If e'er it happen that the Poem Sacred, [1]
To which both heaven and earth have set their hand
Till it hath made me meagre many a year,
O'ercome the cruelty that bars me out
From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered,
Obnoxious to the wolves that war upon it,
With other voice henceforth, with other fleece
Will I return as poet, and at my font
Baptismal will I take the laurel-crown; [9]
Because into the Faith that maketh known
All souls to God there entered I, and then
Peter for her sake so my brow encircled.
Thereafterward towards us moved a light
Out of that band whence issued the first-fruits [14]
Which of his vicars Christ behind him left,
And then, my Lady, full of ecstasy,
Said unto me: "Look, look! behold the Baron
For whom below Galicia is frequented." [18]
In the same way as, when a dove alights
Near his companion, both of them pour forth,
Circling about and murmuring, their affection,
So I beheld one by the other grand
Prince glorified to be with welcome greeted,
Lauding the food that there above is eaten.
But when their gratulations were completed,
Silently _coram me_ each one stood still,
So incandescent it o'ercame my sight.
Smiling thereafterwards, said Beatrice:
"Spirit august, by whom the benefactions
Of our Basilica have been described, [30]
Make Hope reverberate in this altitude;
Thou knowest as oft thou dost personify it
As Jesus to the three gave greater light,"-- [33]
"Lift up thy head, and make thyself assured; [34]
For what comes hither from the mortal world
Must needs be ripened in our radiance."
This exhortation from the second fire [37]
Came; and mine eyes I lifted to the hills, [38]
Which bent them down before with too great weight,
"Since, through his grace, our Emperor decrees
Thou shouldst confronted be, before thy death,
In the most secret chamber, with his Counts, [42]
So that, the truth beholding of this court,
Hope, which below there rightly fascinates,
In thee and others may thereby be strengthened;
Say what it is, and how is flowering with it
Thy mind, and say from whence it came to thee":
Thus did the second light continue still.
And the Compassionate, who piloted [49]
The plumage of my wings in such high flight,
In the reply did thus anticipate me:
"No child whatever the Church Militant
Of greater hope possesses, as is written
In that Sun which irradiates all our band; [54]
Therefore it is conceded him from Egypt
To come into Jerusalem to see, [56]
Or ever yet his warfare is completed.
The other points, that not for knowledge' sake [58]
Have been demanded, but that he report
How much this virtue unto thee is pleasing,
To him I leave; for hard he will not find them,
Nor to be boasted of; them let him answer;
And may the grace of God in this assist him!"
As a disciple, who obeys his teacher,
Ready and willing, where he is expert,
So that his excellence may be revealed,
"Hope," said I, "is the certain expectation [67]
Of glory in the hereafter, which proceedeth
From grace divine and merit precedent.
From many stars this light comes unto me;
But he instilled it first into my heart,
Who was chief singer unto the chief captain. [72]
_Hope they in thee_, in the high Theody
He says, _all those who recognize thy name_; [74]
And who does not, if he my faith possesses? [75]
Thou didst instil me, then, with his instilling
In the Epistle, so that I am full,
And upon others rain again your rain." [78]
While I was speaking, in the living bosom
Of that effulgence quivered a sharp flash,
Sudden and frequent, in the guise of lightning.
Then breathed: "The love wherewith I am inflamed
Towards the virtue still, which followed me
Unto the palm and issue of the field,
Wills that I whisper thee, thou take delight
In her; and grateful to me is thy saying
Whatever things Hope promises to thee."
And I: "The ancient Scriptures and the new
The mark establish, and this shows it me, [89]
Of all the souls whom God has made his friends.
Isaiah saith, that each one garmented
In his own land shall be with twofold garments, [92]
And his own land is this sweet life of yours.
Thy brother, too, far more explicitly,
There where he treateth of the robes of white, [95]
This revelation manifests to us."
And first, and near the ending of these words,
_Sperent in te_ from over us was heard,
To which responsive answered all the carols. [99]
Thereafterward among them gleamed a light, [100]
So that, if Cancer such a crystal had,
Winter would have a month of one sole day. [102]
And as uprises, goes, and enters the dance
A joyous maiden, only to do honor
To the new bride, and not from any failing, [105]
So saw I the illuminated splendor
Approach the two, who in a wheel revolved, [107]
As was beseeming to their ardent love.
It joined itself there in the song and music;
And fixed on them my Lady kept her look,
Even as a bride, silent and motionless.
"This is the one who lay upon the breast
Of him our Pelican; and this is he
To the great office from the cross elected." [114]
My Lady thus; but therefore none the more
Removed her sight from its fixed contemplation,
Before or afterward, these words of hers.
Even as a man who gazes, and endeavors
To see the eclipsing of the sun a little,
And who, by seeing, sightless doth become,
So I became before that latest fire, [122]
While it was said, "Why dost thou daze thyself
To see a thing which here has no existence? [124]
Earth upon earth my body is, and shall be
With all the others there, until our number
With the eternal proposition tallies; [127]
With the two garments in the blessed cloister [128]
Are the two lights alone that have ascended: [129]
And this shalt thou take back into your world." [130]
And at this utterance the flaming circle
Grew quiet, with the dulcet intermingling
Of sound that by the trinal breath was made, [133]
As to escape from danger or fatigue
The oars that erst were in the water beaten
Are all suspended at a whistle's sound.
Ah, how much in my mind was I disturbed,
When I turned round to look on Beatrice,
At not beholding her, although I was
Close at her side and in the Happy World!
[Line 1: This "Divina Commedia," in which human science or Philosophy is
symbolized in Virgil, and divine science or Theology in Beatrice.
"_Fiorenza la Bella_," Florence the Fair. In one of his Canzoni, Dante
says,--
"O mountain-song of mine, thou goest thy way;
Florence my town thou shalt perchance behold,
Which bars me from itself,
Devoid of love and naked of compassion."]
[Line 9: This allusion to the Church of San Giovanni, "_il mio bel San
Giovanni_," as Dante calls it elsewhere, (Inf. xix. 17,) is a fitting
prelude to the Canto in which St. John is to appear. Like the "laughing
of the grass" in Canto xxx. 77, it is a "foreshadowing preface,"
_ombrifero prefazio_, of what follows.
See Canto xxiv. 150;
"So, giving me its benediction, singing,
Three times encircled me, when I was silent,
The apostolic light."]
[Line 14: St. Peter. "That we should be a kind of first-fruits of his
creatures." Epistle of St. James, i. 18.]
[Line 18: St. James. Pilgrimages are made to his tomb at Compostella in
Galicia.]
[Line 30: The General Epistle of St. James, called the _Epistola
Cattolica_, i. 17. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from
above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." Our Basilica:
Paradise: the Church Triumphant.]
[Line 33: Peter, James, and John, representing the three theological
virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, and distinguished above the other
apostles by clearer manifestations of their Master's favor.]
[Line 34: St. James speaks.]
[Line 37: The three Apostles, luminous above him, overwhelming him with
light.]
[Line 38: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh
my help." Psalm cxxi. 1.]
[Line 42: The most august spirits of the Celestial City.]
[Line 49: Beatrice.]
[Line 54: In God,
"Where everything beholds itself depicted."
Canto xxiv. 42.]
[Line 56: To come from earth to heaven.]
[Line 58: "Say what it is," and "whence it came to thee."]
[Line 67: "_Est spes certa expectatio futuræ beatitudinis, veniens ex
Dei gratia et meritis præcedentibus_." Petrus Lombardus, _Magister
Sententiarum_.]
[Line 72: The Psalmist David.]
[Line 74: The Book of Psalms, or Songs of God.]
[Line 75: "And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee."
Psalm ix. 10.]
[Line 78: Your rain: that is, of David and yourself.]
[Line 89: "The mark of the high calling and election sure."]
[Line 92: The twofold garments are the glorified spirit and the
glorified body.]
[Line 95: St. John, in the Apocalypse, vii. 9. "A great multitude which
no man could number ... clothed with white robes."]
[Line 99: Dances and songs commingled; the circling choirs, the
celestial choristers.]
[Line 100: St. John the Evangelist.]
[Line 102: In winter the constellation Cancer rises at sunset; and if it
had one star as bright as this, it would turn night into day.]
[Line 105: Such as vanity, ostentation, or the like.]
[Line 107: St. Peter and St. James are joined by St. John.]
[Line 114: Christ. "Then saith he to the disciple, 'Behold thy mother!'
And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home." St. John,
xix. 27.]
[Line 122: St. John.]
[Line 124: "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee."]
[Line 127: Till the predestined number of the elect is complete.]
[Line 128: The two garments: the glorified spirit and the glorified
body.]
[Line 129: The two lights: Christ and the Virgin Mary.]
[Line 130: Carry back these tidings.]
[Line 133: The sacred trio of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John.]
* * * * *
EXTERNAL APPEARANCE OF GLACIERS.
Thus far we have examined chiefly the internal structure of the glacier;
let us look now at its external appearance, and at the variety of
curious phenomena connected with the deposit of foreign materials upon
its surface, some of which seem quite inexplicable at first sight. Among
the most striking of these are the large boulders elevated on columns of
ice, standing sometimes ten feet or more above the level of the glacier,
and the sand-pyramids, those conical hills of sand which occur not
infrequently on all the large Alpine glaciers. One is at first quite at
a loss to explain the presence of these pyramids in the midst of a
frozen ice-field, and yet it has a very simple cause.
I have spoken of the many little rills arising on the surface of the ice
in consequence of its melting. Indeed, the voice of the waters is rarely
still on the glacier during the warm season, except at night. On a
summer's day, a thousand streams are born before noontide, and die again
at sunset; it is no uncommon thing to see a full cascade come rushing
out from the lower end of a glacier during the heat of the day, and
vanish again at its decline. Suppose one of these rivulets should fall
into a deep, circular hole, such as often occur on the glacier, and the
nature of which I shall presently explain, and that this cylindrical
opening narrows to a mere crack at a greater or less depth within the
ice, the water will find its way through the crack and filter down into
the deeper mass; but the dust and sand carried along with it will be
caught there, and form a deposit at the bottom of the hole. As day after
day, throughout the summer, the rivulet is renewed, it carries with it
an additional supply of these light materials, until the opening is
gradually filled and the sand is brought to a level with the surface of
the ice. We have already seen, that, in consequence of evaporation,
melting, and other disintegrating causes, the level of the glacier sinks
annually at the rate of from five to ten feet, according to stations.
