Across the Chasm

Margaret Trevennon was young and beautiful. Her faithful biographer can say no less, though aware of the possibility that, on this account, the satiated reader of romances may make her acquaintance with a certain degree of reluctance, reflecting upon the two well-worn types--the maiden in the first flush of youth, who is so immaculately lovely as to be extremely improbable, and the maturer female, who is so strong-minded as to be wholly ineligible to romantic situations. If there be only these two classes Miss Trevennon must needs be ranged with the former. Certainly the particular character of her beauty foreordained her to romantic situations, although it must be said, on the other hand, that the term “strong-minded” was one which had been more than once applied to her by those who should have known her best.

She lived with her parents on the outskirts of a small Southern town, in a dilapidated old house, that had once been a grand mansion. The days of its splendid hospitality had passed away long since, and as far back as Margaret’s memory went the same monotonous tranquillity had pervaded its lofty corridors and spacious rooms. In spite of this, however, it was a pleasant, cheerful home, and the girl’s life, up to her nineteenth year, had been passed very happily in it. She had had occasional changes of scene, such as a visit to New Orleans or a brief season at some small Southern watering-place; but she had never been North, and so by birth and circumstance, as well as by instinct and training, she was a genuine Southern girl. The fact that Mr. Trevennon had managed to save from the wreck of his large fortune a small independence, had afforded his daughter the opportunity of seeing something of men and manners beyond her own hearthstone, and this, together with her varied and miscellaneous reading, gave her a range of vision wider and higher than that enjoyed by the other young people of Bassett, and had imbued her with certain theories and opinions which made them regard her as eccentric.

One bright autumnal day, when the weather was still warm and sunny in this fair Southern climate, Miss Trevennon, clad in an airy white costume, and protected from the sun by a veil and parasol, took her way with the rather quick motions usual with her, down the main street of Bassett. When she reached the corner on which Martin’s drug store was situated, she crossed over and passed down on the opposite side; but, doubly screened as she was, she turned her eyes in that direction and took a hurried survey of the loungers assembled on the pavement. Perhaps it was because her gaze especially sought him out that she saw Charley Somers first. This was a young man who had been her unrequited adorer, hoping against hope, ever since they had gone to the village school together, and Margaret had all her life been trying, in a flashing, impetuous way that she had, to fire him with some of the energy and enthusiasm which she herself possessed so abundantly, and in which this pleasant, easy, indolent young Southerner was so absolutely lacking. Young Somers had come of a long line of affluent and luxurious ancestors, and though cut off from an inheritance in their worldly possessions, he had fallen heir to many of their personal characteristics, which hung about him like fetters of steel.

Although Miss Trevennon hurriedly averted her gaze after that one swift glance, she had received a distinct impression of Mr. Somers’ whole manner and attitude, as he sat with his chair tipped back against the wall, his heels caught on its topmost round, his straw hat pushed back from his delicate, indolent face, and a pipe between his lips. In this way he would sit for hours, ringing the changes on the somewhat restricted theme of county politics with the loungers who frequented “Martin’s.” The mere thought of it, much more the sight, infuriated Miss Trevennon. She could not grow accustomed to it, in spite of long habituation.

As she tripped along, erect and quick, she heard a familiar footstep behind her, and in a moment more was joined by the young man.

“Where are you going?” he said, giving his hat a little careless push and re-settlement, without lifting it from his head. “May I go with you and carry your basket?”

“If you like,” said Margaret, distantly, yielding up to him the little white-covered basket. “I am going to see Uncle Mose.”

“As usual! What has Uncle Mose done to be so petted? I wish you would treat me with half as much consideration.”

“I don’t think you entitled to it,” she answered. “Uncle Mose is at the end of a long life of continuous, patient labor, and has won a right to my consideration, which you never have. You have often heard me say, of course, that ever since I’ve been able to form an opinion at all, I’ve been a thorough-going Abolitionist; but all the same, I think there is virtue in a system which makes a man work, whether he wills it or not. Servitude itself seems to me a nobler life than absolute idleness.”

“Oh, the same old thing!” said the young man, wearily. “I wonder when you will give up expecting me to be a paragon!”

“I’ve given it up long ago. I’ve seen the futility of any such expectation; but I will never give up wishing that you would be a man, and do something worthy of a man.”

“You can’t say I don’t work. I attend to my cases, and am always on hand during court week.”

“Provided it doesn’t clash with fishing week or hunting week, or any pursuit that happens to offer a more attractive prospect than that of discussing county politics and smoking bad tobacco with some other loungers at ‘Martin’s’!”

