Tales and Sketches.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 119, 26 July 1873, Page 15

Tales and Sketches.

THE LAST OF THE PROSERPINE. [erom chamber's journal.] PART I. * Hilloa! mister,’ exclaimed a husky voice in my ear; ‘jest help me to a cigar-light, will you—this coon has lost his fusees/ My reverie, as I stood moodily at the edge of the rickety landing-stage at Grand Galf, kicking over maple-chips into the coffee-colored flood of the Mississippi, as it seethed and swirled beneath, was roughly interrupted by this unceremonious address, and I turned, perhaps with some impatience of manner, toward the speaker. The recognition, as our eyes met, was instant and mutual. ‘ Why, Mainwaring, you here—of all locations! Nothing new —no counterorders, eh ?’ such was the greeting of my former acquaintance. ‘ Surely, Gregg,’ I returned with a smile, ‘I might be as much astonished to the full at meeting you here as you could possibly be at seeing me. I thought you were in China.’ Mr or Captain Gregg laughed a little awkwardly as he seated himself on a log that had rolled from the wood-pile that stood for the supply of passing steamers, and bade the negro porter who carried his slender baggage set down the bag and valise at his feet. ‘ Yes, I ought to have been there. Gospel true that, mister. But —you know my old enemy, the bosomserpent, as I may say,’ he continued in a tone that was half jesting and half apologetic— * in fact, I did too much of this/ and he lifted the hollow of his hand to his lips, and went through the pantomine of drinking ; ‘ it was my watch, one moonlight night, when the first-mate came on deck, and found the sails a-shiver, the ship out of her course, and the helmsman taking a social pannikin of grog with your humble servant, while a lad was at the wheel. It wasn’t discipline, I know that; but I give you my word, Britisher, that if they had met my excuses in a gentlemanly spirit, I’d have kept as sober as a judge, and as bright as a beagle, all the rest of the voyage. They choose to clap me in irons. Then, wheD they liberated me, there was a muss, and the first-mate, that I blaiiied more than the skipper—you remember the sour old Aberdeen man got an ugly knock with my brass knuckledusters. So the long and the short of it is that the second officer of the good ship Benjamin Franklin was set ashore at Rio to make his way back to the States as he could. And here I am.’ * I am sorry for it/ said I gently ; ‘ for a better seaman seldom trod a plank, and if it were not for the unlucky habit to which you have alluded, you would have found the berth a good one, and your employers kind and liberal.’ Gregg’s manner changed at once. * You are a good fellow, Mainwaring/ he said, ‘ and I am—what you please. I tried to swagger out of it, but I do assure you I felt more ashamed of myself, for abusing your kindness as I did, when first I set eyes on you here, than I have done since I ran away from school, up yonder in Rhode Island. Yes, old chap, you helped to pay for my outfit, and it was your i ecommendation that got me made secondmate of yonder three-master, and I was a blackguard to kick over the traces after you had done so much to help me out of the mire. Never mind ; it will be all one a hundred years hence ;’ and with another abrupt transition of manner, he drew a shining little flask from his pocket, and swallowed a considerable portion of the raw spirits which it contained, and then turned away his handsome, reckless face, his bloodshot eyes, and streaming dark hair, towards the river, and hummed a tune, to which he beat time with one sunburned hand on the mossy logs beside him. A word of explanation ag to the relative positions of Paul Merrion Gregg and of myself, Alfred Mainwaring. The former was one of those young fellows, clever, audacious, well educated, but not overburdened by scruples, of whom so many are sent forth from the populous hives of the Northern Atlantic States. Of his parentage and early history I knew little, but from hints, that he sometimes let drop, I conjectured him to be a truant member of a respectable and well-to-do family in his native place. Good manners he had done his best to discard, but his ability was undoubted, and his courage no less so. He had thrice risen to the command of small vessels employed in the coastingtrade, and Lad been a New Orleans pilot, mate, and afterwards captain of more than one Mississippi steamer, book-keeper in a store, bar-keeper at a great hotel, overseer of a plantation, and engineer of a Mexican mine, all of which situations he had forfeited through sheer misconduct. Intemperance, wilful disobedience of orders, and the unchecked whimsicality of his capricious nature, were the chief faults of this born Bohemian, since, lax as where his principles, he had never, so far as I knew, been taxed with actual dishonesty. But these drawbacks were too ' heavy to be got over, even in the case of