The natural consequence, of course, must be, that the sand is left
standing above the surface of the ice, forming a mound which would
constantly increase in height in proportion to the sinking of the
surrounding ice, had it sufficient solidity to retain its original
position. But a heap of sand, if unsupported, must very soon subside and
be dispersed; and, indeed, these pyramids, which are often quite lofty,
and yet look as if they would crumble at a touch, prove, on nearer
examination, to be perfectly solid, and are, in fact, pyramids of ice
with a thin sheet of sand spread over them. A word will explain how this
transformation is brought about. As soon as the level of the glacier
falls below the sand, thus depriving it of support, it sinks down and
spreads slightly over the surrounding surface. In this condition it
protects the ice immediately beneath it from the action of the sun. In
proportion as the glacier wastes, this protected area rises above the
general mass and becomes detached from it. The sand, of course, slides
down over it, spreading toward its base, so as to cover a wider space
below, and an ever-narrowing one above, until it gradually assumes the
pyramidal form in which we find it, covered with a thin coating of sand.
Every stage of this process may occasionally be seen upon the same
glacier, in a number of sand-piles raised to various heights above the
surface of the ice, approaching the perfect pyramidal form, or falling
to pieces after standing for a short time erect.
The phenomenon of the large boulders, supported on tall pillars of ice,
is of a similar character. A mass of rock, having fallen on the surface
of the glacier, protects the ice immediately beneath it from the action
of the sun; and as the level of the glacier sinks all around it, in
consequence of the unceasing waste of the surface, the rock is
gradually left standing on an ice-pillar of considerable height. In
proportion as the column rises, however, the rays of the sun reach its
sides, striking obliquely upon them under the boulder, and wearing them
away, until the column becomes at last too slight to sustain its burden,
and the rock falls again upon the glacier; or, owing to the unequal
action of the sun, striking of course with most power on the southern
side, the top of the pillar becomes slanting, and the boulder slides
off. These ice-pillars, crowned with masses of rock, form a very
picturesque feature in the scenery of the glacier, and are represented
in many of the landscapes in which Swiss artists have endeavored to
reproduce the grandeur and variety of Alpine views, especially in the
masterly Aquarelles of Lory. The English reader will find them admirably
well described and illustrated in Dr. Tyndall's work upon the glaciers.
They are known throughout the Alps as "glacier-tables"; and many a time
my fellow-travellers and I have spread our frugal meal on such a table,
erected, as it seemed, especially for our convenience.
Another curious effect is that produced by small stones or pebbles,
small enough to become heated through by the sun in summer. Such a
heated pebble will of course melt the ice below it, and so wear a hole
for itself into which it sinks. This process will continue as long as
the sun reaches the pebble with force enough to heat it. Numbers of such
deep, round holes, like organ-pipes, varying in size from the diameter
of a minute pebble or a grain of coarse sand to that of an ordinary
stone, are found on the glacier, and at the bottom of each is the pebble
by which it was bored. The ice formed by the freezing of water
collecting in such holes and in the fissures of the surface is a pure
crystallized ice, very different in color from the ice of the great mass
of the glacier produced by snow; and sometimes, after a rain and frost,
the surface of a glacier looks like a mosaic-work, in consequence of
such veins and cylinders or spots of clear ice with which it is inlaid.
Indeed, the aspect of the glacier changes constantly with the different
conditions of the temperature. We may see it, when, during a long dry
season, it has collected upon its surface all sorts of light floating
materials, as dust, sand, and the like, so that it looks dull and
soiled,--or when a heavy rain has washed the surface clean from all
impurities and left it bright and fresh. We may see it when the heat and
other disintegrating influences have acted upon the ice to a certain
superficial depth, so that its surface is covered with a decomposed
crust of broken, snowy ice, so permeated with air that it has a
dead-white color, like pounded ice or glass. Those who see the glacier
in this state miss the blue tint so often described as characteristic of
its appearance in its lower portion, and as giving such a peculiar
beauty to its caverns and vaults. But let them come again after a summer
storm has swept away this loose sheet of broken, snowy ice above, and
before the same process has had time to renew it, and they will find the
compact, solid surface of the glacier of as pure a blue as if it
reflected the sky above. We may see it in the early dawn, before the new
ice of the preceding night begins to yield to the action of the sun, and
the surface of the glacier is veined and inlaid with the water poured
into its holes and fissures during the day and transformed into pure,
fresh ice during the night,--or when the noonday heat has wakened all
its streams, and rivulets sometimes as large as rivers rush along its
surface, find their way to the lower extremity of the glacier, or,
dashing down some gaping crevasse or open well, are lost beneath the
ice.
It would seem from the quantity of water that is sometimes ingulfed
within these open breaks in the ice, that the glacier must occasionally
be fissured to a very great depth. I remember once, when boring a hole
in the glacier in order to let down a self-regulating thermometer into
its interior, seeing an immense fissure suddenly rent open, in
consequence, no doubt, of the shocks given to the ice by the blows of
the instruments. The effect was like that of an earthquake; the mass
seemed to rock beneath us, and it was difficult to keep our feet. One of
these glacial rivers was flowing past the spot at the time, and it was
instantly lost in the newly formed chasm. However deep and wide the
fissure might be, such a stream of water, constantly poured into it, and
daily renewed throughout the summer, must eventually fill it and
overflow, unless it finds its way through the whole mass of the glacier
to the bottom on which it rests; it must have an outlet above or below.
The fact that considerable rivulets (too broad to leap across, and too
deep to wade through safely even with high boots) may entirely vanish in
the glacier unquestionably shows one of two things,--that the whole mass
must be soaked with water like a wet sponge, or the cavities reach the
bottom of the glacier. Probably the two conditions are generally
combined.
In direct connection with the narrower fissures are the so-called
_moulins_,--the circular wells on the glacier. We will suppose that a
transverse, narrow fissure has been formed across the glacier, and that
one of the many rivulets flowing longitudinally along its surface
empties into it. As the surface-water of the glacier, producing these
rivulets, arises not only from the melting of the ice, but also from the
condensation of vapor, or even from rain-falls, and flows over the
scattered dust-particles and fragments of rock, it has always a
temperature slightly above 32°, so that such a rivulet is necessarily
warmer than the icy edge of the fissure over which it precipitates
itself. In consequence of its higher temperature it melts the edge,
gradually wearing it backward, till the straight margin of the fissure
at the spot over which the water falls is changed to a semicircle; and
as much of the water dashes in spray and foam against the other side,
the same effect takes place there, by which a corresponding semicircle
is formed exactly opposite the first. This goes on not only at the upper
margin, but through the whole depth of the opening as far down as the
water carries its higher temperature. In short, a semicircular groove is
excavated on either side of the fissure for its whole depth along the
line on which the rivulet holds its downward course. After a time, in
consequence of the motion of the glacier, such a fissure may close
again, and then the two semicircles thus brought together form at once
one continuous circle, and we have one of the round deep openings on the
glacier known as _moulins_, or wells, which may of course become
perfectly dry, if any accident turns the rivulet aside or dries up its
source. The most common cause of the intermittence of such a waterfall
is the formation of a crevasse higher up, across the watercourse which
supplied it, and which now begins another excavation.
These wells are often very profound. I have lowered a line for more than
seven hundred feet in one of them before striking bottom; and one is by
no means sure even then of having sounded the whole depth, for it may
often happen that the water meets with some obstacle which prevents its
direct descent, and, turning aside, continues its deeper course at a
different angle. Such a well may be like a crooked shaft in a mine,
changing its direction from time to time. I found this to be the case in
one into which I caused myself to be lowered in order to examine the
internal structure of the glacier. For some time my descent was straight
and direct, but at a depth of about fifty feet there was a
landing-place, as it were, from which the opening continued its farther
course at quite a different angle. It is within these cylindrical
openings in the ice that those accumulations of sand collect which form
the pyramids described above.
One may often trace the gradual formation of these wells, because, as
they require certain similar conditions, they are very apt to be found
in various stages of completion along the same track where these
conditions occur. Fissures, for instance, will often be produced along
the same line, because, as the mass of the glacier moves on, its upper
portions, as they advance, come successively in contact with
inequalities of the bottom, in consequence of which the ice is strained
beyond its power of resistance and cracks across. Rivulets are also
likely to be renewed summer after summer over the same track, because
certain conditions of the surface of the glacier, to which I have not
yet alluded, and which favor the more rapid melting of the ice, remain
unchanged year after year. Of course, the wells do not remain stationary
any more than any other feature of the glacier. They move on with the
advancing mass of ice, and we consequently find the older ones
considerably lower down than the more recent ones. In ascending such a
track as I have described, along which fissures and rivulets are likely
to occur, we may meet first with a sand-pyramid; at a certain distance
above that there may be a circular opening filled to its brim with the
sand which has just reached the surface of the ice; a little above may
be an open well with the rivulet still pouring into it; or higher up, we
may meet an open fissure with the two semicircles opposite each other on
the margins, but not yet united, as they will be presently by the
closing of the fissure; or we may find near by another fissure, the
edges of which are just beginning to wear in consequence of the action
of the water. Thus, though we cannot trace the formation of such a
cylindrical shaft in the glacier from the beginning to the end, we may
by combining the separate facts observed in a number decipher their
whole history.
In describing the surface of the glacier, I should not omit the shallow
troughs which I have called "meridian holes," from the accuracy with
which they register the position of the sun. Here and there on the
glacier there are patches of loose materials, dust, sand, pebbles, or
gravel, accumulated by diminutive water-rills, and small enough to
become heated during the day. They will, of course, be warmed first on
their eastern side, then, still more powerfully, on their southern side,
and in the afternoon with less force again on their western side, while
the northern side will remain comparatively cool. Thus around more than
half of their circumference they melt the ice in a semicircle, and the
glacier is covered with little crescent-shaped troughs of this
description, with a steep wall on one side and a shallow one on the
other, and a little heap of loose materials in the bottom. They are the
sundials of the glacier, recording the hour by the advance of the sun's
rays upon them.
In recapitulating the results of my glacial experience, even in so
condensed a form as that in which I intend to present them here, I shall
be obliged to enter somewhat into personal narration, though at the risk
of repeating what has been already told by the companions of my
excursions, some of whom wrote out in a more popular form the incidents
of our daily life which could not be fitly introduced into my own record
of scientific research. When I first began my investigations upon the
glaciers, now more than twenty-five years ago, scarcely any measurements
of their size or their motion had been made. One of my principal
objects, therefore, was to ascertain the thickness of the mass of ice,
generally supposed to be from eighty to a hundred feet, and even less.
The first year I took with me a hundred feet of iron rods, (no easy
matter, where it had to be transported to the upper part of a glacier on
men's backs,) thinking to bore the glacier through and through. As well
might I have tried to sound the ocean with a ten-fathom line. The
following year I took two hundred feet of rods with me, and again I was
foiled. Eventually I succeeded in carrying up a thousand feet of line,
and satisfied myself, after many attempts, that this was about the
average thickness of the glacier of the Aar, on which I was working. I
mention these failures, because they give some idea of the
discouragements and difficulties which meet the investigator in any new
field of research; and the student must remember, for his consolation
under such disappointments, that his failures are almost as important to
the cause of science and to those who follow him in the same road as his
successes. It is much to know what we _cannot_ do in any given
direction,--the first step, indeed, toward the accomplishment of what we
can do.
