“Most characters are too narrow for much variety,” says Walter Savage
Landor; and, we add, so much the better for them! for that variety is
often a bitter dower to its possessor.
A man of one idea may be called an acute sector of humanity. He is
clear-willed, prompt, and uncompromising; he walks over people who
stand in his path, and will not listen to the opinions of others,
except in order to controvert them; and he usually accomplishes
something that you can see. The man of two ideas widens his arc a
little, and turns out for and listens to people now and then. The man
of three or more ideas lives and lets live, believes that some good
may come out of Nazareth, and not only listens to others, but is
sometimes convinced by them; and his path curves somewhat, hinting at
an orbit. In him you first perceive that growing humanity aims at the
circle; and as, with the crescent moon, we may see the full moon
faintly outlined, so this man perceives more than he is. For it is not
true, at least not here, what Carlyle says, that “what a man kens, he
can.”
But there is another kind of man, rarely seen, who rounds the circle.
He has eyes and sympathies for zenith and nadir, sunset and sunrise,
and every starry sign. His thought enters at every door, feeds at
every table, and listens to every tongue. Nevertheless, to the few of
one idea and the few of two ideas, and the countless throng of those
who never had an idea, he is, oftener than not, a fool, or a knave,
or a lunatic. He is eccentric, inconsistent; worse than all,
unpractical. Doubtless, he is wicked as well, since he is likely to
eat of all the fruits in the garden. For, though original sin may have
touched them with blight on the one cheek, on the other, to his eyes
still lingers that paradisian bloom it caught on the sixth day, when
the Creator looked, and _saw that all was good_. This perfected
nature, therefore, which needs only the _fiat lux_ of faith to make it
a sun, is appreciated and hailed by him only from whose one limit to
the other stretches the connecting glimmer of prophetic
half-knowledge.
We do not pretend to say that Carl Yorke had one of these universally
sympathizing natures; but he was various enough to be hard to get
attuned, especially since his programme had once been interrupted, and
his harmony temporarily disconcerted.
When a man has looked upon happiness as his first object in life, he
finds it hard to give it the second place, or to leave it quite out of
his plans. Moreover, we do not repent till we have transgressed, and
it must, therefore, be far more difficult to save the tempted than the
sinner. Of actual, heinous transgression, Carl was innocent; but he
had slipped around the outer circle, where first you lay the oars
aside, and the smooth-backed waves become your coursers. Then a man
fancies himself a god: not Neptune himself seems greater. One may more 306
easily tear himself out from the central whirl than draw back from
that smooth outer circle.
Besides, there was doubt. He who can do many things must needs choose,
and, where circumstances are passive, choice may be difficult. Carl
inherited his father’s talent, and had more than his father’s force.
He sketched and painted exquisitely, and, when he drew the portrait of
one he loved, the picture breathed. Many a lady, disappointed with the
stiff presentment of her beauty achieved by other artists, had
entreated him in vain to become her limner.
“Ransome paints my nose, and hair, and shoulders all right,” one said.
“I cannot find fault with a line. But for all the soul he puts into
them, my head might as well be a milliner’s block. I suppose it is
because he thinks that a fine body does not need any soul. Such a
contrast as I saw in his studio, the other day! He had two or three
portraits of Mrs. Clare, painted in different positions, and he
displayed them to me, going into ecstasies over her beauty. ‘Yes,
yes,’ I answered; but I was not enchanted. ‘She is one of the few
dangerous women,’ he said, meaning that the power of her loveliness
was irresistible; but I could not understand his enthusiasm.
Presently, I espied, in a corner of the room, on the floor,
half-hidden by other pictures, a face that made me start. I did not
think whether or not the features were perfect, the hair profuse, the
tint exquisite. I saw only a luring, fascinating creature, who, with
head half-drooping and lips half-smiling, gazed at me over her
shoulder. There were no red and white. The face looked out from
shadows so profound, they might be of a midnight garden at midsummer,
when the moon and stars are hid in sultry cloud, or from the shrouding
arras of a lonely chamber in some wicked old palace, or from the
overhanging portal of the bottomless pit. I would walk through fire to
snatch back one I love from following such a face. ‘It is wonderful!’
I exclaimed. ‘Why do you hide it? It is by far superior too anything
else you have here.’ I thought that Mr. Ransome did not seem to be
much delighted by my praise. ‘I did not paint it,’ he said. ‘Carl Owen
Yorke did.’ Of course, I could not say any more. The situation was
embarrassing. ‘Would you think that face the same as these?’ pointing
to his portraits of Mrs. Clare. I could see no resemblance. ‘They are
the same,’ he said, looking mortified. And then I knew what he meant
in saying that she was a dangerous woman.” “Why did you paint that,
Mr. Yorke?” the lady asked abruptly, turning upon Carl.
