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THE CAVALIERS OF VIRGINIA,
OR THE
RECLUSE OF JAMESTOWN.
AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE OLD DOMINION.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE KENTUCKIAN IN NEW-YORK."
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NO. 82 CLIFF-STREET, AND SOLD BY THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES.
1835.
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1834, by HARPER &BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the SouthernDistrict of New-York.
THE CAVALIERS OF VIRGINIA.
CHAPTER I.
The lightning streamed athwart the heavens in quick and vivid flashes.One peal of thunder after another echoed from cliff to cliff, while adriving storm of rain, wind and hail, made the face of nature black anddismal. There was something frightfully congenial in this uproar of thecontending elements with the storm raging in Bacon's heart, as he rushedfrom the scene of the catastrophe we have just witnessed. The darknesswhich succeeded the lurid and sulphureous flashes was not more completeand unfathomable than the black despair of his own soul. These vividcontrasts of light and gloom were the only stimulants of which he wassusceptible, and they were welcomed as the light of his path! By theirguidance he wildly rushed to his stable, saddled, led forth, and mountedhis noble charger, his own head still uncovered. For once the gallantanimal felt himself uncontrolled master of his movements, fleet as thewind his nimble heels measured the narrow limits of the island. A suddenglare of intense light served for an instant to reveal both to horse andrider that they stood upon the brink of the river, and a singleindication of the rider's will was followed by a plunge into thetroubled waves. Nobly and majestically he rose and sank with theswelling surges. His master sat erect in the saddle and felt hisbenumbed faculties revived, as he communed with the storm. The ragingelements appeared to sympathize with the tumult of his own bosom. Helaughed in horrid unison with the gambols of the lightning, and yelledwith savage delight as the muttering thunder rolled over his head.
There is a sublime stimulus in despair. Bacon felt its power; he wasconscious that one of the first laws of our organization,(self-preservation,) was suddenly dead within him.
The ballast of the frail vessel was thrown overboard, and the sails werespread to the gathering storm with reckless desperation. Compass andrudder were alike abandoned and despised--they were for the use of thosewho had hopes and fears. For himself he spread his sails and steered hiscourse with the very spirit of the storm itself. Nature in her wildestmoods has no terrors for those who have nothing to lose or win; noterrors for them who laugh and play with the very elements of herdestruction; they are wildly, madly independent. It is the sublimity ofthe maniac! Nevertheless there is a fascination in his reckless steps ashe threads the narrow and fearful windings of the precipice, orcarelessly buffets the waves of the raging waters. There are othersensations of a high and lofty character in this disjointed state of thefaculties. The very ease and rapidity with which ordinary dangers aresurmounted, serves to keep up the delusion, and were it not for theirresponsible condition of the mind, there would doubtless be impiety inits developments. Such were Bacon's sensations as he wildly stemmed thetorrent. He imagined that he was absolved from the ordinaryresponsibilities and hazards of humanity! and to his excited fancy, itseemed as though petty fears and grovelling cautions were all that laybetween humanity and the superior creations of the universe! that poweralso came with this absolution from the hopes, fears and penalties ofman's low estate. In imagination "he rode upon the storm and managed thewhirlwind." The monsters of the deep were his playmates, the ill-omenedbirds of the night his fellows. The wolves howled in dreadful concordwith the morbid efforts of his preternaturally distorted faculties, asthe noble and panting animal first struck the shore with his forefeet.
Emerging from the water, he stroked down the dripping mane with a wildand melancholy affection. The very consciousness of such a feeling yetremaining in his soul, which he dared indulge, produced for the momenta dangerous and kindred train of emotions. These as before led him uponforbidden ground, and again the wild tumult of his soul revived.Striking his heels into the animal's flanks, and bending upon his neck,he urged him over the ground at a pace in unison with the impetuosity ofhis own feelings.
