"_Every one has his day, from which he dates._"
OLD PROVERB
You see, Surrey, the school is something extra, and the performances,
and it will please Clara no end; so I thought I'd run over, and
inveigled you into going along for fear it should be stupid, and I would
need some recreation."
"Which I am to afford?"
"Verily."
"As clown or grindstone?--to make laugh, or sharpen your wits upon?"
"Far be it from me to dictate. Whichever suits our character best. On
the whole, I think the last would be the most appropriate; the first I
can swear wouldn't!"
"_Pourquoi_?"
"O, a woman's reason,--because!"
"Because why? Am I cross?"
"Not exactly."
"Rough?"
"As usual,--like a May breeze."
"Cynical?"
"As Epicurus."
"Irritable?"
"'A countenance [and manner] more in sorrow than in anger.' Something's
wrong with you; who is she?"
"She!"
"Ay,--she. That was a wise Eastern king who put at the bottom of every
trouble and mischief a woman."
"Fine estimate."
"Correct one. Evidently he had studied the genus thoroughly, and had a
poor opinion of it."
"No wonder."
"Amazing! _you_ say 'no wonder'! Astounding words! speak them again."
"No wonder,--seeing that he had a mother, and that she had such a son.
He must needs have been a bad fellow or a fool to have originated so
base a philosophy, and how then could he respect the source of such a
stream as himself?"
"Sir Launcelot,--squire of dames!"
"Not Sir Launcelot, but squire of dames, I hope."
"There you go again! Now I shall query once more, who is she?"
"No woman."
"No?"
"No, though by your smiling you would seem to say so!"
"Nay, I believe you, and am vastly relieved in the believing. Take
advice from ten years of superior age, and fifty of experience, and have
naught to do with them. Dost hear?"
"I do."
"And will heed?"
"Which?--the words or the acts of my counsellor? who, of a surety,
preaches wisely and does foolishly, or who does wisely and preaches
foolishly; for preaching and practice do not agree."
"Nay, man, thou art unreasonable; to perform either well is beyond the
capacity of most humans, and I desire not to be blessed above my
betters. Then let my rash deeds and my prudent words both be teachers
unto thee. But if it be true that no woman is responsible for your grave
countenance this morning, then am I wasting words, and will return to
our muttons. What ails you?"
"I am belligerent."
"I see,--that means quarrelsome."
"And hopeless."
"Bad,--very! belligerent and hopeless! When you go into a fight always
expect to win; the thought is half the victory."
"Suppose you are an atom against the universe?" "Don't fight, succumb.
There's a proverb,--a wise one,--Napoleon's, 'God is on the side of the
strongest battalions.'"
"A lie,--exploded at Waterloo. There's another proverb, 'One on the side
of God is a majority.' How about that?"
"Transcendental humbug."
"A truth demonstrated at Wittenberg."
"Are you aching for the martyr's palm?"
"I am afraid not. On the whole, I think I'd rather enjoy life than
quarrel with it. But"--with a sudden blaze--"I feel to-day like fighting
the world."
"Hey, presto! what now, young'un?"
"I don't wonder you stare"--a little laugh. "I'm talking like a fool,
and, for aught I know, feeling like one, aching to fight, and knowing
that I might as well quarrel with the winds, or stab that water as it
flows by."
"As with what?"
"The fellow I've just been getting a good look at."
"What manner of fellow?"
"Ignorant, selfish, brutal, devilish."
"Tremendous! why don't you bind him over to keep the peace?"
"Because he is like the judge of old time, neither fears God nor
respects his image,--when his image is carved in ebony, and not ivory."
"What do you call this fellow?"
"Public Opinion."
"This big fellow is abusing and devouring a poor little chap, eh? and
the chap's black?"
"True."
"And sometimes the giant is a gentleman in purple and fine linen,
otherwise broadcloth; and sometimes in hodden gray, otherwise homespun
or slop-shop; and sometimes he cuts the poor little chap with a silver
knife, which is rhetoric, and sometimes with a wooden spoon, which is
raw-hide. Am I stating it all correctly?"
