dinners exceedingly. This herding together of men and women for the
purpose of eating, this clatter of knives and forks, is barbarous. What
can be more horrible than to see and hear a person talking with his
mouth full? But Landor has strange notions, has he not, Giallo? In fact
_Padrone_ is a fool if we may believe what folks say. Once, while
walking near my villa at Fiesole, I overheard quite a flattering remark
about myself, made by one _contadino_ to another. My beloved countrymen
had evidently been the subject of conversation, and, as the two fellows
approached my grounds, one of them pointed towards the villa and
exclaimed: 'Tutti gli Inglesi sono pazzi, ma questo poi!' (All the
English are mad,--but _this one_!) Words were too feeble to express the
extent of my lunacy, and so both men shrugged their shoulders as only
Italians can. Yes, Giallo, those _contadini_ pitied your old master, and
I dare say they were quite right."
* * * * *
While talking one day about Franklin, Landor said: "Ah, Franklin was a
great man; and I can tell you an anecdote of him that has never been in
print, and which I had directly from a personal friend of Franklin's,
who was acting as private secretary to Lord Auckland, the English
ambassador at Paris during Franklin's visit to the French Court. On one
occasion, when Franklin presented himself before Louis, he was most
cavalierly treated by the king, whereupon Lord Auckland took it upon
himself to make impertinent speeches, and, notwithstanding Franklin's
habitually courteous manners, sneered at his appearing in court dress.
Upon Franklin's return home, he was met by ----, who, being much
attached to him,--a bit of a republican, too,--was anxious to learn the
issue of the visit. 'I was received badly enough,' said Franklin. 'Your
master, Lord Auckland, was very insolent. I am not quite sure that,
among other things, he did not call me a rebel.' Then, taking off his
court coat, which, after carefully folding and laying upon the sofa, he
stroked, he muttered, 'Lie there now; you'll see better days yet.'"
Being asked if he had ever seen Daniel Webster, Landor replied, "I once
met Mr. Webster at a dinner-party. We sat next each other, and had a
most agreeable conversation. Finally Mr. Webster asked me if I would
have taken him for an American; and I answered, 'Yes, for the best of
Americans!'"
Landor had met Talma, "who spoke English most perfectly,"--had been in
the society of Mrs. Siddons, "who was not at all clever in
private,"--had conversed with Mrs. Jordan, "and a most handsome and
agreeable woman she was; but that scoundrel, William IV., treated her
shamefully. He even went so far as to appropriate the money she received
on her benefit nights." Malibran, too, Landor described as being most
fascinating off the stage.
"I never studied German," he remarked at another time. "I was once in
Germany four months, but conversed with the professors in Latin. Their
Latin was grammatical, but very like dog-Latin for all that. What an
offence to dogs, if they only knew it!" Then, lowering his voice, he
laughingly added, "I hope Giallo did not hear me. I would not offend him
for the world. A German Baroness attempted to induce me to learn her
language, and read aloud German poetry for my benefit; but the noise was
intolerable to me. It sounded like a great wagon banging over a
pavement of boulders. It was very ungrateful in me not to learn, for my
fair teacher paid me many pretty compliments. Yes, Giallo, _Padrone_ has
had pleasant things said to him in his day. But the greatest compliment
I ever received was from Lord Dudley. Being confined to his bed by
illness at Bologna, a friend read aloud to him my imaginary conversation
between the two Ciceros. Upon its conclusion, the reader exclaimed, 'Is
not that exactly what Cicero would have said?' 'Yes, if he could!' was
Lord Dudley's answer. Now was not that a compliment worth having?"
One day when I was sitting with Landor, and he, as usual, was
discoursing of "lang syne," he rose, saying, "Stop a bit; I've something
to show you,"--and, leaving the room for a moment, returned with a small
writing-desk, looking as old as himself. "Now I want you to look at
something I have here," he continued, seating himself and opening the
desk. "There, what do you think of that?" he asked, handing me a
miniature of a very lovely woman.
"I think the original must have been exceedingly handsome."
"Ah, yes, she was," he replied, with a sigh, leaning back in his chair.
"That is the 'Ianthe' of my poems."
"I can well understand why she inspired your muse, Mr. Landor."
"Ah, she was far more beautiful than her picture, but much she cared for
my poetry! It couldn't be said that she liked me for my books. She, too,
has gone,--gone before me."
It is to "Ianthe" that the first seventy-five of his verses marked
"Miscellaneous" are addressed, and it is of her he has written,--
"It often comes into my head
That we may dream when we are dead,
But I am far from sure we do.
O that it were so! then my rest
Would be indeed among the blest;
I should forever dream of you."
In the "Heroic Idyls," also, there are lines
"ON THE DEATH OF IANTHE.
"I dare not trust my pen, it trembles so;
It seems to feel a portion of my woe,
And makes me credulous that trees and stones
At mournful fates have uttered mournful tones.
While I look back again on days long past,
How gladly would I yours might be my last!
Sad our first severance was, but sadder this,
When death forbids one hour of mutual bliss."
"Ianthe's portrait is not the only treasure this old desk contains,"
Landor said, as he replaced it and took up a small package, very
carefully tied, which he undid with great precaution, as though the
treasure had wings and might escape, if not well guarded. "There!" he
said, holding up a pen-wiper made of red and gold stuff in the shape of
a bell with an ivory handle,--"that pen-wiper was given to me by ----,
Rose's sister, forty years ago. Would you believe it? Have I not kept it
well?" The pen-wiper looked as though it had been made the day before,
so fresh was it. "Now," continued Landor, "I intend to give that to
you."
"But, Mr. Landor--"
"Tut! tut! there are to be no buts about it. My passage for another
world is already engaged, and I know you'll take good care of my
keepsake. There, now, put it in your pocket, and only use it on grand
occasions."
Into my pocket the pen-wiper went, and, wrapped in the same old paper,
it lies in another desk, as free from ink as it was four years ago.
Who Rose was no reader of Landor need be told,--she to whom "Andrea of
Hungary" was dedicated, and of whom Lady Blessington, in one of her
letters to Landor, wrote: "The tuneful bird, inspired of old by the
Persian rose, warbled not more harmoniously its praise than you do that
of the English Rose, whom posterity will know through your beautiful
verses." Many and many a time the gray-bearded poet related incidents of
which this English Rose was the heroine, and for the moment seemed to
live over again an interesting episode of his mature years.
* * * * *
"Dear! dear! what is the old creature to do for reading-matter?" Landor
exclaimed after having exhausted his own small stock and my still
smaller one. "Shakespeare and Milton are my daily food, but at times,
you know, we require side-dishes."
"Why not subscribe to Vieusseux's Library, Mr. Landor?"
"That would be the best thing to do, would it not? Very well, you shall
secure me a six months' subscription to-morrow. And now what shall I
read? When Mr. Anthony Trollope was here, he called on me with his
brother, and a clever man he appeared to be. I have never read anything
of his. Suppose I begin with his novels?"
And so it happened that Landor read all of Anthony Trollope's works with
zest, admiring them for their unaffected honesty of purpose and truth to
nature. He next read Hood's works, and when this writer's poems were
returned to me there came with them a scrap of paper on which were named
the poems that had most pleased their reader.
"Song of a Shirt.
"To my Daughter.
"A Child embracing.
"My Heart is sick.
"False Poets and True.
"The Forsaken.
"The last stanza of Inez is beautiful."
Of the poem which heads the list, he wrote:--
"'Song of the Shirt' Strange! very strange,
This shirt will never want a change,
Nor ever will wear out so long
As Britain has a heart or tongue."
Hood commanded great love and respect from Landor. Soon the reign of G.
P. R. James set in, and when I left Florence he was still in power. I
cannot but think that a strong personal friendship had much to do with
Landor's enthusiasm for this novelist.
* * * * *
We took many drives with Landor during the spring and summer of 1861,
and made very delightful jaunts into the country. Not forgetful in the
least of things, the old man, in spite of his age, would always insist
upon taking the front seat, and was more active than many a younger man
in assisting us in and out of the carriage. "You are the most genuinely
polite man I know," once wrote Lady Blessington to him. The verdict of
1840 could not have been overruled twenty-one years later. Once we drove
up to "aerial Fiesole," and never can I forget Landor's manner while in
the neighborhood of his former home. It had been proposed that we should
turn back when only half-way up the hill. "Ah, go a little farther,"
Landor said nervously; "I should like to see my villa." Of course his
wish was our pleasure, and so the drive was continued. Landor sat
immovable, with head turned in the direction of the Villa Gherardesca.
At first sight of it he gave a sudden start, and genuine tears filled
his eyes and coursed down his cheeks. "There's where I lived," he said,
breaking a long silence and pointing to his old estate. Still we mounted
the hill, and when at a turn in the road the villa stood out before us
clearly and distinctly, Landor said, "Let us give the horses a rest
here!" We stopped, and for several minutes Landor's gaze was fixed upon
the villa. "There now, we can return to Florence, if you like," he
murmured, finally, with a deep sigh. "I have seen it probably for the
last time." Hardly a word was spoken during the drive home. Landor
seemed to be absent-minded. A sadder, more pathetic picture than he made
during this memorable drive is rarely seen. "With me life has been a
failure," was the expression of that wretched, worn face. Those who
believe Landor to have been devoid of heart should have seen him then.
* * * * *
During another drive he stopped the horses at the corner of a dirty
little old street, and, getting out of the carriage, hurriedly
disappeared round a corner, leaving us without explanation and
consequently in amazement. We had not long to wait, however, as he soon
appeared carrying a large roll of canvas. "There!" he exclaimed, as he
again seated himself, "I've made a capital bargain. I've long wanted
these paintings, but the man asked more than I could give. To-day he
relented. They are very clever, and I shall have them framed." Alas!
they were not clever, and Landor in his last days had queer notions
concerning art. That he was excessively fond of pictures is undoubtedly
true; he surrounded himself with them, but there was far more quantity
than quality about them. He frequently attributed very bad paintings to
very good masters; and it by no means followed because he called a
battle-piece a "Salvator Rosa," that it was painted by Salvator. But the
old man was tenacious of his art opinions, and it was unwise to argue
the point.
* * * * *
The notes which I possess in Landor's handwriting are numerous, but they
are of too personal a character to interest the public. Sometimes he
signs himself "The Old Creature," at another, "The Restless Old Man,"
and once, "Your Beardless Old Friend." This was after the painting of
his portrait, when he had himself shorn of half his patriarchal
grandeur. The day previous to the fatal deed, he entered our room
saying, "I've just made an arrangement with my barber to shear me
to-morrow. I must have a clean face during the summer."
"I wish you had somewhat of the Oriental reverence for beards, Mr.
Landor, for then there would be no shaving. Why, think of it! if you've
no beard, how can you swear?"
"Ah, _Padrone_ can swear tolerably well without it, can he not, Giallo?
he will have no difficulty on that score. Now I'll wager, were I a young
man, you would ask me for a lock of my hair. See what it is to be old
and gray."
"Why, Mr. Landor, I've long wanted just that same, but have not dared to
ask for it. May I cut off a few stray hairs?" I asked, going toward him
with a pair of scissors.
