Worn out and jaded, I began my travels. I strove to make these travels
as inexpensive as possible. I walked much, and at times lived both
cheaply and luxuriously, as one learns to do after a little experience
abroad. At first I resolved to make this tour one long summer day of
pleasure through the outward senses. I took no books with me. I painted
no picture. I rarely even sketched. Brain and heart rested, while there
flowed into them, through the outward avenues of eye and ear, new
pictures and harmonies,--I fancied, for present enjoyment merely, but in
reality for future use.
When I reached Rome, my funds, which had even previously been eked out
by the sale of the few sketches I had made, were quite exhausted.
Anticipating this, I had, after great hesitation, written to Mr.
Leopold, desiring letters of introduction to some artists, in the hope
of obtaining work from them. I found his reply to this letter awaiting
my arrival in Rome; and though I had not hinted at my destitution, he
must have guessed it, for he inclosed a check and all the information I
desired. I provided myself with a humble studio and recommenced work.
How fresh and charming was this return to my old mode of life! I even
bought a few choice books at the old stalls, and revelled in poetry.
Dante opened his Purgatory to me just as I escaped from my own, and I
basked in the returning sun-light of a free and happy life.
Copying in a painting-gallery one day, I beheld with pain, albeit he was
my benefactor, a ghost of my former life arising to haunt me. Mr.
Leopold, having arrived the night before, was enjoying the pictures
preparatory to hunting me up. His greeting was cordial; he cheered me by
most favorable opinions as to my progress in my art, and was dumb about
the past. He desired that I should again work in connection with
himself; and the profound respect I had always felt for his abilities
was confirmed and heightened by the affection he inspired in me. His
really harmonious character guided mine without the absolute surrender
of my individuality. One by one I resumed the old interests, and began
to feel the old heart which has throbbed through the centuries, from
Adam downward, beating within me. How very much I was like other men,
after all!
"Sandy," Mr. Leopold said to me one day, as we sat sketching some old
ruin on the Campagna, "is it your wish to be silent as to the past? Are
you restrained by fear of yourself or me?"
For only answer I exclaimed,--
"How and where is Miss Darry?"
"She is well, and at Munich," he answered, smiling
pleasantly,--"developing in herself the powers with which she invested
you. As a sculptress she gives great promise; her figures show wonderful
anatomical knowledge."
"And you, Mr. Leopold," I asked breathlessly, "how could you forgive and
befriend one who had so weakly treated the woman you alone were worthy
to love?"
"You are indeed breaking silence, Sandy," he replied; "it is with you
the Chinese wall or illimitable space. Perhaps you have not really
wronged either her or me. She worked off some extravagant theories on
you. You exhausted your weakness, I trust, on her; and as for me, I have
learned to conquer through both."
I have lived several years since that morning in Rome, where, at the
headquarters of the confessional, I opened my heart to Mr. Leopold.
Standing, as he does, at the head of his art, I follow him. Those who
prefer fancy to vigorous thought and imagination, the lovely and
familiar in Nature to the sublime, sometimes rank me above him. Time has
not evolved the genius which Miss Darry prophesied, yet I am as fully
convinced that I occupy my true position and do my appropriate work in
the world as though it had. Mrs. Leopold professes occasionally to me,
with a smile, that her opinion is unaltered, that my weakness was only
an additional proof of genius, but that her husband is a hero worth all
the geniuses in the world. She holds this subtile essence more lightly
in estimation now than formerly. Some think she possesses it; and her
groups of statuary fairly entitle her to more laurels than in her happy
domestic life she is likely to win. She laughs at my wife, and calls her
sentimental, because her Art instincts, like vines over a humble
dwelling, embroider only the common domestic life. Her many fanciful
ways of adorning our home, and her own sweet, sunny self, its perpetual
light and comfort, are to me just so many 'traps to catch the sunbeams'
of life, especially as I see beneath all this the earnest, developed
womanhood of the blacksmith's daughter. Do you ask me how I won her? I
can describe my passionate admiration, even the weakness and limitations
of my nature; but I will not unveil my love. Is it not enough that I am
a thorough democrat, have little faith in the hereditary transmission of
good or evil, and welcome Mr. and Mrs. Bray to my home and hearth? I am
not hurried now.
"You have only this lifetime to make a _man_ in, Sandy," Annie pleads
occasionally, when a call for service outside my profession presents
itself; "but any special power of mind, it seems to me, will have the
mending ages in which to unfold."
To love men, to labor for them and for the ideas which free and redeem
them, seems the special mission of our times; and my little wife has
caught its spirit, and so helps me to recognize the virtue which
eighteen hundred years ago was crucified to rise again, which has been
assailed in our country, and is rising again to be the life and
inspiration of Christendom, the death-blow to slavery and oppression,
the light of many a humble home and simple heart. Unselfishness!
keystone to the arch through which each pure soul looks heavenward!
KING JAMES THE FIRST.
A merry monarch two years and four months old.
If we could have stood by when the world was a-making,--could have
sniffed the escaping gases, as they volatilized through the air,--could
have seen and heard the swash of the waves, when the whole world was, so
to speak, in hot water,--could have watched the fiery tumult gradually
soothing itself into shapely, stately palms and ferns, cold-blooded
Pterodactyles, and gigantic, but gentle Megatheriums, till it was
refined, at length, into sunshine and lilies and Robin Redbreasts,--we
fancy we should have been intensely interested. But a human soul is a
more mysterious thing than this round world. Its principles firmer than
the hills, its passions more tumultuous than the sea, its purity
resplendent as the light, its power too swift and subtile for human
analysis,--what wonder in heaven above or earth beneath can rival this
mystic, mighty mechanism? Yet it is formed almost under our eyes. The
voice of God, "Let there be light," we do not hear; the stir of matter
thrilled into mind we do not see; but the after-march goes on before our
gaze. We have only to look, and, lo! the mountains are slowly rising,
the valleys scoop their levels, the sea heaves against its barriers, and
the chaotic soul evolves itself from its nebulous, quivering light, from
its plastic softness, into a world of repose, of use, of symmetry, and
stability. This mysterious soul, when it first passed within our vision,
was only not hidden within its mass of fleshly life, a seed of
spirituality deep-sunk in a pulp of earthliness. Passing away from us in
ripened perfection, we behold a being but little lower than the angels,
heir of God and joint heir with Christ, crowned with glory and honor and
immortality.
Come up, then, Jamie, my King, into the presence of the great
congregation! There are poets here, and philosophers, wise men of the
East who can speak of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon,
even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: also of beasts, and
of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. But fear them not,
little Jamie! you are of more value, even to science, than many fishes.
Wise as these Magi are, yesterday they were such as you, and such they
must become again or ever they shall enter the kingdom of heaven. Come
up, little Jamie, into the hall of audience! Blue eyes and broad brow,
sunny curls, red lips, and dainty, sharp teeth, stout little arm, strong
little hand, sturdy little figure, and most still and steadfast gaze:
truly it is the face and form of a king,--sweetness in power,
unconsciousness in royalty.
"Jamie, you are a little beauty! You are too handsome to live!"
"No!" says Jamie, vehemently, for the fiftieth time, stamping the royal
foot and scowling the royal brows. "Gamma say _not_ too ha'some!"
"But you are a young Apollo."
"_No_ my 'Pollo!"
"What are you, then?"
"I goo e baw," which is Jametic for good little boy.
This microcosm, like the macrocosm, may be divided into many
departments. As the world is viewed geographically, geologically,
historically, astronomically, so in this one little Jamie we have many
Jamies. There is the Jamie philological, Jamie theological, Jamie
psychological, Jamie emotional, Jamie social; in fact, I can hardly
think of any natural, moral, or mathematical science, on which a careful
study of Jamie will not throw some light. Would you frame a theory of
metaphysics? Consult Reid, and Locke, and Hamilton warily, for they are
men, subject to like mistakes as we are; but observe Jamie with utmost
confidence and the closest care, for he is the book of God, and will
teach only truth, if your eye is single to perceive truth.
