The Reign of Law; a tale of the Kentucky hemp fields

"Turn round, Tom, and drive back. I have smelt it enough."

These drives alone with her grandmother were for spring and early summer only. Full summer brought up from their plantations in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, her uncles and the wives and children of some of them. All the bedrooms in the big house were filled, and Gabriella was nearly lost in the multitude, she being the only child of the only daughter of her grandmother. And now what happy times there were. The silks, and satins, and laces! The plate, the gold, the cut glass! The dinners, the music, the laughter, the wines!

Later, some of her uncles' families might travel on with their servants to watering places farther north. But in September all were back again under the one broad Kentucky roof, stopping for the beautiful Lexington fair, then celebrated all over the land; and for the races—those days of the thoroughbred only; and until frost fall should make it safe to return to the swamps and bayous, loved by the yellow fever.

When all were departed, sometimes her grandmother, closing the house for the winter, would follow one of her sons to his plantation; thence later proceeding to New Orleans, at that time the most brilliant of American capitals; and so Gabriella would see the Father of Waters, and the things that happened in the floating palaces of the Mississippi; see the social life of the ancient French and Spanish city.

All that could be most luxurious and splendid in Kentucky during those last deep, rich years of the old social order, was Gabriella's: the extravagance, the gayety, the pride, the lovely manners, the selfishness and cruelty in its terrible, unconscious, and narrow way, the false ideals, the aristocratic virtues. Then it was that, overspreading land and people, lay the full autumn of that sowing, which had moved silently on its way toward its fateful fruits for over fifty years. Everything was ripe, sweet, mellow, dropping, turning rotten.

O ye who have young children, if possible give them happy memories! Fill their earliest years with bright pictures! A great historian many centuries ago wrote it down that the first thing conquered in battle are the eyes: the soldier flees from what he sees before him. But so often in the world's fight we are defeated by what we look back upon; we are whipped in the end by the things we saw in the beginning of life. The time arrived for Gabriella when the gorgeous fairy tale of her childhood was all that she had to sustain her: when it meant consolation, courage, fortitude, victory.

A war volume, black, fiery, furious, awful—this comprised the second part of her history: it contained the overthrow of half the American people, and the downfall of the child princess Gabriella. An idea—how negative, nerveless, it looks printed! A little group of four ideas—how should they have power of life and death over millions of human beings! But say that one is the idea of the right of self-government—much loved and fought for all round the earth by the Anglo-Saxon race. Say that a second is the idea that with his own property a man has a right to do as he pleases: another notion that has been warred over, world without end. Let these two ideas run in the blood and passions of the Southern people. Say that a third idea is that of national greatness (the preservation of the Union), another idol of this nation-building race. Say that the fourth idea is that of evolving humanity, or, at least, that slave-holding societies must be made non-slave-holding—if not peaceably, then by force of arms. Let these two ideas be running in the blood and passions of the Northern people. Bring the first set of ideas and the second set together in a struggle for supremacy. By all mankind it is now known what the result was for the nation. What these ideas did for one little girl, living in Lexington, Kentucky, was part of that same sad, sublime history.

They ordered the grandmother across the lines, as a wealthy sympathizer and political agent of the Southern cause; they seized her house, confiscated it, used it as officers' headquarters: in the end they killed her with grief and care; they sent her sons, every man of them, into the Southern armies, ravaged their plantations, liberated their slaves, left them dead on the fields of battle, or wrecked in health, hope, fortune. Gabriella, placed in a boarding-school in Lexington at that last hurried parting with her grandmother, stayed there a year. Then the funds left to her account in bank were gone; she went to live with near relatives; and during the remaining years of the war was first in one household, then another, of kindred or friends all of whom contended for the privilege of finding her a home. But at the close of the war, Gabriella, issuing from the temporary shelters given her during the storm, might have been seen as a snow-white pigeon flying lost and bewildered across a black cloud covering half the sky.

The third volume—the Peace Book in which there was no Peace: this was the beginning of Gabriella, child of the Revolution. She did not now own a human being except herself; could give orders to none but herself; could train for this work, whip up to that duty, only herself; and if, she was still minded to play the mistress—firm, kind, efficient, capable—must be such a mistress solely to Gabriella.

