"PROVERBS, AND THE INTERPRETATION."
The road was straight, level, and monotonous. It seemed to stretch on for miles, walled in, on either hand, by the rank and profuse foliage of the South. Great cotton woods and water-oaks, walnuts, cypresses, larches, and junipers, stood side by side, with their brawny arms interlaced, and their trunks hidden in a dense and varied undergrowth; while jessamines and wild grapevines climbed up to meet the sunshine at their tops, and pendent moss hung their boughs with swaying drapery of gray-green leaves and filaments.
What lay beyond these walls of verdure was only to be guessed at from occasional and indistinct glimpses. Here, a transient view of corn or vegetable rows, and a sound of voices, gave token of the vicinity of a small plantation or market garden. There, a scarcity of deciduous trees and a predominance of evergreens, a more lush and succulent character of undergrowth, and a dark gleam of stagnant water, betrayed the proximity of an extensive morass. Frequently, the eye lost itself in the complicated vistas of thick pine-barrens, stretching far away to right and left. And, ever and anon, a sudden break in the long line of verdure, and the sight of a diverging wheel-track, quickly lost amid overhanging boughs, served to show in what direction some large rice or cotton estate lay hidden in the circumjacent forest.
It scarcely needs to be added that the road was pleasantly cool and shadowy in the late September afternoon. Even at midday, its track would present but few and scant patches of sunshine, alternating with dense masses of shadow or spots of flickering light and shade. Now, therefore, with the sun hanging red and low in the western horizon, scarce a fitful orange gleam fell athwart the path of the only traveller in sight,—a young man, of thoughtful face and stalwart figure, striding on at a firm, even pace, with a portmanteau strapped across his shoulder. Both the face and the portmanteau seemed to indicate that his walk was not for pleasure merely, but tended to some definite, anticipated goal; while the keen, observant glance with which he noted, not only every object of interest along his route, but the character of the soil beneath and the foliage overhead, showed that his road was as unfamiliar as it had been, for the most part, solitary. Since he left the outskirts of the city of Savalla behind, more than two hours ago, he had seen but three human faces. First, an old negro woman, wrinkled and white-haired, had ducked her decrepit form to him in what would have been, but for the stiffness of her joints, a most deferential courtesy. Later on, a teamster, of the same dependent and obsequious race, had doffed to him the ragged remnant of a palm-leaf hat, and uttered a civil, "Good ebenin\', Massa." Lastly, a lank, listless, unkempt, sallow-skinned personage, in a white covered wagon, snapping a long-lashed whip at a nondescript team, and belonging to the curious class known as "crackers," had suddenly nodded to him, after a prolonged, and, at first, contemptuous stare, as if finally convinced of his claim to the civility.
For some time past, the road had led through a monotonous pine barren, and the traveller had fallen into a fit of thought. Raising his eyes, at last, from the path on which they had been fixed in abstraction, he saw that the long vista before him was once more enlivened by a moving object. His keen, far sight, trained in western wilds, easily made it out to be a half-obsolete kind of chaise, moving in the same direction as himself, but moving so slowly that he gained on it at every step. In a few moments, he was close behind it, quietly observing its superannuated style and condition, as well as the skinny little horse that furnished its motive power. Hearing the sound of his quick, firm tread, its occupant lifted his eyes from the tattered volume over which he was poring, and turned to look at him.
He himself, in a very different way, was well worthy of observation. He was small and spare, probably not more than sixty years of age, but looking much older. He had that parched and wizened look, oftenest the work of circumstances rather than years, which makes it difficult to realize that the possessor was ever young. His hair and complexion had once been light; the one was now gray, the other sallow, except for a faint suggestion of red at the tip of an otherwise handsome nose. His breath exhaled a perceptible odor of strong drink, surrounding him as with an atmosphere of inflammable gas. His dress was made up of divers ill-fitting garments that had doubtless accrued to him from cast-off wardrobes; not one of them bearing any relation to the other, but all being in an advanced stage of seediness well suited to the wearer. Something of the same fusing of special incongruities into general fitness also characterized his manner; wherein the mean and furtive air of the shiftless old vagabond was curiously blended with the pathetic dignity of the decayed gentleman.
He eyed the young foot traveller narrowly for a moment, though with a sidelong rather than a straightforward glance; then, bringing his willing horse to a stand by a jerk of the reins, and a sonorous "Whoa!" he lifted his hat and gravely accosted him:—
"Manus manum lavat. Men were meant to help each other. Have a ride, sir?"
The stranger hesitated, perhaps trying to reconcile the address and the speaker, perhaps with a natural enough doubt as to the character of the companionship thus offered. "Thank you," said he, at last, "but I doubt if it be worth while."
