Sea and Shore | Page 7

thoughtless
enjoyment--so remote from God as I am--have ever been? But the song
speaks for me"--waving his gauntleted hand--"better than I can speak:
"'Away! away! the chords are mute, The bond is rent in twain.'"
"I shall never marry again--never! Miss Miriam, I know now, and shall
know evermore, in all its fullness, and weariness, and bitterness, the
meaning of that terrible word--alone! Eternal solitude. The Robinson
Crusoe of society. A sort of social Daniel Boone. Thus you must ever
consider me. And yet, just think of it, Miss Harz!"
"Oh, but you will not always feel so; there may come a time of
reaction." I hesitated. It was not my purpose to encourage change.
"No, never! never!" he interrupted, passionately; "don't even suggest
it--don't! and check me sternly if ever I forget my grief again in
frivolity of any sort in your presence. You are a noble, sweet woman,
with breadth enough of character to make allowances for the
shortcomings of a poor, miserable man like me--trying to cheat himself
back into gayety and the interests of life. I have sisters, but they are not
like you. I wish to Heaven they were! There is not a woman in the
world on whom I have any claims--on whose shoulder I can lean my
head and take a hearty cry. And what are men at such a season?
Mocking fiends, usually, the best of them! I shall go abroad, Miss Harz.
I am no anchorite. You will hear of me as a gay man of the world,
perhaps; but, as to being happy, that can never be again! The bubble of
life has burst, and my existence falls flat to the earth. Victor Favraud,
that airy nothing, is scarcely a 'local habitation and a name' now!"
"Let him make a name, then," I urged. "With military talents like yours,
Major Favraud, the road to distinction will soon be open to you. Our
approaching difficulties with France--"
"Oh, that will all be patched up, or has been, by this time. Van Buren is
a crafty but peace-loving fox! Something of an epicurean, too, in his
high estate. What grim old Jackson left half healed, he will complete
the cure of. Ah, Miss Harz, I had hoped to flesh my sword in a nobler
cause!"
I knew what he meant. That dream of nullification was still uppermost
in his soul--dispersed, as it was, in the eyes of all reasonable men. I

shook my head. "Thank God! all that is over," I said, gravely, fervently;
"and my prayer to Him is that he may vouchsafe to preserve us for
evermore an unbroken people!"
"May He help Israel when the time comes," he murmured low, "for
come it will, Miss Harz, as surely as there is a sun in the heavens! 'and
may I be there to see!' as John Gilpin said, or some one of him--which
was it?"
And, whipping up his lagging steeds as we gained the open road, we
emerged swiftly from the shadows of the forest--between nodding
cornfields, already helmed and plumed for the harvest, and plantations
green with thrifty cotton-plants, with their half-formed bolls, promising
such bounteous yield, and meadows covered with the tufted Bermuda
grass, with its golden-green verdure, we sped our way toward Lenoir's
Landing.
This peninsula was formed by the junction of two rivers, between
which intervened a narrow point of land, with a background of steep
hills, covered with a growth of black-jack and yellow-pine to the
summit. Here was a ferry with its Charon-like boat, of the primitive
sort--flat barge, poled-over by negroes, and capable of containing at
one time many bales of cotton, a stagecoach or wagon with four horses,
besides passengers ad libitum.
This ferry constituted the chief source of revenue of Madame
Grambeau, an old French lady, remarkable in many ways. She kept the
stage-house hard by, with its neat picketed inclosure, its overhanging
live-oak trees and small trim parterre, gay at this season with various
annual flowers, scarce worth the cultivation, one would think, in that
land of gorgeous perennial bloom. But Queen Margarets, ragged robins,
variegated balsams, and tawny marigolds, have their associations,
doubtless, to make them dear and valuable to the foreign heart, to
which they seem essential, wherever a plot of ground be in possession.
Mignonette, I have observed, is a special passion with the French exile,
recalling, doubtless, the narrow boxes, fitted to the stone window-sill of
certain former lofty lodgings across the sea, perhaps, situated in the
heart of some great city, and overlooking roofs and court-yards--the
street being quite out of the question in such a view, distant, as it seems,
from them, as the sky itself, though in an opposite direction.
I have used the word "exile" advisedly with regard to Madame

Grambeau, and not