I am going to end my story now. There are phases more vivid in the
commonplace lives of these men and women, I do not doubt: love, as
poignant as pain in its joy; crime, weak and foul and foolish, like all
crime; silent self-sacrifices: but I leave them for you to paint; you
will find colours enough in your own house and heart.
As for Christmas-day, neither you nor I need try to do justice to that
theme: how the old school-master went about, bustling, his thin face
quite hot with enthusiasm, and muttering, "God bless my soul!"--hardly
recovered from the sudden delight of finding his old pupil waiting for
him when he went down in the morning; how he insisted on being led by
him, and nobody else, all day, and before half an hour had confided,
under solemn pledges of secrecy, the great project of the book about
Bertrand de Born; how even easy Mrs. Howth found her hospitable
Virginian blood in a glow at the unexpected breakfast-guest,--settling
into more confident pleasure as dinner came on, for which success was
surer; how cold it was, outside; how Joel piled on great fires, and
went off on some mysterious errand, having "other chores to do than
idling and duddering;" how the day rose into a climax of perfection at
dinner-time, to Mrs. Howth's mind,--the turkey being done to a
delicious brown, the plum-pudding quivering like luscious jelly (a
Christian dinner to-day, if we starve the rest of the year!). Even Dr.
Knowles, who brought a great bouquet out for the school-master, was in
an unwonted good-humour; and Mr. Holmes, of whom she stood a little in
dread, enjoyed it all with such zest, and was so attentive to them all,
but Margret. They hardly spoke to each other all day; it quite fretted
the old lady; indeed, she gave the girl a good scolding about it out in
the pantry, until she was ready to cry. She had looked that way all
day, however.
Knowles was hurt deep enough when he saw Holmes, and suspected the
worst, under all his good-humour. It was a bitter disappointment to
give up the girl; for, beside the great work, he loved her in an
uncouth fashion, and hated Holmes. He met her alone in the morning;
but when he saw how pale she grew, expecting his outbreak, and how she
glanced timidly in at the room where Stephen was, he relented.
Something in the wet brown eye perhaps recalled a forgotten dream of
his boyhood; for he sighed sharply, and did not swear as he meant to.
All he said was, that "women will be women, and that she had a worse
job on her hands than the House of Refuge,"--which she put down to the
account of his ill-temper, and only laughed, and made him shake hands.
Lois and her father came out in the old cart in high state across the
bleak, snowy hills, quite aglow with all they had seen at the
farm-houses on the road. Margret had arranged a settle for the sick
girl by the kitchen-fire, but they all came out to speak to her.
As for the dinner, it was the essence of all Christmas dinners: Dickens
himself, the priest of the genial day, would have been contented. The
old school-master and his wife had hearts big and warm enough to do the
perpetual honours of a baronial castle; so you may know how the little
room and the faces about the homely table glowed and brightened. Even
Knowles began to think that Holmes might not be so bad, after all,
recalling the chicken in the mill, and,--"Well, it was better to think
well of all men, poor devils!"
I am sorry to say there was a short thunderstorm in the very midst of
the dinner. Knowles and Mr. Howth, in their anxiety to keep off from
ancient subjects of dispute, came, for a wonder, on modern politics,
and of course there was a terrible collision, which made Mrs. Howth
quite breathless: it was over in a minute, however, and it was hard to
tell which was the most repentant. Knowles, as you know, was a disciple
of Garrison, and the old school-master was a States'-rights man, as you
might suppose from his antecedents,--suspected, indeed, of being a
contributor to "DeBow's Review." I may as well come out with the whole
truth, and acknowledge that at the present writing the old gentleman is
the very hottest Secessionist I know. If it hurts the type, write it
down a vice of blood, O printers of New England!
The dinner, perhaps, was fresher and heartier after that. Then Knowles
went back to town; and in the middle of the afternoon, as it grew dusk,
Lois started, knowing how many would come into her little shanty in the
evening to wish her Happy Christmas, although it was over. They piled
up comforts and blankets in the cart, and she lay on them quite snugly,
her scarred child's-face looking out from a great woollen hood Mrs.
Howth gave her. Old Yare held Barney, with his hat in his hand,
looking as if he deserved hanging, but very proud of the kindness they
all showed his girl. Holmes gave him some money for a Christmas gift,
and he took it, eagerly enough. For some unexpressed reason, they
stood a long time in the snow bidding Lois good-bye; and for the same
reason, it may be, she was loath to go, looking at each one earnestly
as she laughed and grew red and pale answering them, kissing Mrs.
