BEYOND DESERT, AND DESERTS
From all the carnage, havoc, ruin, hatred, and fury of that wicked war
we set our little convoy forth, with passes procured from either side.
According to all rules of war, Firm was no doubt a prisoner; but having
saved his life, and taken his word to serve no more against them,
remembering also that he had done them more service than ten regiments,
the Federal authorities were not sorry to be quit of him.
He, for his part, being of a deep, retentive nature, bore in his wounded
breast a sorrow which would last his lifetime. To me he said not a
single word about his bitter fortune, and he could not bring himself
to ask me whether I would share it. Only from his eyes sometimes I knew
what he was thinking; and having passed through so much grief, I
was moved with deep compassion. Poor Firm had been trained by his
grandfather to a strong, earnest faith in Providence, and now this
compelled him almost to believe that he had been specially visited. For
flying in the face of his good grandfather, and selfishly indulging his
own stiff neck, his punishment had been hard, and almost heavier than he
could bear. Whatever might happen to him now, the spring and the flower
of his life were gone; he still might have some calm existence, but
never win another day of cloudless joy. And if he had only said this, or
thought about it, we might have looked at him with less sadness of our
own.
But he never said any thing about himself, nor gave any opening for
our comfort to come to him. Only from day to day he behaved gently and
lovingly to both of us, as if his own trouble must be fought out by
himself, and should dim no other happiness. And this kept us thinking of
his sorrow all the more, so that I could not even look at him without a
flutter of the heart, which was afraid to be a sigh.
At last, upon the great mountain range, through which we now were
toiling, with the snow little more than a mantle for the peaks, and a
sparkling veil for sunrise, dear Uncle Sam, who had often shown signs of
impatience, drew me apart from the rest. Straightforward and blunt as he
generally was, he did not seem altogether ready to begin, but pulled off
his hat, and then put it on again, the weather being now cold and hot
by turns. And while he did this he was thinking at his utmost, as every
full vein of his forehead declared. And being at home with his ways, I
waited.
“Think you got ahead of me? No, not you,” he exclaimed at last, in
reply to some version of his own of my ideas, which I carefully made a
nonentity under the scrutiny of his keen blue eyes. “No, no, missy;
you wait a bit. Uncle Sam was not hatched yesterday, and it takes fifty
young ladies to go round him.”
“Is that from your size, Uncle Sam, or your depth?”
“Well, a mixture of both, I do believe. Now the last thing you ever
would think of, if you lived to be older than Washington's nurse, is the
very thing I mean to put to you. Only you must please to take it well,
according to my meaning. You see our Firm going to a shadow, don't you?
Very well; the fault of that is all yourn. Why not up and speak to him?”
“I speak to him every day, Uncle Sam, and I spare no efforts to fatten
him. I am sure I never dreamed of becoming such a cook. But soon he will
have Suan Isco.”
“Old Injun be darned! It's not the stomach, it's the heart as wants
nourishment with yon poor lad. He looketh that pitiful at you sometimes,
my faith, I can hardly tell whether to laugh at his newings or cry at
the lean face that does it.”
“You are not talking like yourself, Uncle Sam. And he never does any
thing of the kind. I am sure there is nothing to laugh at.”
“No, no; to be sure not. I made a mistake. Heroic is the word, of
course--every thing is heroic.”
“It is heroic,” I answered, with some vexation at his lightness. “If you
can not see it, I am sorry for you. I like large things; and I know of
nothing larger than the way poor Firm is going on.”
“You to stand up for him!” Colonel Gundry answered, as if he could
scarcely look at me. “You to talk large of him, my Lady Castlewood,
while you are doing of his heart into small wittles! Well, I did
believe, if no one else, that you were a straightforward one.”
“And what am I doing that is crooked now?”
“Well, not to say crooked, Miss 'Rema; no, no. Only onconsistent, when
squared up.”
“Uncle Sam, you're a puzzle to me to-day. What is inconsistent? What is
there to square up?”
He fetched a long breath, and looked wondrous wise. Then, as if his
main object was to irritate me, he made a long stride, and said, “Soup's
a-bilin now.”
“Let it boil over, then. You must say what you mean. Oh, Uncle Sam, I
only want to do the right!”
“I dessay. I dessay. But have you got the pluck, miss? Our little missy
would 'a done more than that. But come to be great lady--why, they take
another tune. With much mind, of course it might be otherwise. But none
of 'em have any much of that to spare.”
“Your view is a narrow one,” I replied, knowing how that would astonish
him. “You judge by your own experience only; and to do that shows a sad
want of breadth, as the ladies in England express it.”
