Kitabı oku: «Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848», sayfa 9

She could not understand it. Her husband sympathized with her most fully on this score, for, like all ignorant, purse-proud men, he could comprehend no claims not based in money.

A sudden light broke in, however, upon the Fairchild's dull life. A great exertion was being made for a new Opera company, and Mr. Fairchild's money being as good as any body else's, the subscription books were taken to him. He put down his name for as large a sum as the best of them, and felt himself at once a patron of music, fashion, and the fine arts.

Mrs. Fairchild was in ecstasies. She had chosen seats in the midst of the Ashfields, Harpers, and others, and felt now "that they would be all together."

Mr. Fairchild came home one day very indignant with a young Mr. Bankhead, who had asked him if he would change seats with him, saying his would probably suit Mr. Fairchild better than those he had selected, as they were front places, &c., that his only object in wishing to change was to be next to the Ashfields, "as it would be a convenience to his wife, who could then go often with them when he was otherwise engaged."

Mr. Fairchild promptly refused in what Mr. Bankhead considered a rude manner, who rather haughtily replied "that he should not have offered the exchange if he had supposed it was a favor, his seats being generally considered the best. It was only on his wife's account, who wished to be among her friends that he had asked it, as he presumed the change would be a matter of indifference to Mr. Fairchild."

The young man had no idea of the sting conveyed in these words. Mrs. Fairchild was very angry when her husband repeated it to her. "It was not a matter of indifference at all. Why should not we wish to be among the Ashfields and Harpers as well as anybody?" she said, indignantly. "And who is this Mrs. Bankhead, I should like to know, that I am to yield my place to her;" to which Mr. Fairchild replied, with his usual degree of angry contempt when speaking of people of no property,

"A pretty fellow, indeed! He's hardly worth salt to his porridge! Indeed, I wonder how he is able to pay for his seats at all!"

While on the Bankhead's side it was,

"We cannot change our places, Mrs. Ashfield. Those Fairchilds refused."

"Oh, how provoking!" was the reply. "We should have been such a nice little set by ourselves. And so disagreeable, too, to have people one don't know right in the midst of us so! Why what do the creatures mean – your places are the best?"

"Oh, I don't know. He 's a vulgar, purse-proud man. My husband was quite sorry he had asked him, for he seemed to think it was a great favor, and made the most of the opportunity to be rude."

"Well, I am sorry. It's not pleasant to have such people near one; and then I am so very, very sorry, not to have you and Mr. Bankhead with us. The Harpers were saying how delightful it would be for us all to be together; and now to have those vulgar people instead – too provoking!"

Ignorant, however, of the disgust, in which her anticipated proximity was held, Mrs. Fairchild, in high spirits, bought the most beautiful of white satin Opera cloaks, and ordered the most expensive paraphernalia she could think of to make it all complete, and determined on sporting diamonds that would dazzle old acquaintances, (if any presumed to be there,) and make even the fashionables stare.

The first night opened with a very brilliant house. Every body was there, and every body in full dress. Mrs. Fairchild had as much as she could do to look around. To be sure she knew nobody, but then it was pleasant to see them all. She learnt a few names from the conversation that she overheard of the Ashfields and Harpers, as they nodded to different acquaintances about the house. And then, during the intervals, different friends came and chatted a little while with them, and the Bankheads leaned across and exchanged a few animated words; and, in short, every body seemed so full of talk, and so intimate with every body, except poor Mrs. Fairchild, who sat, loaded with finery, and no one to speak to but her husband, who was by this time yawning wearily, well-nigh worn out with the fatigue of hearing two acts of a grand Italian Opera.

As Mrs. Fairchild began to recover self-possession enough to comprehend what was going on among them, she found to her surprise, from their conversation, that the music was not all alike; that one singer was "divine," another "only so so;" the orchestra admirable, and the choruses very indifferent. She could not comprehend how they could tell one from another. "They all sang at the same time; and as for the chorus and orchestra, she did not know 'which was which.'"