Howth's hand when she gave it to her. When the cart did drive away,
she watched them standing there until she was out of sight, and waved
her scrap of a handkerchief; and when the road turned down the hill,
lay down and softly cried to herself.
Now that they were alone they gathered close about the fire, while the
day without grew gray and colder,--Margret in her old place by her
father's knee. Some dim instinct had troubled the old man all day; it
did now: whenever Margret spoke, he listened eagerly, and forgot to
answer sometimes, he was so lost in thought. At last he put his hand
on her head, and whispered, "What ails my little girl?" And then his
little girl sobbed and cried, as she had been ready to do all day, and
kissed his trembling hand, and went and hid on her mother's neck, and
left Stephen to say everything for her. And I think you and I had
better come away.
It was quite dark before they had done talking,--quite dark; the
wood-fire had charred down into a great bed of crimson; the tea stood
till it grew cold, and no one drank it.
The old man got up at last, and Holmes led him to the library, where he
smoked every evening. He held Maggie, as he called her, in his arms a
long time, and wrung Holmes's hand. "God bless you, Stephen!" he
said,--"this is a very happy Christmas-day to me." And yet, sitting
alone, the tears ran over his wrinkled face as he smoked; and when his
pipe went out, he did not know it, but sat motionless. Mrs. Howth,
fairly confounded by the shock, went up-stairs, and stayed there a long
time. When she came down, the old lady's blue eyes were tenderer, if
that were possible, and her face very pale. She went into the library
and asked her husband if she didn't prophesy this two years ago, and he
said she did, and after a while asked her if she remembered the
barbecue-night at Judge Clapp's thirty years ago. She blushed at that,
and then went up and kissed him. She had heard Joel's horse clattering
up to the kitchen-door, so concluded she would go out and scold him.
Under the circumstances it would be a relief.
If Mrs. Howth's nerves had been weak, she might have supposed that
free-born serving-man seized with sudden insanity, from the sight that
met her, going into the kitchen. His dinner, set on the dresser, was
flung contemptuously on the ashes; a horrible cloud of burning grease
rushed from a dirty pint-pot on the table, and before this Joel was
capering and snorting like some red-headed Hottentot before his fetich,
occasionally sticking his fingers into the nauseous stuff, and snuffing
it up as if it were roses. He was a church-member: he could NOT be
drunk? At the sight of her, he tried to regain the austere dignity
usual to him when women were concerned, but lapsed into an occasional
giggle, which spoiled the effect.
"Where have you been," she inquired, severely, "scouring the country
like a heathen on this blessed day? And what is that you have burning?
You're disgracing the house, and strangers in it."
Joel's good-humour was proof against even this.
"I've scoured to some purpose, then. Dun't tell the mester: it'll
muddle his brains t'-night. Wait till mornin'. Squire More'll be down
his-self t' 'xplain."
He rubbed the greasy fingers into his hair, while Mrs. Howth's eyes
were fixed in dumb perplexity.
"Ye see,"--slowly, determined to make it clear to her now and
forever,--"it's water: no, t' a'n't water: it's troubled me an' Mester
Howth some time in Poke Run, atop o' 't. I hed my suspicions,--so'd
he; lay low, though, frum all women-folks. So 's I tuk a bottle down,
unbeknown, to Squire More, an' it's oil!"--jumping like a wild
Indian,--"thank the Lord fur his marcies, it's oil!"
"Well, Joel," she said, calmly, "very disagreeably smelling oil it is,
I must say."
"Good save the woman!" he broke out, sotto voce, "she's a born natural!
Did ye never hear of a shaft? or millions o' gallons a day? It's better
nor a California ranch, I tell ye. Mebbe," charitably, "ye didn't know
Poke Run's the mester's?"
"I certainly do. But I do not see what this green ditch-water is to
me. And I think, Joel,"----
"It's more to ye nor all yer States'-rights as I'm sick o' hearin' of.
It's carpets, an' bunnets, an' slithers of railroad-stock, an' some
colour on Margot's cheeks,--ye 'ed best think o' that! That's what it
is to ye! I'm goin' to take stock myself. I'm glad that gell 'll git
rest frum her mills an' her Houses o' Deviltry,--she's got gumption fur
a dozen women."