Theologically, Jamie has points superior to both Andover and Princeton;
he is never in danger of teaching for doctrine the commandments of men;
nor have passion and prejudice in him any power to conceal, but, on the
contrary, they illuminate truth. For the laws of language, mark how the
noble tree of human speech springs in his soul from mustard-seed into
fair and fruitful symmetry. In good sooth, one marvels that there should
be so much error in the world with children born and growing up all over
it. If Jamie were, like Jean Paul, the Only, I should expect
philosophers to journey from remotest regions to sit at his feet and
learn the ways of God to man. Every one who presumed to teach his
fellows should be called upon to produce his diploma as a graduate of
Jamie, or forfeit all confidence in his sagacity. But, with a baby in
every other house, how is it that we continually fall out by the way? It
must be that children are not advantageously used. We pet them, and drug
them, and spoil them; we trick them out in silks and fine array; we
cross and thwart and irritate them; we lay unholy hands upon them, but
are seldom content to stand aside and see the salvation of the Lord.
Tug, tug, tug, one little foot wearisomely ranging itself beside the
other, and two hands helping both: that is Jamie coming up stairs.
Patter, patter, patter: that is Jamie trotting through the entry. He
never walks. Rattle, clatter, shake: Jamie is opening the door. Now he
marches in. Flushed with exertion, and exultant over his brilliant
escapade from the odious surveillance below, he presents himself peering
on tiptoe just over the arm of the big chair, and announces his
errand,--
"Come t' see Baddy."
"Baddy doesn't want you."
"Baddy _do_."
Then, in no wise daunted by his cool welcome, he works his way up into
the big chair with much and indiscriminate pulling: if it is a sleeve,
if it is a curtain, if it is a table-cloth whereon repose many pens,
much ink and paper, and knick-knacks without number, nothing heeds he,
but clutches desperately at anything which will help him mount, and so
he comes grunting in, all tumbled and twisted, crowds down beside me,
and screws himself round to face the table, poking his knees and feet
into me with serene unconcern. Then, with a pleased smile lighting up
his whole face, he devotes himself to literature. A small, brass-lined
cavity in the frame of the writing-desk serves him for an inkstand. Into
that he dips an old, worn-out pen with consequential air, and
assiduously traces nothing on bits of paper. Of course I am reduced to a
masterly inactivity, with him wriggling against my right arm, let alone
the danger hanging over all my goods and chattels from this lawless
little Vandal prowling among them. Shall I send him away? Yes, if I am
an insensate clod, clean given over to stupidity and selfishness; if I
count substance nothing, and shadow all things; if I am content to dwell
with frivolities forever, and have for eternal mysteries nothing but
neglect. For suppose I break in upon his short-lived delight, thrust him
out grieved and disappointed, with his brave brow clouded, a mist in his
blue eyes, and--that heart-rending sight--his dear little under-lip and
chin all quivering and puckering. Well, I go back and write an epic
poem. The printers mangle it; the critics fall foul of it; it is lost in
going through the post-office; it brings me ten letters, asking an
autograph, on six of which I have to pay postage. There is vanity and
vexation of spirit, besides eighteen cents out of pocket, and the
children crying for bread. I let him stay. A little, innocent life,
fearfully dependent on others for light, shines out with joyful
radiance, wherein I rejoice. To-morrow he will have the measles, and the
mumps, and the croup, and the whooping-cough, and scarlatina; and then
come the alphabet, and Latin grammar, and politics, and his own boys
getting into trouble: but to-day, when his happiness is in my hands, I
may secure it, and never can any one wrest from him the sunshine I may
pour into his happy little heart. Oh! the time comes so soon, and comes
so often, that Love can only look with bitter sorrow upon the sorrow
which it has no power to mitigate!
Language is unceremoniously resolved into its original elements by
Jamie. He is constitutionally opposed to inflection, which, as he must
be devoid of prejudice, may be considered indisputable proof of the
native superiority of the English to other languages. He is careful to
include in his sentences all the important words, but he has small
respect for particles, and the disposition of his words waits entirely
upon his moods. _My_ usually does duty for _I_. "Want the Uncle Frank
gave me hossey," with a finger pointing to the mantel-piece is just as
flexible to his use as "Want the hossey that Uncle Frank gave me."
"Where Baddy _can_ be?" he murmurs softly to himself, while peering
behind doors and sofas in playing hide-and-seek. Hens are cud-dah, a
flagrant example of Onomatopoeia. The cradle is a cay-go; corn-balls
are ball-corn; and snow-bird, bird-snow; and all his rosy nails are
toe-nails. He has been drilled into meet response to "how d' ye do?" but
demonstrates the mechanical character of his reply by responding to any
question that has the _you_ and _how_ sounds in it, as "What do you
think of that?" "How did you do it?" "How came you by this?" "Pit-_tee_
well."
But his performances are not all mechanical. He has a stock of poetry
and orations, of which he delivers himself at bedtime with a degree of
resignation,--that being the only hour in which he can be reduced to
sufficient quietude for recitation; nor is that because he loves quiet
more, but bed less. It is a very grievous misfortune, an unreasonable
and arbitrary requisition, that breaks in upon his busy life, interrupts
him in the midst of driving to mill on an inverted chair, hauling wood
in a ditto footstool, and other important matters, and sweeps him off to
darkness and silence. So, with night-gown on, and the odious bed
imminent, he puts off the evil day by compounding with the authorities
and giving a public entertainment, in consideration of a quarter of an
hour's delay. He takes large liberties with the text of his poems, but
his rhetorical variations are of a nature that shows it is no vain
repetition, but that he enters into the spirit of the poem. In one of
his songs a person
"Asked a sweet robin, one morning in May,
That sung in the apple-tree over the way,"
what it was he was singing.
"Don't you know? he replied, you cannot guess wrong;
Don't you know I am singing my cold-water song?"
This Jamie intensifies thus:--
"Do' know my sing my co'-wotta song, hm?"
When he reaches the place where
"Jack fell down
Boke cown,"
he invariably leaves Gill to take care of herself, and closes with the
pathetic moral reflection, "'At _too_ bad!" Little Jack Horner, having
put in his thumb and picked out a plum, is made to declare definitely
and redundantly,--
"My _ga-ate_ big boy, jus' so big!"
He persists in praying,--
"'F I should die 'fore I wake up."
Borne off to bed a last, in spite of every pretext for delay, tired
Nature droops in his curling lashes, and gapes protractedly through his
wide-dividing lips.
"I seepy," he cries, fighting of sleep with the bravery of a
Major-General,--observing phenomena, _in articulo somni_, with the
accuracy and enthusiasm of a naturalist, and reasoning from them with
the skill of a born logician.
A second prolonged and hearty gape, and
"I two seepies," he cries, adding mathematics to his other
accomplishments.
And that is the last of Jamie, till the early morning brings him
trudging up stairs, all curled and shining, to "hear Baddy say 'Boo!'"
Total depravity, in Jamie's presence, is a doctrine hard to be
understood. Honestly speaking, he does not appear to have any more
depravity than is good for him,--just enough to make him piquant, to
give him a relish. He is healthy and hearty all day long. He eats no
luncheon and takes no nap, is desperately hungry thrice a day and sleeps
all night, going to bed at dark after a solitary stale supper of bread
and butter, more especially bread; and he is good and happy. Laying
aside the revelations of the Bible and of Doctors of Divinity, I should
say that his nature is honest, simple, healthful, pure, and good. He
shows no love for wrong, no inclination towards evil rather than good.
He is affectionate, just, generous, and truthful. He just lives on his
sincere, loving, fun-loving, playful, yet earnest life, from day to day,
a pure and perfect example, to my eye, of what God meant children to be.
I cannot see how he should be very different from what he is, even if he
were in heaven, or if Adam had never sinned. There is so fearful an
amount of, and so decided a bent towards, wickedness in the world, that
it seems as if nothing less than an inborn aptitude for wickedness can
account for it; yet, in spite of all theories and probabilities, here is
Jamie, right under my own eye, developing a far stronger tendency to
love, kindness, sympathy, and all the innocent and benevolent qualities,
than to their opposites. The wrong that he does do seems to be more from
fun and frolic, from sheer exuberance of animal spirits and intensity of
devotion to mirth, than anything else. He seems to be utterly devoid of
malice, cruelty, revenge, or any evil motive. Even selfishness, which I
take to be the fruitful mother of evil, is held in abeyance, is
subordinate to other and nobler qualities. Candy is dearer to him than
he knows how to express; yet he scrupulously lays a piece on the mantel
for an absent friend; and though he has it in full view, and climbs up
to it, and in the extremity of his longing has been known, I think, to
chip off the least little bit with his sharp mouse-teeth, yet he endures
to the end and delivers up the candy with an eagerness hardly surpassed
by that with which he originally received it. Can self-denial go
farther?