"Ah no," he replied, quizzically, "there can be but one 'Rape of the
Lock!' Let me be my own barber." Taking the scissors, he cut off the
longest curl of his snow-white beard, enclosed it in an envelope with a
Greek superscription, and, presenting it, said, "One of these days, when
I have gone to my long sleep, this bit of an old pagan may interest some
very good Christians."
* * * * *
The following note is worthy to be transcribed, showing, as it does, the
generosity of his nature at a time when he had nothing to give away but
ideas.
"MY DEAR FRIEND,--Will you think it worth your while to
transcribe the enclosed? These pages I have corrected and
enlarged. Some of them you have never seen. They have occupied
more of my time and trouble, and are now more complete, than
anything you have favored me by reading. I hope you will be
pleased. I care less about others.... I hope you will get
something for these articles, and keep it. I am richer by
several crowns than you suspect, and I must scramble to the
kingdom of Heaven, to which a full pocket, we learn, is an
impediment.
"Ever truly yours,
W. S. L."
The manuscripts contained the two conversations between Homer and
Laertes which two years ago were published in the "Heroic Idyls." I did
not put them to the use desired by their author. Though my copies differ
somewhat from the printed ones, it is natural to conclude that Landor
most approved of what was last submitted to his inspection, and would
not desire to be seen in any other guise. The publicity of a note
prefixed to one of these conversations, however, is warranted.
"It will be thought audacious, and most so by those who know the least
of Homer, to represent him as talking so familiarly. He must often have
done it, as Milton and Shakespeare did. There is homely talk in the
'Odyssey.'
"Fashion turns round like Fortune. Twenty years hence, perhaps, this
conversation of Homer and Laertes, in which for the first time Greek
domestic manners have been represented by any modern poet, may be
recognized and approved.
"Our sculptors and painters frequently take their subjects from
antiquity; are our poets never to pass beyond the mediaeval? At our own
doors we listen to the affecting 'Song of the Shirt'; but some few of
us, at the end of it, turn back to catch the 'Song of the Sirens.'
"Poetry is not tied to chronology. The Roman poet brings Dido and AEneas
together,--the historian parts them far asunder. Homer may or may not
have been the contemporary of Laertes. Nothing is idler or more
dangerous than to enter a labyrinth without a clew."
* * * * *
At last the time came when there were to be no more conversations, no
more drives, with Walter Savage Landor. Summoned suddenly to America, we
called upon him three or four days before our departure to say good by.
"What? going to America?" Landor exclaimed in a sorrowful voice. "Is it
really true? Must the old creature lose his young friends as well as his
old? Ah me! ah me! what will become of Giallo and me? And America in the
condition that it is too! But this is not the last time that I am to see
you. Tut! tut! now no excuses. We must have one more drive, one more cup
of tea together before you leave."
Pressed as we were for time, it was still arranged that we should drive
with Landor the evening previous to our departure. On the morning of
this day came the following note:--
"I am so stupid that everything puzzles me. Is not this the day
I was to expect your visit? At all events you will have the
carriage at your door at _six_ this evening.
To drive or not to drive,
That is the question.
You shall not be detained one half-hour,--but tea will be ready
on your arrival.
"I fell asleep after the jolting, and felt no bad effect. See
what it is to be so young.
"Ever yours affectionately,
"W. S. L."
There was little to cheer any of us in that last drive, and few words
were spoken. Stopping at his house on our way home, we sipped a final
cup of tea in almost complete silence. I tried to say merry things and
look forward a few years to another meeting, but the old man shook his
head sadly, saying: "I shall never see you again. I cannot live through
another winter, nor do I desire to. Life to me is but a counterpart of
Dead Sea fruit; and now that you are going away, there is one less link
to the chain that binds me."
Landor, in the flood-tide of intellect and fortune, could command
attention; Landor, tottering with an empty purse towards his ninth
decade, could count his Florentine friends in one breath; thus it
happened that the loss of the least of these made the old man sad.
At last the hour of leave-taking arrived. Culling a flower from the
little garden, taking a final turn through those three little rooms,
patting Giallo on the head, who, sober through sympathy, looked as
though he wondered what it all meant, we turned to Landor, who entered
the front room dragging an immense album after him. It was the same that
he had bought years before of Barker, the English artist, for fifty
guineas, and about which previous mention has been made. "You are not to
get rid of me yet," said Landor, bearing the album toward the stairs. "I
shall see you home, and bid you good by at your own door."
"But, dear Mr. Landor, what are you doing with that big book? You will
surely injure yourself by attempting to carry it."
"This album is intended for you, and you must take it with you
to-night."
Astonished at this munificent present, I hardly knew how to refuse it
without offending the generous giver. Stopping him at the door, I
endeavored to dissuade him from giving away so valuable an album; and,
finding him resolute in his determination, begged him to compromise by
leaving it to me in his will.
"No, my dear," he replied, "I at least have lived long enough to know
that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Whereupon he carried
the book down stairs and deposited it in the carriage, deaf to our
entreaties, and obstinately refusing assistance. "Now I am sure that you
will have the album," he continued, after we were all seated in the
carriage. "A will is an uncanny thing, and I'd rather remember my
friends out of one than in one. I shall never see you again, and I want
you to think of the foolish old creature occasionally."
The carriage stopped at our door, and "the good by" came. "May God bless
you!" murmured the lonely old man, and in a moment Walter Savage Landor
was out of sight.
He was right. We were never to meet again. Distance did not entirely
sever the friendly link, however, for soon there came to me, across the
sea, the following letters:--
August 28, 1861.
"By this time, my dear friend, you will be far on your way over
the Atlantic, and before you receive the scribble now before
you, half your friends will have offered you their
congratulations on your return home.
"People, I hear, are flocking fast into Florence for the
exhibition. This evening I received another kind note from the
Countess, who tells me that she shall return to Florence on
Saturday, and invites me to accompany her there. But I abhor
all crowds, and am not fascinated by the eye of kings. I never
saw him of Italy when he was here before, and shall not now.
"I am about to remove my terrace, and to place it under the
window of the small bedroom, substituting a glass door for the
present window. On this terrace I shall spend all my October
days, and--and--all my money! The landlord will not allow one
shilling toward the expense, which will make his lower rooms
lighter and healthier. To him the advantage will be
permanent,--to me (God knows) it must be very temporary. In
another summer I shall not sit so high, nor, indeed, _sit_
anywhere, but take instead the easiest and laziest of all
positions.
"I am continuing to read the noble romances of my friend James.
I find in them thoughts as profound as any in Charron, or
Montaigne, or Bacon,--I had almost added, or Shakespeare
himself,--the wisest of men, as the greatest of poets. On the
morning after your departure I finished the 'Philip Augustus.'
In the thirty-eighth chapter is this sentence: 'O Isidore! 't
is not the present, I believe, that ever makes our misery; 't
is its contrast with the past; 't is the loss of some hope, or
the crushing of some joy; the disappointment of expectation, or
the regrets of memory. The present is nothing, nothing,
nothing, but in its relation to the future or the past.' James
is inferior to Scott in wit and humor, but more than his equal
in many other respects; but then Scott wrote excellent poetry,
in which James, when he attempted it, failed.
"Let me hear how affairs are going on in America. I believe we
have truer accounts from England than your papers are disposed
to publish. Louis Napoleon is increasing his naval force to a
degree it never reached before. We must have war with him
before a twelvemonth is over. He will also make disturbances in
Louisiana, claiming it on the dolorous cry of France for her
lost children. They will _invite_ him, as the poor Savoyards
were _invited_ by him to do. So long as this perfidious
scoundrel exists there will be no peace of quiet in any quarter
of the globe. The Pope is heartily sick of intervention; but
nothing can goad his fat sides into a move.
"Are you not tired? My wrist is. So adieu.
"Ever affectionately,
"W. S. L."
With this letter came a slip of paper, on which were these lines:--
"TO GIALLO,
"Faithfullest of a faithful race,
Plainly I read it in thy face,
Thou wishest me to mount the stairs,
And leave behind me all my cares.
No: I shall never see again,
Her who now sails across the main,
Nor wilt thou ever as before
Rear two white feet against her door."
"Written opposite Palazzo Pitti,
September, 1861."
"February 15, 1862.
".... The affairs of your country interest me painfully. The
Northern States had acknowledged the right of the Southern to
hold slaves, and had even been so iniquitous as to surrender a
fugitive from his thraldom. I would propose an accommodation:--
"1. That every slave should be free after ten years' labor.
"2. That none should be imported, or sold, or separated from
wife and children.
"3. That an adequate portion of land should be granted in
perpetuity to the liberated.
"The proprietor would be fully indemnified for his purchase by
ten years' labor. France and England will not permit their
commerce with the Southern States to be interrupted much
longer. It has caused great discontent in Manchester and Leeds,
where the artificers suffer grievously from want of employment.
".... May you continue to improve in health as the warmer
weather advances. Mine will not allow me to hope for many more
months of life, but I shall always remember you, and desire
that you also will remember
"W. S. LANDOR."
"January, 1863.
".... Your account of your improved health is very satisfactory
and delightful to me. Hardly can I expect to receive many such.
This month I enter on my eighty-ninth year, and am growing
blind and deaf.... I hope you may live long enough to see the
end of your disastrous civil war. Remember, the Southrons are
fighting for their acknowledged rights, as established by the
laws of the United States. Horrible is the idea that one man
should be lord and master of another. But Washington had
slaves, so had the President his successor. If your government
had been contented to decree that no slave henceforth should be
imported, none sold, none disunited from his family, your
Northern cause would be more popular in England and throughout
Europe than it is. You are about to see detached from the Union
a third of the white population. Is it not better that the
blacks should be contented slaves than exasperated murderers or
drunken vagabonds? Your blacks were generally more happy than
they were in Africa, or than they are likely to be in America.
Your taxes will soon excite a general insurrection. In a war of
five years they will be vastly heavier than their amount in all
the continent of Europe. And what enormous armies must be kept
stationary to keep down not only those who are now refractory,
but also those whom (by courtesy and fiction) we call free.
"I hope and trust that I shall leave the world before the end
of this winter. My darling dog, Giallo, will find a fond
protectress in ----.... Present my respectful compliments to
Mrs. F., and believe me to continue
"Your faithful old friend,
"W. S. LANDOR."
"September 11, 1863.
".... You must be grieved at the civil war. It might have been
avoided. The North had no right to violate the Constitution.
Slavery was lawful, execrable as it is.... Congress might have
liberated them [the slaves] gradually at no expense to the
nation at large.
"1. Every slave after fifteen years should be affranchised.
"2. None to be imported or sold.
"3. No husband and wife separated.
"4. No slave under twelve compelled to labor.
"5. Schools in every township; and children of both sexes sent
to them at six to ten.
"A few days before I left England, five years ago, I had an
opportunity of conversing with a gentleman who had visited the
United States. He was an intelligent and zealous Abolitionist.