He went on muttering, as he gathered up his pint-pot and bottle,--
"I'm goin' to send my Tim to college soon's the thing's in runnin'
order. Lord! what a lawyer that boy'll make!"
Mrs. Howth's brain was still muddled.
"You are better pleased than you were at Lincoln's election," she
observed, placidly.
"Lincoln be darned!" he broke out, forgetting the teachings of Mr.
Clinche. "Now, Mem, dun't ye muddle the mester's brain t'-night wi'
't, I say. I'm goin' t' 'xperiment myself a bit."
Which he did, accordingly,--shutting himself up in the smoke-house and
burning the compound in divers sconces and Wide-Awake torches, giving
up the entire night to his diabolical orgies.
Mrs. Howth did not tell the master; for one reason: it took a long time
for so stupendous an idea to penetrate the good lady's brain; and for
another: her motherly heart was touched by another story than this
Aladdin's lamp of Joel's wherein burned petroleum. She watched from
her window until she saw Holmes crossing the icy road: there was a
little bitterness, I confess, in the thought that he had taken her
child from her; but the prayer that rose for them both took her whole
woman's heart with it.
The road was rough over the hills; the wind that struck Holmes's face
bitingly keen: perhaps the life coming for him would be as cold a
struggle, having not only poverty to conquer, but himself. But he is a
strong man,--no stronger puts his foot down with cool, resolute tread;
and to-night there is a thrill on his lips that never rested there
before,--a kiss, dewy and warm. Something, some new belief, too, stirs
in his heart, like a subtile atom of pure fire, that he hugs
closely,--his for all time. No poverty or death shall ever drive it
away. Perhaps he entertains an angel unaware.
After that night Lois never left her little shanty. The days that
followed were like one long Christmas; for her poor neighbors, black
and white, had some plot among themselves, and worked zealously to make
them seem so to her. It was easy to make these last days happy for the
simple little soul who had always gathered up every fragment of
pleasure in her featureless life, and made much of it, and rejoiced
over it. She grew bewildered, sometimes, lying on her wooden settle by
the fire; people lead always been friendly, taken care of her, but now
they were eager in their kindness, as though the time were short. She
did not understand the reason, at first; she did not want to die: yet
if it hurt her, when it grew clear at last, no one knew it; it was not
her way to speak of pain. Only, as she grew weaker, day by day, she
began to set her house in order, as one might say, in a quaint, almost
comical fashion, giving away everything she owned, down to her
treasures of colored bottles and needle-books, mending her father's
clothes, and laying them out in her drawers; lastly, she had Barney
brought in from the country, and every day would creep to the window to
see him fed and chirrup to him, whereat the poor old beast would look
up with his dim eye, and try to neigh a feeble answer. Kitts used to
come every day to see her, though he never said much when he was there:
he lugged his great copy of the Venus del Pardo along with him one day,
and left it, thinking she would like to look at it; Knowles called it
trash, when he came. The Doctor came always in the morning; he told
her he would read to her one day, and did it always afterwards, putting
on his horn spectacles, and holding her old Bible close up to his
rugged, anxious face. He used to read most from the Gospel of St.
John. She liked better to hear him than any of the others, even than
Margret, whose voice was so low and tender: something in the man's
half-savage nature was akin to the child's.
As the day drew near when she was to go, every pleasant trifle seemed
to gather a deeper, solemn meaning. Jenny Balls came in one night, and
old Mrs. Polston.
"We thought you'd like to see her weddin'-dress, Lois," said the old
woman, taking off Jenny's cloak, "seein' as the weddin' was to hev been
to-morrow, and was put off on 'count of you."
Lois did like to see it; sat up, her face quite flushed to see how
nicely it fitted, and stroked back Jenny's soft hair under the veil.
And Jenny, being a warm-hearted little thing, broke into a sobbing fit,
saying that it spoiled it all to have Lois gone.
"Don't muss your veil, child," said Mrs. Polston.
But Jenny cried on, hiding her face in Lois's skinny hand, until Sam
Polston came in, when she grew quiet and shy. The poor deformed girl
lay watching them, as they talked. Very pretty Jenny looked, with her
blue eyes and damp pink cheeks; and it was a manly, grave love in Sam's
face, when it turned to her. A different love from any she had known:
better, she thought. It could not be helped; but it WAS better.