It seems to me that the reason of Jamie's gentleness and cheerfulness
and goodness is, that he is comfortable and happy. The animal is in fine
condition, and the spirit is therefore well served; consequently, both
go on together with little friction. And I cannot but suspect that a
great deal of human depravity comes from human misery. The destruction
of the poor is his poverty. Little sickly, fretful, crying babies, heirs
of worn nerves, fierce tempers, sad hearts, sordid tastes, half-tended
or over-tended, fed on poison by the hand of love, nay, sucking poison
from the breasts of love, trained to insubordination, abused by
kindness, abused by cruelty,--that is the human nature from which
largely we generalize, and no wonder the inference is total depravity.
But human nature, distorted, defiled, degraded by centuries of
misdealing, is scarcely human _nature_. Let us discover it before we
define it. Let us remove accretions of long-standing moral and physical
disease, before we pronounce sentence against the human _nature_. If it
ever becomes an established and universally recognized principle, as
fixed and unquestionable as the right and wrong of theft and murder,
that it is a sin against God, a crime against the State, an outrage upon
the helpless victim of their ignorance or wickedness, for an unhealthy
man or woman to become the parent of a child, I think our creeds would
presently undergo modification. Disease seems to me a more fertile
source of evil than depravity; at least it is a more tangible source. We
must have a race of healthy children, before we know what are the true
characteristics of the human race. A child suffering from scrofula gives
but a feeble, even a false representation of the grace, beauty, and
sweetness of childhood. Pain, sickness, lassitude, deformity, a
suffering life, a lingering death, are among the woful fruits of this
dire disease, and it is acknowledged to be hereditary. Is not, then,
every person afflicted with any hereditary disease debarred as by a fiat
of the Almighty from becoming a parent? Every principle of honor forbids
it. The popular stolidity and blindness on these subjects are
astonishing. A young woman whose sisters have all died of consumption,
and who herself exhibits unmistakable consumptive tendencies, is
married, lives to bear three children in quick succession, and dies of
consumption. Her friends mourn her and the sad separation from her
bereaved little ones, but console themselves with the reflection that
these little ones have prolonged her life. But for her marriage, she
would have died years before. Of the three children born of this
remedial marriage, two die in early girlhood of consumption. One left, a
puny infant, languishes into a puny maturity. Even as a remedy, what is
this worth? To die in her youth, to leave her suffering body in the dust
and go quickly to God, with no responsibility beyond herself, or to pine
through six years, enduring thrice, besides all her inherited debility,
the pain and peril, the weariness and terror of child-bearing, to be at
last torn violently and prematurely away from these beloved little
ones,--which is the disease, and which the remedy? And when we look
farther on at the helpless little innocents, doomed to be the recipients
of disease, early deprived of a mother's care, for which there is no
substitute, dragging a load of weakness and pain, and forced down into
the Valley of the Shadow of Death before years shall have blunted the
point of its terrors, or religion robbed them of their sting,--it is
only not atrocious because so unwittingly wrought.
And bodily health is only one of the possessions which every child has a
right to claim from its parents. Not merely health, but dispositions,
traits, lie within human control far beyond the extent of common
recognition. We say that character is formed at fourteen or sixteen, and
that training should begin in infancy; but sometimes it seems to me,
that, when the child is born, the work is done. All the rest is
supplementary and subordinate. Subsequent effort has, indeed, much
effect, but it cannot change quality. It may modify, but it cannot make
anew. After neglect or ignorance may blight fair promise, but no after
wisdom can bring bloom for blight. There are many by-laws whose workings
we do not understand; but the great, general law is so plain, that
wayfaring folk, though fools, need not err therein. Every one sees the
unbridled passions of the father or mother raging in the child.
Gentleness is born of gentleness, insanity of insanity, truth of truth.
Careful and prayerful training may mitigate the innate evil; but how
much better that the young life should have sprung to light from seas of
love and purity and peace! Through God's mercy, the harsh temper, the
miserly craving, the fretful discontent may be repressed and soothed;
but it is always up-hill work, and never in this world wholly
successful. Why be utterly careless in forming, to make conscious life a
toilsome and thankless task of reforming? Since there is a time, and
there comes no second, when the human being is under human
control,--since the tiny infant, once born, is a separate individual, is
for all its remaining existence an independent human being, why not
bring power to bear where form is amenable to power? Only let all the
influences of that sovereign time be heavenly,--and whatever may be true
of total depravity, Christ has made such a thing possible,--and there
remains no longer the bitter toil of thwarting, but only the pleasant
work of cultivating Nature.
It is idle, and worse than idle, to call in question the Providence of
God for disaster caused solely by the improvidence of man. The origin of
evil may be hidden in the unfathomable obscurity of a distant,
undreamed-of past, beyond the scope of mortal vision; but by far the
greater part of the evil that we see--which is the only evil for which
we are responsible--is the result of palpable violation of Divine laws.
Humanity here is as powerful as Divinity. The age of miracles is past.
God does not interfere to contravene His own laws. His part in man's
creation He long ago defined, and delegated all the rest to the souls
that He had made. Man is as able as God to check the destructive tide.
And it is mere shuffling and shirking and beating the wind, for a people
to pray God to mitigate the ill which they continually and
unhesitatingly perpetuate and multiply.
The great mistake made by the believers in total depravity is in
counting the blood of the covenant of little worth. We admit that in
Adam all die; but we are slow to believe that in Christ all can be made
alive. We abuse the doctrine. We make it a sort of scapegoat for
short-coming. But Christ has made Adamic depravity of no account. He
came not alone to pardon sin, but to save people from sinning.
Father-love, mother-love, and Christ-love are so mighty that together
they can defy Satan, and, in his despite, the soul shall be born into
the kingdom of heaven without first passing through the kingdom of hell.
And in this way only, I think, will the kingdom of this world become the
kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
* * * * *
"Now, Jamie, having set the world right,--you and I, for which the world
will be deeply grateful,--let us see what you are about, for you have
been suspiciously still lately. What doing, Jamie?"
"Hay-puh!" says Jamie, very red, eager, and absorbed, with no
intermission of labor.
"Making hasty pudding! Oh, yes! I know what that means. Only taking all
the chips and shavings out of the wood-box in the closet and carrying
them half across the room by the eminently safe conveyance of his two
fat hands, and emptying them into my box of paper, and stirring all
together with a curling-stick. That's nothing. Keep on, Jamie, and amuse
yourself; but let us hear your geography lesson.
"Where are you going one of these days?"
"Min-nee-so-toh."
"Where is Minnesota?"
Jamie gives a jerk with his arm to the west. He evidently thinks
Minnesota is just beyond the hill.
"Where is papa going to buy his horses?"
"Ill-noy."
"And where does Aunt Sarah live?"
"Cog-go."
"What river are you going to sail up to get to Minnesota?"
"Miss-iss-ipp-ee."
"That's a _good_ little boy! He knows ever so much; and here is a
peppermint. Open his mouth and shut his eyes, and pop! it goes."
