attracted to matters of a theatrical drift. A son living in Chicago
occasionally sent her a Sunday paper, and those papers, as everybody
knows, devote a considerable share of their space to the drama in its
various phases. She had serious doubts as to the propriety of reading
these newspapers because they were labeled “Sunday,” but, reflecting
that it was along in the middle of the week before they reached her,
she decided, through some obscure train of logic, that there was no
moral delinquency in finding out just what had been going on in the
world three or four days before.
It was something of a task to read a twenty, thirty or forty-page
Chicago paper through from beginning to end with the religious care
that she did her county weekly, but in the two or three weeks that
each copy lay around before another arrived she accomplished the task.
Consequently she read a good deal about the theaters, much of it not
to edification, because she had never seen a play nor read one, and
failed to comprehend many allusions. There was something about these
columns that attracted her, however, and she continued to peruse them
with interest. One day she found something within her comprehension. In
response to popular demand, Joseph Jefferson had reproduced his “Rip
Van Winkle” that season after its semi-retirement for some years, and
Chicago papers had a great deal to say about it and about him--all in
the way of praise. Now, Mrs. Brooks knew all about “Rip Van Winkle”
and all about Jefferson. The daughter of her next-door neighbor on the
east was a school-teacher in the city--said city meaning Indianapolis,
of course--and subscribed for the Century Magazine, sending each copy
home after she had read it. When the family was through with it,
it was passed around the neighborhood, beginning with Mrs. Brooks.
Among other things she found in it was Jefferson’s autobiography. She
began reading this under the vague impression that Joseph Jefferson
was a statesman of the Thomas Jefferson type; or, if not, perhaps a
great writer, though she did not remember to have heard of him. At
any rate, he must be a distinguished man, for only that kind wrote
biographies of themselves and got them printed. When she learned that
he was only an actor she felt something of a shock, but by that time
she was interested in his career and pleased with the good principles
he seemed to possess and the excellent moral sentiments he enunciated
incidentally. It did seem strange, though, that such a man should
engage in so reprehensible a calling.
When she came to the account of his appearance as Rip Van Winkle she
was again surprised and pleased, for had she not read Irving’s story
of that good-for-nothing but winsome idler? Her next-door neighbor
on the west had received a copy of the “Sketch Book” as a prize for
subscribing for the Weekly Bugle, and, like most other books in the
village, it had eventually gravitated into her hands.
Altogether, she was fairly well posted in regard to this particular
bit of drama, and was startled one day by the discovery that she was
actually wishing to see the play and to see Jefferson. The idea was
really shocking. She, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in
good standing, to think of going to the theater of all places in the
world. Satan himself must have put the suggestion into her mind. Did
not the church Discipline enjoin members to engage in no pastimes
which could not be performed to the glory of God? Certainly no one
could praise God at the theater; and yet--and yet, there was nothing
especially objectionable about “Rip Van Winkle,” while Mr. Jefferson
seemed a good sort of man according to his light. However, perhaps the
theatrical columns of the Sunday papers were just as well left alone,
and she would have no more of them.
The truth was that Mrs. Brooks had, without suspecting it, a liking
for the dramatic and for the spectacular. She patronized all the
entertainments given under church auspices, and was pleased with
them in proportion as they were picturesque or exciting. She liked
elocutionary performances, and was partial to the more dramatic
recitations. She never missed charades or tableaux arranged by the
young people, and made no criticisms, though the representations were
scenes from profane history or heathen gods and goddesses arranged in
white cotton drapery, such as gods never wore before. She liked lively
music--dance music, if she only knew it--revival meetings of the
stirring, fervid sort, and temperance meetings where the emotions were
played upon by skillful speakers.
A week or so after this twinge of worldly temptation Mrs. Brooks went
to spend a few days with her married daughter in Indianapolis to help
that young matron with her winter sewing. The very evening of her
arrival her son-in-law remarked to his wife at the supper table:
“Maria, Joe Jefferson is to play ‘Rip Van Winkle’ to-morrow night. You
know we have been waiting to see him again, and I have bought tickets.”
