“Hand us down all them notions on that side, Cli — and I’ll set to work upon this quarter. Take care of the dry goods — don’t let them domestics get rumpled up that fashion, and mind the baccy and the candles and the whisky. Lay every notion together with its like, and mix nothing. And now, Squire Higings, get your writing-tackle ready, and begin.”
Jonathan Whitlaw then began calling over all the remaining stock of his store; a complete inventory and valuation of which was made out, and signed by Squire Higgins. This operation, together with copying the whole, took about four hours; after which the three men each swallowed about half a pint of whisky; and then the two strangers departed together by the forest path.
Whitlaw’s first words, after they were gone, were— “Now give me a lot of supper, Cli — and then I’ll tell you what to do next.”
Curiosity as well as good-will brought a plentiful meal upon the original deal-table without delay. Portia, however, sat as still and as silent as if made of wax, to which material, allowing for a slight tinge of blue, instead of red, in her complexion, she bore a strong resemblance; while Jonathan junior stood eyeing his father from as great a distance as the room permitted — for he had not yet been addressed as J. J., and thought it safest not to approach. But Clio, bold in usefulness and good-humour, after spreading forth the substantial meal in her very best manner, sat smilingly down opposite her imperious brother, and said cheerfully, “Well, Bub, and what am I to do next?”
“Drink this,” answered the master of the shanty, pushing his own whisky-cup towards her, “drink now, Cli, if you never drink again, to the good luck and prosperity of Mount Etna!”
Clio obeyed, and having swallowed about a spoonful of the noxious decoction, which unadulterated is as strange to the lips of the women as familiar to those of the men of America, she looked to her brother as if for permission, and then passed the cup to the pale Portia, and with a good-humoured nod repeated the words she was to say.
“And the boy?” said Whitlaw, looking round for him. “Where’s the great scholar that is to be? — Come along, J. J., and drink the toast.”
Thus encouraged, Jonathan Jefferson stood forth, and accepting the pledge, did such zealous honour to it, that even his father was fain to cry out, “Hold! enough!”
No sooner had this ceremony been duly performed, than the abdicating lord of the Creek again addressed his prime minister Clio.
“Ten years ago and a bit, Cli, and we stood first upon this ‘ere very spot of ground; only there was no rafters above our heads. D’ye mind that first night, sis? — how I told you both that we could only get a spell of sleep turn and turn about? That was the first night, and this will be the last we shall ever sleep or wake at Mohana Creek. And this last will be like that first; for except poor Porchy there, who can’t do much more waking than sleeping, and the boy, who has got the whisky in his head already, we must go to bed no more than if we expected the bears and the wolves as we did then. For ’tis by the first steamer that will pass to-morrow that I calculate upon shipping you off to Natchez. There you must bide a spell at the Eagle, till I give the word to start for Mount Etna. But as I’ve sold all here, I expect we must buy all there; and if the new things pay me as well as the old, it will do. The Major was in a bit of a bustle, I guess, to locate the young ones off at once; but that’s no business of mine. Howsumever, we couldn’t bargain it for the hogs, — I arn’t going to make bacon out of other folks’ fat, when I can have my own for the driving. So, ladies, you’ll start without me and the boy. J. J. and I will drive Suc-cherry and the hogs overland to Mount Etna, as soon as we’ve see’d you two off; and all the notions that you don’t mean to leave behind must be done packed before sunrise — mind that.”
Clio was too much accustomed to labour early and late, and to forget herself and her own comfort on all occasions, to express or to feel the least discomposure at this sudden warning.
Having first seen Portia and young Jonathan in bed, she set to work heartily, and all the notions of all the Whitlaws were done packed by sunrise; — all the notions, at least, save one; and the history of that one I must recount, as it demonstrates rather a sentimental trait in Clio’s character.
That article of the family possessions not included in the night’s packing, was the original suit in which the destitute squatter had arrived at the Creek, and in which he had performed the first hard and persevering labour which had laid the foundation of the present rising state of the Whitlaw race. This suit, having been at length condemned by the wearer as incapable of further service, was by him thrown into an obscure corner of the hovel, and it was only with the morning light that Clio discovered the well-known relics.
“These shan’t be left behind, nohow,” she exclaimed, catching them up from the dark corner in which they reposed; and hastening to the platform of logs on which the whole family were assembled, she seized upon a sack not fully crammed, and deposited them within it, just as the expected steamer came in sight.
Whitlaw stood beside her as she did so; and as soon as she had completed the operation, he placed his axe, still good and true, in her hands, saying in an accent which spoke some sympathy with her feelings, “Don’t mislay nor overlook this, neither, Cli. This is the true friend that has made my fortune; and though neither he nor I shall have need to work so hard again maybe, yet we don’t choose to be parted.”
The next moment the steam was idly hissing to the air, and in another the two passengers and their uncouth baggage were on board.
