CHAPTER XXXII CHICORA WOOD

March, 1869.

I AM holding on to every moment of my full happy life, for this is to be our last year in Charleston. Mamma has applied for her dower, and when it is assigned her, we will move into the country, as Charlie is to graduate this spring at the college, and Jinty’s education is complete, and Mamma prefers the country where Charlie can make a living by planting rice. Every one is happy over it but me; I cannot bear the thought of giving up my full life; but I try not to think about it until it comes, but to enjoy the present without alloy. Anyway we would have to give up this beautiful house for the creditors of the estate want to sell it.

I have so many delightful friends; one specially who has actually taught me to love poetry, by his persistence in reading it to me. I do believe I have always liked it in my heart, for among my most cherished books from the time I was fourteen are Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales given me by my first hero Cousin Johnston Pettigrew, and a{341} little fat leather-bound copy of Homer’s Iliad, I never moved without these two. Then I liked Evangeline, and Hiawatha, but I never could get up any enthusiasm for The Lady of the Lake, so I had got into the habit of saying with a certain pride that I did not like poetry.

April. Every Friday evening Mr. Sass comes and we read Italian together, which is delightful. I have studied a little alone, and when I was about thirteen, to every one’s great amusement, I used to take an hour’s lesson in the afternoon, once a week, from M. Pose. I have always loved languages and Italian is especially beautiful, and in singing it is such a help to know it. Now we are reading Goldoni’s plays, and the Italian is so simple, it is very easy to read, very different from the Jerusalem, which we read first. My mind is so eager for knowledge, it is positively uncanny, it springs forward so to meet things, I fear me it is more than usually true of me that “Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers.”

I need ballast so much, if I had only had a man’s education. A good course of mathematics under a severe master would help me greatly, and I need help.

The only form of amusement that the young{342} men could afford was boating, and soon after we began the school, Charlie sent to the plantation and got Brother to send down to him one of the rowboats. Rainbow, the pride of the plantation, had been lent to the Confederate Government, for use on the fortifications and we never got her back, but Brother sent the next best and it was a fine rowboat. Charlie named it the Countess, and he and his friends had great pleasure in her; Tom Frost, Arthur Mazyck, William Jervey, James Lesesne and himself were the crew, and they invited their girl friends to the most delightful moonlight rows. They went on long fishing trips on Saturdays and all their holidays, coming back happy but their faces pealing from sunburn. The exercise kept them in good health and spirits.

May, 1869. Things are moving on rapidly. When Mamma applied for her dower, she said she would take a sixth of the real estate in fee simple, instead of a third for life only; she has received information that the creditors appointed a board of Appraisers, to value the property and decide, and after careful valuation they have decided that the plantation, Chicora Wood, where she has always lived will constitute a sixth of the land in value, and have awarded her that. It is too delightful!{343} and she is so happy, and we are all so happy, for the idea of giving up Chicora was dreadful, and we feared they would think it too valuable for a sixth. It has all to be repaired as the house is all torn to pieces, but Mamma has been so wonderful that she has invested more than a thousand dollars every year of the school, and she has begged Brother to engage carpenters and begin the restoration of the house and out-buildings at once, so that it will be ready for us next winter. I only wish my heart was not so heavy about going.

The packing up of all our belongings was a tremendous business, but in this as in everything else Charley was most efficient, and he did it with a good heart, as it was the greatest happiness to him that we were moving back to Chicora, and that he was going to plant the place. Jinty was also perfectly happy, the thought of being able to live on horseback once more filled her with joy. I, only, was downhearted; to me human nature had become more interesting than plain nature, and people more fascinating than plants. So I determined to apply for a place as music-teacher in the town of union, S. C., which had been held by a very charming friend of mine who played beautifully, Caro Ravenel. The family did not ap{344}prove of my doing this as mamma thought I needed rest; anyway, we were to go to the pineland for the summer and I would not have to leave for union until the autumn.

I remember well the last Sunday we were to be in Charleston; during the service I was so moved that I had to put down my heavy veil to conceal my tears!