Wishing to learn the real state of things, he went on board a
vessel bound to New York. He was amazed at the opulence and
splendor of that city, and at the inadequate civilization of
the inhabitants. He dined at a public table, at a principal
inn. The dinner was plenteous and sumptuous. On each side of
him sat two gentlemen who spat like Frenchmen the moment a
plate was removed. This prodigy deprived him of appetite. Dare
I mention it, that the lady opposite cleared her throat in like
manner?
"The Englishman wished to see your capital, and hastened to
Washington. There he met a member of Congress to whom he had
been introduced in London by Webster. Most willingly he
accepted his invitation to join him at Baltimore, his
residence. He found it difficult to express the difference
between the people of New York and those of Baltimore, whom he
represented as higher-bred. He met there a slaveholder of New
Orleans, with whom at first he was disinclined to converse, but
whom presently he found liberal and humane, and who assured him
that his slaves were contented, happy, and joyous. 'There are
some cruel masters,' he said, 'among us; but come yourself,
sir, and see whether we consider them fit for our society or
our notice.' He accepted the invitation, and remained at New
Orleans until a vessel was about to sail for Bermuda, where he
spent the winter.
"Your people, I am afraid, will resolve on war with England.
Always aggressive, they already devour Canada. I hope Canada
will soon be independent both of America and England. Your
people should be satisfied with a civil war of ten or twelve
years: they will soon have one of much longer duration about
Mexico. God grant that you, my dear friend, may see the end of
it. Believe me ever,
"Your affectionate old friend,
"W. S. LANDOR."
It was sad to receive such letters from the old man, for they showed how
a mind once great was tottering ere it fell. Blind, deaf, shut up within
the narrow limits of his own four walls, dependent upon English
newspapers for all tidings of America,--is it strange that during those
last days Landor failed to appreciate the grandeur of our conflict, and
stumbled as he attempted to follow the logic of events? Well do I
remember that in conversations he had reasoned far differently, his
sympathy going out most unreservedly to the North. Living in the dark,
he saw no more clearly than the majority of Europeans, and a not small
minority of our own people. Interesting as is everything that so
celebrated an author as Landor writes, these extracts, so unfavorable to
our cause and to his intellect, would never have been published had not
English reviewers thoroughly ventilated his opinions on the American
war. Their insertion, consequently, in no way exposes Landor to severer
comment than that to which the rashly unthinking have already subjected
him, but, on the contrary, increases our regard for him, denoting, as
they do, that, however erroneous his conclusions, the subject was one to
which he devoted all the thought left him by old age. The record of a
long life cannot be obliterated by the unsound theories of the
octogenarian. It was only ten years before that he appealed to America
in behalf of freedom in lines beginning thus:--
"Friend Jonathan!--for friend thou art,--
Do, prithee, take now in good part
Lines the first steamer shall waft o'er.
Sorry am I to hear the blacks
Still bear your ensign on their backs;
The stripes they suffer make me sore.
Beware of wrong. The brave are true;
The tree of Freedom never grew
Where Fraud and Falsehood sowed their salt."
In his poem, also, addressed to Andrew Jackson, the "Atlantic Ruler" is
apostrophized on the supposition of a prophecy that remained
unfulfilled.
"Up, every son of Afric soil,
Ye worn and weary, hoist the sail,
For your own glebes and garners toil
With easy plough and lightsome flail.
A father's home ye never knew,
A father's home your sons shall have from you.
Enjoy your palmy groves, your cloudless day,
Your world that demons tore away.
Look up! look up! the flaming sword
Hath vanished! and behold your Paradise restored."
This is Landor in the full possession of his intellect.
* * * * *
For Landor's own sake, I did not wish to drink the lees of that rich
wine which Lady Blessington had prophesied would "flow on pure, bright,
and sparkling to the last." It is the strength, not the weakness, of our
friends that we would remember, and therefore Landor's letter of
September, 1863, remained unanswered. It was better so. A year later he
died of old age, and during this year he was but the wreck of himself.
He became gradually more and more averse to going out, and to receiving
visitors,--more indifferent, in fact, to all outward things. He used to
sit and read, or, at all events, hold a book in his hand, and would
sometimes write and sometimes give way to passion. "It was the swell of
the sea after the storm, before the final calm," wrote a friend in
Florence. Landor did not become physically deafer, but the mind grew
more and more insensible to external impressions, and at last his
housekeeper was forced to write down every question she was called upon
to ask him. Few crossed the threshold of his door saving his sons, who
went to see him regularly. At last he had a difficulty in swallowing,
which produced a kind of cough. Had he been strong enough to expectorate
or be sick, he might have lived a little longer; but the frame-work was
worn out, and in a fit of coughing the great old man drew his last
breath. He was confined to his bed but two or three days. I am told he
looked very grand when dead,--like a majestic marble statue. The funeral
was hurried, and none but his two sons followed his remains to the
grave!
One touching anecdote remains to be told of him, as related by his
housekeeper. On the night before the 1st of May, 1864, Landor became
very restless, as sometimes happened during the last year. About two
o'clock, A. M., he rang for Wilson, and insisted upon having the room
lighted and the windows thrown open. He then asked for pen, ink, and
paper, and the date of the day. Being told that it was the dawn of the
1st of May, he wrote a few lines of poetry upon it; then, leaning back,
said, "I shall never write again. Put out the lights and draw the
curtains." Very precious would those lines be now, had they been found.
Wilson fancies that Landor must have destroyed them the next morning on
rising.
* * * * *
The old man had his wish. Years before, when bidding, as he supposed, an
eternal farewell to Italy, he wrote sadly of hopes which then seemed
beyond the pale of possibility.
"I did believe, (what have I not believed?)
Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,
And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.
Hope! hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart
Can lift no aspiration, ... reasoning
As if the sight were unimpaired by death,
Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,
And the sun cheered corruption! Over all
The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,
And light us to our chamber at the grave."
Italy recalled her aged yet impassioned lover, and there, beneath the
cypresses of the English burying-ground at Florence, almost within sound
of the murmur of his "own Affrico," rest the weary bones of Walter
Savage Landor. It is glorified dust with which his mingles. Near by, the
birds sing their sweetest over the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Not far off, an American pine watches vigilantly while Theodore Parker
sleeps his long sleep; and but a little distance beyond, Frances
Trollope, the mother, and Theodosia Trollope, her more than devoted
daughter, are united in death as they had been in life.
"Nobly, O Theo! has your verse called forth
The Roman valor and Subalpine worth,"
sang Landor years ago of his _protegee_, who outlived her friend and
critic but a few months. With the great and good about him, Landor
sleeps well. His genius needs no eulogy: good wine needs no bush. Time,
that hides the many in oblivion, can but add to the warmth and
mellowness of his fame; and in the days to come no modern writer will be
more faithfully studied or more largely quoted than Walter Savage
Landor.
"We upon earth
Have not our places and our distances
Assigned, for many years; at last a tube,
Raised and adjusted by Intelligence,
Stands elevated to a cloudless sky,
And place and magnitude are ascertained."
Landor "will dine late; but the dining-room will be well lighted, the
guests few and select." He will reign among crowned heads.
THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.
What flecks the outer gray beyond
The sundown's golden trail?
The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,
Or gleam of slanting sail?
Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,
And sea-worn elders pray,--
The ghost of what was once a ship
Is sailing up the bay!
From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
From peril and from pain,
The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
O hundred-harbored Maine!
But many a keel shall seaward turn,
And many a sail outstand,
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms
Against the dusk of land.
She rounds the headland's bristling pines.
She threads the isle-set bay;
No spur of breeze can speed her on,
Nor ebb of tide delay.
Old men still walk the Isle of Orr
Who tell her date and name,
Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards
Who hewed her oaken frame.
What weary doom of baffled quest,
Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?
What makes thee in the haunts of home
A wonder and a sign?
No foot is on thy silent deck,
Upon thy helm no hand;
No ripple hath the soundless wind
That smites thee from the land!
For never comes the ship to port
Howe'er the breeze may be;
Just when she nears the waiting shore
She drifts again to sea.
No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,
Nor sheer of veering side.
Stern-fore she drives to sea and night
Against the wind and tide.
In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star
Of evening guides her in;
In vain for her the lamps are lit
Within thy tower, Seguin!
In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,
In vain the pilot call;
No hand shall reef her spectral sail,
Or let her anchor fall.
Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy,
Your gray-head hints of ill;
And, over sick-beds whispering low,
Your prophecies fulfil.
Some home amid yon birchen trees
Shall drape its door with woe;
And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,
The burial boat shall row!
From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point,
From island and from main,
From sheltered cove and tided creek,
Shall glide the funeral train.
The dead-boat with the bearers four,
The mourners at her stern,--
And one shall go the silent way
Who shall no more return!
And men shall sigh, and women weep,
Whose dear ones pale and pine,
And sadly over sunset seas
Await the ghostly sign.
They know not that its sails are filled
By pity's tender breath,
Nor see the Angel at the helm
Who steers the Ship of Death!
DOCTOR JOHNS.
LXIII.
Reuben had heard latterly very little of domestic affairs at Ashfield.
He knew scarce more of the family relations of Adele than was covered by
that confidential announcement of the parson's which had so set on fire
his generous zeal. The spinster, indeed, in one of her later letters had
hinted, in a roundabout manner, that Adele's family misfortunes were not
looking so badly as they once did,--that the poor girl (she believed)
felt tenderly still toward her old playmate,--and that Mr. Maverick was,
beyond all question, a gentleman of very easy fortune. But Reuben was
not in a mood to be caught by any chaff administered by his most
respectable aunt. If, indeed, he had known all,--if that hearty burst of
Adele's gratitude had come to him,--if he could once have met her with
the old freedom of manner,--ah! then--then--
But no; he thinks of her now as one under social blight, which he would
have lifted or borne with her had not her religious squeamishness
forbidden. He tries to forget what was most charming in her, and has
succeeded passably well.
"I suppose she is still modelling her heroes on the Catechism," he
thought, "and Phil will very likely pass muster."
The name of Madam Maverick as attaching to their fellow-passenger--which
came to his ear for the first time on the second day out from
port--considerably startled him. Madam Maverick is, he learns, on her
way to join her husband and child in America. But he is by no means
disposed to entertain a very exalted respect for any claimant of such
name and title. He finds, indeed, the prejudices of his education (so he
calls them) asserting themselves with a fiery heat; and most of all he
is astounded by the artfully arranged religious drapery with which this
poor woman--as it appears to him--seeks to cover her short-comings. He
had brought away from the atmosphere of the old cathedrals a certain
quickened religious sentiment, by the aid of which he had grown into a
respect, not only for the Romish faith, but for Christian faith of
whatever degree. And now he encountered what seemed to him its gross
prostitution. The old Doctor then was right: this Popish form of
heathenism was but a device of Satan,--a scarlet covering of iniquity.
Yet, in losing respect for one form of faith, he found himself losing
respect for all. It was easy for him to match the present hypocrisy with
hypocrisies that he had seen of old.