Now, Mrs. Brooks knew that since her marriage her daughter had departed
from the strict ways of her youth, and now and then indulged in that
perilous frivolity, progressive euchre, and attended the theater. She
had made vigorous remonstrance, as in duty bound, but, finding her
protests of no use, had abandoned the fight, at least till an opportune
season. Out of respect to her mother’s feelings, Maria tacitly ignored
the subject, and now endeavored to signal her husband to silence, but
he went placidly on and invited his mother-in-law to go with them,
saying he would secure another seat. Much to his surprise, and more to
that of his wife, Mrs. Brooks did not manifest that animosity toward
theaters which a mention of them in her presence had been wont to
arouse, and which the artful son-in-law had hoped to excite on this
occasion for his own delectation. On the contrary, she took up the
subject with a show of interest more eager than she knew, and displayed
so much familiarity with Jefferson and his play that the two younger
people looked at each other in wonder. But when urged to say whether or
not she would go she suddenly stiffened and responded coldly:
“George Henry, you know my principles in regard to such places.
To-morrow night I shall go to hear Francis Murphy. I know the way to
the hall, and am not afraid to go and come alone.”
Next evening came, but Maria had a headache and could not go. George
proposed to escort his mother-in-law to the Murphy meeting and leave
her there while he went to the theater for an act or two--“for it was
really a pity to miss it when we had the tickets and the time. You
know, Mother Brooks,” he said solemnly, winking at his wife over his
mother-in-law’s head, “you know going to see Jefferson is not like
going to see other actors. He plays such nice, clean, moral plays and
is such a high-toned, moral man--church member, and all that--that it
is almost as good as going to a religious meeting to hear him.”
“Church member, is he?” was Mrs. Brooks’s only response, but the acute
George Henry detected an expression in her eye that led him to whisper
to his wife, as he kissed her good-night: “If we are not home till late
you may know that I have inveigled your esteemed parent into a wild
orgy at the theater.”
It was a fair night, and they walked down. The Grand Opera House was
on the way to Tomlinson Hall, and as they drew near its portals the
orchestra could be heard discoursing some very lively music preliminary
to the raising of the curtain. When they reached the entrance George
Henry turned toward it.
“Come, Mother Brooks, let’s hear Jefferson. You may never have another
chance. He beats Francis Murphy all hollow. It’s all right. You’ll find
lots of good people there who wouldn’t go to any other play nor to see
any other actor for the world.”
There was a faint remonstrance--where were Mrs. Brooks’s accustomed vim
and decision? There was a feeble holding back of her steps, but her
eyes were fixed on the distant drop curtain, visible through the open
doors--and in she went.
It was an event in her life. The stage with its setting, was as novel
to her as to a child. There it all was, just as she had read about it,
but so much more real--the village green, the old Dutch burghers, the
vixenish Gretchen, little Katrina and the happy-go-lucky, lazy, but
lovable Rip. As played, the story had some points she did not recall
in the book, but what mattered! There was Rip doing the best he could.
Suppose he was lazy and shiftless and did get tipsy sometimes, such
a wife was enough to drive a man to drink. Mrs. Brooks forgot time
and place in following his fortunes. She leaned forward, filled with
visible wrath when Gretchen scolded, and when, at last, the wife drove
him from home with his dog, and Rip turned and bade her and his child a
touching farewell, tears ran down her cheeks unheeded.
Then, how she thrilled at the thunder of the mysterious ninepins rolled
in the hollows of the Catskills by Hendrick Hudson’s men; how weird
those old Dutchmen were; how wonderful was the red fire that flashed
over them, making them look like creatures from the infernal regions!
How her heart and her throat ached for the poor, pitiful old man when
he woke from his twenty years’ sleep and wandered back to his home to
find the world changed! What a wonderful thing it was altogether that
one man--for the others in the play did not matter much--that one man
could make a mere story, an impossible legend, seem so true, such a
thing of actual life! And what a delightful creature he was, that Rip,
that Jefferson, with his airy wave of the hand and his confidential,
infectious smile.
She was glad she had seen him; glad, glad.
