Sleigh Rides—An Ardent Son of the South—The Author in the Pulpit—The Flash of First Love, and Love at First Sight—First Love Letters—Note of a Seedy Genius—Virtue with a Slaveholder—Evidence of Maria’s Seduction—Her Affecting Appeal to the Seducer—His Indifference and Inhumanity—The Evils of Imprudence stare Maria in the Face—The Spot upon the Soul—Her Promise Violated—The Words from the Crow Quill—She faints away.
Six months after the time which brought our last chapter to a close, Maria attended the church of which I was pastor, in Brunswick. It was on a Sabbath morning in midwinter. The snow lay deep on the ground, and the merry bells and the happy faces of that morning of gay sunlight and sparkling frost bespoke the pleasures to be anticipated from many a sleigh-ride. On this occasion Maria was accompanied by a young man who had arrived in the village the week previous, and entered the medical college as a student. He was from Georgia, and his manly bearing, brunette face, jet-black eyes, and curling ringlets, indicated his temperament to be as ardent as a Southern sun could make it. His name was Theodore Maxwell. His father trafficked in human flesh, and bartered virtue for a price; and the loose improvidence of the son told plainly of there being great wealth in the family. His demeanor indicated that he was on the best terms with himself, and, moreover, that he had a taste for licentious gratifications. He was rich, (no matter by what means,) and that was quite sufficient to place him in full favor with the women, and render him “a good fellow” with the men. Theodore and Maria entered the church, and seated themselves in a pew on the broad aisle.
I commenced the worship of God by reading the 44th Psalm, the singing of which was followed by an Address to the Throne of Grace. I then read a hymn, which, as well as the psalm, was very well executed by the choir. I then commenced my sermon, from the following text: “Remember Lot’s wife.” As I proceeded, the utmost of my ability was thrown into the subject. I enlarged upon the development of the affections, the gratitude we owe to the Almighty for a thousand gifts, and the blessed union of two hearts by divine sanction: the nature of the evil thoughts that should be cast away, and the principles which secure to virtue the fruits of a blessed reward: the penalty of disobedience, and the iniquity of the seducer. Few there are, among even the most earnest admirers of the Bible, who truly appreciate its sublimity and poetry. From the first line of Genesis to the last of Revelations, it is filled with evidences of its divine origin. As I reached that point in my discourse which depicted the bereavements of Lot, the cords of whose heart were all severed by a decree of God’s wrath, I perceived that Maria and her companion were deeply affected. Their eyes met: it was Love!
There is no genuine love but love at first sight. This is the pure offspring of unpolluted sympathy. All other love is merely the result of observation, reflection, and compromise. The enduring passions flash like the lightning; they scorch the soul, but it is warmed forever! Miserable the creature whose love rises by degrees upon the frigid morning of the mind! Amid the gloom and sorrow of existence, suddenly to behold a form having a kindred soul, and to feel an overwhelming conviction that, with that form, our destiny must be forever entwined; that there is no more joy but in his joy, no sorrow but when he grieves; that in the warmth of his love, in his smile of fondness, is all future bliss—this is love. Magnificent, sublime, divine sentiment! An intense flame burns in the breast of an adoring girl: she is an ethereal being. She is out upon the sea of life, with a gaze fixed to a single star. If that do not shine, there is no further joy in existence!
Oh Indiscretion! Oh Love! In vain are the teachings of moralists, that thou art a delusion! Love, that can illumine the dark hovel and the dismal garret, that can gladden the heart of the slave, and lighten his shackles! The sage may assert that the gratification of vanity is thine aim and end, but Love glances with contempt at the cold-blooded philosophy of calculation.
LETTERS.
MARIA TO THEODORE.
Sunday Night, 11 o’clock.
Dearest, Dearest Theodore: I have not yet lain down. Did you reach home in safety? That was a swift, ugly horse! I would give worlds to hear from you, Theodore, even one word! What joys hath God revealed to me this day! Can our love endure forever? May angels guard you, Theodore, and learn you to think of your betrothed Maria! It begins to rain dreadfully, and I know not what to do. I beat about my chamber like a silly bird in a cage. What a destiny broods over us! Write me one line, only one line, to tell me of your welfare. I shall be in despair until I hear from you. Do not delay the bearer an instant. He promises to return in a very, very short time. I will pray for you all this night, that seems as if it would never end. God bless you, my darling Theodore! Do not fail to write, and, till we meet again, believe me your own
Maria.