By that social evolution of the race which in one country after another had wrought the overthrow of slavery, she had now been placed with a generation unique in history: a generation of young Southern girls, of gentle birth and breeding, of the most delicate nature, who, heiresses in slaves and lands at the beginning of the war, were penniless and unrecognized wards of the federal government at its close, their slaves having been made citizens and their plantations laid waste. On these unprepared and innocent girls thus fell most heavily not only the mistakes and misdeeds of their own fathers and mothers but the common guilt of the whole nation, and particularly of New England, as respects the original traffic in human souls. The change in the lives of these girls was as sudden and terrible as if one had entered a brilliant ballroom and in the voice of an overseer ordered the dancers to go as they were to the factories.

To the factories many of them went, in a sense: to hard work of some sort—to wage-earning and wage-taking: sometimes becoming the mainstay of aged or infirm parents, the dependence of younger brothers and sisters. If the history of it all is ever written, it will make pitiful, heroic, noble reading.

The last volume of Gabriella's memoirs showed her in this field of struggle—of new growth to suit the newer day. It was so unlike the first volume as to seem no continuation of her own life. It began one summer morning about two years after the close of the war—an interval which she had spent in various efforts at self-help, at self-training.

On that morning, pale and trembling, but resolute, her face heavily veiled, she might have been seen on her way to Water Street in Lexington—a street she had heard of all her life and had been careful never to enter except to take or to alight from a train at the station. Passing quickly along until she reached a certain ill-smelling little stairway which opened on the foul sidewalk, she mounted it, knocked at a low black-painted plank door, and entered a room which was a curiosity shop. There she was greeted by an elderly gentleman, who united in himself the offices of superintendent of schools, experimental astronomer, and manufacturer of a high grade of mustard. She had presented herself to be examined for a teacher's certificate.

Fortunately for Gabriella this kindly old sage remembered well her grandmother and her uncles: they had been connoisseurs; they had for years bought liberally of his mustard. Her uncles had used it first on their dinner tables as a condiment and afterward on their foreheads and stomachs as a plaster. They had never failed to praise it to his face—both for its power to draw an appetite and for its power to withdraw an ache. In turn he now praised them and asked the easiest questions. Gabriella, whose knowledge of arithmetic was as a grain of mustard seed, and who spoke beautiful English, but could not have parsed, "John, come here!"—received a first-class certificate for the sake of the future and a box of mustard in memory of the past.

Early in that autumn she climbed, one morning, into an old yellow-red, ever muddied stage-coach (the same that David had ridden in) and set out to a remote neighborhood, where, after many failures otherwise, she had secured a position to teach a small country school. She was glad that it was distant; she had a feeling that the farther away it was from Lexington, the easier it would be to teach.

Nearly all that interminable day, the mechanism of the stage and the condition of the pike (much fresh-cracked limestone on it) administered to Gabriella's body such a massage as is not now known to medical science. But even this was as nothing in comparison to the rack on which she stretched every muscle of her mind. What did she know about teaching? What kind of people would they be?

Late that mild September afternoon she began to find out The stage stopped at the mouth of a lane; and looking out with deathly faintness, Gabriella saw, standing beside a narrow, no-top buggy, a big, hearty, sunburned farmer with his waist-coat half unbuttoned, wearing a suit of butternut jeans and a yellow straw hat with the wide brim turned up like a cow's horns.

"Have you got my school-teacher in there?" he called out in a voice that carried like a heavy, sweet-sounding bell. "And did you bring me them things I told you to get?"

"Which is she?" he asked as he came over to the stage window and peered in at the several travellers.

"How do you do, Miss Gabriella?" he said, taking his hat clear off his big, honest, hairy, brown head and putting in a hand that would have held several of Gabriella's. "I'm glad to see you; and the children have been crying for you. Now, if you will just let me help you to a seat in the buggy, and hold the lines for a minute while I get some things Joe's brought me, we'll jog along home. I'm glad to see you. I been hearing a heap about you from the superintendent."

Gabriella already loved him! When they were seated in the buggy, he took up six-sevenths of the space. She was so close to him that it scared her—so close that when he turned his head on his short, thick neck to look at her, he could hardly see her.