a man of Buch dauntless resolution and readiness as Gregg possessed. There is no country in which a clever and helpful young fellow can, when American born, get so many new chances of mending his past errors by a fresh start in life as in the States, but at last every channel of employment had appeared to be closed to this born Bohemain. My own introduction to him was on this wise. Having foolishly ventured, through the prompting of idol curiosity, into one of those gambling dens which are the disgrace of New Orleans, a * muss,’ or affray, had been got up by the hangers-on of the establishment, for the purpose of hustling and robbing the English stranger, who declined to be plundered by the more pacific means of marked cards and loaded dice. Beset by bullies armed with sling*’ shot and sharp knives, it would have fared but ill with me but for my finding an unexpected ally in Gregg, who came chivalrously to the rescue, and thanks to whose experience in such brawls X escaped with only a few bruises as keepsakes, by which to remember the adventure. This good turn I had done my best, when opportunity served, to repay, and it, had indeed been through my intercession that Gregg had been allowed to ship as second officer on that voyage that had so prematurely terminated. As for myself, Alfred Mainwaring, X was at that time six-and-twenty years of age, and probably Gregg’s junior by a twelvemonth. I had been four years in America and had spent two of them in the counting house of a respectable and wealthy merchantile firm at Memphis, some hundreds of miles higher up the Mississipi. The house was known as that of Harman Brothers, but there was in reality but one member of it who bore that name, the sole interest having lapsed to Mr Anthony Harman, nephew of the original heads of the firm, and himself an elderly man, and a widower, with one child. This was a daughter, Alice Harman, who returned from completing her education at an English school about a year after I first entered into her father’s employ. And then —and then it was the old story, where two young people, thrown much into one another’s society, and with many tastes and sympathies in common, find acquaintance ripen into friendship, and friendship warm into love, almost before those principally concerned are aware of the transition. Mr Harman was nob a very vigilent parent, and indeed American manners permit so much liberty to young people that the old-fashioned lynxeyed supervision, of which so much still exists it Europe, is practically, unknown. He never, accordingly, threw the slightest obstacle in the way of my intimacy with Miss Harman, nor did he notice the preference which she accorded me ; but when I ventured to ask his consent to onr engagement, the anger and irritation that he showed would have done credit to some hardhearted father of the days of Mrs Radcliffe’s romances. Mr Anthony Harman was not, usualy, of a choleric description. He was, especially for a Southerner, a well-read man, had travelled much in Europe, and was proud of the polish which he had acquired during years of residence in the cities of the Old World. To myself he had been hospitable and polite, and to Alice he was an indulgent, if not an affectunate father: but at the suggestion that his daughter should marry * beneath her ’ in espousing a poor man, he grew literally furious, and all the old prejudices of the Southern slave-owner, dormant hitherto, blazed up into fierce vitality. ‘Mary Alice!’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘A. daughter of mine, and the heiress of Harman Brothers, whose signature is as good as bank paper on the New Orleans Exchange, throw herself away on a beggar ! By heavens, sir, she shall be a beggar herself, like the poor white trash starving about the townships, if she demeans herself by speaking to you again-—to my clerk, sir.—What’s that you say, sir, about being a gentleman ? as if I were to blame for your effete old British customs of primogeniture, or that the acres have gone to your eldest brother. You may go back to England, Mr Mainwaring, and call yotirself a gentleman, but you are a mean white here; and X find I’ve been cherishing a viper beside my hearth in fostering you beneath this roof of mine.’ For this unwarrantable language, wrung from i him at the first outbreak of his wrath, Mr Harman presently made some apology; but that we should be friends henceforth, or that I should continue to be his clerk, was clearly impossible. Oddly enough, the old man, his first anger spent, would willingly have retained me with him, on condition, of course, that I should renounce, and that Alice should forget, what he pleased to style my absurd pretensions. ‘ The girl is only a child-—not twenty yet/ he said, twisting the heavy links of his watch-chain; ‘and she has plenty of time before her. She will get over this nonsensical fancy (and indeed it was no more, though I admit that you acted honorably, Alfred, in coming so frankly to me to make the avowal of this —folly), and marry —hem ! hem ! some suitable person—no hurry, though; and if you