Monday Morning.
Sweetest, Dearest One: Yours found me quite safe and well, at home, smoking over a glass of wine. I love you, if that could be, more than before. You was a darling, to send to inquire after my safety and health so soon! A wet jacket frightens not me. God bless you, enchanting one! I will pledge your name and welfare in a glass of sparkling liquor—I will, ’pon my suavity.[4] Won’t that be sublime! I sigh for the regaling drinks of my mother’s cupboard! Your penny-wise people here in Maine would grudge a dog his bone, and would starve one of my big Cuba hounds, I am sure. But when we get off there, eh? Won’t you shine, a princess? I’ll pistol the fool that says you’re not one. By my honor, you shall have a hundred servants at your heels, deary, eh? Well, good bye for a short time, love. I love you, and that’s gospel truth. I’ll be back to-morrow. My soul goes forth after you, as the sunflower follows in the wake of the sun.
Believe me to be your own Theodore.
Such was the beginning of a correspondence of over a hundred letters, and continuing nearly a year. A careful perusal of all of them, in the order in which they were penned, indicates most clearly the phases of an attachment as fatal to an innocent, unfortunate girl, as it was heartless and betraying on the part of Maxwell. The first impulses of their affections were doubtless mutually sincere. Afterwards the feeling of Theodore changed, or his lust triumphed over the better qualities of his nature. And the truth is not here to be disguised, that the love of a man long immersed in the vices of slavery, and nurtured in slavery’s very lap, (as Maxwell had been, from birth,) cannot be reckoned but as the offspring of unmitigated sensuality. The infamy of such a life is seldom surpassed by the atrocities of ocean piracy. A slaveholder cannot appreciate the sublimity and purity of the guardian angel, Virtue. Deadened in feeling by long familiarity with vice, and steeled to all substantial goodness by the inhumanity of the traffic in female loveliness, he desires no higher or purer delight than sensual indulgence. Where earthly prospects are full of promise, the dark demon of lust intrudes, and, strengthened by possession, flaps his wings in exultation that the laws of a Christian community are inadequate to prevent the accomplishment of his dark designs. He riots in the possession of numberless victims to his rapacious appetite! Youth, innocence and beauty are immolated, at his bidding, on the altars of licentiousness!
Wo to the fair daughter of the North, whose pure soul is at the mercy of the Southern hyena! Wo to that spirit of slavish reverence for wealth, which winks at any crime, if the criminal be only a man of wealth! In this penurious and licentious age, money is the arch destroyer of female chastity. Wo to the female votaries of Wealth and Fashion, whose feet are in the snares of the soul-destroying seducer! Better to pine in want till the coming of grey hairs, and die unbefriended, than yield thy honor, poor worldling, to the exacting blandishments of wealth!
The letter of young Maxwell, as above given, may be regarded not only as a fair specimen of the literature of slavery, but likewise as an ebullition of that chivalric spirit which is the peculiar boast of the Southron. Love, pistols, seduction, murder, dogs, horses, alligators, and improvident indolence, are the ingredients of Southern chivalry. All the letters of Theodore to Maria, now in our possession, abound in the same swaggering emptiness. Many of them are filled with the grossest obscenity. It would be foreign to our purpose to insert them here; our history is sufficiently blackened with human frailty, without them.
But we cannot well refrain from presenting the reader with one more of Maria’s letters, evidently written under the withering influence of disappointment and shame. Still the repulsive brutality of Maxwell could not stifle the flame of FIRST LOVE, that burned within her confiding, forgiving, repentant heart. To his iron scoffs she returned tears, tenderness, and supplications.
June, Wednesday Evening.
Beloved Theodore: Shall we ever again meet? Shall I indeed ever again listen to that sweet voice—that voice which sometimes bears such unkind words—and will it tell me again that it loves me, with the selfsame accents that ever ring in my fascinated ear? But oh, Theodore, speak unkindly no more—no more neglect. I feel that there is a stain upon my soul which all the waters of Jordan could not cleanse. But, Theodore, you swore your fidelity in the face of Heaven. If you continue your neglect, I shall die.
Oh, this love is a fever—a fever which has no antidote but death for me! Could I but blot that fatal night from the scroll of time, my bliss would never end. Why did the moon look down so palely, and the gold stars laugh? You bathed my temples in the pearly dew, and spoke so kindly—Oh, were you false even then? And I your victim!