The fire and gravel flew from his heels, as he bounded through thetrackless forests of the unsubdued wilderness. The frightened birds ofnight, and beasts of prey, started in affright, wild at the appearanceupon the scene of one darker and wilder than themselves. The veryreptiles of the earth shrunk to their hiding places, as the wildhorseman and his steed invaded their prescriptive dominions.
Mrs. Fairfax and her daughter, according to the commands of Sir WilliamBerkley, were conveyed to his mansion. To them all places were nowalike. The mother after a long and death-like trance, revived to abreathing and physical existence; but her mind was overrun with horrors.Reason was dethroned, and her lips gave utterance to the wildestfantasies. Events with which, and persons with whom, none of those abouther were conversant, were alluded to in all the incoherency andunbridled impetuosity of the maniac. The depletion and anodynes of thephysician were administered in vain. The ravages upon the seat ofnervous power had rendered the ordinary remedies to the more distantchords of communication utterly powerless. From a mild, bland, feebleand sickly state of melancholy, she was suddenly transformed into afrenzied lunatic. Her muscular power seemed to have received multipliedaccessions of strength. Yet there was "a method in her madness"--thesame names and scenes frequently recurred in her raving paroxysms. Thatof Charles was reiterated through the wild intonations of delusion;sometimes madly and revengefully, but more frequently in sorrow.
There was occasionally a moving and touching pathos in these latterdemonstrations--tearless it is true, but thrilling and electrifying inthe subdued whisper in which they were sometimes uttered. A flood ofpent up emotions was poured forth with a thrilling eloquence which hadtheir origin in the foundations of the soul. Scenes of days long past,were revived with a graphic and affecting power, which imaginationcannot give if their mysterious source and receptacle be not previouslyand abundantly stored with the richest treasures of the female heart andmind.
Because the by-standers do not happen to be in possession of all theprevious history of the sufferer, so as to put together these melancholyand broken relics, they are generally supposed to be the creations of adistempered fancy.
So it was with Mrs. Fairfax; her detached reminiscences fell upon thedull and uninstructed ears of her attendants as the wildesthallucinations of the brain, yet there was more connexion in theseflights than they imagined. They supposed that she thought herselfconversing in her most subdued and touching moments with young Dudley,merely because his name was frequently pronounced, and that he happenedto be present at the disastrous ceremony, which resulted so dreadfullyto all parties.
Among all these, Virginia's was the hardest lot--so delicately andexquisitely organized, so gentle--so susceptible--so full ofenthusiasm--so rich in innocence and hope, and all so suddenlyprostrated. Bacon was nerved with the wild yet exalted heroism ofmanhood in despair. Her mother was wrapt in a blessed oblivion of thepresent, but she was sensitively and exquisitely alive to the past,present and future. One fainting paroxysm suc
ceeded to another infrightful rapidity, for hours after she was removed to her uncle'shouse.
The painful intervals were filled up with a concentration of wretchedreflections, which none but a finely organized and cultivated femalemind could conceive or endure. No proper conception of these can beconveyed in language, unless the reader will suffer his imagination tograsp her whole condition at once.--Beginning at the first inception ofthe unsuspected passion for the noble youth who is the hero of ourtale--in her earliest infancy; and afterwards following her as itmatured and strengthened by the reflections of riper years.--Everyfaculty, both perceptive and intellectual, had combined to impress hisimage in the most indelible colours upon her heart. He had himselfripened these very faculties into maturity by the most assiduousculture, and won her esteem by the most touching, delicate, andrespectful attentions.