A like disappointment awaited me in my first attempt to ascertain by
direct measurement the rate of motion in the glacier. Early observers
had asserted that the glacier moved, but there had been no accurate
demonstration of the fact, and so uniform is its general appearance from
year to year that even the fact of its motion was denied by many. It is
true that the progress of boulders had been watched; a mass of rock
which had stood at a certain point on the glacier was found many feet
below that point the following year; but the opponents of the theory
insisted that it did not follow, because the mass of rock had moved,
that therefore the mass of ice had moved with it. They believed that the
boulder might have slid down for that distance. Neither did the
occasional encroachment of the glaciers upon the valleys prove anything;
it might he solely the effect of an unusual accumulation of snow in cold
seasons. Here, then, was another question to be tested; and one of my
first experiments was to plant stakes in the ice to ascertain whether
they would change their position with reference to the sides of the
valley or not. If the glacier moved, my stakes must of course move with
it; if it was stationary, my stakes would remain standing where I had
placed them, and any advance of other objects upon the surface of the
glacier would be proved to be due to their sliding, or to some motion of
their own, and not to that of the mass of ice on which they rested. I
found neither the one nor the other of my anticipated results; after a
short time, all the stakes lay flat on the ice, and I learned nothing
from my first series of experiments, except that the surface of the
glacier is wasted annually for a depth of at least five feet, in
consequence of which my rods had lost their support, and fallen down.
Similar disappointment was experienced by my friend Escher upon the
great glacier of Aletsch.
My failure, however, taught me to sink the next set of stakes ten or
fifteen feet below the surface of the ice, instead of five; and the
experiment was attended with happier results. A stake planted eighteen
feet deep in the ice, and cut on a level with the surface of the
glacier, in the summer of 1840, was found, on my return in the summer of
1841, to project seven feet, and in the beginning of September it showed
ten feet above the surface. Before leaving the glacier, in September,
1841, I planted six stakes at a certain distance from each other in a
straight line across the upper part of the glacier, taking care to have
the position of all the stakes determined with reference to certain
fixed points on the rocky walls of the valley. When I returned, the
following year, all the stakes had advanced considerably, and the
straight line had changed to a crescent, the central rods having moved
forward much faster than those nearer the sides, so that not only was
the advance of the glacier clearly demonstrated, but also the fact that
its middle portion moved faster than its margins. This furnished the
first accurate data on record concerning the average movement of the
glacier during the greater part of one year. In 1842 I caused a
trigonometric survey of the whole glacier of the Aar to be made, and
several lines across its whole width were staked and determined with
reference to the sides of the valley;[B] for a number of successive
years the survey was repeated, and furnished the numerous data
concerning the motion of the glacier which I have published. I shall
probably never have an opportunity of repeating these experiments, and
examining anew the condition of the glacier of the Aar; but as all the
measurements were taken with reference to certain fixed points recorded
upon the map mentioned in the note, it would be easy to renew them over
the same locality, and to make a direct comparison with my first results
after an interval of a quarter of a century. Such a comparison would be
very valuable to science, as showing any change in the condition of the
glacier, its rate of motion, etc., since the time my survey was made.
These observations not only determined the fact of the motion of the
glacier itself, as well as the inequality of its motion in different
parts, but explained also a variety of phenomena indirectly connected
with it. Among these were the position and direction of the crevasses,
those gaping fissures of unknown depths, sometimes a mile or more in
length, and often measuring several hundred feet in width, the terror,
not only of the ordinary traveller, but of the most experienced
mountaineers. There is a variety of such crevasses upon the glacier, but
the most numerous and dangerous are the transverse and lateral ones. The
transverse ones were readily accounted for after the motion of the
glacier was admitted; they must take place, whenever, the glacier
advancing over inequalities or steeper parts of its bed, the tension of
the mass was so great that the cohesion of the particles was overcome,
and the ice consequently rent apart. This would be especially the case
wherever some steep angle in the bottom over which it moved presented an
obstacle to the even advance of the mass. But the position of the
lateral ones was not so easily understood. They are especially apt to
occur wherever a promontory of rock juts out into the glacier; and when
fresh, they usually slant obliquely upward, trending from the prominent
wall toward the head of the glacier, while, when old, on the contrary,
they turn downward, so that the crevasses around such a promontory are
often arranged in the shape of a spread fan, diverging from it in
different directions. When the movement of the glacier was fully
understood, however, it became evident, that, in its effort to force
itself around the promontory, the ice was violently torn apart, and that
the rent must take place in a direction at right angles with that in
which the mass was moving. If the mass be moving inward and downward,
the direction of the rent must be obliquely upward. As now the mass
continues to advance, the crevasses must advance with it; and as it
moves more rapidly toward the middle than on the margins, that end of
the crevasse which is farthest removed from the projecting rock must
move more rapidly also; the consequence is, that all the older lateral
crevasses, after a certain time, point downward, while the fresh ones
point upward.
Not only does the glacier collect a variety of foreign materials on its
upper surface, but its sides as well as its lower surface are studded
with boulders, stones, pebbles, sand, coarse and fine gravel, so that it
forms in reality a gigantic rasp, with sides hundreds of feet deep, and
a surface thousands of feet wide and many miles in length, grinding over
the bottom and along the walls between which it moves, polishing,
grooving, and scratching them as it passes onward. One who is familiar
with the track of this mighty engine will recognize at once where the
large boulders have hollowed out their deeper furrows, where small
pebbles have drawn their finer marks, where the stones with angular
edges have left their sharp scratches, where sand and gravel have rubbed
and smoothed the rocky surface, and left it bright and polished as if it
came from the hand of the marble-worker. These marks are not to be
mistaken by any one who has carefully observed them; the scratches,
furrows, grooves, are always rectilinear, trending in the direction in
which the glacier is moving, and most distinct on that side of the
surface-inequalities facing the direction of the moving mass, while the
lee-side remains mostly untouched.
It may be asked, how it is known that the glacier carries this powerful
apparatus on its sides and bottom, when they are hidden from sight. I
answer, that we might determine the fact theoretically from certain
known conditions respecting the conformation of the glacier; to which I
shall allude presently; but we need not resort to this kind of evidence,
since we have ocular demonstration of the truth. Here and there on the
sides of the glacier it is possible to penetrate between the walls and
the ice to a great depth, and even to follow such a gap to the very
bottom of the valley, and everywhere do we find the surface of the ice
fretted as I have described it, with stones of every size, from the
pebble to the boulder, and also with sand and gravel of all sorts, from
the coarsest grain to the finest, and these materials, more or less
firmly set in the ice, form the grating surface with which, in its
onward movement down the Alpine valleys, it leaves everywhere
unmistakable, traces of its passage.
We come now to the moraines, those walls of loose materials built by the
glaciers themselves along their road. They have been divided into three
classes, namely, lateral, medial, and terminal moraines. Let us look
first at the lateral ones; and to understand them we must examine the
conformation of the glacier below the _névé_, where it assumes the
character of pure compact ice. We have seen that the fields of snow,
where the glaciers have their origin, are level, and that lower down,
where these masses of snow begin to descend toward the narrower valley,
they follow its trough-like shape, sinking toward the centre and sloping
upward against the sides, so that the surface of the glacier, about the
region of the _névé_, is slightly concave. But lower down in the glacier
proper, where it is completely transformed into ice, its surface becomes
convex, for the following reason: The rocky walls of the valley, as they
approach the plain, partake of its higher temperature. They become
heated by the sun during the day in summer, so that the margins of the
glacier melt rapidly in contact with them. In consequence of this, there
is always in the lower part of the glacier a broad depression between
the ice and the rocky walls, while, as this effect is not felt in the
centre of the glacier, it there retains a higher level. The natural
result of this is a convex surface, arching upward toward the middle,
sinking toward the sides. It is in these broad, marginal depressions
that the lateral moraines accumulate; masses of rock, stones, pebbles,
dust, all the fragments, in short, which become loosened from the rocky
walls above, fall into them, and it is a part of the materials so
accumulated which gradually work their way downward between the ice and
the walls, till the whole side of the glacier becomes studded with them.
It is evident, that, when the glacier runs in a northerly or southerly
direction, both the walls will be affected by the sun, one in the
morning, the other in the afternoon, and in such a case the sides will
be uniform, or nearly so. But when the trend of the valley is from east
to west, or from west to east, the northern side only will feel the full
force of the sun; and in such a case, only one side of the glacier will
be convex in outline, while the other will remain nearly on a level with
the middle. The large masses of loose materials which accumulate between
the glacier and its rocky walls and upon its margins form the lateral
moraines. These move most slowly, as the marginal portions of the
glacier advance at a much slower rate than its centre.
The medial moraines arise in a different way, though they are directly
connected with the lateral moraines. It often happens that two smaller
glaciers unite, running into each other to form a larger one. Suppose
two glaciers to be moving along two adjoining valleys, converging toward
each other, and running in an easterly or westerly direction; at a
certain point these two valleys open into a single valley, and here, of
course, the two glaciers must meet, like two rivers rushing into a
common bed. But as glaciers consist of a solid, and not a fluid, there
will be no indiscriminate mingling of the two, and they will hold their
course side by side. This being the case, the lateral moraine on the
southern side of the northernmost glacier and that on the northern side
of the southernmost one must meet in the centre of the combined
glaciers. Such are the so-called medial moraines formed by the junction
of two lateral ones. Sometimes a glacier may have a great number of
tributaries, and in that case we may see several such moraines running
in straight lines along its surface, all of which are called medial
moraines in consequence of their origin midway between two combining
glaciers. The glacier of the Aar represented in the wood-cut below
affords a striking example of a large medial moraine. It is formed by
the junction of the glaciers of the Lauter-Aar, on the right-hand side
of the wood-cut, and the Finster-Aar, on the left; and the union of
their inner lateral moraines, in the centre of the diagram, forms the
stony wall down the centre of the larger glacier, called its medial
moraine. This moraine at some points is not less than sixty feet high.
We have here an effect similar to that of the glacier-tables and the
sand-pyramids. The wall protects the ice beneath it, and prevents it
from sinking at the same rate as the surrounding surface, while its
heated surface increases the melting of the adjacent surfaces of ice,
thus forming longitudinal depressions along the medial moraines, in
which the largest rivulets and the most conspicuous sand-pyramids, the
deepest wells and the finest waterfalls, are usually met with. As the
medial moraines rest upon that part of the glacier which moves fastest,
they of course advance much more rapidly than the lateral moraines.