There is, however, a pretty picture on the other side, that Jamie
thrusts his iconoclastic fists through quite as unconcernedly; and that
is the dignity of human nature. The human being can be trained into a
dignified person: that no one denies. Looking at some honored and
honorable man bearing himself loftily through every crisis, and wearing
his grandeur with an imperial grace, one may be pardoned for the
mistake, but it is none the less a mistake, of reckoning the acquirement
of an individual as the endowment of the race. Behold human nature
unclothed upon with the arts and graces of the schools, if you would
discover, not its possibilities, but its attributes. The helplessness of
infancy appeals to all that is chivalric and Christian in our hearts;
but to dignity it is pre-eminently a stranger. A charming and popular
writer--on the whole, I am not sure that it was not my own self--once
affirmed that a baby is a beast, and gave great offence thereby; yet it
seems to me that no unprejudiced person can observe an infant of tender
weeks sprawling and squirming in the bath-tub, and not confess that it
looks more like a little pink frog than anything else. And here is
Jamie, not only weeks, but months and years old, setting his young
affections on candy and dinner, and eating in general, with an appalling
intensity. It is humiliating to see how easily he is moved by an appeal
to his appetite. I blush for my race, remembering the sparkle of his
eyes over a dainty dish, and the abandonment of his devotion to it,--the
enthusiasm with which his feet spring, and his voice rings through the
house, to announce the fact, "Dinnah mo' weh-wy! dinnah mo' weh-wy!" To
the naked eye, he appears to think as much of eating as a cat or a
chicken or a dog. Reasons and rights he is slow to comprehend; but his
conscience is always open to conviction, and his will pliable to a
higher law, when a stick of candy is in the case. His bread-and-butter
is to him what science was to Newton; and he has been known to reply
abstractedly to a question put to him in the height of his enjoyment,
"Don' talk t' me now!" This is not dignity, surely. Is it total
depravity? What is it that makes his feet so swift to do mischief? He
sweeps the floor with the table-brush, comes stumbling over the carpet
almost chin-deep in a pair of muddy rubber boots, catches up the bird's
seed-cup and darts away, spilling it at every step; and the louder I
call, the faster he runs, half frightened, half roguish, till an
unmistakable sharpness pierces him, makes him throw down cup and seed
together, and fling himself full length on the floor, his little heart
all broken. Indeed, he can bear anything but displeasure. He tumbles
down twenty times a day, over the crickets, off the chairs, under the
table, head first, head last, bump, bump, bump, and never a tear sheds
he, though his stern self-control is sometimes quite pitiful to see. But
a little slap on his cheek, which is his standing punishment,--not a
blow, but a tiny tap that must derive all its efficacy from its moral
force,--oh, it stabs him to the heart! He has no power to bear up
against it, and goes away by himself, and cries bitterly, sonorously,
and towards the last, I suspect, rather ostentatiously. Then he spoils
it all by coming out radiant, and boasting that he has "make tear," as
if that were an unparalleled feat. If you attempt to chide him, he puts
up his plump hand with a repelling gesture, turns away his head in
disgust, and ejaculates vehemently, "Don' talk t' me!" After all,
however, I do not perceive that he is any more sensitive to reproof than
an intelligent and petted dog.
His logical faculty develops itself somewhat capriciously, but is very
prompt. He seldom fails to give you a reason, though it is often of the
Wordsworthian type,--
"At Kilve there was no weathercock,
And that's the reason why."
"Don' talk t' me! I little Min-nee-so-toh boy!"--as if that were an
amnesty proclamation. You invite him to stay with you, and let Papa go
to Minnesota without him. He shakes his head dubiously, and protests,
with solemn earnestness, "Mus' go Min-nee-so-toh ca'y my fork," which,
to the world-incrusted mind, seems but an inadequate pretext. I want him
to write me a letter when he is gone away; but, after a thoughtful
pause, he decides that he cannot, "'cause I got no pen." If he is not in
a mood to repeat the verse you ask for, he finds full excuse in the
unblushing declaration, "I bashful." He casts shadows on the wall with
his wreathing, awkward little fingers, and is perfectly satisfied that
they are rabbits, though the mature eye discerns no resemblance to any
member of the vertebrate family. He gazes curiously to see me laugh at
something I am reading,--"What 'at? my want to see,"--and climbs up to
survey the page with wistful eyes; but it is "a' a muddle" to him. He
greets me exultantly after absence, because I have "come home pay coot
with Jamie"; and there is another secret out: that it is of no use to be
sentimental with a child. He loves you in proportion as you are
available. His papa and mamma fondly imagine they are dearer to him than
any one else, and it would be cruel to disturb that belief; but it would
be the height of folly to count yourself amiable because Jamie plants
himself firmly against the door, and pleads piteously, "Don' go in e
parly wite!" He wants you to "pay coot" with him,--that is all. If your
breakfast shawl is lying on a chair, it would not be sagacious to
attribute an affectionate unselfishness to him in begging leave to "go
give Baddy shawl t' keep Baddy back warm." It is only his greediness to
enter forbidden ground. Sentiment and sensibility have small lodgement
in his soul.
But when Jamie is duly forewarned, he is forearmed. Legally admitted
into the parlor to see visitors, he sits on the sofa by his mother's
side, silent, upright, prim, his little legs stuck straight out before
him in two stiff lines, presenting a full front view of his soles. By
the way, I wonder how long grown persons would sit still, if they were
obliged to assume this position. But Jamie maintains himself heroically,
his active soul subdued to silence, till Nature avenges herself, not
merely with a palpable, but a portentous yawn. "You may force me to this
unnatural quiet," she seems to say; "but if you expect to prevent me
from testifying that I think it intolerably stupid, you have reckoned
without your host."
And here Jamie comes out strongly in favor of democracy, universal
suffrage, political equality, the Union and the Constitution, the
Declaration of Independence, and the rights of man. Uncontaminated by
conventional rules, he recognizes the human being apart from his worldly
state. He is as silent and abashed in the presence of the day-laborer,
coarsely clad and rough of speech and manners, as in that of the
accomplished man of the world, or the daintiest silken-robed lady. With
simple gravity, and never a thought of wrong, he begs the poet, "Pease,
Missa Poet, tie up my shoe." He stands in awe before the dignity of the
human soul; but dress and rank and reputation receive no homage from
him. He is reverent, but to no false gods. The world finds room for
kingdoms and empires and oligarchies; but undoubtedly man is born a
democrat.
Is there only one Jamie here? Can one little urchin about as high as the
table so fill a house with mirth and mischief, so daguerrotype himself
in every corner, possess, while claiming nothing, so large a share of
the household interest? For he somehow bubbles up everywhere. Not a
mischance or a misplacement but can pretty surely be brought home to
him. Is a glass broken? Jamie broke it. Is a door open that ought to be
shut? Jamie opened it. Or shut that ought to be open? Jamie shut it. Is
there a mighty crash in the entry? It is Jamie dropping the crowbar
through the side-lights. The "Atlantic" has been missing all the
morning.
"Jamie,"--a last, random resort, after fruitless search,--"where is the
'Atlantic Monthly'?"
"In daw."
"In the drawer? No, it is not in the drawer. You don't know anything
about it."
Not quite so fast. Jamie knows the "Atlantic Monthly" as well as you;
and if you will open the drawer for him, he will rapidly scatter its
contents till he comes to the missing "Monthly," safe under the shawls
where he deposited it.
If you are hanging your room with ground-pine, he lays hold of every
stray twig, and tucks it into every crack he can reach. Will you have
some corn out of the barrel? It is Jamie for balancing himself on the
edge, and reaching down into the depths after it, till little more than
his heels are visible. If, in a sudden exuberance, you make a
"cheese,"--not culinary, but _whirligig_--round go his little bobtail
petticoats in fatuous imitation. You walk the floor awhile, lost in day
dreaming, to find this little monkey trotting behind you with droll
gravity, his hands clasped behind his head, like yours; and he breaks in
upon your most serious meditations with, "Baddy get down on floor, want
wide on Baddy back," as nonchalantly as if he were asking you to pass
the salt. All that he says, all that he does, has its peculiar charm.
Not that he is in the least a remarkable child.
"I trust we have within our realme
Five [thousand] as good as hee."
Otherwise what will befall this sketch?
I do not expect anything will ever come of him. In a few years he will
be just like everybody else; but now he is the _peculiar_ gift of
Heaven. Men and women walk and talk all day long, and nobody minds them;
while this little ignoramus seldom opens his lips but you think nothing
was ever so winsomely spoken. I suspect it is only his complete
simplicity and sincerity. What he says and what he does are the direct,
unmistakable effusions of his nature. All comes straight from the secret
place where his soul abideth. Even his subterfuges are open as the day.
You know that you are looking upon virgin Nature. Just as it flashed
from its source, you see the unadulterated spirit. If grown-up persons
would or could be as frank as he,--if they had no more misgivings,
concealments, self-distrust, self-thought than he,--they would doubtless
be as interesting. Every separate human being is a separate phenomenon
and mystery; and if he could only be unthinkingly himself, as Jamie is,
that self would be as much more captivating as it is become great and
subtle by growth and experience. But we--fashion, habit, society,
training, all the culture of life, mix a sort of paste, and we gradually
become coated with it, and it hardens upon us; so it comes to pass
by-and-by that we see our associates no longer, but only the casing in
which they walk about; and as one is a good deal like another, we are
not deeply fascinated. Sometimes a Thor's hammer breaks this flinty rock
in pieces. Sometimes a fervid sun melts it, and you are let in to where
the vigilant soul keeps watch and ward. Sometimes, alas! the hardening
process seems to have struck in, and you find nothing but petrifaction
all the way through.
Perhaps, after all, it is just as well; for, if our neighbors won upon
us unawares as Jamie does, when should we ever find time to do anything?