will give me your word to think no more of this —Ah, well, if you refuse to be reasonable, part we roust, and I am sorry tor it, Mainwaring, for as a clerk and friend •you please me very well —but as a son-in-law, never !’ „ , ... I believe the old man really did like me. I was useful to him in his affairs, and he had a high opinion of my business capacity, while out of office hours we had had many a pleasant conversation together ; but till the announcement that Alice and I were lovers, I had only seen the smooth side of my employer’s nature. That he was a very proud man I partly knew, but I had underrated, ifc would seem, the strength of those prejudices which planters and merchants, the purse-proud aristocracy of a slave holding community, entertain with reference to the * poor or ‘ mean whites around them. All over America the man witbdollarsispronetoregard theman without dollars as a being inferior to himself; and this feeling, strong even in speculative New York, where fortunes can be built up or overthrown like so many card castles, is doubly powerful in the teriitoriai families who share among them the lands of the fertile South. The Harmans were not only merchants, but extensive land-owners as well, although their estates, injured by war and by the withdrawal of enfored black labor, were not in a flourishing state. Under these circumstances, old Mr Anthony', when he heard that a subordinate of his own aspired to the hand of Miss Harman, was nearly as indignant at my presumption as a feudal baron could have been had some suitor presented himself, with empty hands, to ask tor a noble bride. All this had taken place three months previouslv, and X had left Memphis with a heavy heart and scanty hopes to cheer me in the future. The memory of Alice’s tearful adieu haunted me none the less sadly because X bad so little reason to deem that the course of our true love would ever falsify the proverb by running smoothly. I was poor, and had no particular prospects of bettering my position. Some pittance, almost too small to be thought worthy the attention of a Chancellor of the Exchequer levying income tax, I had over and above my earnings, but that was all, fori was one of several cadets of a numerous family sent out to push our fortunes as best we might; while the old hall of weather stained red brick, and the old trees in what was called the park, and the mortgaged acres had passed to our elder brother, who had sundry olive branches of his own to provide for. I had industrious habits and a robust constitution, and was not one to bewail that circumstances debarred me from eating the bread of idleness. Work honestly done and fairly paid for is, after all, a healthy tonic for mind and body, and I should never have grumbled at my condition in life, bad it not been made the pretext for my being separated from Alice. I paced to and fro, looking out from time to time for the smoke of the coming steamer ; and my reflections were none of the pleasantest. Would Alice learn to forget me? Would time and absence gradually efface the image of her lost lover, and some more eligible suitor finally supplant me in her affections ? She was not one likely to forget, or to give her heart and take it back again at the bidding of caprice ; and I could have placed full reliance on her constancy had my own prospects been less hopeless than they were. Had Alice been poor, and less tenderly nurtured, there would, ,in that land of abundance, have been hope that ours might be a life of at least moderate comfort and prosperity.. But the dear girl had never hitherto known what it was to have a wish ungratified that money could realise, and it would have been selfish on my part to expose her.to the hardships of poverty ; while, even if she had been capable of direct.disobedience to her father’s commands, I felt assured that Mr Hannan would never relent, or extend a helping hand to. one who had defied his authority. As matters stood, a continued sojourn in America had. become distasteful to me; and although fully sensible that there is much truth in the old proverb which condemns a rolling stone, I had determined on tempting fortune in that part of the world where riches are amassed and health jeopardised with, perhaps, greater rapidity than anywhere else. I had distant connections in China, on whose aid I could in some degree.rely, and had obtained, for the outward voyage, the temporary post'of super-cargo on board a fine ship, the Star of the South, bound from New Orleans to Calilornia and Shanghai. My kit was ready. In one short week the clipper was to sail, and my business up the river, such as it was, had been all transacted. Some few hundred dollars I had contrived to save, and these had been out at interest in a Vicksburg bank,, the manager of which had invited me to spend a couple of days at his villa near Grand Gulf, and had driven me over, with the money safe in my pocket, to the landing wharf of the latter town, at the termination of my visit, i had but to return to New Orleans, bid farewell to the few kind friends who dwelt in that city, and then leave America, perhaps for ever.