[Illustration: Glacier of the Aar.]
The terminal moraines consist of all the _débris_ brought down by the
glacier to its lower extremity. In consequence of the more rapid
movement of the centre of the glacier, it always terminates in a
semicircle at its lower end, where these materials collect, and the
terminal moraines, of course, follow the outline of the glacier. The
wood-cut below represents the terminal moraine of the glacier of Viesch.
[Illustration]
Sometimes, when a number of cold summers have succeeded each other,
preventing the glacier from melting in proportion to its advance, the
accumulation of materials at its terminus becomes very considerable; and
when, in consequence of a succession of warm summers, it gradually melts
and retreats from the line it has been occupying, a large semicircular
wall is left, spanning the valley from side to side, through which the
stream issuing from the glacier may be seen cutting its way. It is
important to notice that such terminal moraines may actually span the
whole width of a valley, from side to side, and be interrupted only
where watercourses of sufficient power break through them. To suppose
that such transverse walls of loose materials could be thrown across a
valley by a river were to suppose that it could build dams across its
bed while it is flowing. Such transverse or crescent-shaped moraines are
everywhere the work of glaciers.
All these moraines are the land-marks, so to speak, by which we trace
the height and extent, as well as the progress and retreat, of glaciers
in former times. Suppose, for instance, that a glacier were to disappear
entirely. For ages it has been a gigantic ice-raft, receiving all sorts
of materials on its surface as it travelled onward, and bearing them
along with it; while the hard particles of rock set in its lower surface
have been polishing and fashioning the whole surface over which it
extended. As it now melts, it drops its various burdens on the ground;
boulders are the mile-stones marking the different stages of its
journey, the terminal and lateral moraines are the framework which it
erected around itself as it moved forward, and which define its
boundaries centuries after it has vanished, while the scratches and
furrows it has left on the surface below show the direction of its
motion.
All the materials which reach the bottom of the glacier, and are moving
under its weight, so far as they are not firmly set in the ice must be
pressed against one another, as well as against the rocky bottom, and
will be rounded off, polished, and scratched, like the rock itself over
which they pass. The pebbles or stones set fast in the ice will be thus
polished and scratched, however, only over the surface exposed; but, as
they may sometimes move in their socket, like a loosely mounted stone,
the different surfaces may in turn undergo this process, and in the end
all the loose materials under a glacier become more or less polished,
scratched, and grooved. These marks exhibit also the peculiarity so
characteristic of the grooves and scratches on the bed and walls of the
valley: they are rectilinear, trending in the direction in which the
superincumbent mass advances, though, of course, owing to the changes in
the position of the pebbles or boulders, they may cross each other in
every direction on their surface.
As the larger materials are pressed onward with the finer ones, that is,
with the sand, gravel, and mud accumulated at the bottom of the glacier,
the component parts of this underlying bed of _débris_ will be mixed
together without any reference to their size or weight. The softest mud
and finest sand may be in immediate contact with the bottom of the
valley, while larger rocks and pebbles may be held in the ice above; or
their position may be reversed, and the coarser materials may rest
below, while the finer ones are pressed between them or overlying them.
In short, the whole accumulation of loose _débris_ under the glacier,
resulting from the trituration of all kinds of angular fragments
reaching the lower surface of the ice, presents a sort of paste in which
coarser and lighter materials are impacted without reference to bulk or
weight. Those fragments which are most polished, rounded, grooved, or
scratched, have travelled longest under the glacier, and are derived
from the hardest rocks, which have resisted the general crushing and
pounding for a longer time. The masses of rock on the upper surface of
the glacier, on the contrary, are carried along on its back without
undergoing any such friction. Lying side by side, or one above another,
without being subject to pressure from the ice, they retain, both in the
lateral and medial moraines, and even in the terminal moraines, their
original size, their rough surfaces, and their angular form. Whenever,
therefore, a glacier melts, it is evident that the lower materials will
be found covered by the angular surface-materials now brought into
immediate contact with the former in consequence of the disappearance of
the intervening ice. The most careful observations and surveys have
shown this everywhere to be the case; wherever a large tract of glacier
has disappeared, the moraines, with their large angular boulders, are
found resting upon this bottom layer of rounded materials scattered
through a paste of mud and sand.
We shall see hereafter how far we can follow these traces, and what they
tell us of the past history of glaciers, and of the changes the climates
of our globe have undergone.
* * * * *
STEPHEN YARROW.
A CHRISTMAS STORY.
Sometime in the year 1856, a family named Yarrow moved into the
neighborhood where I then lived, and rented a small house with a bit of
ground attached to it, on one of the rich bottom-farms lying along the
eastern shore of the Ohio. The mother, two or three children, and their
dog Ready made up the quiet household: not one to attract notice from
any cause. People soon knew Martha Yarrow,--all that was in her. She was
Western- and farm-born; whatever Nature had given her of good or bad,
therefore, thrust itself out at once with pungent directness.
The family supported themselves by selling their poultry and vegetables
to the hucksters, leading an eventless life enough, until the change
occurred, some five years after they came into the neighborhood, of
which I am going to tell you.
I called it a Christmas Story, not so much because it happened on a
Christmas, as because the meaning of it seemed suited to that day; and I
thought, too, that nobody grows tired of Christmas stories, especially
if he chance to have been born in one of those families where the day is
kept in the old fashion: it roots itself so deep, that memory, in
whatever quaint superstition, or homely affection for mother or brother,
or unreasoning trust in God, may outlive our childhood, and underlie our
older years. And surely that is as just, as wise a thing,--to strip off
for a child the smirched trading-dress of one day at least, and send it
down through the long procession of the years with its true face bared,
to waken in him a live sense of man's love and God's love. Some one,
perhaps, had done this for this woman, Mrs. Yarrow, long ago; for, let
the months before and after be bare as they chose, she kept this day of
Christmas with a feverish anxiety, more eager than her children even to
make every moment warm and throb with pleasure, and enjoying them
herself, to their last breath, with the whole zest of a nervous,
strong-blooded nature. Yet she may have had another reason for it.
The evening before the Christmas of which we write, she had gone out to
the well with her son before closing the house for the night.
"There's no danger of thaw before morning, Jem?"--looking anxiously up
into the night, as they rested the bucket on the curb.
"Thaw! there's a woman's notion for you! Why, the very crow is frozen
out of the cocks yonder!"--stretching his arms, and clapping his hollow
cheat, as if he were six feet high. "No, we'll not have a thaw, little
woman."
The children often called her that, in a fond, protecting way; but it
sounded most oddly from Jem, he was such a weak, swaggering sparrow of a
little chap. He stretched his hands as high as he could reach up to her
hips, and smoothed her linsey dress down: if it had been her face, the
touch could not have been more tender.
"You don't think of the luck we always have. Why, it couldn't rain on
Christmas for you or me, mother!"
She laughed, nodding several times.
"Well, that is sure, Jem," stopping to look into the lean, emphatic
little face, and to pass her hand over the tow-colored hair.
Somehow, the bond between mother and son was curiously strong to-night.
It was always so on Christmas. At other times they were much like two
children in companionship, but Christmas never came without bringing a
vague sense of cowering close together as though some danger stood near
them. There was something half fierce, now, in the way she caressed his
face.
"Come on with the bucket, brother," she said, cheerfully, stamping the
clogging snow from her shoes, shading her eyes with her hand, and
looking over the white stretch to the black line of hills chopping the
east. "More like a hail-gust than rain. But I was afraid of that, you
see," as they went up the path. "There's an old saying, that trouble
always comes with rain. And it did in my life--to me"--
She was talking to herself. Jem whistled, pretending not to hear; but he
peered sharply into her face, with the relish which all sickly,
premature children have for a mystery or pain. Very seldom was there
hint of either about Martha Yarrow. She was an Ohio woman, small-boned,
muscular, with healthy, quick blood, not a scrofulous, ill-tempered drop
in her veins; in her brain only a very few and obstinate opinions,
maybe, but all of them lying open to the sight of anybody who cared to
know them. Not long ago, she had been a pretty, bouncing country-belle;
now, she was a hard-working housewife: a Whig, because all the Clarks
(her own family) were Whigs: going to the Baptist church, with no clear
ideas about close communion or immersion, because she had married a
country-parson. With a consciousness that she had borne a heavier pain
in her life than most women, and ought to feel scourged and sad, she did
cry out with such feeling sometimes,--but with a keen, natural relish
for apple-butter parings, or fair-days, or a neighbor dropping in to
tea, or anything that would give the children and herself a chance to
joke and laugh, and be like other people again. Between the two
feelings, her temper was odd and uncertain enough. But in this December
air, now, her still rounded cheek grew red, her breast heaved, her eyes
sparkled, glad as a child would be, simply because it was cold and
Christmas was coming; while the child Jem, with his tougher, less sappy
animal nature, jogged gravely beside her, head and eyes down. As for her
every-day life, nobody's fires burned, nobody's windows shone like
Martha Yarrow's; not a pound of butter went to market with the creamy,
clovery taste her fingers worked into hers. She put a flavor, an elastic
spring, into every bit of work she did, making it play. The very
nervousness of the woman, her sudden fits of laughter and tears,
impressed you as the effervescence of a zest of life which began at her
birth. Nobody ever got to the end, or expected to get to the end, of her
stories and scraps of old songs. Then, every day some new plan, keeping
the whole house awake and alive: when Tom's birthday came, a
surprise-feast of raspberries and cake; when Jem's new trousers were
produced, they had been made up over-night, a dead secret, ten shining
dimes in the pocket, fresh from the mint; even the penny string of blue
beads for Catty, bought of Sims the peddler, was hid under her plate,
and made quite a jollification of that supper. You may be sure, the five
years just gone in that house had been short and merry and cozy enough
for the children. Before that--Here Jem's memory flagged: he had been a
baby then; Catty just born; yet, somehow, he never thought of that
unknown time without the furtive, keen glance into his mother's face,
and a frightened choking in the heart under his puny chest. Somewhere,
back yonder, or in the years coming, some vague horror waited for him to
fight. To-night, (always at Christmas, although then the glow and
comfort of all days reached its heat,) this unaccountable dread was on
the boy; why, he never knew. It might be that under the hurry and
preparation of Martha Yarrow on that day some deeper meaning did lie,
which his instinct had discerned: more probably, however, it was but the
sickly vagary of a child grown old too fast.