On the whole, it is a great deal better as it is, until the world has
learned to love its neighbor as itself. For the present, it would not be
safe to go abroad with the soul exposed. You fetch me a blow with your
bludgeon, and I mind it not at all through my coat-of-mail; but if it
had fallen on my heart, it would have wounded me to death. Nay, if you
did but know where the sutures are, how you would stab and stab, dear
fellow-man and brother, not to say Christian! No, we are not to be
trusted with each other yet,--I with you, nor you with me; so we will
keep our armor on awhile, please Heaven.
And as I think of Jamie frisking through the happy, merry days, I see
how sad, unnatural, and wicked a thing it is, that mothers must so often
miss the sunshine that ought to come to them through their little ones.
We speak of losing children, when they die; but many a mother loses her
children, though they play upon her threshold every day. She loses them,
because she has no leisure to bask, and loiter, and live in them. She is
so occupied in providing for their wants, that she has no time to sun
herself in their grace. She snatches from them sweetness enough to keep
herself alive, but she does not expand and mellow and ripen in their
warmth for all the world. And the hours go by, and the days go by,
evening and morning, seed-time and harvest, and the little frocks are
outgrown, and the little socks outworn, and the little baby--oh! there
is no little baby any more, but a boy with the crust formed already on
his soul.
I marvel what becomes of these small people in heaven. They cannot stay
as they are, for then heaven would be a poorer place than earth, where
all but idiots increase in wisdom and stature. And if they keep
growing,--why, it seems but a sorry exchange, to give up your tender,
tiny, clinging infant, that is still almost a part of your own life, and
receive in return a full-grown angel a great deal wiser and stronger
than you. Perhaps it is only a just punishment for our guilty ignorance
and selfishness in treating the little things so harshly, that they die
away from us in sheer self-defence. And how good is the All-Father thus
to declare for His little ones, when the strife waxes too hot, and the
odds too heavy against them! We can maltreat them, but only to a
certain limit. Beyond that, the lovely, stern angel of Death steps in,
and bears them softly away to perpetual peace. I read our vital
statistics,--so many thousands under five years of age dying each year;
and I rejoice in every one. If their chances were fair for purity and
happiness, the earth is too beautiful to slip so quickly from their
hold; but, with sin and suffering, twin beasts of prey, lying in wait to
devour, oh! thrice and four times happy are they who escape swiftly from
the struggle in which they are all too sure to fail. So many, at least,
are safe within the fold.
And thus, too, it seems providential, that the sin of pagan nations
should take the form of infanticide. It is Satanic work, but God
overrules it for good. Evil defeats itself, and hatred crowds the lists
of love. From misery and wickedness, from stifled cities, over-full,
from pagan lands, steeped centuries long in vice and crime, from East
and West and North and South, over all the world, the innocent souls go
up,--little lily-buds, swelling white and pure from earthly slime to
bloom in heavenly splendor.
Jamie, Jamie, do you see birdie has put his head under his wing and gone
to sleep? What does that mean? It means "Good night, Jamie." Now come,
let us have "Cr-e-e-p, cr-e-e-p, cr-e-e-p!" And two fingers go slowly,
measuring Jamie from toe to neck, and Jamie cringes and squirms and
finally screams outright, and almost flings himself upon the floor; but,
as soon as his spasm is over, begs again, "Say, 'K-e-e-p, k-e-e-p,
k-e-e-p!'" and would keep it going longer than I have time to wait.
In this very passion for reiteration may be found a sufficient answer to
those uneasy persons who are perpetually attempting to bring new
singing-books into our churches, on pretext that people are tired of the
old tunes. You never hear from Jamie's pure taste any clamor for new
songs or stories. Whenever he climbs up into your lap to be amused, he
is sure to ask for the story of "Kitty in Ga'et Window," though he knows
it as Boston people know oratorio music, and detects and condemns the
slightest departure from the text. And when you have gone through the
drama, with all its motions and mewings, he wants nothing so much as
"Kitty in Ga'et Window 'gen." Let us keep the old tunes. It is but a
factitious need that would change them.
Gentle and friendly reader, I pray your pardon for this childish record.
Some things I say of set purpose for your good, and the more you do not
like them, the more I know they are the very things you need; and I
shall continue to deal them out to you from time to time, as you are
able to bear them. But this broken, rambling child-talk--with "a few
practical reflections, arising naturally from my subject," as the
preachers say--was penned only for your pleasure--and mine; and if you
do not like it, I shall be very sorry, and wish I had never written it.
For we might have gone away by ourselves and enjoyed it all
alone;--could we not, Jamie, you and I together? Oh, no, no! Never
again! Never, never again! for the mountains that rise and the prairies
that roll between us. Ah! well, Jamie, I shall not cry about it. If you
had stayed here, it would have been but a little while before you would
have grown up into a big boy, and then a young fellow, and then a man,
and been of no account. So what does it signify? Good night, little
Jamie! good night, darling! Do I hear a sleepy echo, as of old, wavering
out of the West, "_Goo-i-dah-ing_"?
THE SLEEPER.
I.
The glen was fair as some Arcadian dell,
All shadow, coolness, and the rush of streams,
Save where the dazzling fire of noonday fell
Like stars within its under-sky of dreams.
Rich leaf and blossomed grape and fern-tuft made
Odors of Life and Slumber through the shade.
II.
"O peaceful heart of Nature!" was my sigh,
"How dost thou shame, in thine unconscious bliss,
Thy calm accordance with the changing sky,
O quiet heart, the restless life of this!
Take thou the place false friends have vacant left,
And bring thy bounty to repair the theft!"
III.
So sighing, weary with the unsoothed pain
From insect-stings of women and of men,
Uneasy heart and ever-baffled brain,
I breathed the silent beauty of the glen,
And from the fragrant shadows where she stood
Evoked the shyest Dryad of the wood.
IV.
Lo! on a slanting rock, outstretched at length,
A woodman lay in slumber, fair as death,--
His limbs relaxed in all their supple strength,
His lips half-parted with his easy breath,
And by one gleam of hovering light caressed
His bare brown arm and white uncovered breast.
V.
"Why comes he here?" I whispered, treading soft
The hushing moss beside his flinty bed:
"Sweet are the haycocks in yon clover-croft,--
The meadow turf were light beneath his head:
Could he not slumber by the orchard-tree,
And leave this quiet unprofaned for me?"
VI.
But something held my step. I bent, and scanned
(As one might view a veiny agate-stone)
The hard, half-open fingers of his hand,
Strong cords of wrist, knit round the jointed bone,
And sunburnt muscles, firm and full of power,
But harmless now as petals of a flower.
VII.
The rock itself was not more still: yet one
Light spray of grass shook ever at his wrist,
Counting the muffled pulses. Where the sun
The open fairness of his bosom kissed,
I marked the curious beauty of the skirt,
And dim blue branches of the blood within.
VIII.
There lay the unconscious Life, but, ah! more fair
Than ever blindly stirred in leaf and bark,--
Warmth, beauty, passion, mystery everywhere,
Beyond the Dryad's feebly burning spark
Of cold poetic being: who could say
If here the angel or the wild beast lay?
IX.
Then I looked up and read his helpless face:
Peace touched the temples and the eyelids, slept
On drooping lashes, made itself a place
In smiles that gently to the corners crept
Of parting lips, and came and went, to show
The happy freedom of the heart below.
X.
A holy rest! wherein the man became
Man's interceding representative:
In Sleep's white realm fell off his mask of blame,
And he was sacred, for that he did live.
His presence marred no more the quiet deep,
But all the glen became a shrine of sleep!
XI.
And then I mused:--How lovely this repose!
How the shut sense its dwelling consecrates!
Sleep guards itself against the hands of foes:
Its breath disarms the Envies and the Hates
Which haunt our lives: were this mine enemy,
My stealthy watch could not less reverent be!
XII.
Here lie our human passions, sung to rest
By tender Nature, anxious to restore
Some hours of innocence to every breast,
To part the husks around the untainted core
Of life, and show, in equal helplessness,
The hearts that wound us and the hearts that bless!
XIII.
How swiftly in this frame the primal seeds
Of purity and peace revive anew!
One wave of sleep the stain of evil deeds
Effaces, as with Heaven's baptismal dew.
The pure white flame through all its ashes burns:
The effluent being to its source returns.
XIV.
So hang their hands that would have done me wrong;
So sweet their breathing whose unkindly spite
Provoked the bitter measures of my song;
So they might slumber, sacred in my sight,
As I in theirs:--why waste contentious breath?
Forget, like Sleep, and then forgive, like Death!
XV.
I bowed my head: the sleeper gently smiled,--
How far he lay from every sting and smart!