The sigh with which young Jonathan witnessed the departure of his aunt without him almost amounted to a sob. It was a fine thing, certainly, to know that he was going to leave the Creek behind him for ever; but to have left it in a steam-boat would have been so much finer still! One circumstance, however, almost reconciled him to the privation: this was the seeing his mother and aunt take their places among the passengers on the deck. “Then after all they won’t see the cabin!” he exclaimed, “and maybe they might have expected me to bide by ’em up there.”
Greatly lightened in spirit by this reflection, he turned to follow his father, and in half an hour afterwards his native hut was left in the hands of its new proprietor, and my hero, followed by his father, and preceded by Suc-cherry and a score of fat hogs, leashed together like hounds, and kept in tolerably good marching order by Watch, the old partner of their emigration, took for the last time that forest path which it was the glory of his father to have made.
Some apology may be due to the reader for having so long detained him in a scene which has so little to excite either interest or sympathy; but the character as well as the history of my hero would have been incomplete without it. We have now to transport his family to their new dwelling; and having established them there, we shall pass more rapidly over the next few years, that we may at once bring him to a period when the business of life begins.
CHAPTER V.
THE new habitation purchased by Jonathan Whitlaw at the distance of seven miles from Natchez, though it was, as he very accurately described it, well cleared of everything resembling a tree, was nevertheless, whatever he might think of it, considerably more “in the bush” than New Orleans. To speak correctly, Mount Etna was itself not “bush,” which, in the language of the country, means uncleared ground; though it was surrounded in every direction, but one, with forest as primeval as that he had left behind him at Mohana Creek.
But the clearing in that one direction did in truth make all the difference imaginable. For, in the first place, it opened upon various paths, leading to a variety of not very distant dwellings; and the principal of these paths was a good sound corduroy road all the way to Natchez. In the next place, this near clearing was in part occupied by a settlement of some years’ standing, separated from that of Whitlaw only by a few acres of forest, through which ran the boundary line of the two properties, and which contained within itself so many essential elements of good neighbourhood, that it was able more effectually to neutralise t
he evils usually consequent upon living in the bush than all the mere clearing in the world.
This settlement, already well known for many miles round, had been named Reichland by the German proprietor, who, about five years before, had taken possession of it as a poor man, but who was now in a very fair way of becoming a rich one.
Frederick Steinmark was the youngest of a large family of the secondary class of nobility in Bavaria. His father, himself a colonel of dragoons, had successively placed five hopeful sons to cut their way to doubtful fortune in his own profession; but Frederick, having very early charged himself with a wife, accepted the offer of his eldest brother, who had married an heiress of large landed property in Westphalia, to settle himself as the cultivator of one of the large farms acquired by his marriage, and sufficiently near the lady’s baronial mansion to ensure to the strongly-attached brothers easy and constant intercourse. Frederick Steinmark was of a character so essentially exalted in itself, that whatever station he had filled must have received rather than conferred dignity by his belonging to it. As a cultivator of the ground, he was at once the most active, persevering, patient, and enterprising. His clear and commanding intellect showed itself inevitably in all he did; but its application was always regulated by a species of practical good sense, which those who did not fully comprehend his character were often surprised to find in a man whose speculations were of so lofty a nature.
For several years after the marriage of the two brothers, which took place within the same year, their vicinity was a source of the truest happiness to both; but a circumstance then occurred which, though it rather increased than lessened the mutual esteem and affection which existed between them, completely poisoned the pleasure of their daily intercourse. The baroness and her humbler sister, both presented a son to their husbands within the first year of their marriage. This formed at first a sort of tie between them, so numberless were the little circumstances interesting to the one which were infallibly interesting to the other also — but it was in fact the only one; for nature never formed two beings less calculated to assimilate than the haughty, artificial, cold-hearted baroness, Karoline van Uberkümpfer, and the gentle, simple, good and kind Mary Smith, whose unaffected natural graces had captivated the heart of the young Frederick Steinmark in one of those rambles to England, which neither a slender purse, nor the necessity of devoting himself to some profession, had prevented the ardent-minded young man from making to most of the countries of Europe.
The Baron Steinmark loved and valued his charming sister-in-law as she deserved; but not all his influence could prevent his lady from treating her as almost a servile dependant; and nothing but the devoted love which Mary bore her husband could have enabled her to endure year after year the series of petty impertinences which the weak; but wilful-minded, baroness delighted to inflict.
Unfortunately for Mary, the high respect, perfect love, and entire esteem felt for her by her husband produced an effect respecting the intercourse between the sisters exactly the reverse of what they ought to have done. For his noble sister he had so utter and profound a contempt, that for years it never entered into his imagination that his intelligent, right thinking wife could be other than an object of respect and deference to her.
Frederick Steinmark was absent-minded to excess; innumerable circumstances daily passed before his eyes without his being in the least degree conscious of them; and from the hour they married, Mary had never in any single instance called his attention — which, absent as he, was, could ever be roused by her — to what was likely to give him pain.