They hurried along the path now to reach the house and shut the night
outside, for every moment the cold and dark were growing heavier; the
snow rasping under their feet, as its crust cracked; overhead, the
sky-air frozen thin and gray, holding dead a low, watery half-moon; now
and then a more earthy, thicker gust breaking sharply round the hill,
taking their breath. It was only a step, however, and Tom was holding
the house-door open, letting a ruddy light stream out, and with it a
savory smell of supper. Tom halloed, and that blue-eyed pudge of a Catty
pounded on the window with her fat little fist. How hot the fire glowed!
Somehow all Christmas seemed waiting in there. It was time to hurry
along. Even Ready came out, shaking his shaggy old sides impatiently in
the snow, and began to dog them, snapping at Jem's heels. Like most old
people, he liked his ease, and was apt to be out of sorts, if meals were
kept waiting. Ready's whims always made Martha laugh as she did when she
was a young girl: they knew each other then, long before Jem was born.
"Come on, old Truepenny," she said, going in.
There _was_ comfort. Nothing in that house, from the red woollen
curtains to the bright poker, which did not have its part to play for
Christmas. Nothing that did not say "Christmas," from Catty's eyes to
the very supper-table. Of course, I don't mean the Christmas dinner,
when I say supper. Tom could have told you. Somewhere in his paunchy
little body he kept a perpetual bill of fare, checked off or unchecked.
He based and stayed his mind now on preparations in the pantry.
Something solid there! A haunch of venison, mince-meat, winter
succotash, a roasted peahen,--and that is the top and crown of Nature's
efforts in the way of fowls. For suppers,--pish! However, Tom ate with
the rest. Mother was hungry; so they were very leisurely, and joked and
laughed to that extent that even Catty was uproarious when they were
through. Then Jem fell to work at the great coals, and battered them
into a rousing fire.
"I'll go and fasten the shutters," said Tom.
Martha Yarrow's back was to the window. She turned sharply. The sickly
white moon lighted up the snow-waste out there; some one might be out in
those frozen fields,--some one who was coming home,--who had been gone
for years,--years. Jem was watching her.
"Leave the windows alone, Tom," he said. "It won't hurt the night to see
my fire."
He pulled his cricket close up to her, and took her hand to pet. It was
cold, and her teeth chattered. However, they were all so snug and close
together, and Christmas, that great warm-hearted day, was so near upon
them, as full of love and hearty, warm enjoyment as the living God could
send it, that its breath filled all their hearts; and presently Martha
Yarrow's face was brighter than Catty's. They were noisy and busy
enough. The programme for to-morrow was to make out; that put all heads
to work to plan: the stockings to be opened, and dinner, and maybe a
visit to the menagerie in the afternoon. That was Martha's surprise, and
she was not disappointed in the applause it brought. It made the tears
come to her eyes, an hour after, when she was going to bed, remembering
it.
"It takes such a little thing to make them happy," she said to
herself,--"or me, either," with a somewhat silly face.
She tried to thank God for giving them so much, but only sobbed. After
the confusion about the show was over, and Catty had been wakened into a
vague jungle of tigers and lions and Shetland ponies, and put to sleep
again, they subsided enough to remember the winding-up of the day. Quiet
that was to be; the children from Shag's Point were coming up, some
half-dozen in all, for their share of Christmas. Poorer than the
Yarrows, you understand? though but a little; in fact, there were not
many steps farther down: peahens and cranberries were not for every day.
Well, to-morrow evening Jem would tell them the story of the Stable and
the Child, and how that the Child was with us yet, if we could only see.
Jem was always his mother's spokesman, and put the meaning of Christmas
into words: she never talked of such things. Yet they always watched her
face, when they spoke of them,--watched it now, and looked, as she did,
into the little room beyond the kitchen where they sat, their eyes
growing still and brighter. There might have been a tinge of the savage
or the Frenchman in Martha Yarrow's nature, she had so strong a
propensity to make real, apparent to the senses, what few ideas she had,
even her religion. A good skill to do it, too. The recess out of the
kitchen was only a small closet, but, with the aid of a softly tinted
curtain or two, and the nebulous light of a concealed lamp, she had
contrived to give it an air of distance and reserve. Within were green
wreaths hung over the whitewashed walls, and an altar-shaped little
white table, covered with heaps of crimson leaves and bright berries,
such as grow in the snow; only a few flowers, but enough to fill the air
with fragrance; the children's Christmas gifts, and wax-lights burning
before a picture, the child Jesus, looking down on them with a smile as
glad as their own. A thoroughly real person to the boys, this Christ for
childhood; for she built the little altar before this picture on all
their holidays: something in the woman herself needing the story of the
Stable and the Child. If she were doing a healthier work on the souls of
that morbid Jem and glutton Tom than could a thousand after-sermons, she
did not know it: never guessed, either, when they absorbed day by day
hardly enough the force of her tough-muscled endurance and wholesome
laugh, that she prepared the way of the Lord and made His paths
straight. Yet what matter who knew?
But to go on with our story. There were times--once or twice to-night,
for instance--when she ceased doing even her unconscious work.
Assuredly, somewhere back in her life, something had gone amiss with
this silly, helpful creature, and left a taint on her brain. The hearty,
pretty smile would go suddenly from her face, something foreign looking
out of it, instead, as if a pestilent thought had got into her soul; she
would rise uneasily, going to the window, looking out, her forehead
leaning on the glass, her body twitching weakly. One would think from
her face she saw some work in the world which God had forgotten. What
could it matter to her? Whatever hurt her, it was the one word which her
garrulous lips never hinted. Once to-night she spoke more plainly than
Jem had ever known her to do in all his life. It was after the children
had gone to bed, which they did, shouting and singing, and playing
circus-riders over the pillows, their mother leaning her elbows on the
foot-board, laughing, in the mean time. Jem got up, after the others
were asleep, and stole after her, in his little flannel drawers, back to
the kitchen. By the window again, as he had feared, the woollen sock
which she was knitting for Tom in her hand, the yarn all tangled and
broken. Ready was by her knees, winking sleepily. The old dog was
growing surly with his years, as we said: Jem remembered when he used to
romp and tussle with him, but that was long ago: he lay in the
chimney-corner always now, growling at Martha herself even, if her
singing or laugh disturbed his nap. But when these strange moods came on
her, Jem noticed that the yellow old beast seemed conscious of it sooner
than any one beside, crept up to her, stood by her: that she clung to
him, not to her children. He was licking her hand now, his red eye,
drowsy though it was, watching her as if danger were nigh. A dog you
would not slight. Inside of his hot-headedness and courage there was
that reserved look in his eyes, which some men and brutes have, that
says they have a life of their own to live separate from yours, and they
know it. The boy crept up jealously, thrust his numb fingers into his
mother's hand. She started, looking down.
"It grows into a clear winter's night, Jemmy," trying to speak
carelessly.
So they stood looking out together. The fire had burned down into a
great bed of flameless coals, the kitchen glowed warm and red, throwing
out even a patch of ruddy light on the snow-covered yard without. A
cold, but comfortable home-look out there: the bit of garden, fences,
cow-house, pump, heaped with the snow; old Dolly asleep in her stable:
Jem wrapped himself in his mother's skirt with a sudden relish of warm
snugness. What made her pull at Ready's neck with such nervous jerks?
She saw nothing beyond? Jem stood on tiptoe, peering out. There was no
hint of the hailstorm they had prophesied, in the night: the moon stood
lower now in the sky, filling the air with a yellow, frosty brilliance.
Yet something strangely cold, dead, unfamiliar, in the night yonder,
chilled him. Neither sound nor motion there; hills, river, and fields,
distinct, sharply cut in pallor, but ghost-like: it made him afraid.
There seemed to be no end of them; the hills to the north ran low, and
beyond them he could see more blue and cold and distance, going on--who
could tell where? to the eternal ice and snow, it might be. She felt it,
he knew. The boy was frightened, tried to pull her back to the fire,
when something he saw outside made him stop suddenly. Shag's Hill, the
nearest of the ledge to the house, is a low, narrow cone, with a sharp
rim against the sky; the moon had sunk half behind it, lighting the
surface of drifted snow which faced them. Across this there suddenly
fell a long, uncertain shadow, which belonged neither to bush nor tree:
it might be the flicker of a cloud; or a man, passing across the top of
the hill, would make it. It was nothing; some of the coal-diggers from
the Point going home; he pulled at her petticoat again.
"Come to the fire, dear," he said, looking up.
Her whole face and neck were hot; she laughed and trembled as if some
spasm were upon her.
"Do you see?" she cried, trying to force the window open. "Oh, Jemmy, it
might be! it might!"
Jem was used to his mother's unaccountable whims of mood. Ready,
however, startled him. The dog pricked up his ears, sniffed the air once
or twice, then, after a grave pause of a minute, with a sharp howl, such
as Jem had not heard him give for years, dashed through the kitchen into
the wash-shed and out across the fields. Martha Yarrow turned away from
the window, and leaned her head against the dresser-shelves: standing
quite still, only that she clutched Jem's hand. The clock ticked noisily
as a half-hour went by; the fire burned lower and dark. The dog came
back at last, dragging his feet heavily, came up close to her, and
crouched down with a half human moan. After a long time he got up, went
out into the wash-kitchen in a spiritless way, and did not return again
that night. She did not move. It seemed a long time to the child before
she turned, her face wet with tears, and took him up in her arms,
chafing his cold feet.
"It could not be! I knew that, Jemmy. I wasn't a fool. But I
thought--Oh, Pet, I've waited such a long while!"
He patted her cheeks, soothing her,--the more effectually, perhaps, that
he did not know what troubled her.
"Why, it's Christmas, mother," he said.
"I know that. You see, I thought," her eyes fastened on his in an
appealing sort of way, "that, being Christmas, if there should be any
lost body wandering out on the fields that God had forgotten--What
then?" all the blood gone from her face. "Why, what then, Jem? No home,
no one to say to him, 'Here's home, here's wife and children a-waiting
to love you,--oh, sick with waiting to love you!' No one to say that,
Jem. And him wandering out in the cold, going quick back to the mouth of
hell, not knowing how God loved him."
"If there is such a one," Jem said, steadily, though his lip trembled,
"God will let him know."
"There is no such one," sharply. "There is no one yonder but knows his
home, and is nearer to his God than you or I, James Yarrow."
The boy made no reply,--sat on her knees looking earnestly into the
fire. He had more nearly guessed her secret than she knew,--near enough
to know how to comfort her. After a while, when she was quiet, he
turned, and put his thin arms about her neck, smiling.
"Take me into your bed, mother, I'm so cold! Let me into old Catty's
place this once."
She nodded, pleased, and, putting him to bed, soon followed him. When
she held him snugly in her arms, the replenished fire making hot,
flickering shadows from the next room, he whispered,--
"Next Christmas, mother! Only one year more!"
Again the quick shiver of her body; but this time her breath was gentle,
a soft light in her eyes.