Some sinless dream his wandering thought beguiled,
And left its sweetness in his open heart.
The God that watched him in the lonely glen
Sent me, consoled and patient, back to men.
DOCTOR JOHNS.
XL.
It would lead us far too widely from the simple order of our narrative
to detail the early history of Madame Arles; and although the knowledge
of it might serve in some degree to explain the peculiar interest which
that poor woman has shown in the motherless Adele, we choose rather to
leave the matter unexplained, and to regard the invalid enthusiast as
one whose sympathies have fastened in a strange way upon the exiled
French girl, and grow all the stronger by the difficulties in the way of
their full expression.
Madame Arles did not forego either her solicitude or the persistence of
her inquiry under the harsh rebuff of the Doctor. Again and again, after
nightfall, he saw her figure flitting back and forth upon the street,
over against Adele's window; and the good man perplexed himself vainly
with a hundred queries as to what such strange conduct could mean. The
village physician, too, had been addressed by this anxious lady with a
tumult of questionings; and the old gentleman--upon whose sympathies the
eager inquirer had won an easier approach than upon those of the severe
parson--had taken hearty satisfaction in assuring her, within a few days
after the night interview we have detailed, that the poor girl was
mending, was out of danger, in fact, and would be presently in a
condition to report for herself.
After this, and through the long convalescence, Madame Arles was seen
more rarely upon the village street. Yet the town gossips were busy with
the character and habits of the "foreign lady." Her devotion to the
little child of the outcast Boody woman was most searchingly discussed
at all the tea-tables of the place; and it was special object of
scandal, that the foreign lady, neglectful of the Sabbath ministrations
of the parson, was frequently to be seen wandering about the fields in
"meeting-time," attended very likely by that poor wee thing of a child,
upon whose head the good people all visited, with terrible frowns, the
sins of the parents. No woman, of whatever condition, could maintain a
good reputation in Ashfield under such circumstances. Dame Tourtelot
enjoyed a good sharp fling at the "trollop."
"I allers said she was a bad woman," submitted the stout Dame; and her
audience (consisting of the Deacon and Miss Almiry) would have had no
more thought of questioning the implied decision than of cutting down
the meeting-house steeple.
"And I'm afeard," continued the Dame, "that Adeel isn't much better; she
keeps a crucifix in her chamber!--needn't to look at me,
Tourtelot!--Miss Johns told me all about it, and I don't think the
parson should allow it. I think you oughter speak to the parson,
Tourtelot."
The good Deacon scratched his head, over the left ear, in a deprecating
manner.
"And I've heerd this Miss Arles has been a-writin' to Mr. Maverick,
Adeel's father,--needn't to look at me, Tourtelot!--the postmaster told
me; and she's been receivin' furren letters,--filled with Popery, I
ha'n't a doubt."
In short, the poor woman bore a most execrable reputation; and Doctor
Johns, good as he was, took rather a secret pride in such startling
confirmation of his theories in respect to French character. He wrote to
his friend Maverick, informing him that his suspicions in regard to
Madame Arles were, he feared, "only too well-founded. Her neglect of
Sabbath ordinances, her unhallowed associations, her extreme violence of
language, (which was on a signal occasion uttered in my hearing,) have
satisfied me that your distrust was only too reasonable. I shall guard
Adaly from all further intercourse with extreme care."
Indeed, Miss Eliza and the Doctor (the latter from the best of motives)
had scrupulously kept from Adele all knowledge of Madame Arles's
impatient and angry solicitude during her illness. And when Adele, on
those first sunny days of her convalescence, learned incidentally that
her countrywoman was still a resident of the village, it pained her
grievously to think that she had heard no tender message from her during
all that weary interval of sickness, and she was more than half inclined
(though she did not say this) to adopt the harshest judgments of the
spinster. There was not a visitor at the parsonage, indeed, but, if the
name were mentioned, sneered at the dark-faced, lonely woman, who was
living such a godless life, and associating, as if from sheer bravado,
with those who were under the ban of all the reputable people of
Ashfield.
When, therefore, Adele, on one of her early walks with Reuben, after her
recovery was fully established, encountered, in a remote part of the
village, Madame Arles, trailing after her the little child of
shame,--and yet darting toward the French girl, at first sight, with her
old effusion,--Adele met her coolly, so coolly, indeed, that the poor
woman was overcome, and, hurrying the little child after her,
disappeared with a look of wretchedness upon her face that haunted Adele
for weeks and months. Thereafter very little was seen of Madame Arles
upon the principal street of the village; and her avoidance of the
family of the parsonage was as studied and resolute as either the Doctor
or Miss Eliza could have desired. A moment of chilling indifference on
the part of Adele had worked stronger repulse than all the harsh
rebuffs of the elder people; but of this the kind-hearted French girl
was no way conscious: yet she _was_ painfully conscious of a shadowy
figure that still, from time to time, stole after her in her twilight
walks, and that, if she turned upon it, shrank stealthily from
observation. There was a mystery about the whole matter which oppressed
the poor girl with a sense of terror. She could not doubt that the
interest of her old teacher in herself had been a kindly one; but
whatever it might have been, that interest was now so furtive, and
affected such concealment, that she was half led to entertain the
cruellest suspicions of Miss Eliza, who did not fail to enlarge upon the
godlessness of the stranger's life, and to set before Adele the thousand
alluring deceits by which Satan sought to win souls to himself.
Rumor, one day, brought the story, that the foreign woman, who had been
the subject of so much village scandal, lay ill, and was fast failing;
and on hearing this, Adele would have broken away from all the parsonage
restraints, to offer what consolations she could: nor would the good
Doctor have repelled her; but the rumor, if not false, was, in his view,
grossly exaggerated; since, on the Sunday previous only, some officious
member of his parish had reported the Frenchwoman as strolling over the
hills, decoying with her that little child of her fellow-lodger, which
she had tricked out in the remnants of her French finery, and was thus
wantoning throughout the holy hours of service.
A few days later, however, the Doctor came in with a serious and
perplexed air; he laid his cane and hat upon the little table within the
door, and summoned Adele to the study.
"Adaly, my child," said he, "this unfortunate countrywoman of yours is
really failing fast. I learn as much from the physician. She has sent a
request to see you. She says that she has an important message, a dying
message, to give you."
A strange tremor ran over the frame of Adele.
"I fear, my child, that she is still bound to her idolatries; she has
asked that you bring to her the little bauble of a rosary, which, I
trust, Adaly, you have learned to regard as a vanity."
"Yet I have it still, New Papa; she shall have it"; and she turned to
go.
"My child, I cannot bear that you should go as the messenger of a false
faith, and to carry to her, as it were, the seal of her idolatries. You
shall follow her wishes, Adaly; but I must attend you, my child, were it
only to protest against such vanities, and to declare to her, if it be
not too late, the truth as it is in the Gospel."
Adele was only too willing; for she was impressed with a vague terror at
thought of this interview, and of its possible revelations; and they set
off presently in company. It was a chilly day of later autumn. Only a
few scattered, tawny remnants of the summer verdure were hanging upon
the village trees, and great rows of the dead and fallen leaves were
heaped here and there athwart the path, where some high wall kept them
clear of the winds; and as the walkers tramped through them, they made a
ghostly rustle, and whole platoons of them were set astir to drift again
until some new eddy caught and stranded them in other heaps. Adele, more
and more disturbed in mind, said,--
"It's such a dreary day, New Papa!"
"Is it the thought that one you know may lie dying now makes it dreary,
my child?"
"Partly that, I dare say," returned Adele; "and then the wind so tosses
about these dead leaves. I wish it were always spring."
"There is a country," said the parson, "where spring reigns eternal. I
hope you may find it, Adaly; I hope your poor countrywoman may find it;
but I fear, I fear."
"Is it, then, so dreadful to be a Romanist?"
"It is dreadful, Adaly, to doubt the free grace of God,--dreadful to
trust in any offices of men, or in tithes of mint and anise and
cumin,--dreadful to look anywhere for absolution from sin but in the
blood of the Lamb. I have a conviction, my child," continued he, in a
tone even more serious, "that the poor woman has not lived a pure life
before God, or even before the world. Even at this supreme moment of her
life, if it be such, I should be unwilling to trust you alone with her,
Adaly."
Adele, trembling,--partly with the chilling wind, and partly with an
ill-defined terror of--she knew not what,--nestled more closely to the
side of the old gentleman; and he, taking her little hand in his, as
tenderly as a lover might have done, said,--
"Adaly, at least _your_ trust in God is firm, is it not?"