Avaunt! avaunt! thou horrid dream! Begone! He is still true—my soul’s light—my Theodore! But seldom he comes, or writes to me, of late. Dearest love, I thought to meet you yesterday, at your boarding-house. I called with Miss R. But you were gone, and (would you think it?) your landlady tossed her head slyly, and said: “Perhaps he went out of town to some grave-yard, last night!” Horrible! How ugly in her to say that! I heeded not her base insinuation.
Would you suppose it? I went into your bedroom. I contrived to get there unobserved. I was there but a moment—a precious moment. Don’t think it wrong, don’t scold me, dear—but I kissed your pillow, and left a tear-drop on it. I could not help it, dearest, when I reflected that your darling head had rested there so often and so lately. Oh, that I were now at your side! Every thing is so desolate without you—every thing so harrows up the past! Oh that I could forget the past! But I will not be miserable. I will be grateful to Heaven that I have been loved by you.
Theodore! do not let your brow be clouded when you read this. Smile, smile! as when you first greeted me, a stranger! God knows how much devotion I lavished upon you for that kindness. Shall it now curse me? Pray write to me. There is no misery so long as we love; but in the flickering light of hope I see darkly.
To-day I have looked over all your letters. Some I pressed to my bosom as priceless treasures; others dropped from my fingers like lead. Oh my heart! Theodore, you are changeable. I am an unprotected, unbefriended girl. I have reposed all in you. Your love is the only sunlight that can illumine this life. Hot tears gush from my eyes, but that’s no matter. God bless you, Theodore! All will yet go well, will it not? It cannot be that you despise me, as the tongue of envy interprets your indifference. If you do, I can endure this life no longer. Write, write! or visit, this evening, your betrothed but unhappy
Maria.
This letter, like a dozen others which had preceded it, produced no response of any description. About ten days afterwards, towards evening, there was a tap at the door of the house where Maria then was, alone. It was Maxwell. She fell into his arms, and fainted. He had, on that day, been apprised, through a tobacco warehouse in Boston, that his father desired his speedy return to Georgia. He had now come to say farewell—and a long and last farewell he meant it should be. When she regained composure, and wiped the tears from her cheek, she pressed to his forehead a kiss. Then he spoke: “Maria, I am summoned home. To-morrow I go. I am here to bid you farewell. I have long avoided you; now you will trouble me no more. It’s strange that you hang about me so.” “Hush!” interrupted Maria, in a low tone; “speak not, but go.” The blood of pride suffused her face; she saw the fruits of her fidelity trampled in the dust, in these words of Maxwell—her devotedness the mark of his derision. He had now come to announce his abandonment. As this thought broke in upon her brain, she gazed at him with the intenseness of despair.—Maxwell burst into a laugh. “Why, ma chere amie,” said he, “such undauntedness of spirit as that would put two thousand dollars upon your head, at a slave market. Suppose you go to Georgia, and let my father advertise you for sale. Many slave-girls are as white as you are. Then you would be provided for: all your wants supplied. Perhaps some covey would make you his bed-favorite, with the full freedom of his plantation.”[5]
Not a word or emotion escaped Maria during the utterance of this jargon of slavery. Maxwell rose unbidden, and left the dwelling. When he was out of sight, Maria gave utterance to a wild despair. From that moment her nature again put on strange garments, and underwent another change. A new lustre beamed in her eyes. It was the embodiment of an unsleeping revenge. She saw her own wreck: and now that all was engulphed within that avalanche of death, disgrace, she summoned to her aid the powers of a long-slumbering fortitude—the fortitude of an injured woman, and formed a stern resolve.
“I am lost. All is over. A thousand demons are hissing at me. I shrink from the faces of my friends. This night I, too, will leave thee, beautiful village, scene of my destruction! Henceforth my life shall be dedicated to the society of strangers. Bravely will I play my part. I will smile when I curse. I will win to destroy.”
Scarcely were these incoherent sentences finished, before Maria recalled to her mind the old Seeress at the Lucky Basin—the letter of fate, and her own solemn promise not to break its seal before the arrival of her eighteenth birth-day. “Two long years yet,” said she, musingly; “I may cease to breathe before that time; all is blighted even now. I will heed my pledge no longer.” Immediately she started for her portfolio, up stairs, in which it lay. She seized and broke it open in an instant: “To love so young; a Lamb and a Wolf; so young; A Killing Frost; Destitution; Marriage; Crime; there is Blood! Death!” One shriek announced that the forbidden contents were known. Maria lay senseless upon the floor!
