Part 1 (1/2)
Jessamine.
by Marion Harland.
CHAPTER I.
A young girl lay upon a lounge in the recess of an oriel-window. If disease held her there, it had not altered the contour of the smooth cheek, or made shallow the dimples in wrist and elbow of the arm supporting her head; had not unbent the spirited bow of the mouth, or dimmed the glad light of the gray eyes. Most people called these black, deceived by the shadow of the jetty lashes. They were wide open, now, and the light of a sunny mid-day streamed in upon her face through the window, yet the upper part of the irid was darkened by the heavy fringe that matched in line the well-defined brows. Her hair, also black, with purple reflections glancing from every coil and fold, was braided into a coronal, and about the heavy plait knotted at the back of the head was twisted a half-wreath of yellow jessamine. Her skin was dark and clear, but she had usually little color; her forehead was not remarkable for breadth or height; the nose was a nondescript, and the mouth rather piquant than pretty, with suggestions of wilfulness in the full, lower lip, and the slight, downward lines at the corners. Her dress was white muslin, with no ornament beyond the gold clasp of her girdle, and a spray of jessamine at her throat.
The cas.e.m.e.nt was canopied with the vine from which this last had been plucked. Hundreds of bright bells were swinging lazily in the warm breeze, and were tossed into livelier motion and perfume by the kisses of brown-coated bees and vivid humming-birds. Heightening the glow of the tropical creeper, while they relieved the eye of the spectator, drooped still, lilac cl.u.s.ters of wisteria, and these the girl put aside with impatient fingers when she raised herself upon her elbow to obtain a better view of the outer scene. A flower-garden, lively with Spring blossoms, opened through a wicket in the white fence into a church-yard--green and level on the roadside--green likewise, but swelling into long ranks of unequal and motionless billows behind the building. This was an ancient structure, as was shown by the latticed windows with rounded tops, and the quaint base of the steeple that yet tapered gracefully into a s.h.i.+mmering point against the pale noon of the sky. But loving eyes had watched it, and reverent hands guarded it against decay. The brick walls were sound, the masonry of gray stone about windows and doors smooth and solid with cement made hard as the stone by years and weather. The sward was shaven evenly, and the two great elms at the entrance to the rural sanctuary were the pride of the region. A double row of these trees bordered the road for a hundred yards in either direction, and now offered shade and coolness to an orderly herd of horses tethered beneath them. A few handsome equipages were there, two or three stately family carriages and several jaunty buggies, but most of the vehicles which the animals were attached, bore the stamp of rusticity, hard usage, and infrequent ablutions, while the preponderance of roadsters and ponderous draught-horses over blooded stock, betokened that in this, as in other agricultural districts, the beautiful was held in subordination to the useful.
The little church, thanks to the taste of the present pastor and the economical proclivities of past generations, had escaped the vulgarizing influence of ”a good coat of paint.” Slow circles of lichens, h.o.a.ry and russet, had toned down the original ruddiness of the bricks, and green mosses dotted the slated roof. It stood on the edge of a cup-like valley, surrounded by mountains. So near was the lofty chain on the north-east, that the rising sun sent the shadow of the Anak of the range--”Old Windbeam,” across the graveyard to the foot of the sacred walls; so remote on the west that the Day-G.o.d looked his last upon the fertile pastures, winding streams, and peaceful homesteads, over hills round and blue with distance.
The watcher in the oriel-window saw neither flowers nor elms; noticed the throng of patient dumb horses and motley collection of carriages as little as she did the mountains, near and far. Every feature was stirred with exultant wistfulness, and her eyes never moved from a certain window of the church from which the inner shutters had been folded back. The house was densely packed with living beings--she could see through this--galleries and aisles, as well as pews, and dimly, in the dusky interior, she discerned an upright and animated figure--the orator of the occasion. Into the heat and hush of high noon--heat fragrant with waves of odor from resinous woods, and clover-fields, and garden-borders--a hush to which the tinkling bells of browsing kine in the meadows, and the hum of bird and bee close by, brought a deeper lull instead of interruption--flowed a voice sonorous and sweet; now calm in argument or narrative--now, breaking into short, abrupt bursts of impa.s.sioned declamation; anon, rising with earnest, majestic measures, most musical of all, that brought words with the varied inflections, to the rapt listener. Smiles and tears came to her with the hearing; light that was glory to the eyes; softness that was tenderness, not sorrow, to the sensitive mouth.
When the speaker's tones were drowned by the storm of applause that shook the church, and the ma.s.s of human heads swayed to and fro as did the cedars in Old Windbeam's crown on gusty Winter nights, the girl fell back upon her cus.h.i.+ons and fairly sobbed with excitement.
”My hero! my king!”
A slight bustle in the hall distracted her attention, and warned her of the necessity of self-control. A man's voice questioned, and a woman's--provincial and drawling--replied, and steps approached the parlor.
