People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1893 — IN DIXIE'S LAND [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IN DIXIE'S LAND

e THE tATt-t*--. ~ ‘

[Copyright, 1533, by A. N. Kellogg Newspaper CoJ r CHAPTER VIL— CONTINUED. In the painful silence that succeeded this startling speech, all eyes were fixed on Castex. Lie rose from his seat, eool and smiling. “It pleases me very much to retire,” he said. “Witness it, messieurs' —yonder gentleman drives me from his table and his house.” lie bowed, and immediately left the room. Alphonse Basnet squirmed in his chair, and at last blurted out: “Bostock, my dear fellow excuse me—but you see I can’t remain. This is a wretched business; I hope it will end here. But I brought my friend here, and of course I must go with him.” And he did. The soup grew cold, and was removed untasted; course after cour*e of the choicest dishes succeeded and were hardly touched. Everybody was under a dreadful constraint; occasionally there was a solitary remark, but the effort to keep up a conversation was a flat failure. I have said so much, that I ought to tell the whole truth. When the wine appeared, the guests turned to it as a relief from the awkwardness of the situation. I presume everybody drank too much; I am certain that I did. I will except Bostock. Tie sat pale, rigid and silent through it all. The guests departed early, with hardly an effort to make the usual compliments to the host. The next morning I was hardly out of bed when Pierce Bostock walked in. He looked as stern and white as when he was denouncing Castex at his own table.

“Well, he’s challenged you,” was my salutation. “No. I shall challenge him. Here’s the note. Take it to him, and then go to the man that he names as his friend.” I was thunderstruck. I tried to remonstrate with him. I told him that, so far as an outsider could judge, if anybody had cause to send a challenge, it was Castex. I begged him to tell me, in the strict confidence of friendship, what the language was that Castex had uttered to him. I told him that I could not act intelligently for him in this matter, unless I was advised. He peremptorily refused to tell me. “You have been my friend, Dorion,” he said. “When I say to you that no human being must know my cause of offense, you will believe that there is the best of reason for my silence. Napoleon Castex knows, no man better knows, the nature of his offense. He knows mr, also; and he understands that if ho were to lisp a hint of my reasons for challenging him, I would seek him and shoot him down like a dog! Don’t argue with me, Alfred Dorion; I tell you the man is a coldblooded scoundrel; he has sought me out to force a quarrel upon me, and there are the best of reasons why the affair must go on.” There was nothing for me to do but to deliver the challenge. I found Castex cool, polite and consenting. “There is not one of my name,” he said, with his marked French accent, “who ever refused the request of a gentleman to meet him on the field of honor. M. Bostock thinks himself insulted. Some might think that I was. No matter; here is his challenge. Take it to my dear Alphonse; he will arrange everything with you. I only say to you, that my remark to M. Bostock was the truth. He knows it to be the truth; and he has not the grace to see that I put it in the language of la belle France, that others might not understand it. So much you may tell him, if you choose.” The affair went on to its frightful end. Nobody could discover the truth. Basnet tried his best to make his man divulge the cause of offense, but in vain. “I only told him the truth, and told it in French, that it might not be heard by others. After I have fought him, I will tell it very loudly, in your harsh English, do you be sure. Meanwhile, I am quite willing to fight him. I knew him long before you did.” The wound that Pierce Bostock received was as nearly fatal as a wound can be and leave the victim alive. The ball traversed his lung; nothing but the extraordinary snill of the doctor saved him. The doctor had served in the Blexican war, and happened to witness the successful operation of a

Mexican surgeon upon a similar wound of Gen. Shields, by cleansing it with a silk handkerchief. In this way Bostock’s life was saved; but the fever that followed confined him to his bed for weeks, drained his strength, and left him only the shadow of his former self. His affection for his daughter seemed doubled, if that were possible, by this dreadful experience. In every waking hour he wanted her with him. In his delirium he would call her name; when conscious, he would hold her hand and look silently into her face as she sat by his bed. I used often to call upon him while he was confined to the house. One day he sent Coralie out of the room and asked me to shut the door. “You are still my friend, Alfred Dorion—are you not?” he abruptly began. “To be sure I am. While I am dreadfully distressed by what has happened—” “No matter about that. I want you to tell me something. What happened after I got that man’s bullet? I think my senses were wandering. What did I say?” I told him. I repeated his expressions—that he regretted that he had killed Castex; that he wanted to spare him; that he was anxious to hear from him a retraction of the words which had caused the duel. His face darkened as he listened.