Meantime, the good ship Meteor was skirting the shores of Spain, and had
made a good hundred leagues of her voyage before Reuben had ventured to
make himself known as the old schoolmate and friend of the child whom
Madam Maverick was on her way to greet after so many years of
separation. The truth was, that Reuben, his first disgust being
overcome, could not shake off the influence of something attractive and
winning in the manner of Madam Maverick. In her step and in her lithe
figure he saw the step and figure of Adele. All her orisons and aves,
which she failed not to murmur each morning and evening, were reminders
of the earnest faith of her poor child. It is impossible to treat her
with disrespect. Nay, it is impossible,--as Reuben begins to associate
more intimately the figure and the voice of this quiet lady with his
memories of another and a younger one,--quite impossible, that he should
not feel his whole chivalrous nature stirred in him, and become prodigal
of attentions. If there were hypocrisy, it somehow cheated him into
reverence.
The lady is, of course, astounded at Reuben's disclosure to her. "_Mon
Dieu!_ you, then, are the son of that good priest of whom I have heard
so much! And you are Puritan? I would not have thought that. They love
the vanities of the world then,"--and her eye flashed over the
well-appointed dress of Reuben, who felt half an inclination to hide, if
it had been possible, the cluster of gairish charms which hung at his
watch-chain. "You have shown great kindness to my child, Monsieur. I
thank you with my whole heart."
"She is very charming, Madam," said Reuben, in an easy, _degage_ manner,
which, to tell truth, he put on to cover a little embarrassing revival
of his old sentiment.
Madam Maverick looked at him keenly. "Describe her to me, if you will be
so good, Monsieur."
Whereupon Reuben ran on,--jauntily, at first, as if it had been a
ballet-girl of San Carlo whose picture he was making out; but his old
hearty warmth declared itself by degrees; and his admiration and his
tenderness gave such warm color to his language as it might have shown
if her little gloved hand had been shivering even then in his own
passionate clasp. And as he closed, with a great glow upon his face,
Madam Maverick burst forth,--
"_Mon Dieu_, how I love her! Yet is it not a thing astonishing that I
should ask you, a stranger, Monsieur, how my own child is looking?
_Culpa mea! culpa mea!_" and she clutched at her rosary, and mumbled an
ave, with her eyes lifted and streaming tears.
Reuben looked upon her in wonder, amazed at the depth of her emotion.
Could this be all hypocrisy?
"_Tenez!_" said she, recovering herself, and reading, as it were, his
doubts. "You count these" (lifting her rosary) "bawbles yonder, and our
prayers pagan prayers; my husband has told me, and that she, Adele, is
taught thus, and that the _Bon Dieu_ has forsaken our Holy Church,--that
He comes near now only to your--what shall I call them?--meeting-houses?
Tell me, Monsieur, does Adele think this?"
"I think," said Reuben, "that your daughter would have charity for any
religious faith which was earnest."
"Charity! _Mon Dieu!_ Charity for sins, charity for failings,--yes, I
ask it; but for my faith! No, Monsieur, no--no--a thousand times, no!"
"This is real," thought Reuben.
"Tell me, Monsieur," continued she, with a heat of language that excited
his admiration, "what is it you believe there? What is the horror
against which your New England teachers would warn my poor Adele? May
the Blessed Virgin be near her!"
Whereupon, Reuben undertook to lay down the grounds of distrust in which
he had been educated; not, surely, with the fervor or the logical
sequence which the old Doctor would have given to the same, but yet
inveighing in good set terms against the vain ceremonials, the
idolatries, the mummeries, the confessional, the empty absolution; and
summing up all with the formula (may be he had heard the Doctor use the
same language) that the piety of the Romanist was not so much a deep
religious conviction of the truth, as a sentiment.
"Sentiment!" exclaims Madam Maverick. "What else? What but love of the
good God?"
But not so much by her talk as by the every-day sight of her serene,
unfaltering devotion is Reuben won into a deep respect for her faith.
Those are rare days and rare nights for him, as the good ship Meteor
slips down past the shores of Spain to the Straits,--days all sunny,
nights moon-lit. To the right,--not discernible, but he knows they are
there,--the swelling hills of Catalonia and of Andalusia, the marvellous
Moorish ruins, the murmurs of the Guadalquivir; to the left, a broad
sweep of burnished sea, on which, late into the night, the moon pours a
stream of molten silver, that comes rocking and widening toward him, and
vanishes in the shadow of the ship. The cruise has been a splendid
venture for him,--twenty-five thousand at the least. And as he paces the
decks,--in the view only of the silent man at the wheel and of the
silent stars,--he forecasts the palaces he will build. The feeble
Doctor shall have ease and every luxury; he will be gracious in his
charities; he will astonish the old people by his affluence; he will
live--
Just here, he spies a female figure stealing from the companion-way, and
gliding beyond the shelter of the wheelhouse. Half concealed as he
chances to be in the shadow of the rigging, he sees her fall upon her
knees, and, with head uplifted, cross her hands upon her bosom. 'T is a
short prayer, and the instant after she glides below.
"Good God! what trust!"--it is an ejaculatory prayer of Reuben's, rather
than an oath. And with it, swift as the wind, comes a dreary sense of
unrest. The palaces he had built vanish. The stars blink upon him
kindly, and from their wondrous depths challenge his thought. The sea
swashes idly against the floating ship. He too afloat,--afloat. Whither
bound? Yearning still for a belief on which he may repose. And he
bethinks himself,--does it lie somewhere under the harsh and dogmatic
utterances of the Ashfield pulpit? At the thought, he recalls the weary
iteration of cumbersome formulas, that passed through his brain like
leaden plummets, and the swift lashings of rebuke, if he but reached
over for a single worldly floweret, blooming beside the narrow path; and
yet,--and yet, from the leaden atmosphere of that past, saintly faces
beam upon him,--a mother's, Adele's,--nay, the kindly fixed gray eyes of
the old Doctor glow upon him with a fire that must have been kindled
with truth.
Does it lie in the melodious aves, and under the robes of Rome? The
sordid friars, with their shaven pates, grin at him; some Rabelais head
of a priest in the confessional-stall leers at him with mockery: and yet
the golden letters of the great dome gleam again with the blazing
legend, _AEdificabo meam Ecclesiam!_--and the figure of the Magdalen
yonder has just now murmured, in tones that must surely have reached a
gracious ear,--
"Tibi Christe, redemptori,
Nostro vero salvatori!"
Is the truth between? Is it in both? Is it real? And if real, why may
not the same lips declare it under the cathedral or the meeting-house
roof? Why not--in God's name--charity?
LXIV.
The Meteor is a snug ship, well found, well manned, and, as the times
go, well officered. The captain, indeed, is not over-alert or fitted for
high emergencies; but what emergencies can belong to so placid a voyage?
For a week after the headlands of Tarifa and Spartel have sunk under the
eastern horizon, the vessel is kept every day upon her course,--her
top-gallant and studding sails all distent with the wind blowing freely
from over Biscay. After this come light, baffling, westerly breezes,
with sometimes a clear sky, and then all is overclouded by the drifting
trade-mists. Zigzagging on, quietly as ever, save the bustle and whiz
and flapping canvas of the ship "in stays," the good Meteor pushes
gradually westward.
Meantime a singular and almost tender intimacy grew up between Reuben
and the lady voyager. It is always agreeable to a young man to find a
listening ear in a lady whose age puts her out of the range of any
flurry of sentiment, and whose sympathy gives kindly welcome to his
confidence. All that early life of his he detailed to her with a
particularity and a warmth (himself unconscious of the warmth) which
brought the childish associations of her daughter fresh to the mind of
poor Madam Maverick. No wonder that she gave a willing ear! no wonder
that the glow of his language kindled her sympathy! Nor with such a
listener does he stop with the boyish life of Ashfield. He unfolds his
city career, and the bright promises that are before him,--promises of
business success, which (he would make it appear) are all that fill his
heart now. In the pride of his twenty-five years he loves to represent
himself as _blase_ in sentiment.
Madam Maverick has been taught, in these latter years, a large amount of
self-control; so she can listen with a grave, nay, even a kindly face,
to Reuben's sweeping declarations. And if, at a hint from her,--which he
shrewdly counts Jesuitical,--his thought is turned in the direction of
his religious experiences, he has his axioms, his common-sense formulas,
his irreproachable coolness, and, at times, a noisy show of distrust,
under which it is easy to see an eager groping after the ends of that
great tangled skein of thought within, which is a weariness.
"If you could only have a talk with Father Ambrose!" says Madam Maverick
with half a sigh.
"I should like that of all things," says Reuben, with a touch of
merriment. "I suppose he 's a jolly old fellow, with rosy cheeks and
full of humor. By Jove! there go the beads again!" (He says this latter
to himself, however, as he sees the nervous fingers of the poor lady
plying her rosary, and her lips murmuring some catch of a prayer.)
Yet he cannot but respect her devotion profoundly, wondering how it can
have grown up under the heathenisms of her life; wondering perhaps, too,
how his own heathenism could have grown up under the roof of a
parsonage. It will be an odd encounter, he thinks, for this woman, with
the people of Ashfield, with the Doctor, with Adele.
There are gales, but the good ship rides them out jauntily, with but a
single reef in her topsails. Within five weeks from the date of her
leaving Marseilles she is within a few days' sail of New York. A few
days' sail! It may mean overmuch; for there are mists, and hazy weather,
which forbid any observation. The last was taken a hundred miles to the
eastward of George's Shoal. Under an easy offshore wind the ship is
beating westward. But the clouds hang low, and there is no opportunity
for determining position. At last, one evening, there is a little lift,
and, for a moment only, a bright light blazes over the starboard bow.
The captain counts it a light upon one of the headlands of the Jersey
shore; and he orders the helmsman (she is sailing in the eye of an easy
westerly breeze) to give her a couple of points more "northing"; and the
yards and sheets are trimmed accordingly. The ship pushes on more
steadily as she opens to the wind, and the mists and coming night
conceal all around them.
"What do you make of the light, Mr. Yardley?" says the captain,
addressing the mate.
"Can't say, sir, with such a bit of a look. If it should be Fire Island,
we 're in a bad course, sir."
"That's true enough," said the captain thoughtfully. "Put a man in the
chains, Mr. Yardley, and give us the water."
"I hope we shall be in the bay by morning, Captain," said Reuben, who
stood smoking leisurely near the wheel. But the captain was preoccupied,
and answered nothing.
A little after, a voice from the chains came chanting full and loud, "By
the mark--nine!"
"This 'll never do, Mr. Yardley," said the captain, "Jersey shore or any
other. Let all hands keep by to put the ship about."
A voice forward was heard to say something of a roar that sounded like
the beat of surf; at which the mate stepped to the side of the ship and
listened anxiously.
"It 's true, sir," said he coming aft. "Captain, there 's something very
like the beat of surf, here away to the no'th'ard."
A flutter in the canvas caught the captain's attention. "It 's the wind
slacking; there's a bare capful," said the mate, "and I 'm afeard
there's mischief brewing yonder." He pointed as he spoke a little to the
south of east, where the darkness seemed to be giving way to a luminous
gray cloud of mist.
"And a half--six!" shouts again the man in the chains.
