American Gothic, page 74
Malcolm Murchison met Mrs. Todd while she was driving on the road one day. He knew her companion, in response to whose somewhat distant bow he lifted his hat. Attracted by the stranger’s appearance, he made inquiries about her in the town, and learned that she was a widow and rich in her own right. He sought opportunities to meet her, courted her, and after a decent interval of hesitation on her part – she had only just put off mourning for her first husband – received her promise to be his wife.
He broke the news to his housekeeper by telling her to make the house ready for a mistress. The housekeeper had been in power too long to yield gracefully, or perhaps she foresaw and dreaded the future. Some passionate strain of the mixed blood in her veins – a very human blood – broke out in a scene of hysterical violence. She pleaded, remonstrated, raged. He listened calmly through it all – he had anticipated some such scene and at the end said to her:
“You had better be quiet and obedient. I have heard what you have to say – this once – and it will be useless for you to repeat it, for I shall not listen again. If you are reasonable, I will send you to the other plantation. If not, I will leave you here, with your new mistress.”
She was silent for the time being, but raged inwardly. The next day she stole away from home, went to the town, sought out the new object of Murchison’s devotion, and told her something – just what she told no one but herself and the lady ever knew.
When Murchison called in the evening, Mrs. Todd sent down word that she was not at home. With the message came a note:
“I have had my wedded happiness spoiled once. A burnt child dreads the fire – l do not care to go twice through the same experience. I have learned some things about you that will render it impossible for me ever to marry you. It is needless to seek an explanation.”
He went away puzzled and angry. His housekeeper wore an anxious look, which became less anxious as she observed his frame of mind. He had been wondering where Mrs. Todd had got the information – he could not doubt what it was – that had turned her from him. Suddenly a suspicion flashed into his mind. He went away early the next morning and made investigations. In the afternoon he came home with all the worst passions of weak humanity, clad with irresponsible power, flaming in his eyes.
“I will teach you,” he said to his housekeeper, who quailed before him, “to tell tales about your master. I will put it out of your power to dip your tongue in where you are not concerned.”
There was no one to say him nay. The law made her his. It was a lonely house, and no angel of mercy stayed his hand.
About a week later he received a letter, – a bulky envelope.
On breaking the seal, he found the contents to consist of two papers, one of which was a letter from a friend and political associate of his uncle. It was dated at Washington, and announced the death of his Uncle Roger as the result of an accident. A team of spirited horses had run away with him and thrown him out of the carriage, inflicting a fatal injury. The letter stated that his uncle had lingered for a day, during which he had dictated a letter to his nephew; that his body had been embalmed and placed in a vault, to await the disposition of his relatives or representatives. His uncle’s letter was enclosed with the one above and ran as follows:
“My dear Malcolm: This is the last communication I shall ever make to you, I am sorry to say – though I don’t know that I ought to complain, for I have always been a philosopher, and have had a good time to boot. There must be an end to all things, and I cannot escape the common fate.
“You have been a good nephew and a careful manager, and I have not forgotten the fact. I have left a will in which you are named as my sole heir, barring some small provision for my sister Mary. With the will you will find several notes, and mortgages securing them, on plantations in the neighborhood – I do not need to specify, as they explain themselves; also some bonds and other securities of value and your grandmother’s diamond necklace. I do not say here where they are, lest this letter might fall into the wrong hands; but your housekeeper Viney knows their hiding place. She is devoted to you and to the family – she ought to be, for she is of our blood – and she only knows the secret. I would not have told her, of course, had I not thought of just some such chance as this which has befallen me. She does not know the value of the papers, but simply that they are important.
“And now, Malcolm, my boy, goodbye. I am crossing the river and I reach back to clasp your hand once more – just once.
“Your dying Uncle,
“Roger Murchison”
Malcolm Murchison took this letter to Viney. She had been banished from the house to a cabin in the yard, where she was waited on by the old black cook. He felt a little remorseful as he looked at her; for, after all, she was a woman, and there had been excuses for what she had done; and he had begun to feel, in some measure, that there was no sufficient excuse for what he had done.
She looked at him with an inscrutable face as he came in, and he felt very uncomfortable under the look.
“Viney,” he said, not unkindly, “I’m sorry I went so far, and I’m glad you’re getting better.”
Her expression softened, a tear rolled down her cheek, and he felt correspondingly relieved. It is so easy to forgive our own sins against others.
“Your old Master Roger is dead. I have just received a letter telling me how it happened. He was thrown from a buggy in a runaway and injured so badly that he died the same day. He had time to write me a letter, in which he says you can tell me where he put certain papers that you know about. Can you tell” – he remembered her condition – “can you show me where they are?”
A closer observer than Malcolm Murchison might have detected at this moment another change in the woman’s expression. Perhaps it was in her eyes more than elsewhere; for into their black depths there sprang a sudden fire. Beyond this, however, and a slight quickening of her pulse, of which there was no visible manifestation, she gave no sign of special feeling; and even if these had been noticed they might have been attributed to the natural interest felt at hearing of her old master’s death.