"Well, and then, my son?"
"Why, some one else then will call me son. How long he has been gone,
dear! so long that I never saw him since I was a bit of a baby."
"Five years. Yes. Well, dear?" anxiously.
Her eyes were shut, he stroked the lids softly, thinking how moist and
red her lips were: never as beautiful a face as the little mother's; for
so Jem, feeling quite grown up in his heart, called her there.
"Well, then, no more trouble, but somebody to take care of us all the
time. Whenever I see a preacher, now, I think of father"--stopping
abruptly, with that anxious, incisive look so sad to see on a child's
face.
She did not reply at first; then,--
"He preached God's word as he knew it," she said, dryly.
"And whenever I hear of a good, brave man, I think, 'That's like
father!'"
Her eyes opened now.
"That's true, Jemmy! God knows that's true! So proud my boy will be of
his father!"
She did not say anything more, but began playing with his hair, her
month unsteady, and a bashful, dreamy smile in her eyes. She looked very
young and girlish in the mellow light.
"He's not coarse like me, Jem," she said at last. "Even more like a
woman in some ways. He always came nearer to you children, for instance;
I mind how you always used to creep away from me close to him at night.
He hates noise, Stephen does,--and mean, scraping ways, such as we're
used to, being poor. My boy'll mind that? We'll keep anything shabby out
of his sight, when he comes back."
"I'll mind," said Jem, dryly. "But--Well, no matter. We're to try and be
like him, Tom and I? I understand."
She drew down her head suddenly into the pillow. Jem had been growing
sleepy, but he started wide awake now, trying to see her face: the
pretty pink color his questions had brought was gone from it.
"Did you speak, mother?"
No answer.
"I said we are to be men like him, Tom and I, if we can?"
He knew he had touched her to the quick somehow: his heart beat thick
with the old childish terror, as he waited for her answer.
"Yes, you are to try, my son."
Martha Yarrow's frivolous chirruping voice was altered, with meaning in
it he never had heard before, as if her answer came out of some depth
where God had faced her soul, and forced it to speak truth. But when,
after that, the boy, curious to know more, went on with his questions,
she quieted him gravely, kissed him good-night, and turned over,--to
sleep, he concluded, from her regular breathing. However, when Jem,
after a while, began to snore, she got up and went to the kitchen-fire,
kneeling down on the stone hearth: her head was on fire, and her body
cold.
"So they _shall_ be like him!" she whispered, with a fierce, baited
look, as if by her wife's trust in him she defied the whole world. "I
have kept my word. I've tried to make his sons what God made him in the
beginning."
That was true: she had kept her word. Five years ago, when the great
scandal came on the church in ----, and their minister was tried for
forgery, and sentenced to six years' imprisonment in the penitentiary,
the first letter his wife wrote to him there had these words: "For the
boys, my husband, they never shall know of this thing. They shall know
you as God and I do, Stephen. I'll make them men like you, if I can:
except in your religion; for I believe, before God, the Devil taught you
that."
When the man read that in his cell, a dry, quiet smile came over his
face. He had not expected such a keen opinion from his shallow,
easy-going wife: he did not think there was so much insight in her.
"It's a deep sounding you give, Martha, true or not," folding up the
letter. "And so the boys will never know?" going back to his solitary
cobbling, for they were making a shoemaker of him.
If there were any remorse under his quiet, or impatience at fate, or
gnawing homesickness, he did not show it. That was the last letter or
message that came from his wife. The friends of other prisoners were
admitted to visit them, but no one ever asked to see him; the five years
went by; every day the same bar of sunlight struck across his bench, and
glittered on the point of his awl, gray in winter, yellow in summer; but
no day brought a word or a sign from the outer world but that. The man
grew thin, mere skin and bone; but then he was scrofulous. He asked no
questions, ceased at last to look up, when the jailer brought his meals,
to see if he carried a letter. Sometimes, when he used to stand chafing
his stubbly chin in the evening at the slit cut in the stones for his
window, looking at the red brick chimney-pot he could see over the
penitentiary-wall, it seemed like something of outer life, and he would
mutter, "She said the boys would never know." Once, too, a year or two
after that, when the jailer came into "quiet Stevy's" cell, (for so he
nicknamed him,) Yarrow came up, and took him by the coat-buttons,
looking up and gabbling something about Martha and the little chaps in a
maudlin sort of way,--then, with a silly laugh, lay down on his pallet.
"I never felt sorry for the little whiffet before," said the fat jailer,
when he came out. "He's so close; but it's a cursed shame in his people
to give him the go-by that way,--there!"
But when he went back an hour or two after, he found he had gained no
ground with Stevy; he was dry, silent as ever: he had come to himself,
meanwhile, and shivered with disgust at the fear that any madness had
made him commit himself to this mass of flesh.
"'Mortised with the sacred garlic,'" he muttered, with the usual dry
twinkle in his eyes.
Ben caught the last word.
"It's a good yarb, garlic," he said, confusedly. "Uses it on hot coals
mostly, under broilin' steaks. Well, good night.--He's a queer chap,
though," after he had gone out,--"beyond me."
Five years being gone, Martha Yarrow, sitting by her fire to-night,
could only repeat the words of her letter. She had taken out a
daguerreotype of her husband, and was looking at it. He was a small man;
young; dressed in a suit of rusty black, with a certain subdued,
credulous, incomplete air about him, like a man forced at birth into
some iron mould of circumstance, and whose own proper muscles and soul
had never had a chance of air to grow. A homely, saddened, uncouthly
shaped face,--one that would be sure to go snubbed and unread through
the world, to find at last some woman who would know its latent meaning,
and worship it with the heat of passion which this country-girl had
given. Withal, a cheerful, quizzical smile on the lips. Poor Martha's
eyes filled, the moment she looked at that; and so she went back to her
first years of married life, full of keen, relishing enjoyment, all
coming from him, quiet, silent as he was,--remembering how her maddest
freaks were indulged with that same odd, dry laugh. She stood alone now.
"And in these years I have grown used to being alone,"--standing up,
stretching her arms suddenly above her head, and letting them fall
again.
It was a lie: she knew that the tired sinking within her of body and
soul was harder to bear now than the day he went away, and she weaker to
bear it. If she could but lean her head on his breast for one moment,
and feel him pat her hair with the old "Tut! tut! why, what ails my
girl?" it would give her more strength than all her prayers. She
couldn't think of herself as anything but a girl, when she remembered
her husband: these years were nothing.
Her mouth grew drier and hotter, as she sat there looking into the face,
polishing the glass with her hand, kissing it. "I'm so tired, Stephen!"
she would whisper now and then. Only those who know the unuttered
mysterious bond in the soul of a true wife and husband can comprehend
what Martha Yarrow bore, when it was torn apart, and by no fault of
hers. "God meant him for me," she sometimes said, savagely; "no man had
a right to part us." She looked at the picture, feeling that he was
purer than any baby she had nursed at her breast, nearer God. "It was
his religion was to blame. That was the ruin of us all. I believe he
never knew who the good God was; how could he?" thinking of his father,
who used to sit in the chimney-corner,--one of those acrid
doctrine-professors who sour the water of life into gall and vinegar
before they dole it out to their children. She was glad she had told him
her mind before they parted,--to what his teaching had brought his son.
"I cut deep that day, and I thank God for it," she said, her face white.
She had brought the children here to be near the penitentiary, but she
had never been allowed to see him. No letters came from him. His
brother, John Yarrow, sent hers to him. There was some formula of
admission, he said, which she did not understand. The time was nearly
up; in one year more he would be free. Well, and then? He had been in
one of the ways that butted down on hell; how would he come back to her?
In all these years, silence. Who would bring him back? Who? They were
keen enough to put him in,--but who would stay with him, to say, "You've
slipped, boy, but stand up again"? Who would hold out a kind hand at the
gate, when he came out, with "Here's a place, Yarrow. Here's home, and
love, and God waiting; try another chance"? Who would do that? No wonder
she looked out that night, thinking there was some work forgotten.
Martha sat there until dawn came, moving only to replenish the fire lest
the children should take cold. In all her life she never forgot that
night. Some furious instinct seemed at work within her, goading her to
be up and doing. What should she do? Why should she disquiet herself?
Her husband was safe asleep in his cell. Yet all night long she could
not keep her soul back from crying to God to save him in his deadly
peril, to bring him there at once to her, to the children. When morning
broke, cold and sweet-breathed, russet clouds, dyed with the latent
crimson day, thronging up from behind the hills, she tried to thrust
down all the pains of the night as moody fancies. They did not go. She
bathed herself, woke the children, laughed and romped with them (for
their year's holiday should not be damped); but the cold, unsufferable
weight within dragged her physically down. Trifles without, too, beset
her with vague fears. Ready was gone; for years he had not left the
house at night. The children began to look with uneasy eyes at her face:
she would betray all. She kept her fingers thrust in the breast of her
wrapper to touch the case of the picture: she could hold herself quiet
so. How cold and unmeaning the light was that day to her! and every tick
of the clock seemed to beat straight on her brain. So the morning crept
by. She grew so sure--without reason--that it was the last day of
waiting, that, when the children went out to build their snow-man, she
sat down on Jem's chest, shivering and dizzy; when the snow cracked
under a step outside, afraid to turn her head,--thinking he would be
standing in the door, with the old patient smile on his mouth, and his
hand out. But he did not come.
* * * * *
About half a mile on the other side of Shag's Hill there is a hotel, off
from the road, looking like an overgrown Swiss _châlet_. Not a
country-tavern by any means. Starr, a New-York caterer, keeps it, as a
sort of boarding-house for a few wealthy Pittsburg families in summer:
however, if you should stop there at any time of the year, you would be
sure of a delicate _croquette_ and a fair glass of wine. Usually, Starr
and his family are the only occupants in winter, but on this Christmas
eve there were lights in two of the upper rooms. M. Soulé, the Mobile
financier, so well known through the West, with his family, had occupied
them for about a week; this evening, too, a Mr. Frazier from St. Louis
was at the house: there was a collision of trains near Beaver, and he
had left the other passengers and come over to Starr's, intending to go
on horseback up to Pittsburg in the morning. An old acquaintance of the
Soulés, apparently: he had dined with them that evening, and when Starr
went up about ten o'clock to know if Mr. Soulé wished to go out gunning
in the morning, he found the old man still standing with his back to the
fire, talking sharply of the Little Miami Railroad shares, then
beginning to go up. "A thorough old Shylock," thought Starr, waiting,
scanning the acrid, wizened face with its protruding black eyes, the
dried-up figure in a baggy suit of blue, a white collar turned down
nearly to the shoulders, and the gray hair knotted in a queue. He looked
at the landlord, scowling at the interruption: M. Soulé, on the
contrary, spoke heartily, as if suddenly relieved of a bore.