The captain meets it with a swelling oath, which betrays clearly enough
his anxiety. "There 's not a moment to lose, Yardley; see all ready
there! Keep her a good full, my boy!" (to the man at the wheel).
The darkness was profound. Reuben, not a little startled by the new
aspect of affairs, still kept his place upon the quarter-deck. He saw
objects flitting across the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the
coils flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There was something
weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures, in the indistinct maze of
cordage and canvas above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray
streaming away from either bow.
"Are you ready there?" says the captain.
"Ay, ay, sir," responds the mate.
"Put your helm a-lee, my man!--Hard down!"
"Hard down it is, sir!"
The ship veers up into the wind; and, as the captain shouts his order,
"Mainsail haul!" the canvas shakes; the long, cumbrous yard groans upon
its bearings; there is a great whizzing of the cordage through the
blocks; but, in the midst of it all,--coming keenly to the captain's
ear,--a voice from the fore-hatch exclaims, "By G--, she touches!"
The next moment proved it true. The good ship minded her helm no more.
The fore-yards are brought round by the run and the mizzen, but the
light wind--growing lighter--hardly clears the flapping canvas from the
spars.
In the sunshine, with so moderate a sea, 't would seem little; in so
little depth of water they might warp her off; but the darkness
magnifies the danger; besides which, an ominous sighing and murmur are
coming from that luminous misty mass to the southward. Through all this,
Reuben has continued smoking upon the quarter-deck; a landsman under a
light wind, and with a light sea, hardly estimates at their true worth
such intimations as had been given of the near breaking of the surf, and
of the shoaling water. Even the touch upon bottom, of which the grating
evidence had come home to his own perceptions, brought up more the fate
of his business venture than any sense of personal peril. We can surely
warp her off in the morning, he thought; or, if the worst came,
insurance was full, and it would be easy boating to the shore.
"It's lucky there's no wind," said he to Yardley.
"Will you obleege me, Mr. Johns? Take a good strong puff of your
cigar,--here, upon the larboard rail, sir," and he took the lantern from
the companion-way that he might see the drift of the smoke. For a moment
it lifted steadily; then, with a toss it vanished away--shoreward. The
first angry puffs of the southeaster were coming.
The captain had seen all, and with an excited voice said, "Mr. Yardley,
clew up, fore and aft,--clew up everything; put all snug, and make ready
the best bower."
"Mr. Johns," said he, approaching Reuben, "we are on a lee shore; it
should be Long Island beach by the soundings; with calm weather, and a
kedge, we might work her off with the lift of the tide. But the Devil
and all is in that puff from the sou'east."
"O, well, we can anchor," says Reuben.
"Yes, we can anchor, Mr. Johns; but if that sou'easter turns out the
gale it promises, the best anchor aboard won't be so good as a
gridiron."
"Do you advise taking to the boats, then?" asked Reuben, a little
nervously.
"I advise nothing, Mr. Johns. Do you hear the murmur of the surf yonder?
It's bad landing under such a pounding of the surf, with daylight; in
the dark, where one can't catch the drift of the waves, it might
be--death!"
The word startled Reuben. His philosophy had always contemplated it at a
distance, toward which easy and gradual approaches might be made: but
here it was, now, at a cable's length!
And yet it was very strange; the sea was not high; no gale as yet; only
an occasional grating thump of the keel was a reminder that the good
Meteor was not still afloat. But the darkness! Yes, the darkness was
complete, (hardly a sight even of the topmen who were aloft--as in the
sunniest of weather--stowing the canvas,) and to the northward that
groan and echo of the resounding surf; to the southward, the whirling
white of waves that are lifting now, topped with phosphorescent foam.
The anchor is let go, but even this does not bring the ship's head to
the wind. Those griping sands hold her keel fast. The force of the
rising gale strikes her full abeam, giving her a great list to shore. It
is in vain the masts are cut away, and the rigging drifts free; the hulk
lifts only to settle anew in the grasping sands. Every old seaman upon
her deck knows that she is a doomed ship.
From time to time, as the crashing spars or the leaden thump upon the
sands have startled those below, Madam Maverick and her maid have made
their appearance, in a wild flutter of anxiety, asking eager questions;
(Reuben alone can understand them or answer them;) but as the
southeaster grows, as it does, into a fury of wind, and the poor hulk
reels vainly, and is overlaid with a torrent of biting salt spray, Madam
Maverick becomes calm. Instinctively, she sees the worst.
"Could I only clasp Adele once more in these arms, I would say,
cheerfully, '_Nunc dimittis_.'"
Reuben regarded her calm faith with a hungry eagerness. Not, indeed,
that calmness was lacking in himself. Great danger, in many instances,
sublimates the faculties of keenly strung minds. But underneath his
calmness there was an unrest, hungering for repose,--the repose of a
fixed belief. If even then the breaking waves had whelmed him in their
mad career, he would have made no wailing outcry, but would have
clutched--how eagerly!--at the merest shred of that faith which, in
other days and times, he had seen illuminate the calm face of the
father. Something to believe,--on which to float upon such a sea!
But the waves and winds make sport of beliefs. Prayers count nothing
against that angry surge. Two boats are already swept from the davits,
and are gone upon the whirling waters. A third, with infinite pains, is
dropped into the yeast. It is hard to tell who gives the orders. But,
once afloat, there is a rush upon it, and away it goes,--overcrowded,
and within eyeshot lifts, turns, and a crowd of swimmers float for a
moment,--one with an oar, another with a thwart that the waves have torn
out,--and in the yeast of waters they vanish.
One boat only remains, and it is launched with more careful handling;
three cling by the wreck; the rest--save only Madam Maverick and
Reuben--are within her, as she tosses still in the lee of the vessel.
"There 's room!" cries some one; "jump quick! for God's sake!"
And Reuben, with some strange, generous impulse, seizes upon Madam
Maverick, and, before she can rebel or resist, has dropped her over the
rail. The men grapple her and drag her in; but in the next moment the
little cockle of a boat is drifted yards away.
The few who are left--the boatswain among them--are toiling on the wet
deck to give a last signal from the little brass howitzer on the
forecastle. As the sharp crack breaks on the air,--a miniature sound in
that howl of the storm,--the red flash of the gun gives Reuben, as the
boat lurches toward the wreck again, a last glance of Madam
Maverick,--her hands clasped, her eyes lifted, and calm as ever. More
than ever too her face was like the face of Adele,--such as the face of
Adele must surely become, when years have sobered her and her buoyant
faith has ripened into calm. And from that momentary glance of the
serene countenance, and that flashing associated memory of Adele, a
subtile, mystic influence is born in him, by which he seems suddenly
transfused with the same trustful serenity which just now he gazed upon
with wonder. If indeed the poor lady is already lost,--he thinks it for
a moment,--her spirit has fanned and cheered him as it passed. Once
more, as if some mysterious hand had brought them to his reach, he
grapples with those lost lines of hope and trust which in that youthful
year of his exuberant emotional experience he had held and lost,--once
more, now, in hand,--once more he is elated with that wonderful sense of
a religious poise, that, it would seem, no doubts or terrors could
overbalance. Unconsciously kneeling on the wet deck, he is rapt into a
kind of ecstatic indifference to winds, to waves, to danger, to death.
The boom of a gun is heard to the northward. It must be from shore.
There are helpers at work, then. Some hope yet for this narrow tide of
life, which just seemed losing itself in some infinite flow beyond. Life
is, after all, so sweet! The boatswain forward labors desperately to
return an answering signal; but the spray, the slanted deck, the
overleaping waves, are too much for him. Darkness and storm and despair
rule again.
The wind, indeed, has fallen; the force of the gale is broken; but the
waves are making deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had
remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great
swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every
lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works
crack and burst open with the strain.
Reuben chances to espy an old-fashioned round life-buoy lashed to the
taffrail, and, cutting it loose, makes himself fast to it. He overhears
the boatswain say, yonder by the forecastle, "These thumpings will break
her in two in an hour. Cling to a spar, Jack."
The gray light of dawn at last breaks, and shows a dim line of shore, on
which parties are moving, dragging some machine, with which they hope to
cast a line over the wreck. But the swell is heavier than ever, the
timbers nearer to parting. At last a flash of lurid light from the dim
shore-line,--a great boom of sound, and a line goes spinning out like a
spider's web up into the gray, bleak sky. Too far! too short! and the
line tumbles, plashing into the water. A new and fearful lift of the sea
shatters the wreck, the fore part of the ship still holding fast to the
sands; but all abaft the mainmast lifts, surges, reels, topples over;
with the wreck, and in the angry swirl and torment of waters, Reuben
goes down.
LXV.
That morning,--it was the 22d of September, in the year 1842,--Mr.
Brindlock came into his counting-room some two hours before noon, and
says to his porter and factotum, as he enters the door, "Well, Roger, I
suppose you 'll be counting this puff of a southeaster the equinoctial,
eh?"
"Indeed, sir, and it 's an awful one. The Meteor 's gone ashore on Long
Beach; and there 's talk of young Mr. Johns being lost."
"Good Heavens!" said Brindlock, "you don't tell me so!"
By half past three he was upon the spot; a little remaining fragment
only of the Meteor hanging to the sands, and a great _debris_ of bales,
spars, shattered timbers, bodies, drifted along the shore,--Reuben's
among them.
But he is not dead; at least so say the wreckers, who throng upon the
beach; the life-buoy is still fast to him, though he is fearfully
shattered and bruised. He is borne away under the orders of Brindlock to
some near house, and presently revives enough to ask that he may be
carried--"home."
As, in the opening of this story, his old grandfather, the Major, was
borne away from the scene of his first battle by easy stages homeward,
so now the grandson, far feebler and after more terrible encounter with
death, is carried by "easy stages" to his home in Ashfield. Again the
city, the boat, the river,--with its banks yellowing with harvests, and
brightened with the glowing tints of autumn; again the sluggish brigs
drifting down with the tide, and sailors in tasselled caps leaning over
the bulwarks; again the flocks feeding leisurely on the rock-strewn
hills; again the ferryman, in his broad, cumbrous scow, oaring across;
again the stoppage at the wharf of the little town, from which the coach
still plies over the hills to Ashfield.
On the way thither, a carriage passes them, in which are Adele and her
father. The news of disaster flies fast; they have learned of the wreck,
and the names of passengers. They go to learn what they can of the
mother, whom the daughter has scarce known. The passing is too hasty for
recognition. Brindlock arrives at last with his helpless charge at the
door of the parsonage. The Doctor is overwhelmed at once with grief and
with joy. The news had come to him, and he had anticipated the worst.
But "Thank God! 'Joseph, my son, is yet alive!' Still a probationer;
there is yet hope that he may be brought into the fold."
He insists that he shall be placed below, upon his own bed, just out of
his study. For himself, he shall need none until the crisis is past. But
the crisis does not pass; it is hard to say when it will. The wounds are
not so much; but a low fever has set in, (the physician says,) owing to
exposure and excitement, and he can predict nothing as to the result.
Even Aunt Eliza is warmed into unwonted attention as she sees that poor
battered hulk of humanity lying there; she spares herself no fatigue,
God knows, but she sheds tears in her own chamber over this great
disaster. There are good points even in the spinster; when shall we
learn that the best of us are not wholly good, nor the worst wholly bad?