And this statement she adhered to. George Henry was discreet enough to
say very little about this escapade of his mother-in-law, but she knew
that she would meet no such consideration at home, for in coming out of
the opera house she had jostled against young Hiram Jones, of Cicero,
whom she had often rebuked for his theater-going, and whose father
was her class leader. But she was not cast down. She had no intention
of concealing her act. Next Sunday she went to church as usual,
serene in the consciousness of looking well in a brand new, though
properly plain, bonnet bought in the city. As usual, she appeared in
class-meeting when the hour came. Her keen eye detected a movement of
interest and curiosity on the part of others present, which convinced
her that young Hiram had told his story.
Brother Minshall, being called on after the opening prayer and hymn,
arose and repeated with nasal emphasis the formula of forty years,
beginning: “Brethren and sisters, I feel to rejoice that I am spared to
be with you another Sunday, that I may tell you of the wondrous work of
grace in my heart.”
Sister Angeline Martin told her hearers in droning phrase that she was
a weak and sinful worm of the dust, but that she had fixed her trust in
the Lord and knew that He would lift her up.
Uncle Ezra Hinshaw was glad to add his testimony and to say that he was
on the Lord’s side, and had been for nigh on to forty year. An hour
spent here, he said, was worth all the fleeting joys the world could
give.
And so it went on until Mrs. Brooks arose. She wasted no time in
preliminaries.
“I take it for granted, brethren and sisters,” she said, “that you know
I attended the theater when I was in the city last week, and that you
want to know how I reconcile it with my professions. I did go; I got
no harm, but very much enjoyment, and, I think, some good. I learned
that whatever some theater plays may be, some others are as good as the
best sermons. I have found out that it doesn’t do to abuse all theaters
because some are bad. I don’t feel that I did anything wrong. I don’t
advise anybody else to go, and I don’t advise them not. It is a matter
with their own conscience. Mine is clear. I expect never to go again,
but I am glad I went, and glad I learned what I learned, and glad I saw
Joe Jefferson. Praise the Lord!”
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” said the leader with solemn
intonation, but with a faint twinkle in his eye. He was a discreet man,
and had been to the theater in his time, too. So the class sang the
doxology and was dismissed.
Going out, Aunt Hannah met young Hiram Jones, looking a little
sheepish, and shook hands with him.
“Wasn’t it beautiful?” said she. “Ain’t you glad you went, and ain’t
Joseph Jefferson great? May he live long and prosper.”
AN ABIDING LOVE
The woman who was a critical reader of magazines met her friend, the
writer of stories, in the little railroad station at Mullins, in
southern Indiana. The writer had just arrived from Indianapolis; the
other was waiting the north-bound train.
“What have you come to this dull, lonely, forlorn place for? Not for
literary material, surely? My grandmother lives here, and I have known
the town all my life. Nothing romantic ever happened to anyone here;
there are no incidents, no tragedies, no characters worth studying; the
people simply vegetate.”
“I never hunt for ‘material’ anywhere,” replied the woman who wrote.
“It comes to me--crowds itself on me. I have been sent for by an
invalid cousin, and expect not to think of literary matters; but if I
were searching for themes I have no doubt I could find them, even here.”
“I am sure you could not. What, for instance (here the speaker’s
voice was lowered), what could you make out of that spiritless, meek,
faded-out creature there? She is a resident here; I have seen her
often, but she is so colorless I never had the curiosity to ask even
her name. I am sure she never had a vivid emotion, never really lived
in all her life.”
“Perhaps not,” laughed the writer, “but I believe she has a story. I
will find it out and tell it to you.”
* * * * *
This is the story she told a month later:
Martin Davis did not look much like a man with æsthetic sentiment
in his soul as he left his plow in the furrow that afternoon in
early April and drove his tired horses up the lane. His face was
weatherbeaten, his hands rough and hard, his clothing cheap and coarse,
his high boots, into which his jeans trousers were tucked, caked with
mud. But he was young and vigorous; his eyes were bright and eager, and
he felt himself a man to be envied, for had he not a wife waiting for
him at the house--a bride of but a few weeks? In the band of his rusty
felt hat he had slipped a bunch of yellow violets.