"Of course, of course, Starr; I'll be off by four. I'll saddle my own
horse,--no need to disturb any of your people; let them sleep on
Christmas at least, poor devils. The partridges about here are really
worth tasting," turning to Frazier, "and Starr tells me of a mythical
deer back in the hills. You see," with a bow, "it will not be possible
for me to breakfast with you. I'll see you at Pittsburg about those
snares,--say, on Monday."
"Yes," buttoning his coat, with a furtive glance of contempt at Soulé's
burly figure and eager face. Was this the far-famed Nimrod of the
money-hunt? "I'll say to Pryor you had other game on hand to-day."
"Other game,--yes," with a sudden gravity,--pushing his hair back, and
looking in the fire, while the old man made his formal adieus to his
wife. They lasted some time, for Madame Soulé was a courtly little body,
with all her quiet.
"I must make an early start, too," said Frazier, turning again. "Glad of
the chance to take a bracing ride. Banks closed to-morrow, so no time's
lost, eh? Well, good night, Soulé," perceiving that the other did not
see his outstretched hand; "don't come down; good night"; and so
shuffled down the stairs.
"Pah!" said Soulé, with a breath of relief. "His blood's like water. He
never owed a dollar, and never gave one away."
The usual genial laugh came back to his face, as he turned to Madame
Soulé and began to romp with the baby lying in her lap. He was a tall
man, about six feet high, with a handsome face, red hair, a frank blue
eye, and a natural, genuine laugh. Whatever else history may record of
him, a man of generous blood and sensitive instincts. His subdued dress,
quiet voice, suited him, were indigenous to his nature, not assumed:
even Starr could see that. Starr used afterwards, when they became the
country's gossip, to talk of little traits in these people, showing the
purity of their refinement. To this day he believes in them. How
unostentatious their kindness was: the delicate, scentless air that hung
about them: the fresh flowers always near. "Eating with iron forks, an'
not a word,--my silver being packed; their under-clothes like gossamer,
outside plainer than mine. Bah! I know the real stuff, when I see it, I
hope. No sham there!"
When the baby was tired of its romp, Madame Soulé hushed it to sleep.
She was the quietest nurse ever lived,--the quietest woman,--one whom
you scarce noted when with her, and forgot as soon as you left the room.
Nature had made her up with its most faint, few lines, and palest
coloring. Soulé, however, had found out the delicate beauty, and all
else that lay beneath. There was a passionate fierceness sometimes in
his look at her, and a something else stranger,--such an expression as a
dog gives his master. She never talked but to him.
"I thought you would have breakfasted with him, perhaps," she said, now.
"No. I'm too much of an Arab, Judith. I can't eat a man's salt and empty
his pocket at the same time."
"I'm glad you did not," smiling as the baby caught at his father's
seals, then glancing at the watch when Soulé held it out for him.
"Nearly eleven. It is time your brother was here. See, John, how pink
its feet are, and dimpled,"--putting one to her mouth with a burst of
childish laughter.
Soulé played with a solitary white calla that stood near in a crystal
vase, gulped down a glass of wine hastily, held the delicate glass up to
see how like a golden bubble it was, then threw it down.
"Are you sure we are right in this, child?"
She stopped playing with the baby, but did not look up.
"About your brother?"
"I thought"--with the doubtful look of one who is about to essay his
strength against flint. "It has been a hard life,--Stephen's,--and
through us. What if we let him go?" anxiously. "What would be better? He
has children,"--taking the baby's hand in his.
"Yes, children,--clods, like his wife,"--the pink lip curling. "You
should know your brother, John Yarrow. You do know the stuff that is in
him. Will his brain ever muddle down to find comfort in that
inn-keeper's daughter? Is it likely? Besides, they are dead to him now.
You have succeeded in keeping them apart."
If she saw the dark flush in his face at this, she did not notice it,
but went on hastily.
"Stephen never had a chance, and you know it, John. He was too weak to
break the trammels at home, as you did,--let himself be forced to preach
what his soul knew was a lie. When you tried to open the door for him to
a broader life"--
"I shut him in a penitentiary-cell," with a bitter laugh. "They taught
him to make shoes."
"Was it your fault? Now that he is free, then," going on steadily, still
patting the child's cheek, "you mean to shake him off,--having used him.
Push him back into the old slough. He can make a decent living there,
cobbling, I know. Be generous, John," with a keen glance of the pale
brown eyes. "If you succeed in this thing to-morrow, take him with us
out of the United States. There is trouble coming here. Give him a
chance for education,--to know something of the world he lives in,--to
catch one or two free breaths before he dies. He has been the man in the
iron cage, since his birth, it seems to me."
She got up as she spoke, rang the bell, and gave the baby to its nurse,
wrapping it up in a blanket or two. When she turned, her husband was
standing on the hearth-rug, a half-laugh in his eyes.
"Judith!"
"What is it?"
"The plain meaning of all this is, that there is no one who can do this
foul job to-morrow but Stephen Yarrow, and for my sake it must be done;
_ergo_--Well, well! You do love me, child!"
Her eyes filled with sudden tears; she caught hold of his arm, and clung
to it.
"I do love you, God knows! What is Stephen Yarrow to me, soul or body?
Don't be harsh with me, John!"
"Harsh? No, Judith," stroking the colorless curls gently; looking back;
thinking that she had done much for him; he would humor her whim, not
behave like a beast to _her_. But his brother--It would be better for
Stephen in the end. Certainly. Yet he sighed: a womanish, unable sigh.
A year or two afterwards, (for I am not writing of a fictitious
character,) this man's frauds were discovered. They were larger and more
uniformly successful than any that had ever been perpetrated in the
States, but there was about them a subtle, dogged daring that did not
belong to Yarrow's character, and shrewd people who had known them began
to talk of this shadow of a woman who went about with him,--a quadroon,
they said,--and hinted strongly that it was she who had been the vital
power of the partnership, and Yarrow but the well-chosen tool. There are
no means of knowing the truth of the conjecture, for Yarrow escaped: she
followed him, but is dead, so their secret is safe. Fraud, however, was
but one half of his story. Soulé gave like a prince,--secretly, with a
woman-like, anxious helpfulness, a passionate eagerness, as if the pain
or want of a human being were insufferable to him. In this he was alone:
the woman had no share in it. She was as cold, impervious to the
suffering of others as nothing but a snake or a selfish woman can be:
whatever muddy human feeling did ooze from her brain was for this man
only. And yet, when we think of it, she was, as they guessed, a
quadroon: maybe, under the low, waxy-skinned forehead that Yarrow's
fingers were patting that night there might have been a revengeful
consciousness of the wrongs of her race that justified to her the harm
she did. It is likely: the coarsest negroes argue in that way. God help
them! At any rate, we shall come closest to Christ's rule of justice in
trying to find a sore heart behind the vicious fingers of the woman.
While the two stood in the pleasant light of the warm room waiting for
him, Stephen Yarrow came towards the house across the fields. It was his
shadow that his wife and Jem saw crossing Shag's Hill. He was a free man
now,--by virtue of his nickname, "quiet Stevy," in part. It startled him
as much as the jailer, when his release was sent in a year before the
time, "in consideration of his uniform good conduct." The truth was,
that M. Soulé took an interest in the poor wretch, and had said a few
words in his favor to the Governor at a dinner-party the other evening,
so the release was signed the next day. Soulé had called to see the man
when he came to Pittsburg, and spent an hour or two in his cell. The
next morning he was free to go, but he had stayed a week longer, making
a pair of red morocco shoes for the jailer's little girl,--idling over
them: when they were done, tying them on, himself, with a wonderful
bow-knot, and looking anxiously in her clean Dutch face to see if she
were pleased.
"Kiss the gentleman, Meg," growled Ben. "Where's yer manners?"
Stephen drew back sharply. The innocent baby! who lived out-of-doors!
Ben must have forgotten who _he_ was: a thief, belonging to this cell.
They were going to let him out; but what difference did that make? His
thin face grew wet with perspiration, as he walked away. Why, his very
fingers had felt too impure to him, as he tied on her shoes. He went
away an hour after, only nodding goodbye to Ben, looking down with an
odd grin at the clothes he had asked the jailer to buy for him. Ben had
chosen a greenish coat and trousers and yellow waistcoat. He did not
shake hands with him. Ben had been mixing hog-food, and the marks were
on his fingers. This was yesterday: he was going now to meet his
brother, as he requested. Well, what else was there for him to do?
He did not look up often, as he plodded over the fields: when he did, it
hurt him somehow, this terrible wastefulness, this boundless unused air,
and stretch of room. It even pained hiss weakened eyes: so long the
oblong slip of clay running from the cell to the wall had been his
share, and the yellow patch of sky and brick chimney-top beyond. For so
many thousands, too, no more. But they were thieves, foul, like him.
Pure men this was for. Stephen looked like an old man now, in spite of
Ben's party-colored rigging: stooped and lean, his step slouched: his
head almost bald under the old fur cap. Something in the sharpened face,
too, looked as if more than eyesight had been palsied in these years of
utter solitude: the brain was dulled with sluggishly gnawing over and
over the few animal ideas they leave for prisoners' souls,--or, as
probably, thoroughly imbruted by them. Soulé thought the latter.
When the convict had finished his dull walk, he sat down on the wooden
staircase that led to his brother's rooms for half an hour, slowly
rubbing his legs, conscious of nothing but some flesh-pain,
apparently,--and when he did enter the chamber, bowed as indifferently
to Soulé and his wife as though they had parted carelessly yesterday.
His brother glanced at the woman: one look would certainly be enough for
her. Poor Stephen's power? If it ever had been, its essence was long
since exhaled: there was nothing in his whole nature now but the stalest
dregs, surely? Perhaps she thought differently: she looked at the man
keenly, and then gave a quick, warning glance to her husband, as she sat
down to her sewing. Soulé did not heed it as he usually did: he was
choked and sick to see what a wreck his brother really was. God help us!
to think of the time when Stephen and he were boys together, and this
was the end of it!
"Come to the fire, old fellow!" he said, huskily. "You're blue with
cold. We used to have snows like this at home, eh?"
The man passed the lady with the quaint, shy bow that used to be
habitual with him towards women, (he still used it to the jailer's
wife,) and held his hands over the blaze. His brother followed him: his
wife had never seen him so nervous or excited: he stood close to the
convict, smoothing his coat on the shoulder, taking off his cap.
"Why, why! this cloth's too thin, even for summer; I--Oh, Stephen, these
are hard times,--hard! But I mean to do something for you, God knows.
Sit down, sit down, you're tired, boy," turning off, going to the
window, his hands behind him,--coming back again. "We're going to help
you, Judith and I."