After they were gone, she lay a long time quiet, with her hand over her
eyes. Forgive her! she, too, was a woman. Ah, it may be there are
more wrongs that shall be righted yonder in the To-Morrow than are set
down in your theology!
And so it was, that, as she drew nearer to this To-Morrow, the brain of
the girl grew clearer,--struggling, one would think, to shake off
whatever weight had been put on it by blood or vice or poverty, and
become itself again. Perhaps, even in her cheerful, patient life,
there had been hours when she had known the wrongs that had been done
her, known how cruelly the world had thwarted her; her very keen
insight into whatever was beautiful or helpful may have made her see
her own mischance, the blank she had drawn in life, more bitterly. She
did not see it bitterly now. Death is honest; all things grew clear to
her, going down into the valley of the shadow; so, wakening to the
consciousness of stifled powers and ungiven happiness, she saw that the
fault was not hers, nor His who had appointed her lot; He had helped
her to bear it,--bearing worse himself. She did not say once, "I might
have been," but day by day, more surely, "I shall be." There was not a
tear on the homely faces turning from her bed, not a tint of colour in
the flowers they brought her, not a shiver of light in the ashy sky,
that did not make her more sure of that which was to come. More loving
she grew, as she went away from them, the touch of her hand more
pitiful, her voice more tender, if such a thing could be,--with a look
in her eyes never seen there before. Old Yare pointed it out to Mrs.
Polston one day.
"My girl's far off frum us," he said, sobbing in the kitchen,--"my
girl's far off now."
It was the last night of the year that she died. She was so much
better that they all were quite cheerful. Kitts went away as it grew
dark, and she bade him wrap up his throat with such a motherly
dogmatism that they all laughed at her; she, too, with the rest.
"I'll make you a New-Year's call," he said, going out; and she called
out that she should be sure to expect him.
She seemed so strong that Holmes and Mrs. Polston and Margret, who were
there, were going home; besides, old Yare said, "I'd like to take care
o' my girl alone to-night, ef yoh'd let me,"--for they had not trusted
him before. But Lois asked them not to go until the Old Year was over;
so they waited down-stairs.
The old man fell asleep, and it was near midnight when he wakened with
a cold touch on his hand.
"It's come, father!"
He started up with a cry, looking at the new smile in her eyes, grown
strangely still.
"Call them all, quick, father!"
Whatever was the mystery of death that met her now, her heart clung to
the old love that had been true to her so long.
He did not move.
"Let me hev yoh to myself, Lo, 't th' last; yoh're all I hev; let me
hev yoh 't th' last."
It was a bitter disappointment, but she roused herself even then to
smile, and tell him yes, cheerfully. You call it a trifle, nothing? It
may be; yet I think the angels looking down had tears in their eyes,
when they saw the last trial of the unselfish, solitary heart, and kept
for her a different crown from his who conquers a city.
The fire-light grew warmer and redder; her eyes followed it, as if all
that had been bright and kindly in her life were coming back in it.
She put her hand on her father, trying vainly to smooth his gray hair.
The old man's heart smote him for something, for his sobs grew louder,
and he left her a moment; then she saw them all, faces very dear to her
even then. She laughed and nodded to them all in the old childish way;
then her lips moved. "It's come right!" she tried to say; but the weak
voice would never speak again on earth.
"It's the turn o' the night," said Mrs. Polston, solemnly; "lift her
head; the Old Year's 'goin' out."
Margret lifted her head, and held it on her breast. She could hear
cries and sobs; the faces, white now, and wet, pressed nearer, yet
fading slowly: it was the Old Year going out, the worn-out year of her
life. Holmes opened the window: the cold night-wind rushed in, bearing
with it snatches of broken harmony: some idle musician down in the
city, playing fragments of some old, sweet air, heavy with love and
regret. It may have been chance: yet, let us think it was not chance;
let us believe that He, who had made the world warm and happy for her,
chose that this best voice of all should bid her good-bye at the last.
So the Old Year went out in that music. The dull eyes, loving to the
end, wandered vaguely as the sounds died away, as if losing
something,--losing all, suddenly. She sighed as the clock struck, and
then a strange calm, unknown before, stole over her face; her eyes
flashed open with a living joy. Margret stooped to close them, kissing
the cold lids; and Tiger, who had climbed upon the bed, whined and
crept down.
"It is the New Year," said Holmes, bending his head.