Then there was a great deal said about "contraltos" and "sopranos;" and when her husband asked her what they meant, she replied, "she did not know, it was French!" They talked, too, of Rossini and Bellini, and people who read and wrote music, and that quite passed her comprehension. She thought "music was only played and sung;" and what they meant by reading and writing it, she could not divine. Had they talked of eating it, it would have sounded to her about as rational.

Occasionally one of the Hamiltons sat with some of the set, for it seemed they had no regular places of their own. "Of course not," said Mrs Fairchild, contemptuously. "They can't afford it," which expressive phrase summed up, with both husband and wife, the very essence of all that was mean and contemptible, and she was only indignant at their being able to come there at all. The Bankheads were bad enough; but to have the Hamiltons there too, and then to hear them all talking French with some foreigners who occasionally joined them, really humbled her.

This, then, she conceived was the secret of success. "They know French," she would reply in a voice of infinite mortification, when her husband expressed his indignant astonishment at finding these "nobodies" on 'change, "somebodies" at the Opera. To "know French," comprehended all her ideas of education, information, sense, and literature. This, then, she thought was the "Open Sesame" of "good society," the secret of enjoyment at the Opera; for, be it understood, all foreign languages were "French" to Mrs. Fairchild.

She was beginning to find the Opera a terrible bore, spite of all the finery she sported and saw around her, with people she did not know, and music she did not understand. As for Mr. Fairchild, the fatigue was intolerable; and he would have rebelled at once, if he had not paid for his places for the season, and so chose to have his money's worth, if it was only in tedium.

A bright idea, a bold resolution occurred to Mrs. Fairchild. She would learn French.

So she engaged a teacher at once, at enormous terms, who was to place her on a level with the best of them.

Poor little woman! and poor teacher, too! what work it was! How he groaned in spirit at the thick tongue that could not pronounce the delicate vowels, and the dull apprehension that knew nothing of moods and tenses.

And she, poor little soul, who was as innocent of English Grammar as of murder, how was she to be expected to understand the definite and indefinite when it was all indefinite; and as for the participle past, she did not believe any body understood it. And so she worked and puzzled, and sometimes almost cried, for a week, and then went to the Opera and found she was no better off than before.

In despair, and angry with her teacher, she dismissed him. "She did not believe any body ever learnt it that way out of books;" and "so she would get a French maid, and she'd learn more hearing her talk in a month, than Mr. A. could teach her, if she took lessons forever." And so she got a maid, who brought high recommendations from some grand people who had brought her from France, and then she thought herself quite set up.

But the experiment did not succeed. She turned out a saucy thing, who shrugged her shoulders with infinite contempt when she found "madame" did not comprehend her; and soon Mrs. Fairchild was very glad to take advantage of a grand flare-up in the kitchen between her and the cook, in which the belligerent parties declared that "one or the other must leave the house," to dismiss her.

In deep humility of spirit Mrs. Fairchild placed her little girl at the best French school in the city, almost grudging the poor child her Sundays at home when she must hear nothing but English. She was determined that she should learn French young; for she now began to think it must be taken like measles or whooping-cough, in youth, or else the attack must be severe, if not dangerous.

Mrs. Fairchild made no acquaintances, as she fondly hoped, at the Opera. A few asked, "Who is that dressy little body who sits in front of you, Mrs. Ashfield?"

"A Mrs. Fairchild. I know nothing about them except that they live next door to us."

"What a passion the little woman seems to have for jewelry," remarked the other. "It seems to me she has a new set of something once a week at least."

"Yes," said one of the Hamiltons, laughing, "she's as good as a jeweler's window. It's quite an amusement to me to see the quantity of bracelets and chains she contrives to hang around her."

"I would gladly have dispensed with that amusement, Ellen," replied Mrs. Ashfield, "for they have the places the Bankheads wanted; and he is so clever and well-informed, and she such a bright, intelligent little creature, that it would have added so much to our pleasure to have had them with us."

"Oh, to be sure! the Bankheads are jewels of the first water. And how they enjoy every thing. What a shame it is they have not those Fairchilds' money."