All these things in detail were painfully revolved in her mind. Everylandscape, every book, every subject, reminded her most forcibly of himwhom it was now criminal to think of. Hers was the sorrow that nosympathy could soften, no friendship alleviate. The sight of herintimate and confidential friend drove her mad, for her presenceinstantly revived the horrid recollections of the chapel. Long after theclouds had cleared away, the thunder still roared in her ears. Thesudden slamming of a door sounded to her nervous irritability, like thereport of a cannon. Her own shadow conjured up horrible images. The mostviolent and the most acute paroxysms of the human organization, however,have a tendency to wear themselves out, when left uninterruptedly totheir own action. Such was necessarily, in some measure, the case withVirginia; her mother's more alarming condition calling so much moreloudly for attention, and Wyanokee having fled, and Harriet's presenceproving so evidently hurtful, she was consequently left with a singlesable domestic. Essentially she was in profound solitude; and after thefirst paroxysms which we have described, her mind naturally andirresistibly fell into a train of retrospective thought. Startling andhorrifying they certainly were at first, but still the mind clung tothem. Many of the circumstances of the late disastrous meeting were toher as yet unexplained. To these she clung as to the last remnants ofhope; they were the straws at which she grasped with the desperation ofthe drowning wretch. She had at first received her mother's tacitacknowledgment of the mysterious stranger's statement, or rather theeffect produced by that statement as irresistible confirmation of itstruth. But now she doubted the propriety of her hasty conviction. Shemarvelled at the effect produced upon her mother--yet there were othermeans of accounting for it. Would she not have exhibited a likesensibility, had a like statement been made, however false, under suchcircumstances?--did she not deny it, positively deny it at the moment?Such was the train of reasoning by which her mind began to reassureitself; and it must be recollected that she had never heard more of hermother's history, than that she was a childless widow when her fathermarried her. Sufficient was left however of first impressions to renderher situation one of intense suffering and suspense. She dared not askfor Bacon, yet a restless and gnawing anxiety possessed her, to knowwhether he acknowledged the truth of the dreadful tale without a murmur,and without investigation. But her physical organization could not keeppace with the ever elastic mind; her gentle frame gave sensibleevidence that the late violent shocks had made sad inroads upon hersystem. One chill was succeeded by another, until they were in theirturn followed by a burning fever. In this condition she fell again intothe hands of the physician, and all mental distress was soon lost in theparamount demands of the suffering body.
Toward the hour of midnight, the storm subsided. Fragments of the blackcurtain which had hung over the face of the heavens, shot up from theeastern horizon in stupendous blue masses, every now and thenilluminated to their summits with the reflection of the raging elementsbeyond. The violence of the conflict in Bacon's breast had alsosubsided. He rode along the banks of the Chickahominy, his chargerdripping with wet and panting with the exhaustion of fatigue. The bridlehung loose upon his neck, and his rider bent over his mane like aworn-out soldier. His own locks had unbent their stubborn curls to thedriving storm, and hung about his neck in drooping masses. His silkenhose were spattered with mud, and his gay bridal dress hung about hisperson in lank and dripping folds. His horse had for some time followedthe bent of his own humour, and was now leading his master in theneighbourhood of human habitations. The boughs of the tall gloomy pineswere fantastically illuminated with broad masses of light, which everand anon burst from the smouldering remnants of a huge pine log fire.Its immediate precincts were surrounded by some fifty or more roundmatted huts, converging toward the summit like a gothic steeple. Aroundthe fire, and under a rude shelter, lay some hundred warriors, wrappedin profound slumber while one of their tribe stood sentinel over thecamp.
When Bacon had approached within a short distance of this picturesquegroup, the sentinel sprung upon his feet, and uttered a shrillwar-whoop. The horse stood still, erected his neck and pricked up hisears, while his master folded his arms upon his breast and calmlysurveyed the scene. Those warriors who slept under the sheds near thefire, assumed the erect attitude with a simultaneous movement, joiningin the wild chorus of the sentinel's yell as they arose.
Hundreds of men, women, and children poured from the surroundinghuts,--most of the grown males, with their faces painted in blue and redstripes, their heads shaved close to the cranium, except a tuft of hairupon the crown, and all armed in readiness for battle. Bacon assumed thecommand of his horse and rode into the very centre of this wildcongregation,--the fore hoofs resting upon the spent embers of the fire.
He was greeted with another yell, after which the savages stood back andviewed his strange and untimely appearance with wonder not unmixed withawe. His bridle again fell from his hand, and his arms were crossed uponhis breast. His countenance was wild and haggard, and a flash ofmaniacal enthusiasm shot athwart his pale features. His dress underpresent circumstances was fantastical in the extreme.
