All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography

Indeed, before one o’clock all we possessed, except what would go with us, was on its way to the pier, where the goods for the Natchez were lying. Then I told Cinda, the negress who had served us ever since our arrival, the state of the case, and gave her permission, after cooking our dinner, to pack all the groceries left, for her own use, taking her promise to go home the next morning. So, after our meal, there was nothing to do but to put the house in order, turn the key in the door, and give it to my neighbor. Before five o’clock we were ready to leave Memphis forever, and I could not help turning my face towards the spot where we had laid the dust of our dear Edith. In this silent farewell I was inadvertently joined by Robert. Our eyes met, but for a few moments we were silent. Then Robert said, “She is not there!” and I bent my head, and turned to the living. Cinda was carrying Lilly, and Mary walked with us, holding her father’s hand. In twenty minutes we were on board the Natchez. I did not like her. She was not a nice boat, and there was an atmosphere that I resented, though I knew not why I should do so. She seemed to have very few passengers, and I only saw three women among them. There was a lack of the usual stir in her leaving. I missed the negro songs and shouts and laughter. All was too still. I missed the crowds usually on the bluff or pier, when a boat was going to sail. Why were they not present? We had a large, comfortable cabin, but it did not please me. I said to Robert the sheets and pillow cases were not clean, but he would not let me ask for different ones. And the heat was terrible.

We had a fairly good meal, just as the sun sunk, and, while eating it, I heard great confusion, and the noise of many people coming on board. They were not accompanied by any of the pleasant sounds usual on such an event – no merry good-byes, no loving messages, no eager calls for recognition. On the contrary, there was sobbing and crying, and one long-drawn wail, inexpressibly mournful and savage, from a number of voices together. I looked at the purser, who sat at the head of the table; he seemed unconscious of the disturbance; none of the passengers appeared to be astonished, and Robert kept his eyes on his plate and would not look at me.

After supper I went on deck. A few men were scattered about; the captain and officers appeared to be busy and watchful; there was an air of constraint; and oh, the heat! The damp, foggy, suffocating heat! There was no comfort outside, and I went in and undressed the children. As I was doing so, Robert looked into the cabin, and said, “I am going to the upper deck to smoke.”

“Robert,” I asked, “what kind of a ship is this? On the lower deck I saw quite a crowd of people.”

“What kind of people?”

“How could I tell? All was dark. I just saw that the crowd consisted of men and women – mostly women.”

“Well, dear, the boat is, I am sorry to say, a slaver; that is, it carries the negroes collected in the states of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky down to the New Orleans slave market for sale.”

“Why? There is a market in Memphis.”

“It pays to send them to New Orleans. Mr. Fackler told me it was a slaver, but advised us to take it, rather than to wait for the next boat, which, under the circumstances, might be delayed. We are fleeing for our lives, Milly, do not forget that, and we cannot be too particular, lest we lose them.”

I said only, “Oh!” but Robert understood my dissatisfaction, and went to the deck unhappy.

I was too cross to care. Never in all my life, before or since, have I been so long and so willingly ill-tempered. I asked myself for no reason; I never tried to make an excuse for the mood. I just gave way to the feeling, and rather enjoyed my wickedness. Mary looked at me with strange questions in her gray eyes. Lilly crept into my arms, or clung to my skirts. I petted them when Robert was not present; when he was, it pleased me to speak sharply, or not answer their questions at all. Evidently, then, it was Robert who had offended me. Poor fellow! He tried being cheerful and bringing me little bits of ship gossip. I perfectly scorned to see there was anything in life worth smiling at. Then he tried being a little aloof, and only looked at me with hasty glances, and I was troubled. I could not gaze into his sorrowful eyes, and not see in them “Love’s philtred euphrasy.” But one day pitiful love, nay loving pity, bid the tides of memory cast on my soul a little spray of tears. It happened thus:

I had dressed the children, gone to the deck with them, and been compelled to come back to the cabin immediately. The air quivered with heat; the river, rolling rapidly onward, was like a river of death; there was no whirr of bird’s wings over it, no sound of a bird’s song on its banks, and vegetation there was apparently withered. The blacks on the lower deck were absolutely silent and motionless, except for a woman’s long drawn wail, always quickly stopped by a man’s passionate command. The captain spoke to no one; the officers passed constantly to and fro, always bent on some duty; in fact, even my short observations convinced me, that every man on the ship was watching the lower deck. I said to Mary, “Let us go to our room, dear,” and she answered, “Please, Mamma, and put on my nightgown; these things” – pointing to her dress and shoes and stockings – “they hurt Mary so much.”