"All correctly."
"And you've been watching this operation when you had better have been
minding your own business, and getting excited when you had better have
kept cool, and now want to rush into the fight, drums beating and colors
flying, to the rescue of the small one. Don't deny it,--it's all written
out in your eyes."
"I sha'n't deny it, except about the business and the keeping cool. It's
any gentleman's business to interfere between a bully and a weakling
that he's abusing; and his blood must be water that does not boil while
he 'watches the operation' as you say, and goes in."
"To get well pommelled for his pains, and do no good to any one, himself
included. Let the weakling alone. A fellow that can't save himself is
not worth saving. If he can't swim nor walk, let him drop under or go to
the wall; that's my theory."
"Anglo-Saxon theory--and practice."
"Good theory, excellent practice,--in the main. What special phase of it
has been disturbing your equanimity?"
"You know the Franklins?"
"Of course: Aunt Mina's son--what's his name?--is a sort of _protégé_
of yours, I believe: what of him?"
"He is cleanly?"
"A nice question. Doubtless."
"Respectable?"
"What are you driving at?"
"Intelligent?"
"Most true."
"Ambitious?"
"Or his looks belie him."
"Faithful, trusty, active, helpful, in every way devoted to my father's
service and his work."
"With Sancho, I believe it all because your worship says so."
"Well, this man has just been discharged from my father's employ because
seven hundred and forty-two other men gave notice to quit if he
remained."
"The reason?"
"His skin."
"The reason is not 'so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but
it is enough.' Of course they wouldn't work with him, and my uncle
Surrey, begging your pardon, should not have attempted anything so
Quixotic."
"His skin covering so many excellent qualities, and these qualities
gaining recognition,--that was the cause. They worked with him so long
as he was a servant of servants: so soon as he demonstrated that he
could strike out strongly and swim, they knocked him under; and, proving
that he could walk alone, they ran hastily to shove him to the wall."
"What! quoting my own words against me?"
"Anglo-Saxon says we are the masters: we monopolize the strength and
courage, the beauty, intelligence, power. These creatures,--what are
they? poor, worthless, lazy, ignorant, good for nothing but to be used
as machines, to obey. When lo! one of these dumb machines suddenly
starts forth with a man's face; this creature no longer obeys, but
evinces a right to command; and Anglo-Saxon speedily breaks him in
pieces."
"Come, Willie, I hope you're not going to assert these people our
equals,--that would be too much."
"They have no intelligence, Anglo-Saxon declares,--then refuses them
schools, while he takes of their money to help educate his own sons.
They have no ambition,--then closes upon them every door of honorable
advancement, and cries through the key-hole, Serve, or starve. They
cannot stand alone, they have no faculty for rising,--then, if one of
them finds foothold, the ground is undermined beneath him. If a head is
seen above the crowd, the ladder is jerked away, and he is trampled into
the dust where he is fallen. If he stays in the position to which
Anglo-Saxon assigns him, he is a worthless nigger; if he protests
against it, he is an insolent nigger; if he rises above it, he is a
nigger not to be tolerated at all,--to be crushed and buried speedily."
"Now, Willie, 'no more of this, an thou lovest me.' I came not out
to-day to listen to an abolition harangue, nor a moral homily, but to
have a good time, to be civil and merry withal, if you will allow it. Of
course you don't like Franklin's discharge, and of course you have done
something to compensate him. I know--you have found him another place.
No,--you couldn't do that?
"No, I couldn't."
"Well, you've settled him somewhere,--confess."
"He has some work for the present; some copying for me, and translating,
for this unfortunate is a scholar, you know."
"Very good; then let it rest. Granted the poor devils have a bad time of
it, you're not bound to sacrifice yourself for them. If you go on at
this pace, you'll bring up with the long-haired, bloomer reformers, and
then--God help you. No, you needn't say another word,--I sha'n't
listen,--not one; so. Here we are! school yonder,--well situated?"
"Capitally."
"Fine day."
"Very."
"Clara will be charmed to see you."