A grim old warrior with savage aspect after staring some time intenselyat the intruder, was suddenly struck with something in his appearance,and stepping out a few paces from the mass of his companions began toaddress them in his own language, now and then pointing to the horseman,and using the most violent gesticulations. At another time the youthwould have been not a little alarmed at certain significant signs whichthe speaker used when pointing to himself. These consisted in twirlinghis war club round and round, as if he was engaged in the most deadlyconflict. Then he placed his hand to the side of his head and bent itnear the earth as if about to prostrate himself, and finally pointing toBacon. When he had done this, several of the crowd closed in toward hishorse, and seemed intensely to examine the lineaments of hiscountenance. Having satisfied themselves, they set up a simultaneousyell of savage delight. He was quickly drawn from the saddle, his handstied behind him, and then placed in the centre of the assembled throng.
Their savage orgies now commenced; a procession of all the grown malesmoved in a circle of some fifty feet in diameter round his person.Several of the number beat upon rude drums, formed of large calabasheswith raw hides stretched tight and dried over the mouths; while othersdexterously rattled dried bones and shuffled with their feet to theirown music. Others chanted forth a monotonous death song; the wholeforming the rudest, wildest, and most savage spectacle imaginable.
Bacon himself stood an unmoved spectator of all these barbarousceremonies. He felt a desperate and reckless indifference to what mightbefall him. Human endurance had been stretched to its utmost verge, andhe felt within him a longing desire to end the vain struggle in thesleep of death. To one like him, who had in the last few hours enduredthe mental tortures of a hundred deaths, their savage cruelties had noterrors. A faint hope indeed may have crossed his mind, that somewarrior more impetuous than his comrades, might sink his tomahawk deepinto his brain in summary vengeance for the death of their chief. Butthey better understood the delights of vengeance. After performing theirrude war-dance for some time, they commenced the more
immediatepreparations for the final tragedy. His hands were loosed, his personstripped and tied to a stake, while some dozen youths of both sexesbusied themselves in splitting the rich pine knots into minute pins.These being completed, a circular pile of finely cleft pieces of thesame material was built around his body, just near enough for the fireto convey its tortures by slow degrees without too suddenly ending theirvictim. A deafening whoop from old and young announced the commencementof the ceremony. Each distinguished warrior present had the privilegeof inserting a given number of splinters into his flesh. The grim oldsavage who had first identified Bacon as the slayer of their chief,stepped forward and commenced the operation. He thrust in the tearingtorments with a ferocious delight, not a little enhanced by the physicalconvulsive movements of his victim at every new insertion. Worn outnature however could not endure the uninterrupted completion of theprocess, and the victim swooned away.
His body hung by the thongs which had bound his waist and hands to thestake, his head drooping forward as if the spirit had already taken itsflight. He was immediately let down and the tenderest care observed toresuscitate him, in order that they might not be cheated of their fullrevenge. His head and throat were bathed in cold water and his parchedlips moistened through the medium of a gourd. At length he revived, andstrange as it may appear, to a keener consciousness of his situationthan he had felt since he left the church. All the wild horrors of hisfate stared him in the face. The savages screamed with delight at hisreturning animation. Copious drafts of water were administered as hecalled for them. The most intense pain was already experienced from thefestering wounds around each of the wooden daggers driven into hisflesh. Again he prayed that some of them might instantaneously reach hisheart, but his prayer was not destined to be granted. He was againfastened to the stake, and the second in dignity and authority proceededto perform his share of the brutal exhibition. At this moment a piercingscream rent the air, and all tongues were mute, all hands suspended.
