Chapter XXXI: Summing Up

It is early June, and the balmy south wind is blowing soft and warm round Redstone Hall, which, with its countless roses in full bloom, and its profusion of flowering shrubs and vines, looked wondrously beautiful without, while within, the sunlight of domestic peace is shining with no cloud to dim its brightness. Frederic and Marian are perfectly happy, for the dark night which enshrouded them so long has passed away, and the day they fancy will never end has dawned upon them at last.

Ben, too, is there, ostensibly as an overseer, but really as a valued friend, free to do whatever he pleases, and greatly esteemed by those whom he worships with a devotion bordering upon idolatry. Everything pertaining to the place he calls his, and Frederic hardly knows whether himself or Ben is the master of Redstone Hall. The negroes acknowledge them both, though, as is quite natural, the aristocratic Higginses give the preference to Frederic, while the democratic Smitherses, with stammering Josh at their head, warmly advocate Marster Ben, “as sayin’ the curisest things and singin’ the drollest songs.”

There is no spot in the world where Ben could be so supremely happy as he is at Redstone Hall, with Marian and Alice; and when Frederic, on his return from Ohio, suggested his remaining there, he evinced his delight in his usual way, lamenting the while that his extremely tender heart would always make him cry just when he did not wish to.

“I was never cut out for a nigger driver,” he said; “but I guess I can coax as much out of ’em as that blusterin’ Warren did;” and making his visit short, he hastened back to New England, where he found no difficulty of disposing of his grocery, and five of his numerous family.

These last he bestowed upon different people in the village, taking great care that none of them should go where there were children, and numerous were his injunctions that they should be well cared for, and suffered to die a natural death. Marian and Alice were destined for Kentucky, where they were welcomed joyfully by those whose names they bore. Particularly was the white one, with its bright, sightless eyes, the pet of the entire household, negroes and all; while even Bruno, who, on account of his recognition of Marian, was now allowed more liberty than before, and was consequently far less savage, took kindly to the little creature, tossing it up in his huge paws, licking its snowy face, and sometimes coaxing it into his kennel, where it was more than once found by the delighted Alice, sleeping half hidden under the mastiff’s shaggy mane.

Frequently on bright days could Alice and her kitten be seen seated in a miniature waggon, which the Yankee ingenuity of Ben had devised, and in which he drew his blind pets from field to field, seeking out for them the shadiest spot and watching all their movements with a vigilance which told how dear to him was one of them at least. In all the wide world there is nothing Ben Burt loves half so well as the helpless blind girl, Alice—not as he loved Marian Grey, but with a tender, unselfish devotion, which would prompt him at any time to lay down his life for her, if it need must be. All the fairest flowers and choicest fruits are brought to her. And when he sees how she enjoys them, and how grateful she is to him, he murmurs softly:

“Blessed bird, I b’lieve I’d be blind myself, if she could only see.”

But Alice does not care for sight, except at times, when she hears the people speak of Mrs. Raymond’s beauty, and she wishes she could look upon the face whose praises so many ring. Still she is very happy in Frederic’s and Marian’s love, and happy, too, with her faithful friend, around whose neck she often twines her arms, blessing him for all he was to Marian and all he is to her.

Once she hoped to improve his peculiar dialect somewhat by imparting to him a greater knowledge of books than he already possessed, and Ben, willing to gratify her, waded industriously through the many volumes she recommended him to read, among which was “Watts on the Mind.” But vain were all his efforts to grasp a single idea, and he returned it to Alice, saying that “he presumed it was a very excitin’ story to some, but blamed if he could make out a word of sense from beginnin’ to finis.”

“‘Taint much use tryin’ to make a scholar of me,” said he, winking slyly at Marian, who was present. “It’s hard enough teachin’ old dogs new tricks, and if I’s to read all there is in the Squire’s library, I shouldn’t be no better off.”

Marian thought so, too, and she dropped a few well-timed hints to Alice, who gradually relaxed her efforts to teach one who, had he been educated, would certainly not have been the simple-hearted, unselfish man we now know as Ben Burt.

Away to the northward among the New England hills there is a forsaken grave, where the inebriated Rudolph sleeps. His thirst for revenge is over and the forlorn girl who, in her mother’s kitchen washes the dinner dishes for college students just as she used to when Frederic Raymond was a boarder there, has nothing to dread from him. Mrs. Huntington’s house on the river has been sold to cancel the mortgage, and in the city of Elms she has returned to her old vocation, and Isabel, with her broken nose and ugly scar has scarcely a hope, that among her mother’s boarders there will ever one be found weak enough to offer her his hand. An humbled, and it is to be hoped, a better woman, she derives her greatest comfort from the letters which sometimes come to her from Marian, and which usually contain a more substantial token of regard than mere words convey.

One word now of William Gordon and our story is done. Ben had claimed the privilege of writing the news to him, and he did it in his characteristic way, first touching upon the note which, he said, was safe in his wallet and sure of being paid, then launching out into glowing descriptions of Marian’s happiness with Frederic.

This letter was a long time in finding Will, and the answer did not reach Redstone Hall until the family had returned from their summer residence at Riverside. Then it came to them one warm November day, just as the sun was setting, and its mellow rays fell upon the group assembled upon the piazza. Frederic, to whom it was directed, broke the seal and read the sincere congratulations which his early friend had sent to him from over the sea,—read, too, that ‘mid the vine-clad hills of Bingen, in a cottage looking out upon the Rhine, there was a fair-haired German girl, with eyes like Marian Grey, and that when Will came next to America he would not be alone.

“For this fair-haired German girl,” he wrote, “has promised to come with me. I have told her of my former love, and when last night I read to her Ben’s letter, the tears glistened in her lustrous eyes as she whispered in her broken English tongue, ‘God bless sweet Marian Grey,’ and I, too, Fred, from a full heart respond the same, God bless sweet Marian Grey, the Heiress of Redstone Hall.”

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.