Just at this time a most wonderful thing happened: mamma got a letter from our cousin, John Earl Allston, of Brooklyn, N. Y., saying:

“My dear Cousin:

“I have placed to your credit in the Bank of Charleston the sum of $5,000, which I hope will be useful to you.

“You need feel no sense of obligation in receiving it, for it is not one-half of what my Cousin Robert, your husband, did for me and mine in the past. When my mother’s house was to be sold over her head, he bought it in and gave it to her, and many other things he did for us, and it is a great pleasure to me to be able to do this for his widow and family.”

Of course, this was as great a blessing as it was a surprise. It so happened that my mother had,{345} in looking over some old papers recently, come upon a letter to my father, with a memorandum on the back in papa’s handwriting: “Application from John E. Allston, for an increase in the amount of allowance made to his brother Washington, as his health is much worse, and the expenses heavier; have directed that it be in future $500, instead of $300, as heretofore.” But she knew nothing about the purchase of the home.

It was too wonderful that this great good luck and mercy should come to us just at this moment, when it would enable mamma to buy things necessary to the beginning of the planting; for she not only had to repair the house at Chicora, but she would have to buy in her own horses and cows and oxen (which last are absolutely necessary to ploughing the rice-lands, as their cloven hoofs do not sink in the boggy land, in which a horse would go down hopelessly); also ploughs and harrows and wagons and carriages, all had to be paid for; so dear, unknown Cousin John had chosen the psychic moment to appear as deus ex machina.

Afterward Cousin John visited mamma at Chicora Wood, and we came to know and love him. He told with the most beautiful simplicity of the long and terrible struggle he had to make a liv{346}ing; like many an Allston he lacked entirely the commercial instinct, and it was much easier for him to spend money than to make it; but he had managed to have a home in Brooklyn, and support his wife and one daughter in very moderate comfort, until this adored only child reached the age of sixteen; then she grew pale and thin, without life, or spirit, or appetite, and terror seized the parents; the doctor called in said: “She must travel; this city air is killing her. Take her away at once to the mountains, and you may save her.” He had prescribed what to him seemed simple, but to the distracted father, who was straining every nerve just to provide daily food, it was utterly out of reach!

John Earl Allston had a very rich uncle, his mother’s brother, but once in the past, being in distress for money, he had written to ask a loan from him, not a large sum, and promising to pay by a certain date, when his income should come next. He not only did not receive the loan, but the refusal was almost insulting, to the effect that he, the uncle, had worked for his money, and he strongly advised his nephew to do the same, and not try to borrow. So Cousin John knew there was no use to apply to him again, and there was{347} no one else; the war was going on, and so my father was not accessible, and he had just to watch his darling fade away and die. Then his wife was so agonized over the misery of seeing death creep nearer and nearer and finally take her lovely child, that her health gave way. The doctor when called made the same prescription: “The only way to save her is to give her change of air and scene.” As before, this was impossible, and she soon was laid beside her child. About a year after Cousin John was left desolate and alone, the uncle died, and he was notified that he had inherited a fortune! It was most terrible to him. All that money, one hundredth part of which could have saved his beloved wife and daughter, to spend on himself alone!

It was truly dust and ashes, and intensified his sorrow. Then, when he found himself getting bitter and unlike himself, he called a halt. “Cousin,” he said, “I made up my mind to spend my time in giving away my money while I was alive, and have at least the enjoyment of making people happy by a little timely present, and you don’t know how their letters have helped me, for I find so many to whom a few thousand dollars are as great a boon and relief as a few hundred would{348} have been to me in my poverty. I did not know how much happiness I was going to get out of it.”

I think this is a good place to stop, for all of us were happy in the thought that my dear mother’s laborious life as the head of a large school was to end so happily, and that she would be able to rest and have time for the reading she so loved, and return to the country life which had become second nature to her, though conditions were so greatly changed, and she would certainly not have to complain of too many servants. I hope I have drawn her portrait and that of my father clearly enough for their children’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren to form some idea of their characters. It is with that hope and desire I have drawn this imperfect sketch, and I will be perfectly repaid for my efforts if I succeed in interesting them in the past.