The only answer Viney made was to lift her hand and point it to her mouth.
“Yes, I know,” he said hastily, “you can’t tell me – not now at least, but you can surely point out the place to me.”
She shook her head and pointed again to her mouth.
“Is it hidden in some place that you can’t lead me to when you are able to get up?”
She nodded her head.
“Will it require words to describe it so that I can find it?” Again she nodded affirmatively.
He reflected a moment. “Is it in the house?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“In the yard?”
Again she made a negative sign. “In the barn?”
No.
“In the fields?”
No.
He tried for an hour, naming every spot he could think of as a possible hiding-place for the papers, but with no avail. Every question was answered in the negative.
When he had exhausted his ingenuity in framing questions he went away very much disappointed. He had been patiently waiting for his reward for many years, and now when it should be his, it seemed to elude his grasp.
“Never mind,” he said, “we will wait until you are better, and then perhaps you may be able to speak intelligibly. In the meantime you shall not want for anything.”
He had her removed to the house and saw that she received every attention. She was fed with dainty food, and such care as was possible was given to her wound. In due time it healed. But she did not even then seem able to articulate, even in whispers, and all his attempts to learn of her the whereabouts of the missing papers, were met by the same failure. She seemed willing enough, but unable to tell what he wished to know. There was apparently some mystery which only words could unravel.
It occurred to him more than once how simple it would be for her to write down the few words necessary to his happiness. But, alas! She might as well have been without hands, for any use she could make of them in that respect. Slaves were not taught to write, for too much learning would have made them mad. But Malcolm Murchison was a man of resources – he would have her taught to write. So he employed a teacher – a free colored man who had picked up some fragments of learning, and who could be trusted to hold his tongue, to teach Viney to read and write. But somehow she made poor progress. She was handicapped of course by her loss of speech. It was unfamiliar work too for the teacher, who would not have been expert with a pupil equipped with all the normal faculties. Perhaps she had begun too old; or her mind was too busily occupied with other thoughts to fix it on the tedious and painful steps by which the art of expression in writing is acquired. Whatever the reason, she manifested a remarkable stupidity while seemingly anxious to learn; and in the end Malcolm was compelled to abandon the attempt to teach her.
Several years passed in vain efforts to extract from Viney in some way the wished-for information. Meantime Murchison’s affairs did not prosper. Several other relatives claimed a share in his uncle’s estate; on the ground that he had died intestate. In the absence of the will, their claims could not be successfully disputed. Every legal means of delay was resorted to, and the authorities were disposed, in view of the remarkable circumstances of the case, to grant every possible favor. But the law fixed certain limits to delay in the settlement of an estate, and in the end he was obliged either to compromise the adverse claims or allow them to be fixed by legal process. And while certain of what his own rights were, he was compelled to see a large part of what was rightfully his go into hands where it would be difficult to trace or recover it if the will were found. Some of the estates against which he suspected the hidden notes and mortgages were held, were sold and otherwise disposed of. His worry interfered with proper attention to his farming operations, and one crop was almost a failure. The factor to whom he shipped his cotton went bankrupt owing him a large balance, and he fell into debt and worried himself into a fever. The woman Viney nursed him through it, and was always present at his side, a mute reproach for his cruelty, a constant reminder of his troubles. Her presence was the worst of things for him, and yet he could not bear to have her out of his sight; for in her lay the secret he longed for and which he hoped at some time in some miraculous way to extract from her.
When he rose from his sick-bed after an illness of three months, he was but the wreck of the strong man he had once been. His affairs had fallen into hopeless disorder. His slaves, except Viney, were sold to pay his debts, and there remained to him of the almost princely inheritance he had expected, only the old place on the sandhills and his slave, Viney, who still kept house for him. His mind was vacant and wandering, except on the one subject of the hidden will, and he spent most of the time in trying to extract from Viney the secret of its hiding-place. A young nephew came and lived with him and did what was necessary to hold the remnant of the estate together.
When the war came Viney was freed, with the rest of her brethren in bondage. But she did not leave the old place. There was some gruesome attraction in the scene of her suffering, or perhaps it was the home instinct. The society of humankind did not possess the same attraction for her as if she had not been deprived of the power of speech. She stayed on and on, doing the simple housework for the demented old man and his nephew, until the superstitious negroes and poor whites of the neighborhood said that she too shared the old man’s affliction. Day after day they sat on the porch, when her indoor work was done, the old man resting in the carved oaken arm-chair, and she in her splint-bottom chair; or the old man commanding, threatening, expostulating, entreating her to try, just once more, to tell him his uncle’s message – she replying in the meaningless inarticulate mutterings that we had heard; or the old man digging, digging furiously, and she watching him from the porch, with the same inscrutable eyes, though dulled somewhat by age, that had flashed upon him for a moment in the dimly lighted cabin where she lay on her bed of pain.