"\'Good and Quickly seldom meet,\'" responded the other, sententiously. "Besides," he added, seeing that the traveller was puzzled to understand the drift of his saw, "Pegasus—I call him Pegasus because he\'s not winged—is \'like a singed cat, better than he looks.\' Moreover, Compagnon bien parlant vaut en chemin chariot branlant. Which may be freely translated, \'Good company shortens the road as much as a swift horse.\'"
"Oh! I meant no disrespect to your equipage, I assure you," returned the young man, smiling. "Only, I supposed that I must be near my journey\'s end. Is it far to Berganton?"
"That depends. \'The last straw breaks the camel\'s back.\' It is three miles, more or less. But I should have said, from your face, that you would want to stop this side of that."
"Do I look so tired? Indeed I am not."
"Um—no, I should say not. But faces show something besides weariness,—\'like father, like son,\' you know. If your looks are to be trusted, there\'s an old mansion about a quarter of a mile farther on, whose door ought to open to you of its own accord—if it can open at all."
The young man smiled and shook his head. "I am sorry that my looks should belie me," said he, "but I have no claim upon the said mansion\'s hospitality."
"Umph! \'tis a wise child that knows its own father. Tush, tush, man!" he added, hastily, seeing the young man\'s cheek flush, "I meant no harm; proverbs run from my tongue like water from a Dutch roof. Besides, Nao ha palavra maldita se na? fora mal entendida,—that is to say, \'No word is ill-spoken which is not ill-taken.\' But come! come! jump in! I\'ll carry you to Berganton, since that\'s your goal, and welcome. The night is drawing on apace; you\'ll be glad of my pilotage before we get there."
The young man glanced down the darkening road, from which the last ray of sunlight had vanished, and seemed still to hesitate; but finally sprang lightly into the chaise, and the horse jogged on.
"Proverbs," continued the old man, treating his three last sentences as mere parentheses, "have been the study of my life. I know Lord Chesterfield bans them as vulgar, but is he wiser than Solomon? or better authority than Cicero and Scaliger and Erasmus and Bacon and Bentley? Bah! the whole gist of his writings might be compressed into two or three of the maxims that he affects to despise. \'Fair-and-Softly goes far in a day,\' will live when his \'Letters\' are forgotten. And a good reason why. Proverbs are the royal road to wisdom. They\'re the crystallized experience of the ages. They epitomize the minds and manners of the people that brought them forth. Who but a \'smooth, fause\' Lowland Scot, for instance, would have said \'Rot him awa\' wi\' butter an\' eggs?\' Who but a marauding Hielander would have declared, \'It\'s a bare moor that ane goes o\'er and gets na a coo?\' Who but poor priest-ridden, king-ridden Spain would have said, Fraile que pide par Dios, pide por dos, \'The friar that begs for God, begs for two;\' Quien la vaca del rey come flaca, gorda la paga, \'He who eats the king\'s cow lean, pays for it fat;\'—but I ought to beg your pardon, perhaps you know Spanish?"
"Not very well," good-naturedly replied the young man, taking pity on his companion\'s inveterate habit of translation, and the delight which it plainly afforded him.
"Well enough, I suppose, to know that it\'s a mine of wealth to the proverb-hunter," rejoined the old man graciously. "Here, now, is a good one, of a different character,—Adonde vas, mal? Adonde mas hay, \'Whither goest thou, misfortune? To where there is more?\' And here is a pertinent question for people who live well without visible resources,—Los que cabras no tienen, y cabritos venden, de donde les vienen? \'They who keep no goats, and yet sell kids, where do they get them?\' But, after all, for right sharp and serviceable proverbs, commend me to the Danish. Here is an old collection that I\'ve lately picked up, printed at Copenhagen, in 1761;—-just let me read you two or three."
He opened the dingy volume aforementioned, and proceeded to read, translate, and comment, with infinite zest. "Ingen kommer i Skaden, uden han selv hielper til, \'No man gets into trouble without his own help\'—(a moral which no one can point better than your humble servant); Naar det regner Voelling, saa har Stodderen ingen Skee, \'When it rains porridge, the beggar has no spoon\'—(there\'s no contenting discontented people); Ingen Ko kaldes broget uden hun haver en Flek, \'A cow is not called dappled unless she has a spot\'—(most gossip has some small foundation); Hvo som vil gj?re et stort Spring, skal gaae vel tilbage, \'He that would leap high must take a long run\'—(else we should have bishops and judges without gray hairs); Det kommer igien, sagde Manden, han gav sin So Floesk, \'It will come back again, said the man, when he gave his sow pork:\'—don\'t you see how the patient, shrewd, humorous character of the Danes peeps through them all?
