say that when his gyirls sung the very mockin'-birds stopped to listen.

"Many a woman has hard work to find one man to love her, and many a woman can't find even one, but Miss Amaryllis had more beaus on her string, and more strings to her bow, than any fiddler, in the state; and she danced with 'em and sung to 'em and played with 'em like a cat plays with mice, and then, when she got ready, she'd send 'em on their way, and she'd go on hers. And as fast as one went another'd come. The judge's wife used to shake her head and say, 'My daughter, there's such a thing as a woman sayin' "No" once too often.' And Miss Amaryllis she'd say, 'Yes, and there's such a thing as a woman sayin'

"Yes" a little too soon;' and the old judge he'd laugh and say, 'Let her alone; one of these days she'll find her master.' And sure enough she did. They said it was love at first sight on both sides when Miss Amaryllis and Hamilton Schuyler met each other at a big party at Squire Elrod's, and before long the weddin' day was set, and everybody was sayin' that Miss Amaryllis had found her match at last.

"Hamilton Schuyler was as handsome as Miss Amaryllis was pretty, and when it come to family he had as much to brag of as she had. He was a first cousin to Squire Meredith Schuyler, and all the Schuylers had fine houses and plenty o' land. Rich folks in that day had a way of namin' their places jest as rich folks do now. The Elrod place was called The Cedars, and Hamilton Schuyler had a big house on the same 'pike, and that was Schuyler Court. The Schuylers was mighty proud o'

their blood, and I used to hear folks talk about the coat of arms that the squire had hangin' in his front hall. Abram was there once to see about some land the squire was havin' cleared, and he said he took particular notice of the coat of arms, but to save his life he couldn't see why they called it that, for there wasn't any coat or any arms on it that he could see, jest a curious colored thing, red and blue and black, and on top of it some kind of a beast standin' on its hind legs.

"The Elrods come of plain people at the start, but they could hold up their heads with the best, for they had plenty o' money and plenty o'

learnin', too, and the judge's wife was as blue-blooded as any Schuyler and twice as proud of her blood, in the bargain. She had pictures, and silver things, and dishes that'd been in the family for generations, and her great-great-grandfather was a Fairfax.

"There's some people, child, that'll tell you that one person's as good as another, and all blood's alike, and all of it red. And maybe they are right. And when it comes to kindness and right principles and all that, why, Squire Schuyler and the judge's wife wasn't a bit better'n Abram and me. But when it come to their manners and their language, they had somethin' we didn't have. Abram was jest as polite a man as Squire Schuyler, but he couldn't take off his hat to a lady the way the squire could, and I couldn't bow and smile like the judge's wife, and I reckon that's where the blue blood comes in.

"I ricollect talkin' to Parson Page once about this very thing, and he says, 'The Lord hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth, and in His sight there is neither high nor low according to blood.'

Says he, 'The Lord looks at the life and the conscience of a man to tell whether he's high or low; and,' says he, 'in His sight there's little difference between the good man who is born in the high places of the earth and the good man who walks in lowly paths. Both are pure gold, but one's been shaped and stamped by goin' through the mint, and the other's rough in the nugget.'

"Now, what was I startin' out to tell you, child, before I got to talkin' about blue blood? Oh, yes, I ricollect now.

"Well, everybody was lookin' for Miss Amaryllis's weddin' cyards, when, all at once, her and Hamilton had a quarrel, and the match was broke off then and there. It was a long time before anybody knew what had happened betwixt the two, but at last it come out that they'd quarreled about where they'd live after they married. Of course he expected to take his bride to his own house, and of course any right-minded woman would 'a' been willin' to go with her husband; but when he happened to say somethin' about the time when she'd be livin'

at Schuyler Court, she give him to understand that she couldn't leave The Cedars, and that whoever married her would have to live at her father's house.

"Now it's my belief, honey, that Miss Amaryllis hadn't any idea of makin' Hamilton Schuyler leave Schuyler Court and come and live at The Cedars. She was jest foolin' when she said that. She'd been used to twistin' the men round her little finger all her life, and she wanted to see if Hamilton was like all the rest. But Hamilton took it all in earnest, and he said whoever heard of a man givin' up his own home and goin' to live with his father-in-law, and did she want him to be the laughin'-stock of the whole country? And she said that if he cared more for his house than he cared for her he could stay at Schuyler Court and she'd stay at The Cedars. And he said it wasn't Schuyler Court he cared for; he'd leave Schuyler Court and build her another house anywhere she wanted to live, but if she wouldn't leave her father's house, then he'd have to believe that she cared more for The Cedars than she cared for him. And they had it up and down and back and forth, and at last she give him back his ring and sent him away jest like she'd sent the others.

"The judge and his wife was terribly upset about it. They both loved Hamilton like he was their own son, and the old lady said that Miss Amaryllis had thrown away her best chance, and maybe her last one, and she grieved mightily, for in that day, honey, an old-maid daughter wasn't considered a blessin' by any means. They tried their best to git Hamilton and Miss Amaryllis to make up, but he said he was certain she didn't love him as well as a woman ought to love the man she was goin' to marry, and she said a man who wouldn't try to please a woman before marriage wouldn't be likely to try to please her after they married; and he said he'd be willin' to give up his way, if he was only certain she loved him right, and she said how could a woman love a man that put his pleasure before hers? And the longer the old people argued with her, the more contrairy it made Miss Amaryllis, and finally they had to give it up.

"Of course all her old beaus come flockin' back as soon as they heard that Miss Amaryllis had give Hamilton his walkin'-papers, and things was as gay as ever at The Cedars. But Hamilton, he settled down at Schuyler Court, and it looked like all the pleasure he had in life was gone. Some men, if they can't git the woman they want, they'll take one they don't want and manage to put up with her tolerable well. But Hamilton wasn't that sort. With him it was the woman he loved or n.o.body.

"Well, the judge dropped off right sudden with paralysis, and in a year or two the old lady followed him, and Miss Penelope married, and there was Miss Amaryllis all alone in the big house with jest the housekeeper, Miss Semp.r.o.nia Davis, and the family servants; and there was Hamilton off yonder in Schuyler Court, pale and thin and quiet, and the years pa.s.sin', and both of 'em lovin' each other more every day, and losin' their happiness and wastin' their lives all on account of a foolish little quarrel.

"They said the judge always felt hard towards Miss Amaryllis for disapp'intin him so, but he divided the property even betwixt her and Miss Penelope and give her The Cedars. 'I give and bequeath to my daughter Amaryllis The Cedars, since she seems to care more for this than for anything else in the world'--that was the way the will was.

"I reckon most women would 'a' lost their beauty livin' the way Miss Amaryllis did, everything goin' wrong with her, and old age certain to come, but it looked like all that time could do to her was to make her prettier, and there wasn't a young gyirl in the country that could hold a candle to her.