The summer following the visit I made to the old Murchison place I accompanied my wife North on a trip to our former home. On my return several weeks later I had occasion again to visit young Murchison, and drove over one morning to the house. As we drove up the lane I noticed a surprising change in the surroundings. A new gate had been hung, upon a pair of ugly cast-iron hinges. The grass in the path had been mowed, and the weeds and shrubs bordering it had been cut down. The neglected pleasure-garden had been reduced to some degree of order, and the ground around the house had been plowed and harrowed, and the young blades of grass were shooting up and covering the surface with a greenish down. The house itself had shared in the general improvement. The roof had been repaired and the broken windows mended, and from certain indications in the way of ladders and pails in the yard, I inferred that it was intended to paint the house. This however was merely a supposition, for house-painting is an art that languishes in the rural districts of the South.
Julius had been noticing my interest in these signs of prosperity, with a pleased expression that boded further surprises.
“What’s been going on here, Julius?” I asked.
“Ole Mars Murchison done dead, suh – died las’ mont’, an’ eve’ything goes ter young Mistah Roger. He’s done ’mence’ ter fix de ole place up. He be’n ober ter yo’ place lookin’ ’roun’, an’ he say he’s gwineter hab his’n lookin’ lak yo’n befo’ de yeah’s ober.”
We stopped the rockaway in front of the house. As we drew up, an old woman came out of the front door, in whom I recognized one of the strange couple I had seen on the piazza on my former visit. She seemed intelligent enough, and I ventured to address her.
“Is Mr. Murchison at home?”
“Yas, suh,” she answered, “I’ll call ’im.”
Her articulation was not distinct, but her words were intelligible. I was never more surprised in my life.
“What does this mean, Julius?” I inquired, turning to the old man, who was grinning and chuckling to himself in great glee at my manifest astonishment. “Has she recovered her speech?”
“She’d nebber lost it, suh. Ole Viney could ’a’ talked all de time, ef she’d had a min’ ter. Atter ole Mars Ma’colm wuz dead, she tuk an’ showed Mistah Roger whar de will an’ de yuther papers wuz hid. An’ whar yer reckon dey wuz, zuh?”
“I give it up, Julius. Enlighten me.”
“Dey wa’n’t in de house, ner de yah’d, ner de ba’n, ner de fiel’s. Dey wuz hid in de seat er dat ole oak a’m-cheer on de piazza yander w’at ole Mars Ma’colm be’n settin’ in all dese yeahs.”
The Sheriff’s Children
Branson County, North Carolina, is in a sequestered district of one of the staidest and most conservative States of the Union. Society in Branson County is almost primitive in its simplicity. Most of the white people own the farms they till, and even before the war there were no very wealthy families to force their neighbors, by comparison, into the category of “poor whites.”
To Branson County, as to most rural communities in the South, the war is the one historical event that overshadows all others. It is the era from which all local chronicles are dated, – births, deaths, marriages, storms, freshets. No description of the life of any Southern community would be perfect that failed to emphasize the all pervading influence of the great conflict.
Yet the fierce tide of war that had rushed through the cities and along the great highways of the country had comparatively speaking but slightly disturbed the sluggish current of life in this region, remote from railroads and navigable streams. To the north in Virginia, to the west in Tennessee, and all along the seaboard the war had raged; but the thunder of its cannon had not disturbed the echoes of Branson County, where the loudest sounds heard were the crack of some hunter’s rifle, the baying of some deep-mouthed hound, or the yodel of some tuneful negro on his way through the pine forest. To the east, Sherman’s army had passed on its march to the sea; but no straggling band of “bummers”1 had penetrated the confines of Branson County. The war, it is true, had robbed the county of the flower of its young manhood; but the burden of taxation, the doubt and uncertainty of the conflict, and the sting of ultimate defeat, had been borne by the people with an apathy that robbed misfortune of half its sharpness.
The nearest approach to town life afforded by Branson County is found in the little village of Troy, the county seat, a hamlet with a population of four or five hundred.
Ten years make little difference in the appearance of these remote Southern towns. If a railroad is built through one of them, it infuses some enterprise; the social corpse is galvanized by the fresh blood of civilization that pulses along the farthest ramifications of our great system of commercial highways. At the period of which I write, no railroad had come to Troy. If a traveler, accustomed to the bustling life of cities, could have ridden through Troy on a summer day, he might easily have fancied himself in a deserted village. Around him he would have seen weather-beaten houses, innocent of paint, the shingled roofs in many instances covered with a rich growth of moss. Here and there he would have met a razor-backed hog lazily rooting his way along the principal thoroughfare; and more than once he would probably have had to disturb the slumbers of some yellow dog, dozing away the hours in the ardent sunshine, and reluctantly yielding up his place in the middle of the dusty road.