“In order not to be attracted by it,” he replied gravely. “Did it not
leave on you the impression of something snakelike? In painting that,
I broke the spell. Alice Mills told me to paint it. She said, ‘You are
fascinated only by that which you cannot analyze. Catch the trick, and
the power is gone.’ She was right. She is always right. Nothing is so
shallow as an evil fascination.”
Yet, in spite of every promise of success, Carl turned aside from art.
He had found out that the artist, above all, needs happiness. One can
study, think, and work, when the heartstrings are strained to
breaking; but he who, with his hand upon the pen, the brush, the
chorded string, or the chisel, waits till those subtile influences
which he is gifted to perceive shall move him, must have every pulse
stilled by a perfect content. Pain distorts his work. It untunes his
music, blurs his color, deadens his thought, and makes his chisel
swerve. Nor is this in purely natural art alone; for the artist whose 307
struggling soul ignores all else to grasp the supernatural gives only
a blunted ray through a turbid medium.
The pencil failing, there was diplomacy, and literature, particularly
journalism. Something must be done. His idle and aimless life had
become a torture. Therefore he studied, and read, giving much time to
languages. “Languages,” he was wont to say, “are as necessary to a man
who would always and everywhere have his forces in hand, as a string
of keys is to a burglar.”
A conversation which Carl held with Edith, just before she left
Boston, may have been instrumental in arousing him. The two stood
together, in one of the lance-windows that lighted Hester’s library.
Hester and her mother were up-stairs, and there was no one else in the
room but Eugene Cleaveland and his little brother, Hester’s child. The
little one was gravely and patiently striving to pick up, with dimpled
fingers, a beam of pink light that fell on the floor through a pane of
colored glass in the window-arch, and Eugene was as gravely explaining
to him why he could not.
“And so,” said Carl, after a silence, “Mr. Rowan is your ideal man.”
It was his way of intimating his knowledge of existing circumstances,
and he spoke carelessly, watching the children.
“I have no ideal of man,” Edith replied briefly; and, after a moment,
added: “A person maybe excellent, without being ideal.” She thought a
moment longer, then said: “Men and stars have to be set at a certain
distance before they shine to us. I am not sure but Tennyson could
make a fine hero of a poem of Dick. He has heroic qualities. I do not
analyze nor criticise my friends, but I perceive this in him: he is
capable of proposing to himself an object, and following it steadily.
Every one is not.”
Carl Yorke’s countenance changed. And yet he knew well that she had
not dreamed of reproaching him.
“What are you studying Spanish for?” Miss Clinton inquired fretfully,
one day. “You might as well learn to dance the minuet.”
“When one has so many castles in a country, one would like to know the
language,” he said.
“Pshaw!” exclaimed the old lady. “Don’t waste your time. No language
with a guttural in it is fit for a well-bred person to speak. Besides,
to speak Spanish properly, you must wear a slouched hat and a
stiletto, or a ruff and feather. I have no patience with this mania
for tongues. English and French are enough for any sensible person.
Italian is boned turkey. What book is that you have brought in?”
“De Maistre, _Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg_.”
Miss Clinton laughed disagreeably. “‘The prophet of the past,’ is it?
Who is it says that he has ‘_une grande vigueur, non pas de raison,
mais de raisonnement_’? Are you studying sophistry or Ultramontanism?
_A propos_, there are pretty doings in that absurd little town where
your people live. That ungrateful paper which you used to edit has
been abusing your father like a pickpocket, on Edith’s account, I
suppose. You wouldn’t tell me, but Bird found out; and she says that
he doesn’t dare stir outdoors.”
“It is not true that he is afraid,” Carl said; “but he is insulted. In
Seaton, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword,’ without doubt. I would
like to see it tried if the horse-whip might not in this case be 308
mightier than the pen.”
“You see, now,” the old lady said, “what mischief all these religions
make. The basis of every so-called religion is hatred of every other
so-called religion. And here you are poring over De Maistre! Pshaw!
Read _The Age of Reason_. Here it is.”
Carl was silent a moment, struggling with himself. Then he said, “I
have gone round the circle, and come back to a faith in faith, and the
sneers or arguments of the atheist have no more effect on me. I have
found that mocking is neither noble nor manly, still less womanly; and
I look back on my days of scepticism as on the freaks of a
presumptuous child, who fancies itself wiser than its parents, when it
is only more foolish. I have done with Tom Paine and his brotherhood.”
It is always hard to even seem to exhort our elders, and especially so
when they are our intimates; and Carl spoke with such an effort that
his words seemed to be a passionate outburst.
Miss Clinton looked at him a moment in silent astonishment, then
laughed shrilly. “‘_What is this that hath happened to the son of
Kish?_’” Then changing suddenly, she rang her bell. “Bird,” she said,
when that person appeared, “I want you to read the paper to me. There
is a beautiful case of poisoning, this evening. Young Mr. Yorke is too
pious for secular reading. He has turned preacher, Bird. You and he
can sing psalms together.”