Days and days pass. Reuben hovering between life and death; and the old
Doctor, catching chance rest upon the little cot they have placed for
him in the study, looks yearningly by the dim light of the sick-lamp
upon that dove which his lost Rachel had hung upon his wall above the
sword of his father. He fancies that the face of Reuben, pinched with
suffering, resembles more than ever the mother. Of sickness, or of the
little offices of friends which cheat it of pains, the old gentleman
knows nothing: sick souls only have been his care. And it is pitiful to
see his blundering, eager efforts to do something, as he totters round
the sick-chamber where Reuben, with very much of youthful vigor left in
him, makes fight against the arch-enemy who one day conquers us all. For
many days after his arrival there is no consciousness,--only wild words
(at times words that sound to the ears of the good Doctor strangely
wicked, and that make him groan in spirit),--tender words, too, of
dalliance, and eager, loving glances,--murmurs of boyish things, of
sunny, school-day noonings,--hearing which, the Doctor thinks that, if
this light must go out, it had better have gone out in those days of
comparative innocence.
Over and over the father appeals to the village physician to know what
the chances may be,--to which that old gentleman, fumbling his
watch-key, and looking grave, makes very doubtful response. He hints at
a possible undermining of the constitution in these later years of city
life.
God only knows what habits the young man may have formed in these last
years; surely the Doctor does not; and he tells the physician as much,
with a groan of anguish.
* * * * *
Meantime, Maverick and Adele have gone upon their melancholy search;
and, as they course over the island to the southern beach, the sands,
the plains, the houses, the pines, drift by the eye of Adele as in a
dream. At last she sees a great reach of water,--piling up, as it rolls
lazily in from seaward, into high walls of waves, that are no sooner
lifted than they break and send sparkling floods of foam over the sands.
Bits of wreck, dark clots of weed, are strewed here and
there,--stragglers scanning every noticeable heap, every floating thing
that comes in.
Is she dead? is she living? They have heard only on the way that many
bodies are lying in the near houses,--many bruised and suffering ones;
while some have come safe to land, and gone to their homes. They make
their way from that dismal surf-beaten shore to the nearest house. There
are loiterers about the door; and within,--within, Adele finds her
mother at last, clasps her to her heart, kisses the poor dumb lips that
will never more open,--never say to her rapt ears, "My child! my
darling!"
Maverick is touched as he has never been touched before; the age of
early sentiment comes drifting back to his world-haunted mind; nay,
tears come to those eyes that have not known them for years. The grief,
the passionate, vain tenderness of Adele, somehow seems to sanctify the
memory of the dead one who lies before him, her great wealth of hair
streaming dank and fetterless over the floor.
Not more tenderly, scarce more tearfully, could he have ministered to
one who had been his life-long companion. Where shall the poor lady be
buried? Adele answers that, with eyes flashing through her
tears,--nowhere but in Ashfield, nowhere except beside the sister,
Marie.
It is a dismal journey for the father and the daughter; it is almost a
silent journey. Does she love him less? No, a thousand times, no. Does
he love her less? No, a thousand times, no. In such presence love is
awed into silence. As the mournful _cortege_ enters the town of
Ashfield, it passes the home of that fatherless boy, Arthur, for whom
Adele had shown such sympathy. The youngster is there swinging upon the
gate, his cap gayly set off with feathers, and he looking wonderingly
upon the bier. He sees, too, the sad face of Adele, and, by some strange
rush of memory, recalls, as he looks on her, the letter which she had
given him long ago, and which till then had been forgotten. He runs to
his mother: it is in his pocket,--it is in that of some summer jacket.
At last it is found; and the poor woman herself, that very morning, with
numberless apologies, delivers it at the door of the parsonage.
Phil is the first to meet this exceptional funeral company, and is the
first to tell Adele how Reuben lies stricken almost to death at the
parsonage. She thanks him: she thanks him again for the tender care
which he shows in all relating to the approaching burial. When an enemy
even comes forward to help us bury the child we loved or the parent we
mourn, our hearts warm toward him as they never warmed before; but when
a friend assumes these offices of tenderness, and takes away the
harshest edge of grief by assuming the harshest duties of grief, our
hearts shower upon him their tenderest sympathies. We never forget it.
Of course, the arrival of this strange freight in Ashfield gives rise to
a world of gossip. We cannot follow it; we cannot rehearse it. The poor
woman is buried, as Adele had wished, beside her sister. No _De
Profundis_ except the murmur of the winds through the crimson and the
scarlet leaves of later September.
The Tourtelots have been eager with their gossip. The dame has queried
if there should not be some town demonstration against the burial of the
Papist. But the little Deacon has been milder; and we give our last
glimpse of him--altogether characteristic--in a suggestion which he
makes in a friendly way to Squire Elderkin, who is the host of the
French strangers.
"Square, have they ordered a moniment yit for Miss Maverick?"
"Not that I 'm aware of, Deacon."
"Waal, my nevvy's got a good slab of Varmont marble, which he ordered
for his fust wife; but the old folks did n't like it, and it's in his
barn on the heater-piece. 'T ain't engraved, nor nothin'. If it should
_suit_ the Mavericks, I dare say they could git it tol'able low."
LXVI.
Reuben is still floating between death and life. There is doubt whether
the master of the long course or of the short course will win. However
that may be, his consciousness has returned; and it has been with a
great glow of gratitude that the poor Doctor has welcomed that look of
recognition in his eye,--the eye of Rachel!
He is calm,--he knows all. That calmness which had flashed into his soul
when last he saw the serene face of his fellow-voyager upon that mad sea
is _his_ still.
The poor father had been moved unwontedly by that unconsciousness which
was blind to all his efforts at spiritual consolation; but he is not
less moved when he sees reason stirring again,--a light of eager inquiry
in those eyes fearfully sunken, but from their cavernous depths seeing
farther and more keenly than ever.
"Adele's mother,--was she lost?" He whispers it to the Doctor; and Miss
Eliza, who is sewing yonder, is quickened into eager listening.
"Lost! my son, lost! Lost, I apprehend, in the other world as well as
this, I fear the true light never dawned upon her."
A faint smile--as of one who sees things others do not see--broke over
the face of Reuben. "'T is a broad light, father; it reaches beyond our
blind reckoning."
There was a trustfulness in his manner that delighted the Doctor. "And
you see it, my son?--Repentance, Justification by Faith, Adoption,
Sanctification, Election?"
"Those words are a weariness to me, father; they suggest methods,
dogmas, perplexities. Christian hope, pure and simple, I love better."
The Doctor is disturbed; he cannot rightly understand how one who seems
inspired by so calm a trust--the son of his own loins too--should find
the authoritative declarations of the divines a weariness. Is it not
some subtle disguise of Satan, by which his poor boy is being cheated
into repose?
Of course the letter of Adele, which had been so long upon its way, Miss
Eliza had handed to Reuben after such time as her caution suggested, and
she had explained to him its long delay.
Reading is no easy matter for him; but he races through those delicately
penned lines with quite a new strength. The spinster sees the color come
and go upon his wan cheek, and with what a trembling eagerness he folds
the letter at the end, and, making a painful effort, tries to thrust it
under his pillow. The good woman has to aid him in this. He thanks her,
but says nothing more. His fingers are toying nervously at a bit of torn
fringe upon the coverlet. It seems a relief to him to make the rent
wider and wider. A little glimpse of the world has come back to him,
which disturbs the repose with which but now he would have quitted it
forever.
Adele has been into the sick-chamber from time to time,--once led away
weeping by the good Doctor, when the son had fallen upon his wild talk
of school-days; once, too, since consciousness has come to him again,
but before her letter had been read. He had met her with scarce more
than a touch of those fevered fingers, and a hard, uncertain quiver of a
smile, which had both shocked and disappointed the poor girl. She
thought he would have spoken some friendly consoling word of her mother;
but his heart, more than his strength, failed him. Her mournful, pitying
eyes were a reproach to him; they had haunted him through the wakeful
hours of two succeeding nights, and now, under the light of that laggard
letter, they blaze with a new and an appealing tenderness. His fingers
still puzzle wearily with that tangle of the fringe. The noon passes.
The aunt advises a little broth. But no, his strength is feeding itself
on other aliment. The Doctor comes in with a curiously awkward attempt
at gentleness and noiselessness of tread, and, seeing his excited
condition, repeats to him some texts which he believes must be
consoling. Reuben utters no open dissent; but through and back of all he
sees the tender eyes of Adele, which, for the moment, outshine the
promises, or at the least illuminate them with a new meaning.
"I must see Adele," he says to the Doctor; and the message is
carried,--she herself presently bringing answer, with a rich glow upon
her cheek.
"Reuben has sent for me,"--she murmurs it to herself with pride and joy.
She is in full black now; but never had she looked more radiantly
beautiful than when she stepped to the side of the sick-bed, and took
the hand of Reuben with an eager clasp--that was met, and met again. The
Doctor is in his study, (the open door between,) and the spinster is
fortunately just now busy at some of her household duties.
Reuben fumbles under his pillow nervously for that cherished bit of
paper, (Adele knows already its history,) and when he has found it and
shown it (his thin fingers crumpling it nervously) he says, "Thank you
for this, Adele!"
She answers only by clasping his hand with a sudden mad pressure of
content, while the blood mounted into either cheek with a rosy
exuberance that magnified her beauty tenfold.
He saw it,--he felt it all; and through her beaming eyes, so full of
tenderness and love, saw the world to which he had bidden adieu shining
before him more beguilingly than ever. Yesterday it was a dim and weary
world that he could leave without a pang; to-day it is a brilliant
world, where hopes, promises, joys pile in splendid proportions.
He tells her this. "Yesterday I would have died with scarce a regret;
to-day, Adele, I would live."
"You will, you will, Reuben!" and she grappled more and more
passionately those shrunken fingers. "'T is not hopeless!" (sobbing).
"No, no, Adele, darling, not hopeless. The cloud is lifted,--not
hopeless!"
"Thank God, thank God!" said she, dropping upon her knees beside him,
and with a smile of ecstasy he gathered that fair head to his bosom.
The Doctor, hearing her sobs, came softly in. The son's smile, as he met
his father's inquiring look, was more than ever like the smile of
Rachel. He has been telling the poor girl of her mother's death, thinks
the old gentleman; yet the Doctor wonders that he could have kept so
radiant a face with such a story.
Of these things, however, Reuben goes on presently to speak: of his
first sight of the mother of Adele, and of her devotional attitude as
they floated down past the little chapel of Notre Dame to enter upon the
fateful voyage; he recounts their talks upon the tranquil moon-lit
nights of ocean; he tells of the mother's eager listening to his
description of her child.
"I did not tell her the half, Adele; yet she loved me for what I told
her."
And Adele smiles through her tears.
At last he comes to those dismal scenes of the wreck, relating all with
a strange vividness; living over again, as it were, that fearful
episode, till his brain whirled, his self-possession was lost, and he
broke out into a torrent of delirious raving.