"No, no, Ellen, that is not fair," replied Mrs. Ashfield. "Let Mrs. Fairchild have her finery – it's all, I suppose, the poor woman has. The Bankheads don't require wealth for either enjoyment or consequence. They are bright and flashing in their own lustre, and like all pure brilliants, are the brighter for their simple setting."

"May be," replied the gay Ellen, "but I do love to see some people have every thing."

"Nay, Ellen," said Mrs. Ashfield, "Is that quite just? Be satisfied with Mrs. Bankhead's having so much more than Mrs. Fairchild, without robbing poor Mrs. Fairchild of the little she has."

Could Mrs. Fairchild have believed her ears had she heard this? Could she have believed that little Mrs. Bankhead, whose simple book-muslin and plainly braided dark hair excited her nightly contempt, was held in such respect and admiration by those who would not know her. And Bankhead, whom her husband spoke of with such infinite contempt, as having "nothing at all," "not salt to his porridge." And yet as Mrs. Fairchild saw them courted and gay, she longed for some of their porridge, "for they knew French."

And thus the season wore on in extreme weariness and deep mortification. The Fairchilds made no headway at all. She made no acquaintances at all at the opera, as she had fondly hoped. She even regretted that her husband had refused their seats to the Bankheads. Had he yielded them a favor may be they would have spoken to them.

Desperate, at last, she determined she would do something. She would give a party. But who to ask?

Not old friends and acquaintance. That was not to be thought of. But who else? She knew nobody.

"It was not necessary to know them," she told her husband. "She would send her card and invitations to all those fine people, and they'd be glad enough to come. The Bankheads, too, and the Hamiltons, she would ask them."

"You are sure of them, at any rate," said her husband contemptuously. "Poor devils! it's not often they get such a supper as they'll get here."

But somehow the Hamiltons and Bankheads were not as hungry as Mr. Fairchild supposed, for very polite regrets came in the course of a few days, to Mrs. Fairchild's great wrath and mortification.

This was but the beginning, however. Refusals came pouring in thick and fast from all quarters.

The lights were prepared, the music sounding, and some half dozen ladies, whose husbands had occasionally a business transaction with Mr. Fairchild, looked in on their way to a grand fashionable party given the same evening by one of their own clique, and then vanished, leaving Mrs. Fairchild with the mortified wish that they had not come at all, to see the splendor of preparations and the beggary of guests. Some few young men dropped in and took a look, and bowed themselves out as soon as the Fairchilds gave them a chance; and so ended this last and most desperate effort.

"My dear," said Mrs. Fairchild one day to her husband in perfect desperation, "let us go to Europe."

"To Europe," he said, looking up in amazement.

"Yes," she replied, with energy. "That's what all these fine people have done, and that's the way they know each other so well. All the Americans are intimate in Paris, and then when they come back they are all friends together."

Mr. Fairchild listened and pondered. He was as tired as his wife with nothing to do; and moreover deeply mortified, though he said less about it, at not being admitted among those with whom he had no tastes or associations in common, and he consented.

The house was shut up and the Fairchilds were off.

"Who are those Fairchilds," asked somebody in Paris, "that one sees every where, where money can gain admittance?"

"Oh, I don't know," replied Miss Rutherford. "They traveled down the Rhine with us last summer, and were our perfect torment. We could not shake them off."

"What sort of people are they?" was the next question.

"Ignorant past belief: but that would not so much matter if she were not such a spiteful little creature. I declare I heard more gossip and ill-natured stories from her about Americans in Paris than I ever heard in all the rest of my life put together."

"And rich?"

"Yes, I suppose so – for they spent absurdly. They are just those ignorant, vulgar people that one only meets in traveling, and that make us blush for our country and countrymen. Such people should not have passports."

"Fairchild," said Mrs. Castleton. "The name is familiar to me. Oh, now I remember. But they can't be the same. The Fairchilds I knew were people in humble circumstances. They lived in – street."

"Yes. I dare say they are the very people," replied Miss Rutherford. "He has made money rapidly within a few years."

"But she was the best little creature I ever knew," persisted Mrs. Castleton. "My baby was taken ill while we were in the country boarding at the same house, and this Mrs. Fairchild came to me at once, and helped me get a warm bath, and watched and nursed the child with me as if it had been her own. I remember I was very grateful for her excessive kindness and attention."