“Do you mean to say that I said all that siily stuff?” “I have only repeated your own words.” “Then my brain tra» wandering. Dorion, I meant to kill him. He has gone to be judged, as I must be one day; but, I tell you, I am not sorry he has gone. He well knew when he came up here with his malignant tongue that either his life or mine must be forfeited.” You can imagine what effect such a declaration had on me. It showed me a side of Bostock’s character that I had never suspected to exist. I beg*tn to draw away from him, as did others of his friends. In less than two years after the duel he had alienated himself from all of us. His nature seemed to have changed. He became cold, reserved and haughty. He was very little seen away from his home. When he removed to Louisiana, he passed away from all intercourse with his old friends here. He has answered no letters. When I bought this place, I negotiated with him through an agent. You can see, knowing all this, th’at his life before he came here was clouded with something fearful and mysterious. I have wearied my brain in conjecturing what it can be. His wife, Conrad, Coralie, —which of them does it affect —or does it relate to all of them? If you can guess, you are shrewder than I.

CHAPTER VIII BETWEEN DUTY AND TEMPTATION. I slept very soundly that night. The experience and revelations of the last twenty-four hours had been to me more than incomprehensible; they were staggering. I tried to think about the astounding story that Mr. Dorion had told me, after I had bidden him good night, and had been lighted with a pair of tall wax tapers up a broad stairway to a large, square bed-chamber, where a great high-posted, canopied and curtained bed awaited me. I say I tried to think of it; but I could make nothing of it; I speedily gave it up, and lapsed away into slumber. Bodily and mentally, I was tired, and I slept late. 1 was aroused by a prolonged knocking at my chamberdoor, through which ran a continual current of negro-talk. “Please, young maussa, would you get up an’ come down to breakfast? Maussa Dorion say, wake yo’ up easy; an’ yo’ pass out yo’ boots to be shined.” When, an hour later, I was seated at the planter’s hospitable tabid, it seemed as though I had been at home here for a year. Mr. Dorion, clad in a loose linen suit, his wife and three daughters, all pleasant, cool and at least one of them handsome, entertained me with easy and agreeable

conversation. It warms my heart now to think of this, my first agreeable introduction to southern hospitality. As for the feast that was spread on that board—l despair of conveying an adequate idea of its profusion. I was the “stranger within their gates:” I was therefore entitled to all that they could set before m< Coffee, and milk, bacon, eggs, white and corn bread, fish from the river, hominy—where shall I stop? I had an appetite; but it soon surrendered before the great supply that loaded the table. After breakfast, Mr. Dorion took me out on the shady west veranda, and smoked. I declined the weed, and he good-humoredly said: , “You’ll have to learn, youngster, if you’re going to stay in the south. Like the morning cocktail, tobacco is a social force here. And you’ve been here at my plantation fourteen hours and haven’t said a word about politics or slavery. lam beginning to doubt whether you are northern born er not’’ I saw that he was bantering me. but I replied, seriously:

“I have never voted yet and I know nothing about poli-tics. As to slavery, I hope to get some information about it I have very little yet” Be clapped me heartily on the shoulder. “You talk like a sensible young fellow. I wish all this noise in congress and in the press could stop, and that the northerners could come down here, and see what slavery is like. Come along with me, and I’ll show you a little of it.” We went back to the negro quarters; a small street of comfortable white cabins. As we passed through, the darkies ran out to see “Ole Muussa.” The young children, with hardly an apology of cotton clothing to hide their blackness, laughed and chatted round him. Withered old crones and rheumatic “uncles” hobbled to the doors to see him. Lusty young negroes and negresses gathered about him, eagerly discussing the prospects of “the crop.” “Here they are,” said Mr. Dorion. “Something more than a hundred of them. You see their disposition. All that are able to work are aching to get into the cotton field to ‘save de crop.’ ” “Would you sell one of these slaves?” “Sell one of them? Ma? Why, I’d as soon think of selling one of my own girls.” “Do all planters feel that way?” “I can’t say; likely not. I know of many who do.” “Is it not true that at the slavemarts in New Orleans and Charleston young girls are sold on the auctionblock, and that mothers are separated from young children?” Mr. Dorion answered with some warmth: “You said you didn't know anything about slavery, my boy; your questions show me that you have read a great deal about it. I suppose the things

that you speak of do exist; I don’t know; they are just as strange tome as though my life had been passed in Siberia. Here is my south—right here, among these people who raise a bale of cotton to the acre, and care for their niggers as no white man at the north could be coaxed or driven to do. Well, here we are, at the edge of the cotton fields. Take a look there!” I looked, and I saw the sight that I had already seen a dozen times at a distance on my way down the river. Hundreds of acres bursting into the snowy bloom of the cotton; a mimic snowstorm, with the contrast of deep green foliage all about it, and azure skies and unclouded sun above it. The sight was one to remember for a lifetime. Under the shade of a broad-armed oak at the border of the fields Mr. Dorion sat down and fanned himself with his hat. “See here, my boy,” he said, “I’ve got something to say to you. I want to talk to you like a father. Sit down there and hear me.”