I was granting the child her request, when Robert looked into the cabin. “I heard you and the children were on deck,” he said. “I was glad you were taking a little change. Why did you come in?”

“I could not endure the sight of the river.”

“It is a grand river, Milly; you should not speak ill of it.”

“It is like the river of sorrows – ’ Acheron sad and black and deep.’ I hate it with my whole soul,” and I spoke with passionate force, throwing down Mary’s coral necklace to emphasize my words, and scattering its scarlet and gold beads on the floor.

The child uttered a cry, and Robert said, “Hush, Mary! Papa will pick them up for you.”

“The Acheron, Milly?” he queried, as he gathered the scattered beads; “I have heard of it, but I cannot place it. Where is it?”

“In hell,” I answered.

I said no more, for Robert dropped the beads he had gathered into Mary’s pinafore, and then went to the door. As he stood with it open in his hand, he said, “Forgive me, Milly. I have brought you much sorrow, an Acheron of it! Poor child! I meant to make you happier than all our dreams. God help us both!”

As he spoke I lifted my eyes to his face, and an instantaneous penetrating sense of my sin made my soul tremble. For it was a handsome, loving face, though it looked, after all, as one made for suffering; half-pleading and half-defiant – the face of a man I could hurt, but could not move.

“Robert!” I said, and I knew that my voice had its old loving tones.

“Milly!” And he closed the door, opened his arms, and I buried my contrition in his tender words and kisses. It was he, and not me, who made excuses for my behavior; then he told me, that we should be in New Orleans the next day, and would take as long a rest as possible at the St. Charles Hotel.

At that time I wondered, and was ashamed and sorry for the temper I had not been able to control, but I was far from understanding its cause, and perhaps blamed myself a little more than I deserved. For I am sure now, that my mind was infected by the anger, grief, and misery with which I was traveling; that my soul had retired from her surroundings, and so left me to the tyranny of physical emotions. The mind, as well as the body, is subject to malignant diseases, and, in some fretful moment, when I had surrendered myself to disaffection, deposed will, and given all power to feeling, I had caught the mental malady so rife a few yards away from me.

Mental, or spiritual crowding, is just as injurious as physical crowding – perhaps more so; and, as people are made ill, or money-mad in a great city by breathing sickly, cast-off commercial atoms, so I was made angry, moody, sullen or passionate, by the cast-off thoughts of the wrathful, miserable crowd of sufferers almost at my elbow. Had I known then, what I know now, I would have called constantly for the help of Him who was able to say to such spiritual invasions, “Retro me, Sathana,” “Get thee behind me, Satan,” and drawn from the simple exercise of this power, the love that is omnipotent against all evil. And, if this excuse does not seem rational to my readers, let all who have never been cross under the suffering caused by excessive heat or cold, or the strain of things known and unknown, reprove me. The number of such accusers will be few, and their words mildly uncertain.

Two days after this explanation we were resting in the cool shadowy rooms of the St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans. I saw nothing of this city. Fever was present in many quarters, and Robert was anxiously looking for some ship ready to leave the port. He found a fine bark bound for New York, and also a small steamer going to Galveston, early on our third day in New Orleans.

“Which shall it be, Milly?” he asked.

“Have you any doubt, Robert?” I replied.

“A little. It seems I made a great mistake in not going to Boston. Is it too late now?”

“Yes, dear. Fortune does not stand twice on a man’s threshold. New York was our point of turning, and we turned to the West, instead of the North.”

“Mr. Curtis would not renew his offer, I suppose?”

“If he did, you would have to tell him all that has taken place.”

“That would be foolish.”

“It would be honorable.”