I had almost forgotten the presence of my not over-reputable acquaintance, Captain Gregg, when I found myself opposite to him as I walked slowly to and fro, and observed that his eyes were fixed on me with rather a singular expression. It was early, as yet, in the day, but he had evidently been drinking a good deal ; and, curiously enough, the repeated doses of alcohol which he had swallowed seemed to have at length produced the effect of steadying his nerves. His hand no longer shook, and the unwholesome flush on his bronzed cheek had passed away. * Going up river, are you not ?’ he asked abruptly. 4 1 see the steamer rounding the point yonder—the Empire City, by her colors a fine boat, and sure to haye a band on board of her.’ ‘No,’ I answered ; ‘ my way lies down stream; I take the first steamer for New Orleans, and, if I am not mistaken, they are signalling her now.’ An exclamation of mingled pain and anger, half curse, half moan, broke from Gregg’s lips as I spoke, and then he jumped up from the log on which he had been seated, and took one or two hasty strides backwards and forwards on the quay. ‘No, no! hang it, no!’ X heard him mutter to himself as he passed me. * If it had been any other living 90ul, I’d have cared no more than for the empty shuck of a cotton pod, but this is too much to stand.’ He grew calmer after a moment or two, and then came up and laid his muscular brown hand on my sleeve. ‘ Mainwaring,' he said, ‘ I’ll take it kind of you if you will go back into the town to the hotel, or anywhere, and put off your sailing till the afternoon. The Sunflower comes by at about two, or three at latest, and’ ‘ But why,’ said I, interrupting his hesitating speech, ‘ am I to wait till then ; or what earthly benefit, Gregg, could I confer upon yourself by simply upsetting all my arrangements, and arriving several hours later than is necessary ? If you can give me any reason’ ‘Ah,’ rejoined my nautical acquaintance, insensibly resuming his old quaint recklessness of manner and diction, ‘that’s jest what I can’t do. There’s a saying I have heard among Texan trappers, that a nod’s as good as a wink to a blink mustang.’ I could not help laughing at having this scrap of ancestral philosophy presented to me in trans atlantic garb ; and as I contemplated Gregg, whose momentary embarrassment seemed to be at an end, I conjectured that—unless, indeed, he were the agent of an opposition packet company —his objection to my pursuing my south ward journey by the first available boat was a mere whim of a liquor soddeD brain. Presently, up came the two steamers, almost simultaneously. The upwardbound boat, the Empire City, as Gregg had opined, was the first to come snorting and splashing up to the landing stage. A fine steamer she was ; very full of passengers, for in that season of sultry heat most of the Upper Ten Thousand of the South are glad to take flight from New Orleans ; and, with her snow-white awning and gay flags flaunting in the warm breeze, the lively music of her German band ringing blithely out, and the flutter of muslin and many-colored silk on her hurricane deck, she looked a floating temple of pleasure. The upward-bound boat having taken in her wood and provisions, and such goods as were awaiting transmission towards the North, dashed merrily off again, the bubbling water spurting upwards like a fountain as her sharp prow cut razorlike through the strong rush of the tawny river. Then, before the echoes of the last air of Offenbach’s had died away, I saw close to us the thin blue line of wood smoke that streamed behind the downgoing steamer. She was heavily laden, and deep in the water; but even with the advantage of the Mississippi current her progress was not very swift, and there were but few passengers visible, though this, during the hottest month of summer, was not surprising in a boat going South. The steamer was gaudily painted, and was further embellished with a splendid figure-head, bright with gold leaf and color, and her funnels, and awnings, and flags, were of the newest and most brilliant ; but I thought that her engines worked slowly, and that there was something lumbering and clumsy in her way of getting through the water. ‘Do you know that boat?’ Tasked of Gregg. ‘The Proserpine,’ he replied, lialf sullenly, half defiantly, as I fancied. ‘ The Proserpine!’ I answered incredulously. ‘ Surely not! Why, she was an old boat, worn out, and given up as incurable and useless. Who in his senses would have dragged her out of dock again, and furbished here up ? It seems as bad as painting some venerable grandmother into the semblance of a girl of sixteen.' ‘ She belongs now to Harman Brothers,’ said Gregg, with his eyes fixed on the ground. I heard this announcement with the utmost surprise. My former employer’s firm had been always averse to that wild game of speculation that reaches its apogee west of the Atlantic. Safe, prudent traffickers, content with moderate gains,