“Alice, I accept one dogma of your church,” Carl said afterward to his
friend. “I must believe in purgatory, for I am in it.”
“I am rejoiced to hear it,” she replied, yet looked at him sadly. She
would so gladly have spared him any pain. “Purgatory is the high-road
to heaven. Of course, while you are getting your moral perspective
arranged, you must feel uncomfortable; but once started in life, all
will arrange itself.”
“Suppose that I should fail?” he asked.
“I dare say that you will fail, in one sense,” she replied. “Men who
propose to themselves great ends always do meet with a sort of
failure, as the flower fails in order to give place to the fruit. Each
great success, _being unique_ of its kind, comes in its own way.
You cannot count surely, but success must come, sooner or later.”
“You speak as if I had all eternity,” he said, not without impatience.
She looked up vividly. “You have all eternity, Carl!”
He made no reply.
“Let me quote a favorite of yours,” she said:
“‘That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred’s soon hit.
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses a unit.
That, has the world here--should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed,
Seeking, shall find him.’”
“I understand you,” he said, with a slight shrug. “But, do I look an
apostle?”
“You might be,” she answered. “You could influence a class which the
preachers cannot reach. Religion has been too much confined to
ascetics, or to those who underestimate the power of the beautiful.
What we want most now are Christians who can outshine sinners in
grace, fascination, and learning. In these reckless days, people will
not receive a check from those whom they know would gladly impose an
utter prohibition; but one of their own might put a limit. We want
scholars who will acknowledge that there is a point beyond which 309
speculation should not go and reason cannot. We want accomplished
leaders in society who are not ashamed to prostrate themselves before
God; and we want gentlemen to encourage modesty in women. You see
there is a large field.”
“I am glad,” Carl exclaimed, “to hear a Catholic own that a rich and
cultivated person can do some good in the church besides giving money.
From all the sermons I have heard with you, the impression I have
received is that clean linen and a knowledge of the alphabet are
obstacles to grace. Never once have I heard talent or culture spoken
of except with reprobation.”
“Oh! you exaggerate!” she said. “It is true, the poor need constant
comfort, and the rich constant warning; and it is equally true that
the greatest ignorance, combined with charity, must be more pleasing
to God than the finest intellect and learning without charity.”
“There is precisely the point,” Carl said eagerly. “And my experience
and belief are that the finer the mind and the culture, the greater
the charity, and _vicè versa_. ‘_Tout comprendre c’est tout aimer._’ I like
Sir Thomas Browne’s thought: ‘Those highly magnify him whose judicious
inquiry into his works returns him the homage of a learned
admiration.’”
She made no reply. They had been out walking, and they now reached
Miss Mills’s door. “Are you ill?” Carl asked, noticing that she looked
unusually pale.
“I am rather tired,” she answered faintly. “Good-by!”
When he turned away, she stood looking at him through the side-light,
and, when he was no longer visible, she went up-stairs to her chamber.
She was very tired, and very ill. Her impulse was to lie down, but she
hesitated, then refrained. “All is ready,” she said, looking about
her. “I do not think that there is anything to do.”
She put up a small trunkful of clothing with feverish haste, rang her
bell, and ordered a carriage. “Drive to the Hospital of the Sisters of
Charity, in South Boston,” she said to the driver. And, sinking back,
knew no more till she had reached her destination.
“I think I have come here to die,” she said to the sister who received
her. “And I have a few wishes. Send back word immediately where I am.
I did not tell them, for I could not bear any struggle. My worldly
affairs are all in order, and I have no last words to say to any one.
Let no person come near me but the sister and the priest, and do not
mention any person’s name to me, nor tell me who comes to inquire. I
know they will all be kind; but all my life has been a sacrifice to
others, a sympathizing with and loving of others, while my own heart
starved, and these last hours must be given to God alone. No earthly
being has any claim on them.”
Perhaps in all her life she had never before spoken so bitterly, but
her words were true. She had given to the poor, and worked for them,
and their gratitude had been but the ‘lively sense of favors to come.’
She had been solicitous for friends, had mourned over their sorrows,
and sympathized with them always, and their selfishness had grown upon
her unselfishness. So sweet had been the sympathy and love she
lavished upon them, they had never stopped to inquire if she were
impoverishing herself, or if she also might not wish sometimes to
receive as well as to give.
But the thought of how keen would be the revenge of this utter
withdrawal at the time when they must have been startled into 310
thinking of her in some other way than as pensioners, never entered
her mind. Besides that momentary and almost unconscious complaint, she
had but one thought: God alone had loved her, and she must be alone
with him. She could no longer do anything for any person; and since no
one belonged to her more than to any other, nor so much as to others,
no one had any claim to intrude now.