The Sawyer stared, and then took off his hat, and then felt all about
for his spectacles. The idea of being regarded by a “female” from a
larger and loftier point of view, made a new sensation in his system.
“Yes,” I continued, with some enjoyment, “let us try to look largely
at all things, Uncle Sam. And supposing me capable of that, what is the
proper and the lofty course to take?”
He looked at me with a strange twinkle in his eyes, and with three words
discomfited me--“Pop the question.”
Much as I had heard of woman's rights, equality of body and mind
with man, and superiority in morals, it did not appear to me that her
privilege could be driven to this extent. But I shook my head till all
my hair came down; and so if our constitutional right of voting by color
was exercised, on this occasion it claimed the timid benefit of ballot.
With us a suggestion, for the time discarded, has often double effect
by-and-by; and though it was out of my power to dream of acting up to
such directions, there could be no possible harm in reviewing such a
theory theoretically.
Now nothing beyond this was in my thoughts, nor even so much as that
(safely may I say), when Firm and myself met face to face on the third
day after Uncle Sam's ideas. Our little caravan, of which the Sawyer
was the captain, being bound for Blue River and its neighborhood, had
quitted the Sacramento track by a fork on the left not a league from
the spot where my father had bidden adieu to mankind. And knowing every
twist and turn of rock, our drivers brought us at the camping-time
almost to the verge of chaparral.
I knew not exactly how far we were come, but the dust-cloud of memory
was stirring, and though mountains looked smaller than they used to
look, the things done among them seemed larger. And wandering forth from
the camp to think, when the evening meal was over, lo! there I stood in
that selfsame breach or portal of the desert in which I stood once by
my father's side, with scared and weary eyes, vainly seeking safety's
shattered landmark. The time of year was different, being the ripe end
of October now; but though the view was changed in tint, it was even
more impressive. Sombre memories, and deep sense of grandeur, which is
always sad, and solemn lights, and stealing shadows, compassed me with
thoughtfulness. In the mouth of the gorge was a gray block of granite,
whereupon I sat down to think.
Old thoughts, dull thoughts, thoughts as common as the clouds that cross
the distant plain, and as vague as the wind that moves them--they please
and they pass, and they may have shed kindly influence, but what are
they? The life that lies before us is, in some way, too, below us, like
yon vast amplitude of plain; but it must be traversed foot by foot, and
laboriously travailed, without the cloudy vaporing or the high-flown
meditation. And all that must be done by me, alone, with none to love
me, and (which for a woman is so much worse) nobody ever to have for my
own, to cherish, love, and cling to.
Tier upon tier, and peak over peak, the finest mountains of the world
are soaring into the purple firmament. Like northern lights, they flash,
or flush, or fade into a reclining gleam; like ladders of heaven, they
bar themselves with cloudy air; and like heaven itself, they rank
their white procession. Lonely, feeble, puny, I look up with awe and
reverence; the mind pronounces all things small compared with this
magnificence. Yet what will all such grandeur do--the self-defensive
heart inquires--for puny, feeble, lonely me?
Before another shadow deepened or another light grew pale, a slow,
uncertain step drew near, and by the merest chance it happened to be
Ephraim Gundry's. I was quite surprised, and told him so; and he said
that he also was surprised at meeting me in this way. Remembering how
long I had been here, I thought this most irrational, but checked myself
from saying so, because he looked so poorly. And more than that, I asked
him kindly how he was this evening, and smoothed my dress to please his
eye, and offered him a chair of rock. But he took no notice of all these
things.
I thought of the time when he would have behaved so very differently
from this, and nothing but downright pride enabled me to repress
vexation. However, I resolved to behave as kindly as if he were his own
grandfather.
“How grand these mountains are!” I said. “It must do you good to see
them again. Even to me it is such a delight. And what must it be to you,
a native?”
“Yes, I shall wander from them no more. How I wish that I had never done
so?”
“Have men less courage than women?” I asked, with one glance at his pale
worn face. “I owe you the debt of life; and this is the place to think
and speak of it. I used to talk freely of that, you know. You used to
like to hear me speak; but now you are tired of that, and tired of all
the world as well, I fear.”
“No, I am tired of nothing, except my own vile degradation. I am tired
of my want of spirit, that I can not cast my load. I am tired of my lack
of reason, which should always guide a man. What is the use of mind or
intellect, reasoning power, or whatever it is called, if the whole of
them can not enable a man to hold out against a stupid heart?”
“I think you should be proud,” I said, while trembling to approach the
subject which never had been touched between us, “at having a nature
so sensitive. Your evil chance might have been any body's, and must of
course have been somebody's. But nobody else would have taken it so--so
delightfully as you have done!”
“Delightfully! Is that the word you use? May I ask who gets any delight
from it?”