Harman Brothers had prided themselves on their avoidance of gambling investments and adventurous hazards. They had held their own by adherence to their own old system, while colossal fortunes had grown and collapsed all around them. And now Mr Anthony Harman was, if my informant spoke truly, the owner of so rickety a craft as the superannuated Proserpine, and had freighted her with a heavy, and no doubt a costly cargo. _ ‘I only hope,’ said I, half jokingly, ‘ that the’eaptain does not match Iffie boat?’ ‘ I command the Proserpine,’ retorted Gregg, with a strange look in his haggard eyes, a strange ring in his hoarse voice. I started as this. declaration reached my ears. There was something very odd about the whole transaction. Here was a vessel which, to my knowledge, had been laid aside as unfit for service, pressed into activity once more, and bedizened like some antique bride whose Honiton lace and orange blossoms contrast painfully with the wrinkles and grizzled locks of the wearer. She was now the property, of all people, of Harman Brothers ! I was about to take my passage in her, and that in spite of the apparently motiveless dissuasions of the very man who was to be her captain. The very fact that Paul, so recently and disgracefully dismissed from his post as second-mate of a China bound merchantman, should suddenly be entrusted with so responsible a position as that of skipper of a Mississippi first-class passenger steamer, seemed to me not the least surprising of this tissue of incidents. To be sure, he had previously discharged the same duties, but that was before his fatal habit of intemperance had gained so complete a mastery over him, and before his reputation as a reliable man had sunk so low. Mr Harman must have strangely altered, I bethought me, when he entrusts valuable possessions to the care of Paul Merrion Gregg and to the frail planks of the Peoserpine. The boat now came panting up ; and as the bell rang, and the porters and stevedores, white and black, began to thrust out planks, over which the neat white kegs bearing the brand of some Northern manufacturer of biscuits, whisky, or conserve of apples, the hams, sugarcasks, and logs of wood, might be carried on board, there was somewhat more of bustle than had hitherto prevailed on the somewhat lonely quay. I was in the act of stepping across the gangway, when Gregg, who had followed me, touched me on the shoulder. ‘ Mainwaring,’ he said, very earnestly, ‘I feel kinder soft towards the one man who has never turned his back yet on a scampish never-do-well like P. M. G.—towards the friend who has striven to save me from ruin. Keep clear of this ship. Ask no questions, but wait for the next vessel ; and never blab, when it’s over, that I advised you as I have done.’ For an instant I hesitated. Gregg’s words were an enigma to me, but there was something in his tone that impressed me in spite of myself, and I might perhaps have retired, had not a pert boatclerk, with the strong nasal accent of New Jersey, at this instant exclaimed : ‘ Wall, stranger, are you for New Orleans, or are you not? Faint heart, I guess, never won fair lady ; but if you don’t make you.r mind up pretty slick, the paddles will save you the trouble.’ And indeed the wild snorting of the steampipes, and the suppressed throbbing of the vessels sides as her engines began to work, gave token of immediate departure. Half mechanically, I went on board. Gregg brushed past me. The planks were withdrawn, and off we went on our way down-stream. ‘ Mr Jowlett, the pilot, had the barky in charge so far as Grand Gulf,’ a grinning mulatto waiter, whose teeth were whiter than his napkin, informed me in answer to my inquiry ; ‘ and when he go ashore, we pick up our skipper, Cap’en Gregg.’ The latter was already installed in command, and I observed that, as he gave his orders in a loud and clear voice, all traces of excitement had vanished from his face and bearing, and that he seemed merely to be the careful and experienced mariner to whom every reach and shoal of the Father of Waters was intimately known. He showed no desire to resume his conversation with myself and, in fact, appeared to have forgotten his late incomprehensible warning. But what was my amazement when, among the groups of passengers on the lofty hurricane deck of the steamer, I recognised old Mr Harman, with his daughter beside him ! The old man, a stately figure yet, tall and erect, and scrupulously well dressed, reddened as he caught sight of me, and, with a cold bow, turned away, leading Alice with him towards another part of the deck. My own gaze had been riveted on the face that I loved best of all in the world, and I had noticed that a bright involuntary gleam of joy had crossed it as our eyes met, to be clouded the instant after, as, dropping her eyes and avertiug her head, she allowed her father to conduct her from the neighborhood of the spot where I stood. Here, then, was a new source of embarrassment. This unlucky rencontre might not unnaturally lead to miscon-