"You flatter me. I hope so."
"There, now you talk rationally. Don't relapse. We will go up and hear
the pretty creatures read their little pieces, and sing their little
songs, and see them take their nice blue-ribboned diplomas, and fall in
love with their dear little faces, and flirt a bit this evening, and
to-morrow I shall take Ma'm'selle Clara home to Mamma Russell, and you
may go your ways."
"The programme is satisfactory."
"Good. Come on then."
All Commencement days, at college or young ladies' school, if not twin
brothers and sisters, are at least first cousins, with a strong family
likeness. Who that has passed through one, or witnessed one, needs any
description thereof to furbish up its memories. This of Professor Hale's
belonged to the great tribe, and its form and features were of the old
established type. The young ladies were charming; plenty of white gowns,
plenty of flowers, plenty of smiles, blushes, tremors, hopes, and fears;
little songs, little pieces, little addresses, to be sung, to be played,
to be read, just as Tom Russell had foreshadowed, and proving to be--
"Just the least of a bore!" as he added after listening awhile; "don't
you think so, Surrey?"
"Hush! don't talk."
Tom stared; then followed his cousin's eye, fixed immovably upon one
little spot on the platform. "By Jove!" he cried, "what a beauty! As
Father Dryden would say, 'this is the porcelain clay of humankind.' No
wonder you look. Who is she,--do you know?"
"No."
"No! short, clear, and decisive. Don't devour her, Will. Remember the
sermon I preached you an hour ago. Come, look at this,"--thrusting a
programme into his face,--"and stop staring. Why, boy, she has
bewitched you,--or inspired you,"--surveying him sharply.
And indeed it would seem so. Eyes, mouth, face, instinct with some
subtle and thrilling emotion. As gay Tom Russell looked, he
involuntarily stretched out his hand, as one would put it between
another and some danger of which that other is unaware, and remembered
what he had once said in talking of him,--"If Will Surrey's time does
come, I hope the girl will be all right in every way, for he'll plunge
headlong, and love like distraction itself,--no half-way; it will be a
life-and-death affair for him." "Come, I must break in on this."
"Surrey!"
"Yes."
"There's a pretty girl."
No answer.
"There! over yonder. Third seat, second row. See her? Pretty?"
"Very pretty."
"Miss--Miss--what's her name? O, Miss Perry played that last thing very
well for a school-girl, eh?"
"Very well."
"Admirable room this, for hearing; rare quality with chapels and halls;
architects in planning generally tax ingenuity how to confuse sound. Now
these girls don't make a great noise, yet you can distinguish every
word,--can't you?"
No response.
"I say, can't you?"
"Every word."
Tom drew a long breath.
"Professor Hale's a sensible old fellow; I like the way he conducts this
school." (Mem. Tom didn't know a thing about it.) "Carries it on
excellently." A pause.
Silence.
"Fine-looking, too. A man's physique has a deal to do with his success
in the world. If he carries a letter of recommendation in his face,
people take him on trust to begin with; and if he's a big fellow, like
the Professor yonder, he imposes on folks awfully; they pop down on
their knees to him, and clear the track for him, as if he had a right to
it all. Bless me! I never thought of that before,--it's the reason you
and I have got on so swimmingly,--is it not, now? Certainly. You think
so? Of course."
"Of course,"--sedately and gravely spoken.
Tom groaned, for, with a face kind and bright, he was yet no beauty;
while if Surrey had one crowning gift in this day of fast youths and
self-satisfied Young America, it was that of modesty with regard to
himself and any gifts and graces nature had blessed him withal.
"Clara has a nice voice."
"Very nice."
"She is to sing, do you know?"
"I know."
"Do you know when?"
No reply.
"She sings the next piece. Are you ready to listen?"
"Ready."
"Good Lord!" cried Tom, in despair, "the fellow has lost his wits. He
has turned parrot; he has done nothing but repeat my words for me since
he sat here. He's an echo."
"Echo of nothingness?" queried the parrot, smilingly.