“Why, all who hate the Southern cause,” I replied, with a sudden turn of
thought, though I never had meant to use the word. “Surely that needs no
explanation.”
“They are delighted, are they? Yes, I can very well believe it.
Narrow-minded bigots! Yes, they are sure to be delighted. They call it a
just visitation, of course, a righteous retribution. And they hope I may
never get over it.”
“I pray you to take it more gently,” I said; “they are very good
men, and wish you no harm. But they must have their own opinions; and
naturally they think them just.”
“Then all their opinions are just wrong. They hope to see me go down,
to my grave. They shall not have that pleasure. I will outlive every
old John Brown of them. I did not care two cents to live just now.
Henceforth I will make a point of it. If I cannot fight for true freedom
any more, having ruined it perhaps already, the least I can do is to
give no more triumph to its bitter enemies. I will eat and drink, and
begin this very night. I suppose you are one of them, as you put their
arguments so neatly. I suppose you consider me a vile slave-driver?”
“You are very ill,” I said, with my heart so full of pity that anger
could not enter; “you are very ill, and very weak. How could you drive
the very best slave now--even such a marvel as Uncle Tom?”
Firm Gundry smiled; on his lean dry face there shone a little flicker,
which made me think of the time when he bought a jest-book, published at
Cincinnati, to make himself agreeable to my mind. And little as I meant
it, I smiled also, thinking of the way he used to come out with his
hard-fought jokes, and expect it.
“I wish you were at all as you used to be,” he said, looking at me
softly through the courage of his smile, “instead of being such a grand
lady.”
“And I wish you were a little more like yourself,” I answered, without
thinking; “you used to think always there was nobody like me.”
“Suppose that I am of the same opinion still? Tenfold, fiftyfold, a
millionfold?”
“To suppose a thing of that sort is a little too absurd, when you have
shown no sign of it.”
“For your own dear sake I have shown no sign. The reason of that is too
clear to explain.”
“Then how stupid I must be not to see an atom of it!”
“Why, who would have any thing to say to me--a broken-down man, a fellow
marked out for curses, one who hates even the sight of himself? The
lowest of the low would shun me.”
He turned away from me, and gazed back toward the dismal, miserable,
spectral desert; while I stood facing the fruitful, delicious, flowery
Paradise of all the world. I thought of the difference in our lots,
and my heart was in misery about him. Then I conquered my pride and my
littleness and trumpery, and did what the gentle sweet Eve might have
done. And never have I grieved for that action since.
With tears on my cheeks quite undissembled, and a breast not ashamed of
fluttering, I ran to Firm Gundry, and took his right hand, and allowed
him no refuge from tender wet eyes. Then before he could come to see the
meaning of this haste--because of his very high discipline--I was out
of his distance, and sitting on a rock, and I lifted my eyes, full of
eloquence, to his; then I dropped them, and pulled my hat forward, and
said, as calmly as was possible, “I have done enough. The rest remains
with you, Firm Gundry.”
The rest remained with him. Enough that I was part of that rest; and if
not the foundation or crown of it, something desirous to be both, and
failing (if fail it ever does) from no want of trial. Uncle Sam says
that I never fail at all, and never did fail in any thing, unless it was
when I found that blamed nugget, for which we got three wagon-loads of
greenbacks; which (when prosperity at last revives) will pay perhaps for
greasing all twelve wheels.
Jowler admits not that failure even. As soon as he recovered from canine
dementia, approaching very closely to rabies, at seeing me in the flesh
once more (so that the Sierra Nevada rang with avalanches of barking),
he tugged me to the place where his teeth were set in gold, and proved
that he had no hydrophobia. His teeth are scanty now, but he still can
catch a salmon, and the bright zeal and loyalty of his soft brown
eyes and the sprightly elevation of his tail are still among dogs as
pre-eminent as they are to mankind inimitable.
Now the war is past, and here we sit by the banks of the soft Blue
River. The early storm and young conflict of a clouded life are over.
Still out of sight there may be yet a sea of troubles to buffet with;
but it is not merely a selfish thought that others will face it with me.
Dark mysteries have been cleared away by being confronted bravely; and
the lesson has been learned that life (like California flowers) is of
infinite variety. This little river, ten steps wide, on one side has all
lupins, on the other side all larkspurs. Can I tell why? Can any body?
Can even itself, so full of voice and light, unroll the reason?
Behind us tower the stormy crags, before us spread soft tapestry of
earth and sweep of ocean. Below us lies my father's grave, whose sin was
not his own, but fell on him, and found him loyal. To him was I loyal
also, as a daughter should be; and in my lap lies my reward--for I am no
more Erema.