"Yet, if some proverbs are national, others are cosmopolitan, and fit all generations, and all countries. For instance, there\'s the Greek saw, Archè êmisu pantós,—see how it comes down through every language under the sun, till, at last, it settles into terse English rhyme,
\'Well begun
Is half done.\'
Or, take that common saying, \'To carry coals to Newcastle,\' which seems to have originated in the East. At least, we find it first in the Persian of Saadi, \'To carry pepper to Hindostan;\' then the Hebrews have it, \'To carry oil to the City of Olives;\' the Greeks, \'owls to Athens;\' the Latins, \'wood to the forest;\' the French, \'water to the river;\' the Dutch, \'firs to Norway;\' the Danish—Hallo! Pegasus! what are you about?"
The horse, being left to his own guidance while his master was riding his favorite hobby, had taken occasion to shoot off from the main road into an apparently little-used track, cut through a thick pine-barren at the left. He had made several lengths before his driver, taken at a disadvantage, could pull him up.
"Pegasus is of the opinion that \'the longest way round is the surest way home,\'" remarked the old man, apologetically, as he scanned the narrow, tree-lined track, with a view to the possibility of turning safely around. "Or," he added, with a glance of sly humor at the traveller, "perhaps he thinks, as I did just now, that Bergan Hall is your natural destination."
"Bergan Hall," repeated the young man, in a tone of extreme surprise,—"is this the way to Bergan Hall? I thought you came to the village first, from Savalla."
"So you did, once," rejoined the old man, looking surprised, in his turn; "but that must have been before you were born, if your face doesn\'t belie your age. The road used to make a long elbow, to get round that swamp which you crossed a mile back. But it was straightened thirty years ago at least,—Autre temps, autre chemin,—a different time, a different road. And so you are going to Bergan Hall? Well, thanks to luck and Pegasus, you\'re in the right way."
"But I must not take you out of yours," responded the young man, good-naturedly. And he had jumped out of the chaise before its owner was well aware of his intention.
"Canis festinans coecos parit catulos," muttered the old man, in a tone of chagrin. "In other words, \'Look before you leap.\' I\'d as soon have gone this way as the other. My place lies between the Hall and the village, and the choice of roads isn\'t worth shucks,—at least, in comparison with a pleasant chat. However, you\'re out, and I suppose it\'s no use to ask you to get in again, since the Hall is but a few rods away. Keep straight ahead till you come to the old avenue, then turn to the left. Good day, il n\'y a si bons compagnons qui ne se separent,—the best friends must part."
"Yes—to meet again," said the young man, pleasantly.
"Very true; les beaux esprits se rencontrent," returned the old man, slowly and cautiously backing his crazy vehicle around. And with another "Good day," and a parting gesture, he quickly disappeared among the fast-falling shadows.
The young man stood looking after him for a moment, with a smile half of amusement, half, of pity, upon his lips. But his features soon settled into something more than their accustomed gravity, and suddenly facing about, he pursued his way.
Ere long the tall, crowded pines of the barren gave place to various stubble and fallow grounds, with here and there a late crop waiting to be harvested; and shortly after, the narrow, irregular track that he had been following encountered a broader and more beaten one. Recognizing this, with some difficulty, as the "avenue" of which his late companion had spoken, he stopped, and gazed up and down with a look of surprise and pain.
It was bare of trees; but on either side extended a long row of live oak stumps, the size of which showed what massive trunks and far-reaching branches had once columned and arched it like a temple. Here and there, some forgotten bole or bough lay and rotted upon the very spot which it had formerly overhung with a soft canopy of verdure, and made beautiful with pleasant play of sunshine and leaf-shadow; while around it gathered a rank luxuriance of weeds, transmuting its slow aristocratic decay into teeming, plebeian life. In one or two cases, as if moved by an almost human sympathy, vines had sprung up around the bereaved stumps, and sought to soften their hard outlines with clinging drapery of leaves and tendrils. They had also done their best to cover up various unsightly gaps in the long lines of ruinous fence that divided the avenue from the open fields on either side. Yet the final effect of these gentle touches was only to deepen the painful impression of the scene. Where they did not reach, the bareness was so much more bare, the dilapidation so much uglier!
The young observer felt this bareness and dilapidation to his heart\'s core,—felt it all the more keenly because an image of the avenue\'s pristine grandeur, derived from the surrounding fragments (or from some other source), continually rose before his mind\'s eye, to heighten its present desolation by contrast. His brow contracted as he gazed; and the expression of his face changed rapidly from surprise to dissatisfaction, from dissatisfaction to perplexity, from perplexity to doubt. Once, he turned as if half-minded to retrace his steps; but the next moment, he shook off his irresolution with a gesture of disdain, and immediately hastened forward.
The avenue terminated in an open, circular space. Evidently, it had once been a lawn; but it was now covered with half-obliterated furrows, showing that at some not very remote period, it had been planted with corn. Around it stood a number of gigantic live-oaks, heavily draped with moss, and brooding dusky shadows under their massive boughs. Fronting upon it, was a large mansion of dark brick, consisting of an upright, two-story main building, with a huge, clustered chimney in the midst, and long, low, rambling wings on either side.