“Milly, I have seen all my life, that it is very near as bad to be accused as it is to be guilty. In a few words, a man is accused of some cruel or dishonorable deed – four or five words will do that wrong – but the accused, however innocent, cannot go about with the proofs of his innocence in his pocket, and expect people to take an interest in them. That unspeakable man knew this; he calculated on its influence, even if his plot failed.”

“Do not let us speak of him. His very name is malign on our lips. Robert, we have been traveling thousands of miles towards Texas. Shall we turn back now? Or shall we go on?”

“To go to New York, Milly – ”

“Is to turn back.”

“Then we had better go forward to Texas.”

“It seems the only road open to us.”

So Robert took passage for us on The Lone Star, bound for Galveston, and I had a singular failure of heart and hope. I had longed so to go to Boston, but that prayer had fallen from out my prayers and had come to nothing. Chicago had been our first station on a wrong road; all it promised had turned to failure, and it had taken the hand of God to lift us out of the ruth and ruin we met in places to which we were not sent. Yellow fever and cholera had driven us down that dreary, steaming, terrible river. Would Texas indeed give a future to our mistaken past? Then my eyes fell upon my children playing with such careless sweet content in the cool, dusky room. They had no fear as to where their father and I were going to take them. They believed in our love and wisdom. Would God be less kind to us than we were to them? Impossible! Then why not give Him the same child-like confidence and affection? For, if I did not know where we were going, I did know

“We could not drift,Beyond God’s love and care.”

That surely was sufficient.

CHAPTER XII

A PLEASANT JOURNEY

“… all that is most beauteous imaged thereIn happier beauty; more pellucid streamsIn ampler ether, a diviner air,And fields invested with purpureal gleams.”

We left New Orleans that evening, and, on the second morning thereafter, we were far out on the Gulf of Mexico. The blessed north wind was gently rocking The Lone Star. I could smell the sea, and hear the beating of its great heart, as deep called unto deep. Then, raising myself in my berth, I could see the white horses chasing each other over the blue waters. The port hole being open, I had been drinking oxygen all night, and I was a new woman, fit for anything, and afraid of nothing that could come to me.

I dressed myself and the children as quickly as possible, and we went to the saloon for breakfast. Then I sent for Robert to join us, but he had breakfasted with the captain; so we ate the good meal leisurely, and then went on deck. Oh, what a joy it was! How the children ran and played in the cool, fresh breeze! How happy, and how well Robert looked! And how heavenly it was, just to lie on the mattress the captain had placed for me in a snug corner, and shut my eyes, and let the wind, and the sea, and the sun revivify and remake me. I could hear my soul laugh low within me, and, when I was a little more rested, I knew it would break into song. In the meantime, I slept, and slept, and the wind and the waves sung me some lullaby of my fathers – some ancient song of love and courage, such as I used to hear Tom Huddleston sing in the Huddleston quarter in Whitehaven. It seemed years and years ago; though, when I tried to count them, I could only make out that it might be six or seven, since I heard the gay sailor lad singing to me,

“Round the world and home again,That is the sailor’s way.”

The Lone Star was a slow ship, and the wind was a little contrary, but we were not troubled by delay. For a short space it was good to be out of the world, and away from all its cares and obligations; we were growing younger and stronger with every hour’s respite. The passengers were few in number, and consisted mainly of a respectable party of German emigrants bound for the beautiful colony of New Braunfels. They kept to themselves, but, in the still moonlit evenings, sung the folk songs of their native land in the most delightful manner.

This pleasant journeying soon came to an end. One morning when I awoke, the ship was as still as “a painted ship upon a painted ocean.” We were lying at anchor off Galveston bar, and, after breakfast, the captain told us if we wished to land at Galveston we had better get all our trunks ready. I was in favor of our landing at Galveston. From the sea the city had a tropical and most attractive appearance. “It is a city in a garden,” I said to Robert, and he was equally pleased with its pretty white houses, and flowery beauty, for the perfume of its gardens was distinctly felt on the ship.

It was nearly noon ere our captain’s signal received any attention, then a small boat arrived, and every man in it was dressed in white linen. They held a very serious conversation with our captain, and I was sure, from his air of annoyance and perplexity, that there was some trouble to be met; and, in a few minutes, we were made aware of its nature.