"He has a little slip of a wife," explained Gabriella to herself. "I'm in her seat: that's why he's used to it."

So SHE got used to it; and soon felt a frank comfort in being able to nestle freely against him—to cling to him like a bat to a warm wall. For cling sometimes she must. He was driving a sorrel fresh from pasture, with long, ragged hoofs, burrs in mane and tail, and a wild desire to get home to her foal; so that she fled across the country—bridges, ditches, everything, frantic with maternal passion. One circumstance made for Gabriella's security: the buggy tilted over toward him so low, that she could not conveniently roll out: instead she felt as though she were being whirled around a steep hillside.

Meantime, how he talked to her! Told her the school was all made up: what families were going to send, and how many children from each. They had all heard from the superintendent what a fine teacher she was (not for nothing is it said that things are handed along kindly in Kentucky)!

"Oh," murmured Gabriella to herself, "if the family are only like HIM!" The mere way in which he called her by her first name, as though she were an old friend—a sort of old sweetheart of his whom for some reason he had failed to marry—filled her with perfect trust.

"That's my house!" he said at last, pointing with extended arm and whip (which latter he had no occasion to use) across the open country.

Gabriella followed his gesture with apprehensive eyes and beheld away off a big comfortable-looking two-story brick dwelling with white-washed fences around it and all sorts of white-washed houses on one side or the other—a plain, sweet, country, Kentucky home, God bless it! The whiteness won Gabriella at once; and with the whiteness went other things just as good: the assurance everywhere of thrift, comfort. Not a weed in sight, but September bluegrass, deep flowing, or fresh-ploughed fields or clean stubble. Every rail in its place on every fence; every gate well swung. Everything in sight in the way of live stock seemed to Gabriella either young or just old enough. The very stumps they passed looked healthy.

Her conjecture had been correct: the slender slip of a woman met her at the side porch a little diffidently, with a modest smile; then kissed her on the mouth and invited her in. The supper table was already set in the middle of the room; and over in one corner was a big white bed—with a trundle bed (not visible) under it. Gabriella "took off her things" and laid them on the snowy counterpane; and the housewife told her she would let the children entertain her for a few minutes while she saw about supper.

The children accepted the agreement. They swarmed about her as about a new cake. Two or three of the youngest began to climb over her as they climbed over the ice-house, to sit on her as they sat on the stiles. The oldest produced their geographies and arithmetics and showed her how far they had gone. (They had gone a great deal farther than Gabriella!) No one paid the least attention to any one else, or stood in awe of anything or anybody: Fear had never come to that Jungle!

But trouble must enter into the affairs of this world, and it entered that night into Gabriella.

At supper the farmer, having picked out for her the best piece of the breast of the fried chicken, inquired in a voice which implied how cordially superfluous the question was:—

"Miss Gabriella, will you have cream gravy?"

"No, thank you."

The shock to that family! Not take cream gravy! What kind of a teacher was that, now? Every small hand, old enough to use a knife or fork, held it suspended. At the foot of the table, the farmer, dropping his head a little, helped the children, calling their names one by one, more softly and in a tone meant to restore cheerfulness if possible. The little wife at the head of the table had just put sugar into Gabriella's cup and was in the act of pouring the coffee. She hastily emptied the sugar back into the sugar-dish and asked with look of dismay:—

"Will you have sugar in your coffee?"

The situation grew worse at breakfast. In a voice to which confidence had been mysteriously restored during the night—a voice that seemed to issue from a honey-comb and to drip sweetness all the way across the table, that big fellow at the foot again inquired:—

"Miss Gabriella, will you have cream gravy—THIS MORNING?"

"No, thank you!"

The oldest boy cocked his eye sideways at his mother, openly announcing that he had won a secret wager. The mother hastily remarked:—

"I thought you might like a little for your breakfast."

The baby, noticing the stillness and trouble everywhere, and feeling itself deeply wounded because perfectly innocent, burst into frantic crying.

Gabriella could have outcried the baby! She resolved that if they had it for dinner, she would take it though it were the dessert. A moment later she did better. Lifting her plate in both hands, she held it out, knife, fork, and all.