"Ah, you've come to yourself, have you? Capital! now stay awake. There's
Clara to sing directly, and you are to cheer her, and look as if you
enjoyed it, and throw her that bouquet when I tell you, and let her
think it's a fine thing she has been doing; for this is a tremendous
affair to her, poor child, of course."
"How bright and happy she is! You will laugh at me, Tom, and indeed I
don't know what has come over me, but somehow I feel quite sad, looking
at those girls, and wondering what fate and time have in store for
them."
"Sunshine and bright hours."
"The day cometh, and also the night,"--broke in the clear voice that was
reading a selection from the Scriptures.
Tom started, and Willie took from his button-hole just such a little
nosegay as that he had bought on Broadway a fortnight before,--a
geranium leaf, a bit of mignonette, and a delicate tea-rosebud, and,
seeing it was drooping, laid it carefully upon the programme on his
knee. "I don't want that to fade," he thought as he put it down, while
he looked across the platform at the same face which he had so eagerly
pursued through a labyrinth of carriages, stages, and people, and lost
at last.
"There! Clara is talking to your beauty. I wonder if she is to sing, or
do anything. If she does, it will be something dainty and fine, I'll
wager. Helloa! there's Clara up,--now for it."
Clara's bright little voice suited her bright little face,--like her
brother's, only a great deal prettier,--and the young men enjoyed both,
aside from brotherly and cousinly feeling, cheered her "to the echo" as
Willie said, threw their bouquets,--great, gorgeous things they had
brought from the city to please her,--and wished there was more of it
all when it was through.
"What next?" said Willie.
"Heaven preserve us! your favorite subject. Who would expect to tumble
on such a theme here?--'Slavery; by Francesca Ercildoune.' Odd
name,--and, by Jove! it's the beauty herself."
They both leaned forward eagerly as she came from her seat; slender,
shapely, every fibre fine and exquisite, no coarse graining from the
dainty head to the dainty foot; the face, clear olive, delicate and
beautiful,--
"The mouth with steady sweetness set,
And eyes conveying unaware
The distant hint of some regret
That harbored there,"--
eyes deep, tender, and pathetic.
"What's this?" said Tom. "Queer. It gives me a heartache to look at
her."
"A woman for whom to fight the world, or lose the world, and be
compensated a million-fold if you died at her feet," thought Surrey, and
said nothing.
"What a strange subject for her to select!" broke in Tom.
It was a strange one for the time and place, and she had been besought
to drop it, and take another; but it should be that or nothing, she
asserted,--so she was left to her own device.
Oddly treated, too. Tom thought it would be a pretty lady-like essay,
and said so; then sat astounded at what he saw and heard. Her face--this
schoolgirl's face--grew pallid, her eyes mournful, her voice and manner
sublime, as she summoned this Monster to the bar of God's justice and
the humanity of the world; as she arraigned it; as she brought witness
after witness to testify against it; as she proved its horrible
atrocities and monstrous barbarities; as she went on to the close, and,
lifting hand and face and voice together, thrilled out, "I look backward
into the dim, distant past, but it is one night of oppression and
despair; I turn to the present, but I hear naught save the mother's
broken-hearted shriek, the infant's wail, the groan wrung from the
strong man in agony; I look forward into the future, but the night grows
darker, the shadows deeper and longer, the tempest wilder, and
involuntarily I cry out, 'How long, O God, how long?'"
"Heavens! what an actress she would make!" said somebody before them.
"That's genius," said somebody behind them; "but what a subject to
waste it upon!"
"Very bad taste, I must say, to talk about such a thing here," said
somebody beside them. "However, one can excuse a great deal to beauty
like that."
Surrey sat still, and felt as though he were on fire, filled with an
insane desire to seize her in one arm like a knight of old, and hew his
way through these beings, and out of this place, into some solitary spot
where he could seat her and kneel at her feet, and die there if she
refused to take him up; filled with all the sweet, extravagant,
delicious pain that thrills the heart, full of passion and purity, of a
young man who begins to love the first, overwhelming, only love of a
lifetime.