“I know I am not what you like,” said Somers despondently; “but there is one thing that would make me different. If you would give me some hope for the future----”

“I begged you never to say that again,” interrupted Margaret, quickly. “You know how indignant it makes me, and the worst of it is that you really believe it to be true. If you won’t do right for right’s sake, you would never do it for mine.”

He made no answer to her words. But one form of response suggested itself, and to that he knew she was in no mood to listen; so, for the space of a few moments, they walked along in silence. But Margaret’s thoughts were very active, and presently she broke out:

“Why, Charley, when I heard you complaining the other day, that the tailor who has a shop opposite you kept you from sleeping in the morning by his violin practice begun at daylight, I remembered how you had told me once that you frequently saw him at his work until after midnight; and do you know what I thought? I thought: I wish to goodness Charley would try to be a little more like him.”

“What do you mean?” the young man cried, angrily. “You don’t know what you are talking about. Do you think I could ever so far forget myself as to imitate a beastly little Yankee tailor, or to desire to be like him in any way whatever? I can stand a good deal from you, Margaret, but this is a little too much!”

“Of course! His happening to be a Yankee puts him down at once. But I can tell you what it is, Charley, there is one lesson you might profitably learn from him, and that the most important in the world for you. It is, to make something of the powers you have. That poor little man has no possibilities, I suppose, beyond the attainment of a certain degree of skill in making clothing, on the one hand, and learning to play popular airs indifferently on a cracked little fiddle, on the other. But with you, how different it is! Papa says you would be an able lawyer, but for the trifling obstacle that you don’t know any law. We all know how well you talk, on those rare occasions on which you become really interested. And as to the other point, the music--oh, Charley, what mightn’t your voice become, if you would avail yourself of the means of cultivation within your reach? But no! Your teacher told you that you must practise patiently and continuously to procure its proper development, and this you would not do; it was too troublesome!”

“Trouble apart,” said Somers, “the notion does not please me, and I must say I wonder that you, who make such a point of manliness in a man, should favor any one’s regularly preparing himself to be the sort of drawing-room pet that one of your trained song-singers is certain to become.”

“You can say the most aggravating things!” said Margaret. “Is it possible that you can consider it unmanly to cultivate such a gift as that? But what’s the use of all this? You don’t care.”

“No, I don’t care much,” he answered slowly. “When a man has one supreme, paramount care forever possessing him, and is constantly being told that the object of his desires is beyond his reach, other things don’t matter very much.”

At the sight of the weary discontent on his handsome face, her heart softened, and as they stopped before the little cabin, which was their destination, she said kindly:

“Come in and see Uncle Mose with me, won’t you?”

But the young man excused himself rather hurriedly, and delivering the basket into her hands he said good-morning, and walked rapidly back toward the town.

Margaret pushed open the door of the wretched little cabin, and just within sat Uncle Mose, engaged in his customary avocation of shoemaking, or to speak more accurately, shoe-mending. He was a spare and sinewy old negro, whose age, according to his own account, was “somewhar high up in de nineties.” He was much bowed in figure, and lame in one leg. Bushy tufts of dull gray hair rose on each side of his brown and polished crown, and his wrinkled and sunken cheeks were quite beardless. His expression was one of placid benevolence and contentment--a strange contrast to his surroundings. The room he occupied was hideously squalid and confused. The roof sloped in one direction and the floor in another, and the stove, which was unreasonably large, in a third. Old phials, suspended by their necks and partly filled with muddy liquids, decorated the walls, together with a pair of patched boots, a string of red peppers, several ears of pop-corn, and a leather-covered whipstock. In one corner hung a huge walking cane. Everything was thickly coated with dust.

The old man was seated near the perilously one-sided stove, in which a fire smoked and smouldered, though it was a balmy day, and in front of which a rusty old iron spade did duty for a door. His few old tools and pegs and twines were on a broken chair beside him. When he looked up, over the top of his brass-rimmed spectacles, and saw who his visitor was, he broke into a broad smile of welcome, as he raised his withered old hand to his head in token of salutation.

“Dat you, missis?” he said. “What bin fetch you out dis time o’ day? I is glad to see you, sho’. Come in, en take a seat.”

He swept his tools and twines from the wooden seat to the floor, and rubbed the dusty surface several times with his hard palm. Margaret at once sat down, laying her long white draperies across her lap, to protect them from the dusty floor, showing a pair of neat little boots as she did so. Then she took off the cover of the basket, and revealed its contents to the old man’s delighted gaze.