Soulé did not see the look which the convict shot at the woman, when he
spoke these words; but she did,--and knew, that, however her husband
might contrive to deceive himself, he never would his brother. If
Stephen Yarrow's soul went down to any deeper depth to-night, it would
be conscious in its going. What manner of man was he? What was his wife,
or long-ago home, or his old God, now, to him? It mattered to them: for,
if he were not a tool, they were ruined. She stitched quietly at her
soft floss and flannel. Soulé was sincere; let him explain what his wish
was, himself; it would be wiser for her to be silent; this man, she
remembered, had eyes that never understood a lie.
Yarrow did not sit down; his brother stood close, leaning his unsteady
hand upon his arm.
"I knew you would not fail me, Stephen. To-morrow will be a
turning-point in both our lives. Circumstances have conspired to help me
in my plan."
He began to stammer. The other looked at him quietly, inquiringly.
"You remember what I told you on Tuesday?" more hastily. "I have dealt
heavily in stocks lately; it needs one blow more, and our future is
secure for life. Yours and mine, I mean,--yours and mine, Stephen. This
paper old Frazier carries,--he Is going to New York with it. If I can
keep it out of the market for a week, my speculation is assured,--I can
realize half a million, at least. Frazier is an old man, weak: he
crosses the Narrows to-morrow morning on horseback."
He stopped abruptly, playing with a shell on the mantel-shelf.
"I understand," in a dry voice; "you want him robbed; and my hands came
at the right nick of time."
"Pish! you use coarse words. A man's brain must be distempered to call
that robbery; the paper, as I said, is neither money nor its
equivalent."
There was a silence of some moments.
"I must have it," his eye growing fierce. "You could take it and leave
the man unhurt. I could have done it myself, but he's an old man, I want
him left unhurt. If I had done it--Well," chewing his lips, "it would
not have been convenient for him to have gone on with that story. He
knows me. Is the affair quite plain now?"
Yarrow nodded slowly, looking in the fire.
"If I were not strong enough to-morrow, what then?"
"I will be with you,--near. I must have the paper. He is an old Shylock,
after all," with a desperate carelessness. "His soul would not weigh
heavily against me, if it were let out."
Yarrow passed his hand over his face; it was colorless. Yet he looked
bewildered. The bare thought of murder was not clear to him yet.
"Drink some wine, Stephen," said his brother, pouring out a goblet for
himself. "I carry my own drinking-apparatus. This Sherry"--
Yarrow tasted it, and put down the glass.
"I was cheated in it, eh?"
"Yes, you were."
"Your palate was always keener than mine. I"--
His mouth looked blue and cold under his whiskers: then they both stood
vacantly silent, while the woman sewed.
"Tut! we will look at the matter practically, as business-men," said
Soulé at last, affecting a gruff, hearty tone, and walking about,--but
was silent there.
The convict did not answer. No sound but the rough wind without blowing
the drifted snow and pebbles from the asphalt roof against the frosted
panes, and the angry fire of bitumen within breaking into clefts of blue
and scarlet flame, thrusting its jets of fierce light out from its cage:
impatient, it may be, of this convict, this sickly, shrivelled bit of
humanity standing there; wondering the nauseated life in his nostrils or
soul claimed yet its share of God's breath. Society had taken the man
like a root torn out of native unctuous soil, kept it in a damp cellar,
hid out the breath and light. If after a while it withered away, whose
fault was it? If there were no hand now to plant it again, do you look
for it to grow rotten, or not? One would have said Soulé was a root that
had been planted in fat, loamy ground, to look at him. There was a
healthy, liberal, lazy life for you! Yet the winter sky looked gray and
dumb when he passed the window, and the fire-light broke fiercest
against his bluff figure going to and fro. No matter; something there
that would have warmed your heart to him: something genial, careless,
big-natured, from the loose red hair to the indolent, portly stride.
"Who knows? A comfortable, true-hearted, merry clergyman,--a jolly
farmer, with open house, and a bit of good racing-stock in the
stable,--if bigotry in his boyhood, and this woman, had not crossed him.
They had crossed him: there was not an atom of unpolluted nature left:
you saw the taint in every syllable he spoke. Fresh and malignant
to-night, when this tempted soul hung in the balance.
"We're letting the matter slip too long. Something must be decided upon.
Stephen!" nervously, "wake up! You have forgotten our subject, I think."
"No," the bald head raised out of the coat-collar in which it had sunk.
"Go on."
Soulé looked at him perplexed a moment. Was he dulled, or had he
learned in those years to shut in looks and thoughts closer prisoners
than himself?
"It is a mere question of time," he said, a little composed. "Frazier is
an agent: shall this money accrue to me or to his employers? I have
risked all on it. I must have it at any cost."
"At any cost?"
"At any," boldly. "Is it any easier for me to talk of that chance than
you, Stephen?"
"No, John. Your hands are clean," with an exhausted look. "I know that.
You had a kind Irish heart. What money you made with one hand you flung
away with the other."
Soulé blushed like a woman.
"No matter," beating some dust off his boot. "But for Frazier,--I've
talked that over with Judith, and--I don't value human life as you do:
it may Lave been my residence in the South. It matters little how a man
dies, so he lives right. This Frazier, if he dies to defend his package,
would do a nobler deed than in any of his dime-scraping days. For me, my
part is not robbery. The paper is neither specie nor a draft."
His tongue swung fluently now, for it had convinced himself.
"There is but a night left to decide. What will you do, Stephen?"
He put his hand on the green coat with its gaudy buttons, and leaned
against his brother as they used to go arms over shoulders to school.
Soulé's big throat was full of tears; he had never felt so full of
sorrowful pity as in this the foulest purpose of his life. Unselfish it
seemed to him. O God! what a hard life Stephen's had been! This would
cure him: two or three sea-voyages, a winter in Florence, would freshen
him a little, maybe,--but not much.
"Eh? What will you do, old fellow?" striking his shoulder. "This is the
last night."
"I know that. I have been waiting for it all my life."
He put his red handkerchief up to his mouth to conceal the face, as if
its meaning were growing too plain. Soulé looked at him fixedly a
moment, then, taking him by the button, began tapping off his sentences
on his breast.
"I'll state the case. I'll be plain. Stephen, you want food; you want
clothes; you"--
"Is that all I want?" facing him.
The woman started, as she saw his face fully, and his look, for the
first time. A quiet blue eye, unutterably kind and sad: a slow,
compelling face, that would look on his life barely, day after day, year
after year, never drowsing over its sore or pain until he had wrung its
full meaning out to the last dregs.
"All you want? Clothing? food?" stammered Soulé,--something in the face
having stopped his garrulous breath. "I did not say that, Stephen."
The wind struck sharper on the rattling panes; the yellow and brown
heats grew deeper. One saw how it was then. No beggar turned from God so
empty-handed as this man to-day. His place in the world slipped: his
chance gone: sick, sinking; his brain mad for knowledge: his hands
stretched out for work: no man to give it to him: whatever God he had
lost to him: the thief's smell, he thought, on every breath he drew,
every rag of clothes he wore. Hundreds of convicts leave our
prison-doors with souls as hungry and near death as this.
"I have lost something--since I went in there," he said, jerking his
thumb over his shoulder. "I do not think it will ever come back."
"No?"
Soulé put his big hand to his face mechanically.
"Don't say that, boy! I know--The world has gone on, it has left you
behind--You"--
He choked,--could not go on: he would have put half the strength and
life in himself into Yarrow's lank little body that moment, if he could.
There was a something else lost, different from all these, of which they
both thought, but they did not speak of it. The convict looked out into
the night. Beyond the square patch of window and that near dark, how
full the world was of happy homes getting ready for Christmas! children
and happy wives! Soulé understood.
"I don't say I can bring you back what you have lost, Stephen. I offer
you the best I can. You're not an old man,--barely thirty: you must have
years to acquire fresh bone and muscle. Set your brain to work,
meanwhile. Give it a chance."
"It never had one," said the convict, with a queer, faint smile.
"Hillo! that looks like old times!" brightening up. "No, it never had.
Do you think I forget our alley-house with its three rooms? the
carpentering by day, and the arithmetic by night? the sweltering, sultry
Sunday mornings in church, and the afternoons sniffling over the
catechism among the rain-butts in the back-yard? Do you remember the
preachers, the travelling agents, that put up with us? how they snarled
at other churches, and helped themselves out of the shop, as if to be a
man of God implied a mean beggar? I don't say my father was a hypocrite
when he made you a colporteur, and so one of them; but"--
He paused. Even in this frothy-brained fellow, his religion or his doubt
lay deeper than all. His face grew dark.
"I tell you, if there is one thing I loathe, it is the God and His day
that were taught to me when I was a child: joyless, hard, cruel.
Fire--humph!--and brimstone for all but a few hundred. I remember. Well,
I don't know yet if there is any better," with a vague look. "A man
shifts for himself in the next chance as well as now, I suppose. Did you
believe what you preached, Stephen?" with an abrupt change. "God! how
you used to writhe under it at first!"
"They forced me into it," said Yarrow. "I was only a boy. You remember
that I was only a boy,--just out of the shop. The more uneducated a man
was in our church-pulpit then, the better. _I_ knew nothing, John,"
appealingly. "When I preached about foreordination and hell-fire, it was
in coarse slang: I knew that. I used to think there might be a different
God and books and another life farther out in the world, if I could only
get at it. I never was strong, and they had forced me into it; and when
you came to me to help you with your plan, I wanted to get out, and"--
"You did help me,"--chafing the limp fingers. "That was my first start,
that Pesson note. I owe that to you, Stephen."
"I have paid for it," looking him steadily in the eye, some unexpected
manliness rising up, making his tone bitter and marrowy. "I paid for it.
But no matter for that. But now you come again. I have had time to think
over these things in yonder, John."
Soulé dropped his hand, drew back, and was silent a moment.
"Let it be so. But did you think what you would do, if you refused your
aid to me? Have you found work? or a God to preach?"
Something in these last words took Yarrow's sudden strength away. He did
not answer for a moment.
"Work?" feebly. "No,--I haven't heard of any work. As for a God"--
"Well, then, what are your purposes?" coldly.
Another silence.
"I don't know. I never was worth much," he gasped out at last, stooping,
and pulling at his shoestrings.
"And now"--said Soulé.
"There's no need for you to say that!" with a sharp cry. "I don't forget
that I have slipped,--that it's too late,--I don't forget."
His hands jerked at his coat-fronts in a wild, dazed way.
"Stephen!"
The woman rose, and let in the air.
"I thank you. I'm not sick."
Soulé turned away. He could not meet the look on the pinched
convict-face,--the soul of the man crying out for God or his brother,
something to help. There was a silence for a few moments.