"Well, I dare say," replied Miss Rutherford. "But that was when she was poor, and, as you say, humble, Mrs. Castleton. Very probably she may have been kind-hearted originally. She does love her children dearly. She has that merit; but now that she is rich, and wants to be fine and fashionable, and don't know how to manage it, and can't succeed, you never knew any body so spiteful and jealous as she is of all those she feels beyond her reach."

"Pity," said Mrs. Castleton almost sorrowfully. "She was such a good little creature. How prosperity spoils some people."

And so Mrs. Fairchild traveled and came home again.

They had been to Paris, and seen more things and places than they could remember, and did not understand what they could remember, and were afraid of telling what they had seen, lest they should mispronounce names, whose spelling was beyond their most ambitious flights.

They had gone to the ends of the earth to be in society at home. But ignorant they went and ignorant they returned.

"Edward and Fanny shall know every thing," said Mrs. Fairchild, and teachers without end were engaged for the young Fairchilds, who, to their parents' great delight were not only chatting in "unknown tongues," but becoming quite intimate with the little Ashfields and other baby sprigs of nobility.

"Who is that pretty boy dancing with your Helen, Mrs. Bankhead?" asked some one at a child's party.

"Young Fairchild," was the reply.

"Fairchild! What, a son of that overdressed little woman you used to laugh at so at the opera?" said the other.

"The same," replied Mrs. Bankhead laughing.

"And here's an incipient flirtation between your girl and her boy," continued the other archly.

"Well, there's no leveler like Education. The true democrat after all," she pursued.

"Certainly," replied Mrs. Bankhead. "Intelligence puts us all on a footing. What other distinction can or should we have?"

"I doubt whether Mrs. Fairchild thinks so," replied her friend.

"Indeed you are mistaken," replied Mrs. Bankhead earnestly. "She would not perhaps express it in those words: but her humble reverence for education is quite touching. They are giving these children every possible advantage, and in a few years, when they are grown up," she continued, laughing, "We mothers will be very glad to admit the young Fairchilds in society, even if they must bring the mother with them."

"I suppose so," said the other. "And old people are inoffensive even if they are ignorant. Old age is in itself a claim to respect."

"True enough," returned Mrs. Bankhead; "and when you see them engrossed and happy in the success of their children, you forgive them a good deal. That is the reward of such people."

"They have fought through a good deal of mortification though to attain it," rejoined the other. "I wonder whether the end is worth it?"

"Ah! that's a question hard to settle," replied Mrs. Bankhead seriously. "Society at large is certainly improved, but I doubt whether individuals are the happier. No doubt the young Fairchilds will be happier for their parents' rise in the world – but I should say the 'transition state' had been any thing but a pleasant one to the parents. The children will have the tastes as well as the means for enjoyment; the one Mrs. Fairchild having found to be quite as necessary as the other."

"This is the march of intellect, the progress of society, exemplified in the poor Fairchilds," replied the other laughing. "Well, thank Heaven my mission has not been to rise in the world."

TWILIGHT. – TO MARY

 
Oh! how I love this time of ev'n,
When day in tender twilight dies;
And the parting sun, as it falls from heaven,
Leaves all its beauty on the skies.
When all of rash and restless Nature,
Passion – impulse – meekly sleeps,
And loveliness, the soul's sweet teacher,
Seems like religion in its deeps.
And now is trembling through my senses
The melting music of the trees,
And from the near and rose-crowned fences
Comes the balm and fragrant breeze;
And from the bowers, not yet shrouded
In the coming gloom of night,
Breaks the bird-song, clear, unclouded.
In trembling tones of deep delight.
But not for this alone I prize
This witching time of ev'n,
The murmuring breeze, the blushing skies,
And day's last smile on heaven.
But thoughts of thee, and such as thou art.
That mingle with these sacred hours,
Give deeper pleasure to my heart
Than song of birds arid breath of flowers.
Then welcome the hour when the last smile of day
Just lingers at the portal of ev'n,
When so much of life's tumults are passing away,
And earth seems exalted to heaven. H. D. G.
 