The sound proceeded from the extreme right of the encampment. Here alarger hut than the rest stood in solitary dignity apart from theothers, like an officer's _marquee_ in a military encampment. In a fewmoments the rude door was thrust aside and an Indian female of exquisiteproportions rushed to the scene of butchery, and threw herself betweenthe half immolated victim and his bloodthirsty tormentors. Upon her headshe wore a rude crown, composed of a wampum belt tightly encircling herbrows, and surmounted by a circlet of the plumes of the kingfisher,facing outwards at the top. Around her waist was belted a short frock ofdressed deer-skin, which fell in folds about her knees, and wasornamented around the fringed border with beads and wampum. Over herleft shoulder and bust she gracefully wore a variegated skin dressedwith the hair facing externally; from this her right arm extended, bareto the shoulder, save a single clasp at the wrist; and she carried inher hand a long javelin mounted at the end with a white crystal. Theremaining parts of her figure exhibited their beautiful proportionsneatly fitted with a pair of buck-skin leggins, extended and fringed onthe seam with porcupine quills, copper and glass ornaments. Similardecorations were visible on her exquisitely proportioned feet andankles. Thrusting her javelin in the ground with energy, and proudlyraising her head, she cast a withering glance of scorn and indignationupon the perpetrators of the cruelty. Her address, translated intoEnglish, was to the following purport: "Is it for this," and she pointedto Bacon's bleeding wounds, "that I have been invested with theauthority of my sires? Was it to witness the perpetration of thesecruelties that I have been almost dragged from the house of my palefaced friends? Scarcely has the fire burned out which was kindled tocelebrate my arrival among you, before it is rekindled to sacrifice inits flames him who redeemed me from captivity. Is this the return whichChickahominies make for past favours? If so, I pray you to tear from myperson these emblems of my authority among you."
She was immediately answered by the old warrior who had commenced thetortures; "Did not the long knife[1] slay the chief of our nation?"
[Footnote 1: This term originated in Virginia.]
He was answered by a yell of savage delight from all the warriorspresent. Wyanokee (for it was she, as the reader has no doubt alreadysurmised) continued, "Ay, he did slay King Fisher and his son--but werethey not unjustly attempting to take away the property of the palefaces? and did they not commit the deed against their solemn promise andtreaty, and after they had smoked the pipe of peace? For shame,warriors and men--would ye turn squaws, and murder a brave and nobleyouth because he had fought for his own people and for the preservationof his own life?"
Her harangue was not received with the submission and respect which sheexpected--many murmured at her defence, and claimed the death of thecaptive as a prescriptive right and an act of retributive justice. Sheadvanced to cut the cords which bound the prisoner, but twenty morepowerful arms instantly arrested her movement. Tomahawks were raised infrightful array, while deep and loud murmurs of discontent, and demandsfor vengeance rent the air. She placed herself before the captive, andelevating her person to its utmost height, and extending her handsbefore him as a protection, she cried, "Strike your tomahawks here, intothe daughter of your chief, of him who led you on to battles and tovictory, but harm not the defenceless stranger." The principal warriorsheld a consultation as to the fate of the prisoner. It was of but shortduration, there being few dissenting voices to the proposition of theold savage, already mentioned as principal spokesman of the party. Theysoon returned and announced to their new queen that the council of thenation had decreed the prisoner's death. "Never, never!" exclaimed theimpassioned maiden, "unless you first cleave off these hands with whichI will protect him from your fury. Ha!" she cried, as a sudden thoughtseemed to strike her; "there is one plan of redemption by your own laws.I will be his wife!" A deep blush suffused her cheeks as she forced thereluctant announcement from her lips. An expression of sadness anddisappointment soon spread itself over the countenances of therevengeful warriors, for they knew that she had spoken the truth.Another council was immediately held; at which it was determined thattheir youthful queen, might according to the usages of the nation, takethe captive for her husband, in the place of her kinsman who was slain.When this was proclaimed, Wyanokee slowly and doubtingly turned her eyesupon Bacon to see whether the proposition met a willing response in hisbreast. A single glance sufficed to convince her that it did not.Instantly, however, recovering her self-possession, she cut the cordsand led him to her hut, where after having been reinvested with the sadremnants of his bridal finery, we must leave him for the night.