Part 12 (2/2)

Not far from the picturesque old city of San Antonio was the Huisache, one of the three springs which join to form the San Antonio River.

Along its banks the gray dove's sad note was heard. When the two Indian sisters, ”Flower of Gladness” and ”Flower of Pity,” used to come down to drink from the Spring of the Huisache the song of the dove was all of joy. A youthful Indian brave of rare enchantment came into their lives and brought love and treachery, and the a.s.sa.s.sin's knife felled the Indian youth on the brink of the Huisache. ”Flower of Pity,” coming to the spring, found the lifeless form of the young warrior and s.n.a.t.c.hed the knife from the wound and plunged it into her own heart. A little later ”Flower of Gladness” found her sister and the Indian brave dead by the water's edge and straightway went mad.

Manitou graciously allowed the poor lost soul to find a voice for its woes in the note of the dove and henceforth she was the mourning dove.

The lives of the youth and maiden, floating out in white clouds of mist, descended into the earth and became two living springs which united with the Huisache to form the San Antonio River.

In her story of ”Inez,” founded upon the most tragic event in the history of the Lone Star State, the defence of the Alamo, Miss Evans thus described the scene from the viewpoint of the newly arrived immigrant:

The river wound around the town like an azure girdle, gliding along the surface and reflecting in its deep blue waters the rustling tule which fringed the margin. An occasional pecan or live-oak flung a majestic shadow athwart its azure bosom.

Now and then a clump of willows sigh low in the evening breeze.

Far away to the north stretched a mountain range, blue in the distance; to the south lay the luxuriant valley of the stream.

The streets were narrow and laid out with a total disregard of the points of the compa.s.s.

By this river of romantic beauty and old-time myth Augusta Evans spent two of youth's impressionable years. On Main Plaza, near the Alamo, where the Frost National Bank now stands, was the Evans store, where she, the daughter of the store-keeper, lived. Almost under the shadow of the tragically historic old mission, by the park near which Santa Ana had his headquarters, she received the incentive and gathered the material for her first novel, ”Inez,” written in her own room at night as a gift with which to surprise her father and mother. The work of a girl of fifteen, it did not appeal to many readers, but it contained a vivid description of the inspired heroism and self-sacrifice of the men whose deeds crowned the history of Texas with the sanct.i.ty of the supreme glory of self-immolation upon the altar of patriotism. We have fallen upon commercial days now, and the traditions of the old Alamo circle around a warehouse. Alamo Plaza is now the scene of the annual ”Battle of the Flowers,” a joyous and beautiful occasion which throws a fragrant floral veil about the terrible memories that gloom over the place.

At the close of the two years spent in San Antonio, the family returned to Columbus and later found a home in Mobile, Alabama, the town of the ”Maubila,” Choctaw, Indians. It is a pleasant town of shaded streets, romantic drives and beautiful homes. Its history reaches back through the centuries to a time long before the United States had being, and it is the only American city that has seen five flags wave over it: French, English, Spanish, United States and Confederate.

While in this home Augusta Evans became widely known through the publication in 1859 of her second novel, ”Beulah.” Then came the war, bringing forth her one war-novel, ”Macaria.” ”Vashti,” ”St. Elmo,”

”Infelice,” ”At the Mercy of Tiberius,” the latter being her best, followed in quick succession, until her marriage put a close to her work, for Mr. Wilson was unwilling that she should tax her strength by close application. Life in the delightful home furnished interest enough to make resort to fiction unnecessary as an entertainment. In 1879 the death of Mr. Wilson ended the idyllic home life and she returned to her desk, writing ”The Speckled Bird” and ”Devota,” with a pen that had lost much of its charm in the days of happy absorption.

Having no children of her own, Mrs. Wilson gave her devoted affection to the children and grandchildren of her husband, who was a widower at the time of their marriage.

It has been observed that the stories of Augusta Evans have no location. They happen in any place where the people chance to be and, given that kind of people, the story would evolve itself in the same way anywhere else. But for her there was always a place in which flowers grew and trees waved their branches to the breeze and made mystic aisles of purpled glooms, shot through with glimpses of sun amid silences broken happily by the songs of birds. There were always the wide sky and dim reaches of s.p.a.ce and great walls of majestic mountains against the horizon. However gifted might be her maidens in roaming amid the stars or delving in philosophic depths, they, like herself, had always eyes for the beauties which Nature sets in place, and why should all these things be geographically bounded and designated by appellations to be recorded in the Postoffice Guide?

Being in Mobile some years ago, I called upon Mrs. Wilson after her husband had pa.s.sed on and left her alone in the charming home. She was in her work-room, if a place so decoratively enchanting can be connected with a subject so stern and prosaic, so crowded with every-day commonplaceness, as work. It was a bower of beauty, with light, graceful furniture, and pots of plants making cheerful greenery at every available spot. Vases of flowers cut from her garden, tended by her own care and love, were on desk and table and in sunny alcoves, filling the room with a glory of color and a fragrance as of incense from jewelled censers swung in adoration of the G.o.ddess of the exquisite shrine.

Remembering that charming study as I saw it then, blossoming and redolent with the flowers beloved of the heart of its mistress, I wonder at times if all that beauty is still there and if some bright soul, as in the dead days, is sunning itself in that warmth and glow.

The old home has pa.s.sed into stranger hands, as Mrs. Wilson was persuaded to sell it after the death of her husband and her removal to the city.

In Magnolia Cemetery in the home city so dear to her, Augusta Evans Wilson rests beside the brother whom she was seeking when her midnight song thrilled the hearts of the defenders of the Stars and Bars on Look-out Mountain. On her laurel-wreathed monument are the lines written by Mr. De Leon when the dawn of one May morning brought him the sad tidings that his friend of many years had pa.s.sed from earth:

Dead, in her fulness of years and of fame, What has she left?

High on the roll of fair Duty, a name: Love, friends devoted as few mortals claim: A Nation bereft!

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