THE SAGAMORE OF SACO

A LEGEND OF MAINE

BY ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH

 
Land of the forest and the rock —
Of dark blue lake and mighty river —
Of mountains reared aloft to mock
The storms career, the lightning's shock —
My own green land forever. Whittier.
 

Never was country more fruitful than our own with rich materials of romantic and tragic interest, to call into exercise the finest talents of the dramatist and novelist. Every cliff and headland has its aboriginal legend; the village, now thrifty and quiet, had its days of slaughter and conflagration, its tale of devoted love or cruel treachery; while the city, now tumultuous with the pressure of commerce, in its "day of small things," had its bombardment and foreign army, and its handful of determined freemen, who achieved prodigies of single handed valor. Now that men are daily learning the worth of humanity, its hopes and its trials coming nearer home to thought and affection; now that the complicated passions of refined and artificial life are becoming less important than the broad, deep, genuine manifestations of the common mind, we may hope for a bolder and more courageous literature: we may hope to see the drama free itself from sensualism and frivolity, and rise to the Shaksperian dignity of true passion; while the romance will learn better its true ground, and will create, rather than portray – delineate, rather than dissect human sentiment and emotion.

The State of Maine is peculiarly rich in its historically romantic associations. Settled as it was prior to the landing of the Pilgrims, first under Raleigh Gilbert, and subsequently by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, whose colony it is fair, in the absence of testimony, to infer never left the country after 1616, but continued to employ themselves in the fisheries, and in some commerce with the West Indies, up to the time of their final incorporation with the Plymouth settlement. Indeed the correspondence of Sir Richard Vines, governor of the colony under Sir Ferdinando Gorges, with the Governor of Plymouth, leaves no doubt upon this head; and it is a well known fact that the two settlements of De Aulney and De la Tour at the mouths of the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers, even at this early age, were far from being contemptible, both in a commercial and numeric point of view. Added to these was the handful of Jesuits at Mont Desert, and we might say a colony of Swedes on the sea-coast, between the two large rivers just named, the memory of which is traditional, and the vestiges of which are sometimes turned up by the ploughshare. These people probably fell beneath some outbreak of savage vengeance, which left no name or record of their existence.

Subsequently to these was the dispersion of the Acadians, that terrible and wanton piece of political policy, which resulted in the extinction and denationalizing of a simple and pious people. The fugitive Acadians found their way through a wilderness of forests, suffering and dying as they went, some landing in distant states, (five hundred having been consigned to Governor Oglethorpe of Georgia,) and others, lonely and bereft, found a home with the humble and laborious farmers of this hardy state, whose finest quality is an open-handed hospitality. These intermarrying with our people here, have left traces of their blood and fine moral qualities to enhance the excellence of a pure and healthful population.

Then followed the times of the Revolution, when Maine did her part nobly in the great and perilous work. Our own Knox was commandant of the artillery, and the bosom friend of Washington: our youth sunk into unknown graves in the sacred cause of freedom; and our people, poor as they were, for the resources of the state were then undeveloped, cast their mite of wealth into the national treasury. Northerly and isolated as she is, her cities were burned, and her frontiers jealously watched by an alert and cruel enemy. Here, too, Arnold sowed his last seeds of virtue and patriotism, in his arduous march through the wilderness of Maine to the capital of the Canadas, an exploit which, considering the season, the poverty of numbers and resources, combined with the wild, unknown, and uncleared state of the country, may compete with the most heroic actions of any great leader of any people.

A maritime state, Maine suffers severely from the fluctuations of commerce, but is the first to realize the reactions of prosperity. Her extended seaboard, her vast forests, her immense mineral resources, together with a population hardy, laborious, virtuous, and enterprising; a population less adulterated by foreign admixture than any state in the Union, all point to a coming day of power and prosperity which shall place her foremost in the ranks of the states, in point of wealth, as she is already in that of intelligence.

