Chapter Ten.
The eve of departure
The evil day has arrived; the ruin, foreseen, has fallen.
The mortgage deed, so long held in menace over the head of Archibald Armstrong – suspended, as it were, by a thread, like the sword of Damocles – is to be put into execution. Darke has demanded immediate payment of the debt, coupled with threat of foreclosure.
The demand is a month old, the threat has been carried out, and the foreclosure effected. The thread having been cut, the keen blade of adversity has come down, severing the tie which attached Colonel Armstrong to his property, as it to him. Yesterday, he was owner, reputedly, of one of the finest plantations along the line of the Mississippi river, an hundred able-bodied negroes hoeing cotton in his fields, with fifty more picking it from the pod, and “ginning” the staple clear of seed; to-day, he is but their owner in seeming, Ephraim Darke being this in reality. And in another day the apparent ownership will end: for Darke has given his debtor notice to yield up houses, lands, slaves, plantation-stock – in short, everything he possesses.
In vain has Armstrong striven against this adverse fate; in vain made endeavours to avert it. When men are falling, false friends grow falser; even true ones becoming cold. Sinister chance also against him; a time of panic – a crisis in the money-market – as it always is on such occasions, when interest runs high, and second mortgages are sneered at by those who grant loans.
As no one – neither friend nor financial speculator – comes to Armstrong’s rescue, he has no alternative but submit.
Too proud, to make appeal to his inexorable creditor – indeed deeming it idle – he vouchsafes no answer to the notice of foreclosure, beyond saying: “Let it be done.”
At a later period he gives ear to a proposal, coming from the mortgagee: to put a valuation upon the property, and save the expenses of a public sale, by disposing of it privately to Darke himself.
To this he consents; less with a view to the convenience of the last, than because his sensitive nature recoils from the vulgarism of the first. Tell me a more trying test to the delicate sensibilities of a gentleman, or his equanimity, than to see his gate piers pasted over with the black and white show bills of the auctioneer; a strip of stair carpet dangling down from one of his bedroom windows, and a crowd of hungry harpies clustered around his door-stoop; some entering with eyes that express keen concupiscence; others coming out with countenances more beatified, bearing away his Penates – jeering and swearing over them – insulting the Household Gods he has so long held in adoration. Ugh! A hideous, horrid sight – a spectacle of Pandemonium!
With a vision of such domestic iconoclasm flitting before his mind – not a dream, but a reality, that will surely arise by letting his estate go to the hammer – Colonel Armstrong accepts Darke’s offer to deliver everything over in a lump, and for a lamp sum. The conditions have been some time settled; and Armstrong now knows the worst. Some half-score slaves he reserves; the better terms secured to his creditor by private bargain enabling him to obtain this concession.
Several days have elapsed since the settlement came to a conclusion – the interval spent in preparation for the change. A grand one, too; which contemplates, not alone leaving the old home, but the State in which it stands. The fallen man shrinks from further association with those who have witnessed his fall. Not but that he will leave behind many friends, faithful and true. Still to begin life again in their midst – to be seen humbly struggling at the bottom of the ladder on whose top he once proudly reposed – that would indeed be unendurable.
He prefers to carry out the design, he once thought only a dreamy prediction – migrating to Texas. There, he may recommence life with more hopeful energy, and lesser sense of humiliation.
The moving day has arrived, or rather the eve preceding it. On the morrow, Colonel Archibald Armstrong is called upon by the exigency of human laws, – oft more cruel, if not more inexorable, than those of Nature – to vacate the home long his.
’Tis night. Darkness has spread its sable pall over forest and field, and broods upon the brighter surface of the stream gliding between – the mighty Mississippi. All are equally obscured – from a thick veil of lead-coloured cloud, at the sun’s setting, drawn over the canopy of the sky. Any light seen is that of the fire-flies, engaged in their nocturnal cotillon; while the sounds heard are nightly noises in a Southern States forest, semi-tropical, as the wild creatures who have their home in it. The green cicada chirps continuously, “Katy did – Katy did;” the hyladae, though reptiles, send forth an insect note; while the sonorous “gluck-gluck” of the huge rana pipiens mingles with the melancholy “whoo-whooa” of the great horned owl; which, unseen, sweeps on silent wing through the shadowy aisles of the forest, leading the lone traveller to fancy them peopled by departed spirits in torment from the pains of Purgatory.
Not more cheerful are the sounds aloft: for there are such, far above the tops of the tallest trees. There, the nightjar plies its calling, not so blind but that it can see in deepest darkness the smallest moth or midge, that, tired of perching on the heated leaves essays to soar higher. Two sorts of these goatsuckers, utter cries quite distinct; though both expressing aversion to “William.” One speaks of him as still alive, mingling pity with its hostile demand: “Whippoor-Will!” The other appears to regard him as dead, and goes against his marital relict, at intervals calling out: “Chuck Will’s widow!”
Other noises interrupt the stillness of a Mississippian night. High up in heaven the “honk” of a wild gander leading his flock in the shape of an inverted V; at times the more melodious note of a trumpeter swan; or from the top of a tall cottonwood, or cypress, the sharp saw-filing shriek of the white-headed eagle, angered by some stray creature coming too close, and startling it from its slumbers. Below, out of the swamp sedge, rises the mournful cry of the quabird – the American bittern – and from the same, the deep sonorous bellow of that ugliest animal on earth – the alligator.
Where fields adjoin the forest – plantation clearings – oft few and far between – there are sounds more cheerful. The song of the slave, his day’s work done, sure to be preceded, or followed, by peals of loud jocund laughter; the barking of the house-dog, indicative of a well-watched home; with the lowing of cattle, and other domestic calls that proclaim it worth watching. A galaxy of little lights, in rows like street lamps, indicate the “negro quarter;” while in the foreground a half-dozen windows of larger size, and brighter sheen, show where stands the “big house” – the planter’s own dwelling.
To that of Colonel Armstrong has come a night of exceptional character, when its lights are seen burning later than usual. The plantation clock has tolled nine, nearly an hour ago. Still light shines through the little windows of the negro cabins, while the larger ones of the “big house” are all aflame. And there are candles being carried to and fro, lighting up a scene of bustling activity: while the clack of voices – none of them in laughter – is heard commingled with the rattling of chains, and the occasional stroke of a hammer. The forms of men and women, are seen to flit athwart the shining windows, all busy about something.
There is no mystery in the matter. It is simply the planter, with his people, occupied in preparation for the morrow’s moving. Openly, and without restraint: for, although so near the mid hour of night, it is no midnight flitting.
The only individual, who appears to act surreptitiously, is a young girl; who, coming out by the back door of the dwelling, makes away from its walls in gliding gait – at intervals glancing back over her shoulder, as if in fear of being followed, or observed.
Her style of dress also indicates a desire to shun observation; for she is cloaked and close hooded. Not enough to ensure disguise, though she may think so. The most stolid slave on all Colonel Armstrong’s plantation, could tell at a glance whose figure is enfolded in the shapeless garment, giving it shape. He would at once identify it as that of his master’s daughter. For no wrap