struction. Mr Harman might well believe that I had purposely followed hia movements ; while even to Alice my conduct, in wilfully throwing myself in lier way, and in perhaps thereby arousing the angry suspicions of her father, must appear cruel and inconsiderate. Should I disembark at the next stopping-place, and there await the Sunflower, by which I might pursue my solitary way to New Orleans? No, surely; for such a step would argue that I felt myself to be in the wrong ; that I acknowledged my own unworthiness to pretend to the hand of a rich man’s daughter ; that I shrank from the displeasure of my former employer. No; up to this time my conduct had been open and manly, and I resolved that for the future I would act as I had hitherto done. It was enough that I had not infringed the laws of hospitality, or used my influence over Alice so to tempt her to set at naught the just authority of her only surviving parent. I need not sink off, like a culprit, because by pure accident she and I were passengers by the same steamer. No intrusion from me was to be feared. I should not even place myself in Miss Harman s path; and yet and yet all the while that I thus reasoned with myself I knew it was the chance of again looking on the dear face that I loved so well that pleaded with me to remain on board. Passengers in an American river-steamer, with their common meals common saloons, and the breezy promenade of the hurricane deck are thrown very much together, and I should have more than one opportunity of seeing her to whom I was forbidden to SP The mulatto waiter, or under-stewart, of whom I have already made mention, was, like most of his color, giyen to chatter, and unreservedly communicative about himself and others. His name, e told me, was Lysander, to which classical prefix he had chosen to add the patronymic of Randolph, having been a ‘boy’ on Colonel Norman Randolphs estate before the war, during which he had played the part of a contraband, and had much to tell of the hardships and semistarvation endured by runaway slaves on the other side of the Federal lines. He had been in the pantry of one or our West Indian mail packets, and nad visited England, and acquired a sort of Anglomania, which I have noticed before in creole blacks, who have been c.iarmed to find their dark skin rather m the light ot a passport to English sympathies than 8 badge of inferiority. As a Britisher, he took me under his cordial protection, waited on mo with patronising kindness, and whispered in my ear the names ot those dishes on the long bill of fare which were, in his oninion, the choicest tit-bits of what was,'l own, a very sumptuous dinner. I was not hungry, however, and. Lysander presently grew tired of recommending some ‘ bootiful fis, caught in a lake among the rooky hills of Tennessee, and in ice to the river bank, or couops ot * black-tail venison, shot in Big Swamp, Arkansaw State,’ and allowed me to dream away my time as I listed. Alice looked very beautiful, I thought, but sadder and more womanly than before, a thought paler too. She was very silent, and never looked towards me, nor did her father, who conversed, with, as it appeared to me, more than usual volubility, with some fellow travellers who knew him. I could not help fancying that Mr Harman 0 seemingly high spirits were no index to his real state of mind, and the same might be said of Gregg, who was full of boastfulness and merriment at. the other end of the table, but who carefully avoided catching my eye. Deep in the afternoon, my mulatto friend Lysander brought me a crumpled letter, ill folded and hastily written, but heedfully sealed with black wax, ‘from Massa Cap’in Gregg.” It contained merely these words : ‘ Do you remember a passage in a French book you lent me, where a coon got a note with this in it: “Fly'—fly—fly!’ three times repeated? He didn’t take the hint—more fool he ! The boat stops at Vidalia, pnd there is a good inn there.—P. M. G.” I sat staring for some time at this extraordinary document. It certainly implied a warning, but of what evil could it bid me to beware ? ( Concluded in our next J