“Gentlemen,” he said, to a little group of passengers, of which Robert and I were a part, “gentlemen, we are in an almighty fix. There is yellow fever in Galveston – plenty of it, already – and likely to be much more, and that’s a fact. So none of us will be allowed to land there, unless we have homes in the city, and have been made immune by a previous attack.”

The gentlemen in white then examined the passengers, and only four were permitted to land. Our case was hopeless: we were Europeans, and particularly liable to become infected, as were also the body of emigrants on board. What were we to do? There were two alternatives. We could return to New Orleans on The Lone Star for the chance of some ship going to New York, or we could continue our journey into the interior of Texas.

“How can the journey be continued?” asked Robert.

“A small steamer will be sent this afternoon,” was the answer. “It will convey all wishing to go inland up the Buffalo Bayou to Harrisburg. The leader of the German emigrants tells me they will be met at Harrisburg with vehicles to carry them and their baggage to New Braunfels.”

“But we are traveling alone,” continued Robert, “and how can we proceed?”

“Where are you going to?”

“To Austin.”

“Well, then, the railway goes some distance beyond Harrisburg – a few miles – and it may yet be in service. If so, you will take it to its terminus. There the mail coach for Austin and San Antonio will call for mail, and no doubt it will have room for you. Travel is not very lively at present.”

“Do you know the days and hours when the mail coach is due at this terminus?” Robert asked.

“No, indeed!” was the smiling reply. “Bud Terry makes his own hours. But he’s sure to come along sooner or later. I did hear that Bud was down, but I don’t take any stock in that report. There’s a deal of business just now between Washington and Austin, and Bud knows his duty, and, gen’rally speaking, does it.”

All this was very uncertain consolation, and Robert looked at me in bewildered anxiety. I had a singular satisfaction in the affair. It had been taken out of our hands. We were shut up to one road, and, unless we were willing to go back, and gaze after our life and work and will sailed by, we must take it. If we refused, I did not dare to search through what hopeless, desultory ways our path might lie; for so it happeneth to those who fear to follow the one road open to them.

“You see, Robert,” I said with a smile, “there is nothing left for us to do, but to go to Harrisburg. Have we sufficient money to return to New York?”

“No.”

“Is it safe to return to New Orleans?”

“No; and the captain says he will not go back to New Orleans. He is going to Pensacola.”

“Where is that?”

“In Florida, I think.”

I did not then know where Florida was, but knew that it was an aggravating thing to question an anxious, undecided man about trifles, not relevant, so I checked my desire for information and remarked cheerfully, “Then, dear, it is Harrisburg. That far is certain. When we reach Harrisburg, the way will open, that also is certain. One of the German women emigrants told me, that there would be a number of wagons waiting for them at Harrisburg. If we can do no better, they will let us travel with them.”

So we waited for the boat to take us to Harrisburg. It did not arrive until late in the afternoon. Then, with a little effort to be merry over our adventures, we were transferred to the small, very narrow steamer, that was to take us up the Buffalo Bayou. And, as soon as I was on her deck, I threw off all care and responsibility. I felt that we were in charge of some power, who knew all about our affairs, and who was quite able to manage them – especially as we were not.

That sail up the Buffalo Bayou was well worth while. No one taking it in those early days can ever forget it. Certainly it is part of my everlasting remembrances. We reached the Bayou shortly before dark, at least it was light enough to see the famous plain of San Jacinto, on which Houston and his eight hundred gentlemen, wiped out the Spanish army under Santa Anna, and gave to the American settlers in Texas that religious and civic liberty which was their right. I noticed that the captain bared his head as he passed it, and, during the evening, he told me the gallant, stirring story, which I have retold in my novel, “Remember the Alamo.” It made a wonderful impression on me, and I thought how grand it would be to live among men who had at least once in their lives scorned the mean god Mammon, and, for the faith of their fathers, and the civil liberty without which life was of no value, offered themselves willingly for their God and their country.

“We are going to live among heroes,” I said; “and, O Robert, after a life among weavers and traders, will not that be a great experience?”