The whole place had a deserted and melancholy appearance. The moss on the live-oaks swayed slowly to and fro in the evening breeze, with a wonderfully sombre and funereal effect; and the mansion was dark and silent as any ruin. Not a light shone from the closed windows; not a sound came from the deep, shadowy doorway; and the unsteady stone steps, slippery with damp and green with moss, gave the impression of a spot where no human foot had left its print for many years.
The young man halted at a little distance from the dark building, and surveyed it moodily. "Can this be Bergan Hall?" he murmured. "Can this gloomy old ruin be the open, cheery, hospitable mansion, full of light and life, that my mother has so often described to me? It looks a habitation for ghosts—and for ghosts only! I wonder if any living being—"
Breaking off abruptly, he ascended the moss-grown steps, only to find that the vines which so heavily draped the portico, had woven a thick network across the door. It was plain that it had not been opened for months, perhaps years. Nevertheless, not to be easily daunted, he found and lifted the knocker. It fell with a dull lifeless sound, that smote the young man\'s heart like a sudden chill. A dreary reverberation came from within, and then died away into silence. He knocked again, and, listening intently, he fancied that he heard the sound of stealthy footsteps within, and a slight creaking of the floor. But so dead a silence followed upon these imaginary sounds, that he soon became convinced of his involuntary self-deception.
Turning from the door, he now noticed a little footpath running round the end of one of the long wings. Committing himself to this timely guide, he soon came in sight of the rear of the mansion, which looked upon a sort of court; where a few ornamental shrubs still held an uncertain tenure against the encroachments of divers sorts of lawless and vagrant vegetation. At a little distance, was a long range of dilapidated offices, showing upon what an almost princely scale the housekeeping had once been administered. But this part of the premises was not less dark, silent, and deserted, than the other.
The footpath still held on, however, past the court and the offices, toward a bright light at a considerable distance, "The negro quarter!" muttered the young man, recognizing the whereabout of one of the most salient features of his mother\'s well-remembered descriptions. "At least, I may learn there what it all means." And, quickening his steps, he soon came upon a busy and picturesque scene.
In the midst of a large, quadrangular space, flanked on three sides by double rows of negro-cabins, and on the fourth apparently sloping down to a water-course, was a rough sort of threshing-mill, now idle, but showing satisfactory results of its day\'s labor in a large heap of rice by its side. A crowd of negroes, of both sexes, coarsely and uncouthly clad, were busily filling odd, shallow baskets from this heap, which they then poised on their heads, and bore off down the slope to some unseen goal. There were two regular, silent files, the one coming, the other going; and the heap of grain steadily and even swiftly diminished. Near the mill, stood the only white person visible,—a large, powerfully-framed man, carelessly and even shabbily dressed, yet with the unmistakable air of ownership about him. At his left hand, a half-naked, impish looking negro boy was holding a blazing pitch-pine torch, by the light of which he seemed to be jotting down some sort of memoranda in a small book.
The scene was even more strange and weird than picturesque. The dark figures of the negroes, filing noiselessly up the shadowed slope, suddenly grew distinct, wild, and fantastic, within the circle of enchantment made by the flaring light of the torch, only to become dim and spectral again when received back into the dusk. They might have passed for embodiments of those vagaries of the mind, which come from no one knows whither, play their fitful parts within the illuminated circle of the imagination, and vanish as they came. The young man would almost have taken it as a matter of course, had the whole spectacle suddenly melted into thin air.
Yet, even in that case, he would have expected the masterful personage aforementioned to have remained, as the one tangible link between the phantasms and the earth. In truth, a single glance at his massive figure, which seemed to have been hewn out of the rock, rather than moulded from any softer material, went far to disenchant the scene. Here was a touch of the actual, the substantial, and the dogmatic, not to be mistaken; and serving as a clue to the reality of everything else.
Toward this personage, after a moment\'s scrutiny, the young man unhesitatingly made his way, with the air of one who has found something certain amid much that is confused, illusory, and perplexing. He was immediately spied by the negroes, and followed by their curious gaze; albeit, they ventured not to intermit their labor for an instant, but contented themselves with slowly and stiffly turning their burdened heads toward him as they marched on, and keeping their shining black eyes fixed on him to the last, in such that the heads of the retreating file seemed to have been set on backwards. The boy with the torch was perhaps the most wondering, open-mouthed gazer of them all.
As yet, the master of the premises had not been made aware of the stranger\'s approach; but, looking up to reprimand his torch-bearer for inattention, he observed the imp\'s dumbfounded gaze, and turned to see what had caused it.
"My uncle, Mr. Bergan, I presume," said the young man, taking off his hat, and bowing low: "I am Bergan Arling." And he added, after a moment, seeing that the other did not speak, "I bring you a letter from my mother."