We have enumerated but a tithe of the intellectual resources of Maine – have given but a blank sheet as it were of the material which will hereafter make her renowned in story, and must confine ourselves to but a single point of historic and romantic interest, connected with the earlier records of the country. We have alluded to the first governor, Sir Richard Vines, a right worthy and chivalric gentleman, the friend and agent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, of Walter Raleigh, and other fine spirits of the day. His residence was at the Pool, as it is now called, or "Winter Harbor," from the fact that the winter of 1616-17 was passed by Vines and his followers at this place. After a residence of eighteen or twenty years, devoted to the interests of the colony, the death of his patron, the transfer of the Maine plantation to the Plymouth proprietors, together with domestic and pecuniary misfortunes, induced Sir Richard Vines to retire to the Island of Barbadoes, where we find him prosperous and respected, and still mindful of the colony for which he had done and suffered so much.

Prior to his departure, and probably not altogether unconnected with it, he had incurred the deadly hatred of John Bonyton, a young man of the colony, who in after years was called, and is still remembered in tradition as the "Sagamore of Saco." The cause of this hatred was in some way connected with the disappearance of Bridget Vines, the daughter of the governor, for whom John Bonyton had conceived a wild and passionate attachment. Years before our story she had been suddenly missing, to the permanent grief and dismay of the family, and the more terrible agony of John Bonyton, who had conceived the idea that Bridget had been sent to a European convent, to save her from his presence. This idea he would never abandon, notwithstanding the most solemn denials of Sir Richard, and the most womanly and sympathizing asseverations of Mistress Vines. The youth listened with compressed lip, his large, remarkable eye fixed with stern and searching scrutiny upon the face of the speaker, and when he was done the reply was always the same, "God knows if this be true; but, true or false, my hand shall be against every man till she be found."

Accordingly we find the youth, who seems to have been possessed of those rare and strong points of character which go to make the hero, in constant collision with the people of the times. Moody and revengeful, he became an alien to his father's house, and with gun and dog passed months in the wildest regions of that wild country. With the savage he slept in his wigwam, he threaded the forest and stood upon the verge of the cataract; or penetrated up to the stormy regions of the White Mountains; and anon, hushed the tumultuous beatings of his heart in accordance with the stroke of his paddle, as he and his red companions glided over that loveliest of lakes, Winnépisógé, or "the smile of the Great Spirit."

There seemed no rest for the unhappy man. Unable to endure the formalities and intermedlings, which so strongly mark the period, he spent most of his time on the frontiers of the settlement, admitting of little companionship, and yielding less of courtesy. When he appeared in the colony, the women regarded his fine person, his smile, at once sorrowful and tender, and his free, noble bearing with admiration, not unmingled with terror; while men, even in that age of manly physique looked upon his frame, lithe yet firm as iron, athletic and yet graceful, with eyes of envious delight. Truth to say, John Bonyton had never impaired a fine development by any useful employment, or any elaborate attempts at book-knowledge. He knew all that was essential for the times, or the mode of life which he had adopted, and further he cared not. His great power consisted in a passionate yet steady will, by which all who came within his sphere found themselves bent to his purposes.

The Pilgrims even, unflinching and uncompromising as they were, felt the spell of his presence, and were content to spurn, to persecute, and set a price upon the head of a man whom they could not control. Yet for all this John Bonyton died quietly in his bed, no one daring to do to him even what the law would justify. He slept in perfect security, for he knew this, and knew, too, that the woods were alive with ardent and devoted adherents, who would have deluged the soil with blood had but a hair of his head been injured. The Sagamore of Saco was no ordinary man; and the men of the times, remarkable as they were, felt this; and hence is it, that even to this day his memory is held in remembrance with an almost superstitious awe, and people point out a barrow where lie the ashes of the "Sagamore," and show the boundaries of his land, and tell marvelous tales of his hardihood and self-possession.

They tell of a time when a price had been set upon his head, how, when the people were assembled in the little church for worship, John Bonyton walked in with gun in hand, and stood through the whole service, erect and stern as a man of iron, and no one dared scarcely look upon him, much less lift a finger against him; and how he waited till all had gone forth, even the oracle of God, pale and trembling, and then departed in silence as he came. Surely there was greatness in this – the greatness of a Napoleon, needing but a field for its exercise.