He sleeps brokenly that night, and the next day is feebler than ever.
The physician warns against any causes of excitement. He is calm only at
intervals. The old school-days seem present to him again; he talks of
his fight with Phil Elderkin as if it happened yesterday.
"Yet I like Phil," he says (to himself), "and Rose is like Amanda, the
divine Amanda. No--not she. I've forgotten: it's the French girl. She's
a ---- Pah! who cares? She's as pure as heaven; she's an angel. Adele!
Adele! Not good enough! I'm not good enough. Very well, very well, now
I'll be bad enough! Clouds, wrangles, doubts! Is it my fault? _AEdificabo
meam Ecclesiam._ How they kneel! Puppets! mummers! No, not mummers, they
see a Christ. What if they see it in a picture? You see him in words.
Both in earnest. Belief--belief! That is best. Adele, Adele, I believe!"
The Doctor is a pained listener of this incoherent talk of his son. "I
am afraid,--I am afraid," he murmurs to himself, "that he has no clear
views of the great scheme of the Atonement."
The next day Reuben is himself once more, but feeble, to a degree that
startles the household. It is a charming morning of later September;
the window is wide open, and the sick one looks out over a stretch of
orchard (he knew its every tree), and upon wooded hills beyond (he knew
every coppice and thicket), and upon a background of sky over which a
few dappled white clouds floated at rest.
"It is most beautiful!" said Reuben.
"All things that He has made are beautiful," said the Doctor; and
thereupon he seeks to explore his way into the secrets of Reuben's
religious experience,--employing, as he was wont to do, all the
Westminster formulas by which his own belief stood fast.
"Father, father, the words are stumbling-blocks to me," says the son.
"I would to God, Reuben, that I could make my language always clear."
"No, father, no man can, in measuring the Divine mysteries. We must
carry this draggled earth-dress with us always,--always in some sort
fashionists, even in our soberest opinions. The robes of light are worn
only Beyond. Thought, at the best, is hampered by this clog of language,
that tempts, obscures, misleads."
"And do you see any light, my son?"
"I hope and tremble. A great light is before me; it shines back upon
outlines of doctrines and creeds where I have floundered for many a
year."
"But some are clear,--some are clear, Reuben!"
"Before, all seems clear; but behind--"
"And yet, Reuben," (the Doctor cannot forbear the discussion,) "there is
the cross,--Election, Adoption, Sanctification--"
"Stop, father; the cross, indeed, with a blaze of glory, I see; but the
teachers of this or that special form of doctrine I see only catching
radiations of the light. The men who teach, and argue, and declaim, and
exorcise, are using human weapons; the great light only strikes here and
there upon some sword-point which is nearest to the cross."
"He wanders," says the Doctor to Adele, who has slipped in and stands
beside the sick-bed.
"No wandering, father; on the brink where I stand, I cannot."
"And what do you see, Reuben, my boy?" (tenderly).
Is it the presence of Adele that gives a new fervor, a kind of crazy
inspiration to his talk? "I see the light-hearted clashing cymbals; and
those who love art, kneeling under blazing temples and shrines; but the
great light touches the gold no more effulgently than the steeple of
your meeting-house, father, but no less. I see eyes of chanting girls
streaming with joy in the light; and haggard men with ponderous
foreheads working out contrivances to bridge the gap between the finite
and the infinite. Father, they are no nearer to a passage than the
radiant girls who chant and tell their beads. Angels in all shapes of
beauty flit over and amid the throngs I see,--in shape of fleecy clouds
that fan them,--in shape of brooks that murmur praise,--in shape of
leafy shadows that tremble and flicker,--in shape of birds that make a
concert of song." The birds even then were singing, the clouds floating
in his eye, the leafy shadows trailing on the chamber floor, and, from
the valley, the murmur of the brook came to his sensitive ear.
"He wanders,--he wanders!" said the poor Doctor.
Reuben turns to Adele. "Adele, kiss me!" A rosy tint ran over her face
as she stooped and kissed him with a freedom a mother might have
shown,--leaving one hand toying caressingly with his hair. "The cloud is
passing, Adele,--passing! God is Justice; Christ is Mercy. In him I
trust."
"Reuben, darling," says Adele, "come back to us!"
"Darling,--darling!" he repeated with a strange, eager, satisfied
smile,--so sweet a sound it was.
The chamber was filled with the delightful perfume of a violet bed
beneath the window. Suddenly there came from the Doctor, whose old eyes
caught sooner than any the change, a passionate outcry. "Great God! Thy
will be done!"
With that one loud, clear utterance, his firmness gave way,--for the
first time in sixty years broke utterly; and big tears streamed down his
face as he gazed yearningly upon the dead body of his first-born.
LXVII.
In the autumn of 1845, three years after the incidents related in our
last chapter, Mr. Philip Elderkin, being at that time president of a
railroad company, which was establishing an important connection of
travel that was to pass within a few miles of the quiet town of
Ashfield, was a passenger on the steamer Caledonia, for Europe. He
sailed, partly in the interest of the company,--to place certain
bonds,--and partly in his own interest, as an intelligent man, eager to
add to his knowledge of the world.
At Paris, where he passed some time, it chanced that he was one evening
invited to the house of a resident American, where, he was gayly
assured, he would meet with a very attractive American heiress, the only
daughter of a merchant of large fortune.
Philip Elderkin--brave, straightforward fellow that he was--had never
forgotten his early sentiment. He had cared for those French graves in
Ashfield with an almost religious attention. In all the churchyard there
was not such scrupulously shorn turf, or such orderly array of bloom. He
counted--in a fever of doubt--upon a visit to Marseilles before his sail
for home.
But at the _soiree_ we have mentioned he was amazed and delighted to
meet, in the person of the heiress, Adele Maverick,--not changed
essentially since the time he had known her. That life at
Marseilles--even in the well-appointed home of her father--has none of
that domesticity which she had learned to love; and this first winter in
Paris for her does not supply the lack. That she has a great company of
admirers it is easy to understand; but yet she gives a most cordial
greeting to Phil Elderkin,--a greeting that by its manner makes the
pretenders doubtful. Philip finds it possible to reconcile the demands
of his business with a week's visit to Marseilles. To the general
traveller it is not a charming region. The dust abounds; the winds are
terrible; the sun is scalding. But Mr. Philip Elderkin found it
delightful. And, indeed, the country-house of Mr. Maverick had
attractions of its own; attractions so great that his week runs over
into two,--into three. There are excursions to the Pont du Gard, to the
Arene of Arles. And, before he leaves, he has an engagement there (which
he has enforced by very peremptory proposals) for the next spring.
On his return to Ashfield, he reports a very successful trip. To his
sister Rose (now Mrs. Catesby, with a blooming little infant, called
Grace Catesby) he is specially communicative. And she thinks it was a
glorious trip, and longs for the time when he will make the next. He,
furthermore, to the astonishment of Dame Tourtelot (whose husband sleeps
now under the sod), has commenced the establishment of a fine home, upon
a charming site, overlooking all Ashfield. The Squire, still stalwart,
cannot resist giving a hint of what is expected to the old Doctor, who
still wearily goes his rounds, and prays for the welfare of his flock.
He is delighted at the thought of meeting again with Adele, though he
thinks with a sigh of his lost boy. Yet he says in his old manner, "'T
is the hand of Providence; she first bloomed into grace under the roof
of our church; she comes back to adorn it with her faith and her works."
* * * * *
At a date three years later we take one more glimpse at that quiet
village of Ashfield, where we began our story. The near railway has
brought it into more intimate connection with the shore towns and the
great cities. But there is no noisy clatter of the cars to break the
quietude. On still days, indeed, the shriek of the steam-whistle or the
roar of a distant train is heard bursting over the hills, and dying in
strange echoes up and down the valley. The stage-driver's horn is heard
no longer; no longer the coach whirls into the village and delivers its
leathern pouch of letters. The Tew partners we once met are now partners
in the grave. Deacon Tourtelot (as we have already hinted) has gone to
his long home; and the dame has planted over him the slab of "Varmont"
marble, which she has bought at a bargain from his "nevvy."
The Boody tavern-keeper has long since disappeared; no teams wheel up
with the old dash at the doors of the Eagle Tavern. The creaking
sign-board even is gone from the overhanging sycamore.
Miss Almira is still among the living. She sings treble, however, no
longer; she wears spectacles; she writes no more over mystical asterisks
for the Hartford Courant. Age has brought to her at least this much of
wisdom.
The mill groans, as of old, in the valley. A new race of boys pelt the
hanging nests of the orioles; a new race of school-girls hang swinging
on the village gates at the noonings.
As for Miss Johns, she lives still,--scarce older to appearance than
twenty years before,--prim, wiry, active,--proof against all ailments,
it would seem. It is hard to conceive of her as yielding to the great
conqueror. If the tongue and an inflexibility of temper were the
weapons, she would whip Death from her chamber at the last. It seems
like amiability almost to hear such a one as she talk of her
approaching, inevitable dissolution,--so kindly in her to yield that
point!
And she does; she declares it over and over, there are far feebler ones
who do not declare it half so often. If she is to be conquered and the
Johns banner go down, she will accept the defeat so courageously and so
long in advance that the defeat shall become a victorious confirmation
of the Johns prophecy.
She is still earnest in all her duties; she gives cast-away clothing to
the poor, and good advice with it. She is rigorous in the observance of
every propriety; no storm keeps her from church. If the children of a
new generation climb unduly upon the pew-backs, or shake their curly
heads too wantonly, she lifts a prim forefinger at them, which has lost
none of its authoritative meaning. She is the impersonation of all good
severities. A strange character! Let us hope that, as it sloughs off its
earthly cerements, it may in the Divine presence scintillate charities
and draw toward it the love of others. A good, kind, bad
gentlewoman,--unwearied in performance of duties. We wonder as we think
of her! So steadfast, we cannot sneer at her,--so true to her line of
faith, we cannot condemn her,--so utterly forbidding, we cannot love
her! May God give rest to her good, stubborn soul!
* * * * *
Upon Sundays of August and September there may be occasionally seen in
the pew of Elderkin Junior a gray-haired old gentleman, dressed with
scrupulous care, and still carrying an erect figure, though somewhat
gouty in his step. This should be Mr. Maverick, a retired merchant, who
is on a visit to his daughter. He makes wonderful gifts to a certain
little boy who bears a Puritan name, and gives occasional ponderous sums
to the parish. In winter, his head-quarters are at the Union Club.
And Doctor Johns? Yes, he is living still,--making his way wearily each
morning along the street with his cane. Going oftenest, perhaps, to the
home of Adele, who is now a matron,--a tender, and most womanly and
joyful matron,--and with her little boy--Reuben Elderkin by name--he
wanders often to the graves where sleep his best beloved,--Rachel, so
early lost,--the son, in respect to whom he feels at last a "reasonable
assurance" that the youth has entered upon a glorious inheritance in
those courts where one day he will join him, and the sainted Rachel too,
and clasp again in his arms (if it be God's will) the babe that was his
but for an hour on earth.
TIED TO A ROPE.