“I knew ye liked posies, Lizzie,” he said as he handed them to her
at the kitchen door, “and these are the first I’ve seen this season,
’thout it’s the little white windflowers that wilt while ye’re pickin’
them. These yellow things are way ahead of time. I’ve never found them
before earlier than May; they’re not common hereabouts, anyhow, but I
know of a spot down in the holler where they always flourish.”
When she put them in a teacup and set them on the supper table he
wondered vaguely why he had never known before that flowers made a
room look so cheerful--almost as if the sun were shining, though that
luminary had sunk behind the western hill. He did not know that the
brightness was not of the flowers, but was the light of love reflected
from his heart and hers.
It was but a brief time that his happiness lasted. That was the spring
of ’61, and the country was even then calling upon her loyal sons.
Martin Davis turned his horses into the pasture, left his crops for
others to harvest and went unhesitatingly to answer the call. Oh, the
heroism of the myriads who thus went out from home, and peace, and
love, to the battlefield in those dreadful years! What if they did
not know that the ninety days would lengthen until no man could name
the end, and that the slain would be like the leaves of the forest
for numbers? What if they did go simply from a matter-of-fact sense
of duty, and with little feeling of risk and danger, or because the
riotous spirit of youth yearned for adventure? The fact remains--the
tremendous, immutable fact--that they went by hundreds, by thousands,
by tens and hundreds of thousands, and that they offered their lives.
Greater love than this hath no man, and yet we, in this frivolous later
day, dare sometimes speak lightly of those men and their sacrifices.
It was a monotonous and a hard life for the most part, that of a
private soldier in the war for the Union. Its story has been told in
fragments at home firesides and by campfires, but never in literature
as a whole for the world to know. Perhaps it never will be. The
veterans tell of battles and of victories and of stirring events,
but they do not, as a class, care to dwell upon their hardships and
sufferings. The experience cut deep, and the scars are even yet too
sensitive to touch upon.
Martin Davis’s life was not different from the rest. There was the
drill and the camp life, the picket duty, the marching, the digging of
trenches and building of breastworks, the skirmishing, the expectation
of encounters with the enemy--all this for slow and weary months, and
at last a great battle.
Lizzie, the young wife at home, waited from week to week and month
to month, as women did in those days, with what show of patience and
composure they could muster--a proof of courage and patriotism not less
than that of going to war. The soldiers’ story may sometimes be told,
but where is the historian who shall portray the agony of the women’s
waiting hearts, the suffering of uncertainty and suspense? Who shall
comprehend the anguish of their tears? Who understand that the strain
of constant dread of evil news from husband and brother and lover was
greater than that felt by the soldier before the enemy’s guns--that it
left unhealed scars that aged them before their time?
Lizzie Davis fared like the other women--hoping and praying, living
upon the letters that came at irregular intervals, going about her
tasks by day, with heavy heart, and enduring long nights with their
visions of war and woe. In the little town from which the flower of
the young men had already gone, existence was not gay at the best of
times, and was now more monotonous than ever to the women, whose part
was to wait. There were few things to distract their minds from their
own anxieties; they were not the “new” women, with many and diverse
activities, and so they sat at home and thought of what might be. Mrs.
Davis did not love her husband more than the other lonely women loved
theirs, perhaps; but without him she was quite alone in the world, and
it was natural that no event of the war was important in which he had
no place. That brawny private, that long-limbed, awkward farmer boy,
was all the world to her. No future opened to her vision which he did
not share. She was a commonplace little creature, narrow in thought and
limited in capacity, but other and greater women have found it all of
life to love one man.
Letters came to her from Tennessee now. Martin wrote that it looked as
if some fighting would be done very soon that would scatter the rebels
and end the war. Then came the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, and he
wrote with still greater certainty that the war was soon to close. Men
better informed than he thought so then. After that there was marching
across country, transportation by boat up the Tennessee, more marching,
with rain and mud and cold as features of the travel--all this
described in fragmentary scrawls. One of them, dated April 5th, and
written on a scrap of paper while he stood in the rain with his company
awaiting orders, said there would be fighting soon, and added: “Here’s
a yellow violet; just found it under a bank. Season’s early down here.
We’re going to beat the rebs out of their boots. Good-bye.”