”Here's a gentleman wants Mr. Fordham, Miss Jessie,” said an ungainly country girl, opening the door.
A tall figure bowed upon the threshold.
”I am an intruder, I fear,” he said, taking in at once the facts of the young lady's inability to rise from her sofa, and the confusion that burned in her dark cheek at the unexpected apparition. ”But they told me at the hotel below that I should find Mr. Fordham here.
He is my cousin.”
The glow remained in all its brightness, but it was painful no longer, as she held out her hand.
”Then you are Mr. Wyllys?” smiling cordially. ”You are very welcome.”
She waved him to a chair near her lounge with an air of proud, but unconscious, grace, that did not escape the visitor.
”I am sorry you did not arrive in season to partic.i.p.ate in the celebration of our Centennial. You know, I suppose, that Mr. Fordham is the orator of the day?”
Warily observant, with eyes that habitually looked careless, and were never off guard, Mr. Wyllys remarked the smile and glance through the window at the church, which accompanied this bit of information, but his reply evinced no knowledge of aught beyond what was conveyed by her words.
”I should be ashamed to confess it, but I was not aware until this moment that any public celebration was going on, unless it were a religious service in the church--a saint's day or other solemn festival. Is this, then, the Anniversary of a notable event in the history of your lovely valley?”
There was a tincture of commiseration for his ignorance mingled with her surprise at the question that must have diverted the stranger if his sense of humor was keen. Her answer was grave as befitted the importance of the subject.
”The founder of this colony among the hills was a direct descendant of the Scotch Covenanters--one David Dundee, from whom the settlement took its name. He emigrated with a large family of st.u.r.dy boys and girls, and his report of the rich lands and genial climate of his new home drew after him many others--all from his native land--most of them his former friends and neighbors. They cleared away forests, built houses, dug, and ploughed, and reaped, and wors.h.i.+pped G.o.d after the fas.h.i.+on of their fathers, having, within fifteen years after David Dundee's establishment of himself and household here, erected the substantial church you see over there.
At the time of the breaking out of the French and Indian war, there was not a more prosperous and happy community in the State. In response to the call to arms, the bravest and best of the young and middle-aged men formed themselves into a company and marched away to fight as zealously and conscientiously as they had felled the woods and tilled the ground. A mere handful--and most of these infirm from age and disease--remained with the women and children, upon whom devolved much and heavy labor if they would retain plenty and comfort in their homes. They were literally hewers of wood and drawers of water; they sowed the fields and gardens, and gathered in the crops with their own hands--these heroic great-grandmothers of ours!--herded their cattle and repaired their houses, besides performing the ordinary tasks of housewives. And--one and all--they learned and practised the use of fire-arms, kept muskets beside cradles and kneading-troughs, and when they met for wors.h.i.+p on Sabbath, mothers carried their babies on the left arm, a gun upon the right. One day, late in April--perhaps as fair and sweet a day as this--news came to this secluded hamlet that a large body of 'the enemy'--chiefly Indians and half-breeds--was approaching.
Providentially, old David Dundee was at home on a furlough of three days--he asked no more--that he might rally somewhat after the amputation of his left arm in hospital. He had the church bell rung (it was a present from a Scottish lord, and it hangs still in the steeple), and after a brief consultation upon the green in front of the 'kirk,' with the wisest of his neighbors--a council of war from which women were not excluded--he collected the entire population into the church, first allowing them one hour in which to bury or otherwise secrete their valuables. The feebler women and the children were sent, for safety, into the cellar, which extends under the whole building; the lower parts of the windows were barricaded with feather-beds and mattresses, with loop-holes through which guns could be thrust, and these stout-hearted matrons and young girls volunteered to defend. The men were mustered in the galleries. A sentinel from the bell-tower soon gave warning that the foe was in sight. From their loop-holes the colonists saw their houses and barns fired, their horses and other stock maimed and butchered, gardens, fields, and orchards wantonly laid waste; but not a woman wept or a man swore or groaned in the crowded church. On they came, flushed with success, ravening for human blood. David Dundee spoke twice before the uproar without made hearing, even of his stentorian voice, impossible. 'Haud your fire 'till ye hear me gie the word!'
he said, when his small army looked to him for orders, as savages and half-breeds rushed forward to surround the building. A minute later--'The Lord have maircy upon their souls, for we'll hae nane upon their bodies! _Fire!_'
”The fight was a fierce one, and lasted until nightfall.”
”'Then,' says the chronicler of the story--'seeing that the enemy had withdrawn a little s.p.a.ce, we thanked the G.o.d of battles, and took some refreshment; then set about caring for our wounded and preparing for the renewed attack we believed the savages were about to make. Finding the hurt of our leader, David Dundee, to be mortal, and that our ammunition was well-nigh exhausted, and being, in consequence, sore distraught in spirit, we gave ourselves anew to prayer--_then, stood to our arms_!'