Robert, who had been listening to the same story, answered, “I suppose it may, Milly, but there are heroes at the loom and at the counter both. I have known them.”

Then we were actually in the dense shadows of the Buffalo Bayou, and no one felt like talking. It was a narrow, very narrow, still, black water. A thick growth of trees on both banks of it met above our heads, and shut out all light, but that from the pine flambeaus, burning not only on board, but at intervals along the shore, showing us, with lurid, smoky lights, that we were forging our way through a water full of alligators. Their ugly black eyes dotted it, and they lay along the banks of the stream, barking at us, as we passed. It was the most unearthly sail the imagination can picture, in no way made more human by the half-clothed negroes managing the flaming torches, and the hot, heavy atmosphere, sickly with the scent of magnolias.

Landing at Harrisburg, we found there was fever in every house. Under the very roof which sheltered us from the poisonous night air, a man was dying of the vomìto. Though he was at the other end of the long building, we could only too distinctly hear the awful struggle of the suffering soul to escape from its tortured body. I know not how it was, but I had not then the slightest fear of the sickness. The children slept soundly, and Robert and I sat by them, talking in whispers, and praying silently for the poor soul crying out in its piteous extremity. Soon after midnight a dreadful silence stole through the house, and we fell asleep. For I knew, and was sure, that the agony of the strong man was over; that

“Pale from the Passion of Death,Cold from the cold, dark River,Staggering blind with Death,With trembling steps yet fleet,Over the stones of darkness,He had stumbled to His feet.For day and night Christ standeth,Scanning each soul as it landeth,With a face that hath once been dead,With a mouth which once did cryFrom that River in agony, —‘The waters go over my head.’”

In the morning we were awakened by a pale, sorrowful woman, barefooted, and in the simplest garment, bringing us fresh water, some biscuits just out of the oven and a cup of tea. But she brought us neither milk or butter. “They hev been in the way of it all night,” she said; “they’re full of death. Sure!”

She had wept till she had no tears left, and the worst was over. “He is gone,” she added. “Jim, he’s gone! Eat a mouthful and get away. It isn’t safe here – and you be strangers, too.”

We did as she advised, and found a queer little empty train ready to start for a terminus some twenty miles further inland. Here there was a rude shanty of unpainted wood, the last station of a line only just being built; but, to our great delight, we found a large coach drawn by four horses waiting for us. It was driven by a Mexican, beautifully dressed in black velvet, adorned with silver lace and silver buttons. Moreover, he had the manners of a Spanish grandee, and his way of addressing us as Señor and Señorita, and the nonchalant skill with which he managed those four wild mustangs, were things to see and to never forget. He asked me to take the box seat beside him, but Robert insisted on my going inside with the children. He did not believe in the safety of our charioteer.

But never again in this life, never, never again, shall I have such a glorious ride. For to one coming from the old world at that time, Texas was a new world. That afternoon, after mounting a steep hill, and then thundering down it at lightning speed, the horses were allowed to rest and draw breath for ten minutes. Then I got out of the coach, and was transported by the wonderful beauty and majesty of the scene before me. The flowery prairie rolled away magnificently to the far-off horizon, here and there jumping into hills, over which marched myriads of red cattle. Masses of wild honeysuckle scented the air for miles and miles, and a fresh odor of earth and clover, mixed with the perfume of wild flowers, was the joy we breathed. But, best of all was the clear, sweet atmosphere. It went to the heart like wine. It made us laugh, it made us sing, and I never heard on any other spot of earth such melodious fluting as the winds of Texas made all around us.

Surely it was the giants of the unflooded world, who cleared off and leveled these boundless plains as a dwelling place for liberty. Looking back to that charmed drive over them, I thank God, even as I write, that I was then permitted to see earth as it may be, when He shall make “His tabernacle with men.” And I remember this hour that, when I could find no words fit to express the delight with which my heart was filled, that wonderful Old Book that is the interpreter of all human feeling came to my help, and I touched Robert’s arm, as we stood together, and said, “How beautiful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” I have no doubt it is much changed now, settled and improved; but it lives in my memory green and sweet as the fields of Paradise, with the fresh wild winds gurgling melodiously through all its lovely spaces.