I complied. “When you came here, last night, you were no more to me or to my family than any other traveler from the north would be. You have been with us but a little while, and, I’m free to say, you have grown on us. You are a lad of sense and spirit; I like you. My wife told me this morning that she hoped I could keep you here awhile. Now, don’t you be too much flattered, my lad. My wife is a sensible woman; she knows that two of our daughters are engaged to be married, and that the other is likely to be, very soon. I don’t expect any danger from you in that quarter. But my overseer is getting cranky; he is a northern man, and he don’t use the field hands just as I would like. The idea has been passing through my mind all night that I would like to keep you with me, and learn you all about the plantation and the hands. Then, in a few months, I can dismiss the overseer and put you in his place. You are northern born; but I feel as if you would be a success in that place. What do you say?” I felt tempted. I hesitated, and knew not what to say. Then I replied: “You overpower me with your offer, Mr. Dorion. If it were not for my duty to Sir. Bostock—” He snatched me up impatiently: “Your duty to Bostock? You owe him none. Let me warn you not to sacrifice your prospects to a mere sentiment. The man that you think you owe some obligation to is a* changed, embittered man. Do not think that he will receive you with the cordiality that he showed you ten years ago in your northern home. He may not know you at all. I don’t know what manner of reception he will give you. Have you thought of this?” I was silent. He was encouraged by my silence, and went on: “And think, for a moment, what you are exposing yourself to! You are seeking to link your fortunes to those of a man who has clouded his life. He has alienated all the friends that he made here.. There is a fearful mystery hanging over his past life. Ido not know-*-you do not know —how you may become complicated with it, if you persist in going on. I only say to you—shun him!” I heard his words. I relected; and th* temptation to heed them grew less

and less. I recalled the poverty of mj life on the New Hampshire farm; an yearning to be with him. “When,” I thought,’’did he need friends more than now?” I was quickly decided. “I am grateful, very grateful to you, Mr. Dorion,” I said. “But I must stand by Mr. Bostock.” He looked hard at me, and seized my hand. “You are a splendid fellow,” he said. “I am disappointed; but I reckon yen are right.” CHAPTER IX. AFLOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPL It was with deep regret that I parted that evening from good Mrs. Dorion hnd her amiable daughters. In the brief time that 1 had been under this roof I had enjoyed a sample of home life at the south that was to me as novel as it was agreeable. When these kind ladies learned that I had determined to prosecute my journey to Louisiana, they joined their husband and father in urging me to delay. “We are hardly acquainted with you yet,” said the matron. “I’d have you know, sir, it’s not at all the Mississippi way for a visitor to come one day, and go the next.” “My curiosity isn’t half satisfied,” laughed Miss Celeste. “I supposed, from what I had heard, that your New England people were a kind of kangaroo. We see so little company here that an interesting young man like you is a positive godsend.” “And then,” added a mischievous younger sister, “Simon Basnet doesn’t come over more than once a week.”

“Perhaps I can furnish you with a good reason for stopping with us awhile. You want to see slave life down here; you can't half see it unless you witness the cotton picking. We shall begin in less than a month, and the sight will be well worth seeing. I’m a southerner born and reared; yet this is something that is always new to me and always grand. The section of Louisiana where you are going is all sugar; you’ll see no cotton there, only what is piled up in bales at New Orleans. Don’t I tempt you now?” Thus Mr. Dorion talked. He assuredly did; so greatly that I realized that my only safety was to firmly decline. To remain here even a week would attach me so to these people and to this home that the thought of Mr. Bostock would cease to trouble me. If I would go to him, I must go at once. There is nothing of the fatalist in me; notwithstanding the strange events of my early life which have been and are to be recorded, I am a plain, matter-of-fact kind of person; 1 had at twenty-one no more than the average sentiment that belongs to young people. When, therefore, I say that 1 felt urged, impelled to travel on, it will probably appear to others, as it does to me, that 1 had a destiny to accomplish. [TO BE CONTINUED.]

I WAS LIGHTED WITH A PADS OF TALL WAX CANDLES.

MR. DORION FANNED HIMSELF WITH HIS HAT.