This note, and then--silence. There had been a battle; it was
Shiloh--bloody Shiloh. On its gory field, when the 7th of April dawned,
the dead lay by thousands--the blue and the gray. Oh, Shiloh! the
waiting hearts that broke when your victory was won!
Private Davis, of Company D, was numbered among the dead. A comrade
wrote to Lizzie, telling her that Martin had died like a hero. A part
of his regiment had faced about and retreated, broken in a panic
before the Confederates’ furious onslaught; but he had remained, had
seized the flag from the hand of the fleeing color-bearer and gone on
triumphantly to meet the coming foe. In the thick of the fight he was
seen to fall, “and,” said the writer, with no art at softening cruel
truth, “he was buried in a trench.”
To the widow a realizing sense of the death did not come. It is
often so when those away from home are taken; to their families they
seem still temporarily absent and likely to return at any hour. She
accepted the situation dumbly, uncomplainingly. She had no longer a
keen interest in life, and was without the strength of character to
rise above her grief and force herself to accept new interests. She was
simply an every-day woman, who had loved her husband and continued to
love and to think of him day and night, though he was dead. She sold
her farm to a rich neighbor, who took advantage of her ignorance to pay
her but half its value, and she was deprived of a large share of the
proceeds by a sharper to whom she intrusted them for investment. Then
she settled down in the little town and became a neighborhood drudge.
She sewed, nursed the sick, took care of the new babies, and was at the
beck and call of any housewife who needed her in domestic emergencies.
The years went on with little variety. The war ended, and affairs
settled into new grooves. A flood of prosperity swept over the country
and affected even this quiet town, but made little difference in Mrs.
Davis’s plodding, uneventful existence. No one pitied her especially
for her lonely and hard-working life. She was spoken of as “the widow
Davis,” but she was only one among many widows the war had created,
and, as she made no ado over her woes, no one else thought to do it
for her. They had their own troubles to think of. They did say, along
at first, that she didn’t take Mart’s death very hard. She “didn’t
make no fuss,” they said, and they “’lowed” she was “ruther shaller.”
Afterwards they practically forgot him, and assumed that she had done
the same. But she never put off her simple mourning garb; her mouth
fixed itself in a pathetic little droop; her brown hair faded early.
And she would not marry again. Ten years after Shiloh, John Holt, a
thrifty widower, attracted by her quiet, industrious ways, sought her
as a step-mother for his children.
“No, Mr. Holt,” she said. “I can’t be your wife. Martin Davis is dead
and buried, but I can’t make him seem dead nohow; I never have, an’ I
don’t reckon I ever can. I feel as if he was gone jest on a trip; an’ I
dream of him o’ nights, an’ I’m always glad when night comes, because
them dreams come, too. I’ll go along by myself till the time comes for
me to go and meet Martin--but it’s long, long!”
And then, her self-repression overcome by the sudden compassion in the
man’s eyes, she bowed her head upon the table and sobbed and wept in
the utter abandonment of a grief which knows no pretense.
John Holt went away thoughtful, and was afterwards heard to say it was
a “sing’lar dispensation o’ Providence that took a man away from a wife
like that an’ let other men live whose wives wouldn’t a-mourned for ’em
over night if they’d drownded theirselves.”
More years went, until, one day, Mrs. Davis heard of an excursion
that filled her patient soul with longing. This was a trip by boat
to Shiloh battleground. She had never been further from home than to
Cincinnati, fifty miles away, where she had gone once when a girl, but
she determined to make this journey. It was a great undertaking, and
she got ready for it with an excitement such as had not stirred her for
years. She never thought of the South but as the rebels’ country, and,
though she knew there were no rebels now, there was down in her heart a
dull hatred of all Southerners, because but for them there would have
been no war--but for a certain one of them who had fired a fatal shot
she would not have been left in loneliness all these long years.
Men and women of the world who, through contact with people of many
localities, have gained the ability to judge their fellow-beings
dispassionately find it difficult to comprehend the limitations of one
who has but a single point of view. Lizzie Davis had had but one great
interest in life, and had never been able to consider the outside world
in any other than its relation to herself.