"It is! it is!" said she.
The house, as we have said, lay far out upon the river-road, within a
strip of ill-tended garden-ground, surrounded by a rocky pasture. A
solitary white-oak stood in the line of straggling wall that separated
garden from pasture, and showed still a great crown of leaves blanched
by the frosts, and shivering in the wind. An artemisia, with blackened
stalks, nodded its draggled yellow blossoms at one angle of the house,
while a little company of barn-door fowls stood closely grouped under
the southern lea, with heads close drawn upon their breasts, idling and
winking in the sunshine.
The young mother of the vagrant little one who had attracted latterly so
much of the solitary woman's regard received them with an awkward
welcome.
"Miss Arles is poorly, to-day," she said, "and she's flighty. She keeps
Arthur" (the child) "with her. You hear how she's a-chatterin' now."
(The door of her chamber stood half open.) "Arty seems to understand
her. I'm sure I don't."
Nor, indeed, did the Doctor, to whose ear a torrent of rapid French
speech was like the gibberish of demons. He never doubted 't was full of
wickedness. Not so Adele. There were sweet sounds to her ear in that
swift flow of Provencal speech,--tender, endearing epithets, that seemed
like the echo of music heard long ago,--pleasant banter of words that
had the rhythm of the old godmother's talk.
"Ah, you're a gay one! Now--put on your velvet cap--so. We'll find a
bride for you some day--some day, when you're a tall, proud man. Who's
your father, Arty? Pah! it's nothing. You'll make somebody's heart ache
all the same,--eh, Arty, boy?"
"Do you understand her, Miss Maverick?" says the mother.
"Not wholly," said Adele; and the two visitors stepped in noiselessly.
The child, bedizened with finery, was standing upon the bed where the
sick woman lay, with a long feather from the cock's tail waving from his
cap. Madame Arles, with the hot flush of the fever upon her,
looked--saving the thinness--as she might have looked twenty years
before. And as her flashing eye caught the newcomers, her voice broke
out wildly again,--
"Here's the bride, and here's the priest! Where's the groom? Where's the
groom? Where's the groom, I say?"
The violence of her manner made poor Adele shiver.
The boy laughed as he saw it, and said,--
"She's afraid! _I'm_ not afraid."
"Oh, no!" said the crazed woman, turning on him. "You're a man, Arty:
men are not afraid,--you wanton, you wild one! Where's the groom?" said
she again, addressing the Doctor, fiercely.
"My good woman," says the old gentleman, "we have come to offer you the
consolations that are only to be found in the Gospel of Christ."
"Pah! you're a false priest!"--defiantly. "Where's the groom?"
And Adele, hoping to pacify the poor woman, draws from her reticule the
little rosary, and, holding it before the eyes of the sufferer, says,
timidly,--
"My dear Madam, it is I,--Adele; I have brought what you asked of me; I
have come to comfort you."
And the woman, over whose face there ran instantly a marvellous change,
snatched the rosary, and pressed it convulsively to her lips; then,
looking for a moment yearningly, with that strange double gaze of hers,
upon the face of Adele, she sprang toward her, and, wreathing her arms
about her, drew her fast upon her bosom,--
"_Ma fille! ma pauvre fille!_"
The boy slipped down from the bed,--his little importance being
over,--and was gone. The Doctor's lips moved in silent prayer for five
minutes or more, wholly undisturbed, while the twain were locked in that
embrace. Then the old gentleman, stooping, says,--
"Adaly, will she listen to me now?"
And Adele, turning a frightened face to him, whispers,--
"She's sleeping; unclasp her hands; she holds me tightly."
And the Doctor, with tremulous fingers, does her bidding.
Adele, still whispering, says,--
"She's calm now; she'll talk with us when she wakes, New Papa."
"My poor child," said the Doctor, solemnly, and with a full voice,
"she'll never wake again."
And Adele, turning,--in a maze of terror, as she thought of that
death-clasp,--saw that her eyes had fallen open,--open, and fixed, and
lustreless. So quietly Death had come upon his errand, and accomplished
it, and gone; while without, the fowls, undisturbed, were still blinking
idly in the sunshine under the lea of the wall, and the yellow
chrysanthemums were fluttering in the wind.
XLI.
In the winter of 1838-9, Adele, much to the delight of Dr. Johns, avowed
at last her wish to join herself to the little church-flock over which
the good parson still held serenely his office of shepherd. And as she
told him quietly of her desire, sitting before him there in the study of
the parsonage, without urgence upon his part, it was as if a bright
gleam of sunshine had darted suddenly through the wintry clouds, and
bathed both of them in its warm effulgence. The good man, rising from
his chair and crossing over to her place, touched her forehead with as
tender and loving a kiss as ever he had bestowed upon the lost Rachel.
He had seen too closely the development of her Christian faith to
disturb her with various questionings. She rejoiced in this; for even
then, with all the calm serenity of her trust, it was doubtful if her
answers could have fully satisfied the austerities of his theological
traditions. Nay, she doubted, even, if the exuberance of her spirits
would not sometimes, in days to come, bound over the formalities of his
Sunday observance, and startle a corrective glance; but withal she knew
her trust was firm, and on this had full repose. Even the little rosary,
so obnoxious to the household of the parsonage, was, by its terrible
association with the death-scene of Madame Arles, endeared to her
tenfold; and she could not forbear the hope that the poor woman, at the
very last, by that clinging kiss upon the image of Christ, told a prayer
that might give access to His abounding mercy.
Nor did Adele seek to comprehend in their entireness all those wearisome
dogmatic utterances which were familiar to her tongue, and which she
could understand might form the steps to fulness of belief for the
rigorous mind of the Doctor: for herself there was other ladder of
approach, in finding which the emotional experiences of Reuben had been
of such signal service.
To Reuben himself those experiences, brought a temporary exhilaration,
but as yet no peace. He has a vague notion creeping over him, with
fearfully chilling effect, that his sensibilities have been wrought upon
rather than his reason; a confused sense of having yielded to
enthusiasms, which, if they once grow cool, will leave him to slump back
into a mire worse than the old. Therefore he must, by all possible
means, keep them at fever-heat. A dim consciousness, however, possessed
him, that, for the feeding of the necessary fires, there would be
needed an immense consumption of fuel,--such stock as an ordinary
experience could hardly hope to supply. By degrees, this consciousness
took the force of conviction, and he became painfully sensible of his
own limitations. There was a weary, matter-of-fact world to struggle
with, in whose homely cares and interests he must needs be a partner. He
could not wear the gyves of a Gabriel on the muddy streets of life, or
carry the ecstatic language of praise into the world's talk: if he
could, he would be reckoned insane, and not unjustly, since sanity is,
after all, but a term to express the average normal condition of mind.
He looked with something like envy upon the serene contentment of Adele.
He lived like an ascetic; he sought, by reading of all manner of
exultant religious experience, to keep alive the ferment of the autumn.
"If only death were near," he said to himself, "with what a blaze of
hope one might go out!" But death was not near,--or, at least, life and
its perplexing duties were nearer. The intensity of his convictions
somehow faded, and they lost their gorgeous hue, under the calm
doctrinal sermons of the parson. If the glory of the promises and the
tenderness of Divine entreaty were to be always dropping mellifluously
on his ear, as upon that solemn Sunday of the summer, it might be well.
But it is not thus; and even were the severe quiet of the Ashfield
Sundays lighted up by the swift and burning words of such fiery
evangelism, yet six solid working-days roll over upon the heel of every
Sunday,--in which he sees good Deacon Tourtelot in shirt-sleeves driving
some sharp bargain for his two-year-old steers, or the stout Dame
hectoring some stray peddler by the hour for the fall of a penny upon
his wares, and wonders where their Christian largeness of soul is gone.
Is the matter real to him? And if real, where is the peace? Shall he
consult the good Doctor? He is met straightway with an array of the old
catechismal formulas, clearly stated, well argued, but brushing athwart
his mind like a dusty wind. The traditional dislikes of his boyhood have
armed him against all such, _cap-a-pie_. In this strait, he wanders over
the hills in search of loneliness, and a volume of Tillotson he carries
with him is all unread. Nature speaks more winningly, but scarce more
helpfully.
Adele, with a quick eye, sees the growing unrest, and, with a great
weight of gratitude upon her heart, says, timidly,--
"Can I help you, Reuben?"
"No, thank you, Adele. I understand you; I'm in a boggle,--that's all."