The sisters were faithful to their charge. Of the many who came with
tardy devotion, she heard nothing; of Miss Clinton, sitting in her
carriage at the door, with two men waiting to carry her up-stairs in a
chair as soon as she should have permission, the attendants did not
speak to her; of Carl Yorke, haunting the place, and sitting hour
after hour in the parlor, waiting for news, she never knew.
One day, when Carl had sat there long, with only one prospect of news
before him, the priest came down, and entered the room. Carl lifted
his face from his hands, and looked at him, but could not speak.
“Let us think of heaven!” said the priest.
Of some actively religious persons, we might think that they parody
the paradox, and say, Give us the luxuries of piety, and we will
dispense with the necessities; but this woman had been other. No great
work could be pointed to that she had done or attempted: her life had
flowed like an unseen brook, that, hidden itself, is only guessed at
by the winding line of verdure which betrays its presence. She was one
of those piteously tender and generous souls whom everybody makes use
of, and nobody truly thanks. Seldom, indeed, do we find one so just
and truly kind as to think for those who do not demand their
thoughtfulness. It is the clamorous and the pushing who possess the
land.
A part of Miss Mills’s fortune was given to the church, the rest was
left conditionally. She knew Miss Clinton’s caprice well enough to
think it possible that Carl might be left unprovided for at the last
moment. In such a case, he was to be her heir, after a few legacies
had been paid. But if Miss Clinton’s will should be favorable to him,
then all was to go to Edith.
On Miss Clinton, the effect of this death was terrible. She
alternately refused to believe that it had taken place, and reproached
them for telling her of it. When Bird tried indiscreetly to draw a
pious lesson from it, the old lady flew into such a paroxysm of rage
that she frightened them. She seemed to be on the point of having
convulsions. Carl went to the funeral without saying where he was
going, and the name was never again mentioned in her hearing.
But that silence was not forgetfulness, they saw plainly; for, from
that time, Miss Clinton never allowed herself to be left alone a
moment. Bird read to her till far into the night, watched her fitful
slumbers, and was ready with cheerful inquiries whenever the old lady
opened her frightened eyes. The light never went out in her room, but
was kept brightly burning--a small shade screening the face only of
the sleeper. By day, Carl had to read to her amusing stories or tell
the gossip of the town.
When spring came again, she was unable to leave her room, and, in a
short time, was confined to her bed, and from querulous became
light-headed.
Carl made a desperate effort one day to induce her to see a priest or 311
a minister, using every argument in his power, even begging her to
consent for his sake. He was not sure that she heard or understood all
that he said, for, though she sometimes looked at him with intent,
wide-open eyes, her glance often wandered.
“Are you afraid?” she asked sharply, when he paused for a reply.
“Yes; I am afraid,” he answered. “There is no bravery in defying God.”
She half-lifted herself from the pillows, her brows contracted with an
anxious frown, and she looked about the room as if in search of some
one. He was startled by the change in her face. “Do you want
anything?” he asked gently.
“Carl,” she called out, as if he were far away and out of her sight,
“who was it said, ‘O God!--if there is a God--save my soul--if I have
a soul’?”
She did not look at him, but leaned out of bed, staring wildly round
the room. He tried to soothe her, and coax her back to her pillows
again.
“Was it I said it?” she asked excitedly, resisting him, and sitting
upright. “Was it I said it? It sounds like me, doesn’t it?”
He rang the bell, and Bird came in. But they could do nothing with
her. She pushed them aside, leaned from the bed, and searched the room
with her wild eyes, then looked upward, and seemed to shrink, yet
continued looking. “Was it I said it, Alice?” she cried out
breathlessly. “It sounds like me, doesn’t it? ‘O God!--if there is a
God--save my soul--if I have a soul!’”
“She is gone!” Carl whispered, and laid her back on the pillow.
So Carl Yorke was at last rich and free, with the world before him.
There was but little for him to do at present. When winter should be
near, the family were to come up and take possession of their old
home, which would then be ready for them. Now that it was summer, he
would go down and stay with them a while. If rest and pleasure were to
be had there, he would have them. He felt like one who has travelled
over a dusty, sultry road, and longs to plunge into a bath, and wash
all that heat and dust away. He wanted to hear again at the home
gatherings gentle voices, to see tender, thoughtful ways, to refresh
his soul in that quiet yet rich atmosphere.
“I will not turn my back upon delight, and invite dryness of life by
looking for it,” he thought. “If the Bible does not proclaim my right
to pursue happiness, the Declaration of Independence does, and I will
give myself the benefit of the doubt. When the summer fails, I must
look about me, and think of work, and remember the curse of Adam; but
I will give myself a few weeks of lotos-eating--if they are to be had.”