When at length, therefore, accident chanced to open his eyes at once and for ever to the fact, that the woman he reverenced and loved was the object of the most insolent contempt to his brother’s rich and noble, but most silly wife, his resolution was at once taken; he decided irrevocably upon leaving his farm and the neighbourhood. The baron knew his brother too well to believe for a moment that it would be possible to shake his resolution: there had long been a sort of tacit understanding between him, and Mary on the subject of the baroness; upon every occasion on which her insolence broke out in his presence, his respect and affection appeared to be redoubled; and though not a word was said on the subject, the keeping the unsuspicious Frederick from perceiving it became a mutual object.
It would but delay the narrative unnecessarily were I to recount the particulars of the scene which at length opened Frederick’s eyes to the position which his wife held in the estimation of the haughty baroness. Her son and heir — who was moreover her only child — was an agent in it; and had Mary wanted any reason beyond her husband’s will to reconcile her to leaving her comfortable home, it would have been furnished by the fear that the baron’s anger towards the boy, if often called forth in the same way, might generate a feeling between the father and son deeply injurious to the happiness of both.
One long evening’s confidential conversation with his brother sufficed to decide whither Frederick and his family should betake themselves in search of a new home. The years of union which had given one son to the baron, had brought four boys and a girl to Frederick; and the future destination of these precious boys had already become a theme of anxious speculation to him. No sooner had he decided upon leaving the protection and immediate neighbourhood of his brother, than the idea of the new world suggested itself, as offering the best hope, not only for the immediate support, but for the ultimate provision of his family. When he first named it, however, the Baron vehemently opposed the project, which he declared had less of kindness and of wisdom in it than he had looked for. But the scheme had taken strong possession of Frederick’s mind, and never through their lives had the elder ever found it possible to resist the forcible eloquence of the younger brother on any point upon which it had been fervently employed. So, ere they parted, the German noble, though sorely against his inclination, felt himself obliged to avow, that if he were able to persuade this enterprising brother to abandon his American project, he had no power to propose a better.
The financial arrangements were soon settled between them, for no difficulties arose but such as were generated by a struggle of liberality. It was settled that the baron should himself become the purchaser of all his brother’s large stock, as well as of the furniture, and improvements of the house and premises. Beyond this, nothing could persuade Frederick to go, in accepting the urgent offers of his wealthy brother; who, either as a gift or a loan, was most anxious to press upon him such a sum as he thought might secure him from every inconvenience in the prosecution of his enterprise. But strong as were the feelings which led to this expedition, they had not driven Frederick Steinmark to undertake a mode of life of which he was ignorant: at least all the information that books could give on the subject was familiar to him, and he well knew that the sum he could command was fully sufficient to afford every facility to a settler whose intention it was to bring up his family in habits of active industry.
In the month of March 18 — , Frederick Steinmark, his wife and five children, arrived at New Orleans; and in less than a month afterwards they were inhabiting a large and partially cleared estate which they had purchased near Natchez. From that period, to the month of August, eight years afterwards, at which time my hero and his family became their neighbours, not a year, not a month — perhaps not a day had passed, which had not tended to improve the house and estate of Reichland; and though no slave had ever worked for a single hour upon it, the land was held to be the best cultivated and most productive in the neighourhood.
But notwithstanding this success, the task of settling a European family in a forest of Louisiana had not been performed without privations and annoyances of many kinds: but these chiefly fell upon Mary, and were met and conquered with a degree of quiet resolution which robbed them of half their evil power.
The situation of the Steinmark family was in truth exactly that best calculated to encounter the hazards of emigration with advantage. In addition to health of mind and body, they bro
ught to the task, zeal, courage, industry, patience, and perseverance, together with both knowledge and money enough to spare them the necessity of enduring the first dreadful destitution of all things, which those who enter the forest with the axe alone must abide; or the mortification, almost greater still, of bestowing labour and care in vain, because ignorantly.
When it was known at Reichland that a family of new-comers had arrived at Mount Etna, the first thought which took possession of the whole Steinmark household was— “what can we do to help them?”
“They cannot have any milk yet, mother or, at any rate, any butter,” observed Lotte Steinmark, who, at the age of eleven, was dairy woman-inchief of Reichland: “may I send over two of my pretty pats that I churned last night? Fritz will take them for me.”
“And a loaf, Lottchen, may be welcome too, I think,” replied her mother: “nobody can bake in a moment. Go, Fritz — and you, Karl, go too,” she continued, addressing her two eldest sons; “take the loaf, and some of Lotte’s butter, and ask if there is anything we can do to assist them.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE friendly embassy from Reich]and found the Whitlaw family in a state of great confusion; but this was occasioned quite as much by their amazement at finding themselves the inhabitants of a house with four rooms besides the store, and three of them with real glass windows, as from any embarrassment caused by the absence or disorder of the ordinary comforts of existence. Those who have been well broken in to the system expressively designated “getting along,” have at least this advantage over the rest of the human race: namely, that nothing which can befall them can ever put them much out of their way.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 5