The cripple was dead; but LOIS, free, loving, and beloved, trembled
from her prison to her Master's side in the To-Morrow.
I can show you her grave out there in the hills,--a short, stunted
grave, like a child's. No one goes there, although there are many
firesides where they speak of "Lois" softly, as of something holy and
dear: but they think of her always as not there; as gone home; even old
Yare looks up, when he talks of "my girl." Yet, knowing that nothing
in God's just universe is lost, or fails to meet the late fulfilment of
its hope, I like to think of her poor body lying there: I like to
believe that the great mother was glad to receive the form that want
and crime of men had thwarted,--took her uncouth child home again, that
had been so cruelly wronged,--folded it in her warm bosom with tender,
palpitating love.
It pleased me in the winter months to think that the worn-out limbs,
the old scarred face of Lois rested, slept: crumbled into fresh atoms,
woke at last with a strange sentience, and, when God smiled permission
through the summer sun, flashed forth in a wild ecstasy of the true
beauty that she loved so well. In no questioning, sad pallor of sombre
leaves or gray lichens: throbbed out rather in answering crimsons, in
lilies, white, exultant in a chordant life!
Yet, more than this: I strive to grope, with dull, earthy sense, at her
freed life in that earnest land where souls forget to hunger or to
hope, and learn to be. And so thinking, the certainty of her aim and
work and love yonder comes with a new, vital reality, beside which the
story of the yet living men and women of whom I have told you grows
vague and incomplete, like unguessed riddles. I have no key to solve
them with,--no right to solve them.
My story is but a mere groping hint? It lacks determined truth, a
certain yea and nay? It has no conduit of God's justice running through
it, awarding apparent good and ill? I know: it is a story of To-Day.
The Old Year is on us yet. Poor old Knowles will tell you it is a dark
day; bewildered at the inexplicable failure of the cause for which his
old blood ran like water that dull morning at Ball's Bluff. He doubts
everything in the bitterness of wasted effort; doubts sometimes, even,
if the very flag he fights for, be not the symbol of a gigantic
selfishness: if the Wrong he calls his enemy, have not caught a certain
truth to give it strength. A dark day, he tells you: that the air is
filled with the cry of the slave, and of nations going down into
darkness, their message untold, their work undone: that now, as
eighteen centuries ago, the Helper stands unwelcome in the world; that
your own heart, as well as the great humanity, asks an unrendered
justice. Does he utter all the problems of To-Day? Vandyke, standing
higher, perhaps, or, at any rate, born with hopefuller brain, would
show you how, by the very instant peril of the hour, is lifted clearer
into view the eternal prophecy of coming content: could tell you that
the unquiet earth, and the unanswering heaven are instinct with it:
that the ungranted prayer of your own life should teach it to you: that
in that Book wherein God has not scorned to write the history of
America, he finds the quiet surety that the rescue of the world is near
at hand.
Holmes, like most men who make destiny, does not pause in his cool,
slow work for their prophecy or lamentation. "Such men will mould the
age," old Knowles says, drearily, for he does not like Holmes: follows
him unwillingly, even knowing him nearer the truth than he. "Born for
mastership, as I told you long ago: they strike the blow, while----.
I'm tired of theorists, exponents of the abstract right: your Hamlets,
and your Sewards, that let occasion slip until circumstance or--mobs
drift them as they will."
But Knowles's growls are unheeded, as usual.
What is this To-Day to Margret? She has no prophetic insight, cares
for none, I am afraid: the common things of every-day wear their old
faces to her, dear and real. Her haste is too eager to allay the pain
about her, her husband's touch too strong and tender, the Master beside
her too actual a presence, for her to waste her life in visions.
Something of Lois's live, universal sympathy has come into her narrow,
intenser nature; through its one love, it may be. What is To-Morrow
until it comes? This moment the evening air thrills with a purple of
which no painter as yet has caught the tint, no poet the meaning; no
silent face passes her on the street on which a human voice might not
have charm to call out love and power: the Helper yet waits near her.
Here is work, life: the Old Year you despise holds beauty, pain,
content yet unmastered: let us leave Margret to master them.
It does not satisfy you? Child-souls, you tell me, like that of Lois,
may find it enough to hold no past and no future, to accept the work of
each moment, and think it no wrong to drink every drop of its beauty
and joy: we, who are wiser, laugh at them. It may be: yet I say unto
you, their angels only do always behold the face of our Father in the
New Year.