"I believe I'll change my mind. It looks SO tempting."

"I think you'll find it nice," remarked the housewife, conciliated, but resentful. But every child now determined to watch and see what else she didn't take. They watched in vain: she took everything. So that in a few days they recovered their faith in her and resumed their crawling. Gabriella had never herself realized how many different routes and stations she had in her own body until it had been thus travelled over: feet and ankles; knees; upper joints; trunk line; eastern and western divisions; head terminal.

There was never any more trouble for her in that household. They made only two demands: that she eat whatever was put on the table and love them. Whatever was put on the table was good; and they were all lovable. They were one live, disorderly menagerie of nothing but love. But love is not the only essential of life; and its phenomena can be trying.

Here, then, in this remote neighborhood of plain farmers, in a little district school situated on a mud road, Gabriella began alone and without training her new life,—attempt of the Southern girl to make herself self-supporting in some one of the professions,—sign of a vast national movement among the women of her people. In her surroundings and ensuing struggles she had much use for that saving sense of humor which had been poured into her veins out of the deep clear wells of her ancestors; need also of that radiant, bountiful light which still fell upon her from the skies of the past; but more than these as staff to her young hands, cup to her lips, lamp to her feet, oil to her daily bruises, rest to her weary pillow, was reliance on Higher Help. For the years—and they seemed to her many and wide—had already driven Gabriella, as they have driven countless others of her sex, out of the cold, windy world into the church: she had become a Protestant devotee. Had she been a Romanist, she would long ere this have been a nun. She was now fitted for any of those merciful and heroic services which keep fresh on earth the records of devoted women. The inner supporting stem of her nature had never been snapped; but it had been bruised enough to give off life-fragrance. Adversity had ennobled her. In truth, she had so weathered the years of a Revolution which had left her as destitute as it had left her free, that she was like Perdita's rosemary: a flower which keeps seeming and savor all the winter long. The North Wind had bolted about her in vain his whitest snows; and now the woods were turning green.

It was merely in keeping with Gabriella's nature, therefore, that as she grew to know the people among whom she had come to stay, their homes, their family histories, one household and one story should have engaged her deep interest: David's parents and David's career. As she drove about the country, visiting with the farmer's wife, there had been pointed out a melancholy remnant of a farm, desperately resisting absorption by some one of three growing estates touching it on three sides. She had been taken to call on the father and mother; had seen the poverty within doors, the half-ruined condition of the outhouses; had heard of their son, now away at the university; of how they had saved and he had struggled. A proud father it was who now told of his son's magnificent progress already at college.

"Ah," she exclaimed, thinking it over in her room that night, "this is something worth hearing! Here is the hero in life! Among these easy-going people this solitary struggler. I, too, am one now; I can understand him."

During the first year of her teaching, there had developed in her a noble desire to see David; but one long to be disappointed. He did not return home during his vacation; she went away during hers. The autumn following he was back in college; she at her school. Then the Christmas holidays and his astounding, terrible home-coming, put out of college and church. As soon as she heard of that awful downfall, Gabriella felt a desire to go straight to him. She did not reason or hesitate: she went.

And now for two months they had been seeing each other every few days.

Thus by the working out of vast forces, the lives of Gabriella and David had been jostled violently together. They were the children of two revolutions, separate yet having a common end: she produced by the social revolution of the New World, which overthrew mediaeval slavery; he by the intellectual revolution of the Old World, which began to put forth scientific law, but in doing this brought on one of the greatest ages of religious doubt. So that both were early vestiges of the same immeasurable race evolution, proceeding along converging lines. She, living on the artificial summits of a decaying social order, had farthest to fall, in its collapse, ere she reached the natural earth; he, toiling at the bottom, had farthest to rise before he could look out upon the plains of widening modern thought and man's evolving destiny. Through her fall and his rise, they had been brought to a common level. But on that level all that had befallen her had driven her as out of a blinding storm into the church, the seat and asylum of religion; all that had befallen him had driven him out of the churches as the fortifications of theology. She had been drawn to that part of worship which lasts and is divine; he had been repelled by the part that passes and is human.