The father, too, at a hint from Adele, (whose perceptions are so much
quicker,) sees at last how the matter stands.
"Reuben," he says, "these struggles of yours are struggles with the
Great Adversary of Souls. I trust, my son, you will not allow him to
have the mastery."
It was kindly said and earnestly said, but touched the core of the son's
moral disquietude no more than if it were the hooting of an owl. Yet,
for all this, Reuben makes a brave struggle to wear with an outward calm
the burden of the professions he has made,--a terrible burden, when he
finds what awful chasms in his faith have been overleaped by his
vaulting Quixotic fervor. Wearily he labors to bridge them across, with
over-much reading, there in the quiet study of the parsonage, of Newton
and Tillotson and Butler; and he takes a grim pleasure (that does not
help him) in following the amiable argumentation of Paley. It pains him
grievously to think what humiliation would possess the old Doctor, if he
but knew into what crazy currents his boy's thoughts were drifting over
the pages of his beloved teachers. But a man cannot live a deceit, even
for charity's sake, without its making outburst some day, and wrecking
all the fine preventive barriers which kept it in.
The outburst came at last in the quiet of the Ashfield study, Reuben had
been poring for hours--how wearily! how vainly!--over the turgid dogmas
of one of the elder divines, when he suddenly dashed the book upon the
floor.
"Confound the theologies! I'll have no more of them!"
The Doctor dropped his pen, and stared as if a serpent had stung him.
"My son! Reuben! Reuben!"
It was not so much the expression that had shocked him, as it was the
action and the defiance in his eye.
"I can't help it, father. It's the Evil One, perhaps. If it be, I'll
cheat him, by making a clean breast of it. I can't abide the stuff; I
can't see my way through it."
"My son, it is your sin that blinds you."
"Very likely," says Reuben.
"It was not thus with you three months ago, Reuben," continues the
Doctor, in a softened tone.
"No, father, there was a strange light around me in those days. It
seemed to me that the path lay clear and shining through all the maze.
If Death had caught me then, I think I could have sung hosannas with the
saints. It was a beautiful dream. It's faded dismally, father,--as if
the Devil had painted it."
The old man shuddered, and lifted his hands, as he was wont to do in his
most earnest pleas at the Throne of Grace.
"The muddle of the world and the theologies has come in since,"
continued Reuben, "and the base professions I see around me, and the
hypocrisies and the cant, have taken away the glow. It's all a weariness
and a confusion, and that's the solemn truth."
The Doctor said, measuredly, (as if the Book were before him,)--
"'_Some seeds fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth; and
forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth. And
when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root,
they withered away._' Reuben! Reuben! we must agonize to enter into the
strait gate!"
"It's a long agony," said Reuben; and he rose and paced back and forth
for a time; then suddenly stopping before the Doctor, he laid his hand
upon his shoulder, (the boy was of manly height now, and overtopped the
old gentleman by an inch,)--"Father, it grieves me to pain you,--indeed
it does; but truth is truth. I have told you my story; but if you wish
it, I will live outwardly as if no such talk had passed. I will respect
as much as ever all your religious observances, and no person shall be
the wiser."
"I would not have you practise hypocrisy, my son; but I would not have
you withdraw yourself from any of the appointed means of grace."
And at this Reuben went out,--out far upon the hills, from which he saw
the village roofs, and the spire, and the naked tree-tops, the fields
all bare and brown, the smoke of a near house curling lazily into the
sky; and the only sound that broke the solemn stillness was the drumming
of a partridge in the woods or the harsh scream of a belated jay.
Never had Reuben been more kind or attentive to the personal wants of
the old gentleman than on the days which followed upon this interview.
There was something almost like a daughter's solicitude in his
watchfulness. On the next Sunday the Doctor preached with an emotion
that was but poorly controlled, and which greatly mystified his people.
Twice in the afternoon his voice came near to failing. Reuben knew where
the grief lay, but wore a composed face; and as he supported the old
gentleman home after service, he said, (but not so loudly that Adele
could hear, who was tripping closely behind,)--
"Father, I grieve for you,--upon my soul I do; but it's fate."
"Fate, Reuben?" said the Doctor, but with a less guarded voice,--"fate?
God only is fate!"
The Doctor was too much mortified by this revelation of Reuben's present
state of feeling to make it the subject of conversation, even with Miss
Eliza, and much less with the elders of his flock. To Squire Elderkin,
indeed, whose shrewd common-sense he had learned to value even in its
bearings upon the "weightier matters of the law," he had dropped some
desponding reflections in regard to the wilful impetuosity of his poor
son Reuben, from which the shrewd Squire at once suspected the
difficulty.
"It's the blood of the old Major," he said. "Let it work, Doctor, let it
work!"
From which observation, it must be confessed, the good man derived very
little comfort.
Miss Eliza, though she is not made a confidant in these latter secrets
of the study, cannot, however, fail to see that Reuben's constancy to
the Doctor's big folios is on the wane, and that symptoms of his old
boyish recklessness occasionally show themselves under the reserve which
had grown out of his later experiences. She has hopes from this--true to
her keen worldly wisdom--that the abandoned career of the city may yet
win his final decision. But her moral perceptions are not delicate
enough to discover the great and tormenting wrangle of his thought. She
ventures from time to time, as on his return, and from sharp sense of
duty, some wiry, stereotyped religious reflections, which set his whole
moral nature on edge. Nor is this the limit of her blindness:
perceiving, as she imagines she does, the ripening of all her plans with
respect to himself and Adele, she thinks to further the matter by
dropping hints of the rare graces of Adele and of her brilliant
prospects,--assuring him how much that young lady's regard for him has
been increased since his conversion, (which word has to Reuben just now
a dreary and most detestable sound,) and in a way which she counts
playful, but which to him is _agacant_ to the last degree, she forecasts
the time when Reuben will have his pretty French wife, and a rich one.
Left to himself, the youth would very likely have found enough to admire
in the face and figure and pleasantly subdued enthusiasm of Adele; but
the counter irritant of the spinster's speech drove him away on many an
evening to the charming fireside of the Elderkins, where he spent not a
few beguiling hours in listening to the talk of the motherly mistress of
the household, and in watching the soft hazel eyes of Rose, as they
lifted in eager wonderment at some of his stories of the town, or fell
(the long lashes hiding them with other beauty) upon the work where her
delicate fingers plied with a white swiftness that teased him into
trains of thought which were not wholly French.
Adele has taken a melancholy interest in decking the grave of the exiled
lady, which she has insisted upon doing out of her own resources, and
thus has doubled the little legacy which Madame Aries had left to the
outcast woman and child with whom she had joined her fate, and who, with
good reason, wept her death bitterly. Hour upon hour Adele pondered over
that tragic episode, tasking herself to imagine what message the dying
woman could have had to communicate, and wondering if the future would
ever clear up the mystery. To the good Doctor it seemed only a strange
Providence, by which the religious convictions of Adele should be
deepened and made sure. And in no way were the results of those
convictions more beautifully apparent than in the efforts of Adele to
overcome her antipathies to the spinster. It is doubtful, indeed, if a
bolder challenge can be made to the Christian graces of any character
whatever than that which demands the conquest of social prejudices which
have grown into settled aversion. With all the stimulus of her new
Christian endeavor, Adele sought to think charitably of Miss Eliza. Yet
it was hard; always, that occasional cold kiss of the spinster had for
Adele an iron imprint, which drove her warm blood away, instead of
summoning it to response.
For her, Miss Eliza's staple praises of Reuben, and her adroit stories
of the admiration and attachment of Mrs. Brindlock for her nephew, were
distasteful to the last degree. Coarse natures never can learn upon
what fine threads the souls of the sensitive are strung.
Adele felt a tender gratitude toward Reuben, which it seemed to her the
boisterous affection of the spinster could never approach. She
apprehended his spiritual perplexities more keenly than the austere
aunt, and saw with what strange ferment his whole nature was vexed. Had
he been a brother by blood, she could not have felt for him more warmly.
And if she ever allowed herself to guess at a nearer tie, it was not to
Miss Eliza that she would have named the guess,--not even, thus far, to
herself. As yet there was a soft fulness in her heart that felt no
wound,--at least no wound in which her hope rankled. Whether Reuben were
present or away, her songs rose, with a sweeter, a serener, and a
loftier cheer than of old under the roof of the parsonage; and, as of
old, the Doctor laid down his book and listened, as if an angel sang.
XLII.