You don't know what a Hircus Oepagrus is, Tommy? Well, it is a big
name for him, isn't it? And if you should ask that somewhat slatternly
female, who appears to employ tubs for the advantage of others rather
than herself, what the animal is, she would tell you it is a goat. See
what a hardy, sturdy little creature he is; and how he lifts up his
startled head, as the cars come thundering along, and bounds away as if
he were on the rugged hills that his ancestors climbed, ages ago, in
wild freedom. O that cruel rope! how it stops him in his career with a
sudden jerk that pulls him to the ground! See where it has worn away the
hair round his neck, in his constant struggles to escape. See how he has
browsed the scanty grass of that dry pasture, in the little circle to
which he is confined, and is now trying to reach an uncropped tuft, just
beyond his tether. And the sun is beating down upon him, and there is
not the shade of a leaf for him to creep into, this July day. Poor
little fellow!
Not waste my sympathy on a common goat? My dear Madam, I can assure you
that ropes are not knotted around the neck of Hirci Oepagri alone. And
when I was bemoaning the captivity of yonder little browser we have left
behind, I was bewailing the fortune of another great order of the
Mammalian class,--an order that Mr. Huxley and Mr. Darwin and other
great thinkers of the day are proving to be close connections of their
humbler brethren that bleat and bark and bray. The bimanal species of
this order are similarly appendaged, though they are not apt to be
staked beside railways or confined to a rood of ground.
Do you see Vanitas at the other end of the car? Does he look as though
he carried about with him a "lengthening chain"? No one would certainly
suppose it. Yet he is bound as securely as the poor little goat. We may
go to the fresh air of his country-seat this July day, or to the
sea-breezes of his Newport cottage next month, or he may sit here, "the
incarnation of fat dividends," while you and I envy him his wealth and
comforts; but he can never break his bonds. They are riveted to the
counters of the money-changers, knotted around the tall masts of his
goodly ships, bolted to the ore of his distant mines. He bears them to
his luxurious home, and his fond wife, his caressing children, his
troops of friends, can never strike them off. Ever and anon, as the car
of fortune sweeps by to start him from his comfortable ease, they gall
him with their remorseless restraint. You may cut the poor goat's rope
and set him free, to roam where he will; but Vanitas has forged his own
fetters, and there comes to him no blessed day of emancipation.
My dear Madam, the bright blue ether around us is traversed by a
wonderful network of these invisible bonds that hold poor human beings
to their fate. Over the green hills and over the blue waters, far, far
away they reach,--a warp and woof of multiform, expansive strands, over
which the sense of bondage moves with all the wondrous celerity of that
strange force which, on the instant, speaks the thought of the
Antipodes. You don't know that you carry about any such? Ah! it is well
that they weigh so lightly. Utter your grateful thanks, to-night, when
you seek your pillow, that the chains you wear are not galling ones. But
you are most irrevocably bound. Frank holds you fast. One of these days,
when you are most peaceful and content in your bondage, scarcely
recognized, there may come a stately tread, a fiery eye, a glowing
heart, to startle you from your quiet ease; and when you bound,
trembling and breathless in their mighty sway, you may feel the
chain--before so light--wearing its way deep into your throbbing heart.
May you never wake on the morn of that day, Madam! You don't carry any
such? Round a little white tablet, half hidden in the sighing grass, is
linked a chain which holds you, at this moment, by your inmost soul. You
are not listening to me now; for I have but touched it, and your breast
is swelling 'neath its pressure, and the tears start to your eyes at its
momentary tightness. You don't carry any such? We all carry them; and
were human ears sensitive to other than the grosser sounds of nature,
they would hear a strange music sweeping from these mystic chords, as
they tremble at the touch of time and fate.
Master Tommy seems to be tolerably free from any sort of restraint, I
acknowledge. In fact, it is he who keeps myself and Mrs. A. in the most
abject servitude. He holds our nasal appendages close to the grindstone
of his imperious will. And yet--please take him into the next car,
Madam, while I speak of him. You cannot? What is this? Let me see, I
pray you. As I live, it is his mother's apron-string. Ah! I fear, Madam,
that all your efforts cannot break that tie. In the years to come, it
will doubtless be frayed and worn; and, some day or other, he will bound
loose from his childhood's captivity; but long ere that he will have
other bonds thrown around him, some of which he can never break. He will
weave with his own hands the silken cord of love, coil it about him,
knot it with Gordian intricacy, net it with Vulcan strength, and then,
with blind simplicity, place it in Beauty's hand to lead him captive to
her capricious will. My dear Madam, did not Tommy's father do the same
foolish thing? And is he not grateful to the lovely Mrs. Asmodeus for
the gentleness with which she holds him in her power? Some of our bonds
are light to bear. We glory in them, and hold up our gyves to show them
to the world. Tommy may be a little shamefaced when his playmates jeer
at the maternal tie; but he will walk forth, glowing with pride and joy,
to parade his self-woven fetters ostentatiously in the sight of men.
When you had done some such foolish thing yourself, did not your young
mates gather round to view, with wondering and eager eyes, the result of
your own handiwork at the cordage of love? Were there not many
loquacious conclaves held to sit in secret judgment thereon? Were there
not many soft cheeks flushing, and bright eyes sparkling, and fresh
hearts beating, as you brought forth, with a pride you did not pretend
to hide, the rose-colored fabric you had woven? And did they not all
envy you, and wonder when their distaffs were to whirl to the tread of
their own ready feet?
But we are not always eager or proud to exhibit our bonds. Indeed, we
sedulously conceal them from every eye; we cover up the marks upon our
scarred hearts with such jealous care, that none, not even our bosom
friends, can ever see them. They hold us where the sweet herbage of life
has become dry and sere, where no shelter offers us a grateful retreat.
Vanitas can bear away with him his "lengthening chain" to his leafy
groves; but Scripsit is confined to the torrid regions of his scanty
garret. In vain he gazes afar, beyond the smoky haze of his stony
prison, upon the green slopes and shady hills. In vain he toils and
strains to burst the links that bind him. His soul is yearning for the
cooling freshness, the sweet fragrance, the beauty, the glory, of the
outer world. It is just beyond his reach; and, wearied with futile
exertions, he sinks, fainting and despairing, in his efforts to rend the
chain of penury. And there are many other bonds which hold us to areas
of life from which we have gathered all the fresh bloom and the rich
fruit. We may tread their barren soil with jewelled sandals, wrap around
us ermined robes in winter's cold, and raise our silken tents in
summer's glare, while our souls are hungering and thirsting for the
ambrosia and the nectar beyond our tethered reach. We are held fast by
honor, virtue, fidelity, pity,--ties which we dare not break if we
could. We must not even bear their golden links to their extremest
length; we must not show that they are chains which bind us; we must not
show that we are hungering and thirsting in the confines to which they
restrain us. We must seem to be feasting as from the flesh-pots of
Egypt,--fattening on the husks which we have emptied,--while our souls
are starving and fainting and dying within us. 'T is a sad music that
swells from these chords. How fortunate that our ears are not attuned to
their notes. And we are not always solitary in our bondage; nor do we
tread round the cropped circuit, held to senseless pillars. We are
chained to each other; and unhappy are they who, straining at the bond,
seek food for their hearts in opposite directions. We are chained to
each other; and light or heavy are the bonds, as Fortune shall couple
us. Now you and Frank, I know, are leashed with down; and when Mrs.
Asmodeus went to the blacksmith, the Vulcan of our days, to order my
fetters, she bespoke gossamers, to which a spider's web were cable. But
we are among the favored of Fortune's children. There are many poor
unfortunates whose daily round is but the measured clank of hateful
chains; who eat, drink, sleep, live together, in a bondage worse than
that of Chillon,--round whom the bright sun shines, the sweet flowers
bloom, the soft breezes play,--and yet who stifle in the gloom of a
domestic dungeon.
And there are others fettered as firmly,--but how differently! The
clasping links are soft, caressing arms; the tones their sounding chains
give out are cheerful voices, joyous accents, words of love, that echo
far beyond the little circle that they keep, and spread their harmony
through many hearts. That little circle is a happy home; love spun the
bonds that hold them close therein, and many are the strands that bind
them there. They come from beauteous eyes that beam with light; from
lisping tongues more sweet than seraph choirs; from swelling hearts that
beat in every pulse with fond affection, which is richer far than all
the nectar of the ancient gods. Bind me with these, O Fortune! and I hug
my chains o'erjoyed. Be these the cords which hold me to the rock around
which break the surging waves of time, and let the beak of Fate tear as
it will, I hold the bondage sweet and laugh at liberty.
My dear Madam, there are chains which hold us as the cable holds the
ship; and, in their sure restraint, we safely ride through all the
howling blasts of adverse fate. The globe we tread whirls on through
endless space, kept ever in the circuit that it makes by that
restraining force which holds it to the pillar of the sun. Loose but the
bond an instant, and it flies in wild, tangential flight, to shatter
other worlds. The very bondage that we curse, and seek, in fretful mood,
to break and burst, may keep us to the orbit that is traced, by
overruling wisdom, for our good. We gravitate towards duty, though we
sweep with errant course along the outer marge of the bare area of its
tightened cord. Let but the wise restraint be rudely broke, and through
life's peopled space we heedless rush, trampling o'er hearts, and
whirling to our fate, leaving destruction on our reckless way.
Did you ever chance to see, Madam, a picture of those venturous hunters,
who are lowered by a rope to the nests of sea-birds, built on some
inaccessible cliff? Hanging between heaven and earth they sway;--above,
the craggy rock, o'er which the single cord is strained that holds them
fast; below, a yawning chasm, whose jagged depth would be a fearful
grave to him who should fall. You and I would never dream of
bird-nesting under such circumstances. I can see you shudder, even now,
at the bare idea. Yet do we not sometimes hang ourselves over cliffs
from which a fall were worse than death? Do we not trust ourselves, in
venturous mood, to the frail tenure of a single strand which sways
'twixt heaven and earth? Not after birds' eggs, I grant you. We are not
all of us so fond of omelettes. But over the wild crags of human passion
many drop, pursuing game that shuns the beaten way, and sway above the
depths of dark despair. Intent upon their prey, they further go, secure
in the firm hold they think they have, nor heed the fraying line that,
grating on the edge of the bare precipice, at last is worn and weak;
while, one by one, the little threads give way, and they who watch above
in terror call to warn them of the danger. But in vain! no friendly
voice can stay their flushed success; till, at its height, the cord is
suddenly snapped, and crushed upon the rocks beneath they lie. You and I
will never go bird-nesting after this fashion, my dear Madam. Let us
hover then around the crags of life, and watch the twisting strands that
others, more adventurous than we, have risked themselves upon. Be ours
the part to note the breaking threads, and, with our words of kindly
warning, seek to save our fellows from a fall so dread.
And, if the ties of earth keep us from falling, so also do they keep us
from rising above the level of grosser things. They hold us down to the
dull, tedious monotony of worldly cares, aims, purposes. Like birds
withheld from flight into the pure regions of the upper air by cruel,
frightening cords, we fluttering go, stifled amid the vapors men have
spread, and panting for the freedom that we seek.