But I am rambling on too far and too fast for to-day. Here is one more book, however, that I must say a word about, as it lies open on my knee, the gift of PUIR ROBBIE BURNS to a female friend,–his own poems,–the edition which gave him “so much real happiness to see in print.” Laid in this copy of his works is a sad letter, in the poet’s handwriting, which perhaps has never been printed. Addressed to Captain Hamilton, Dumfries, it is in itself a touching record of dear Robin’s poverty, and _a’ that_.
“SIR,
“It is needless to attempt an apology for my remissness to you in money matters; my conduct is beyond all excuse.–Literally, Sir, I had it not. The Distressful state of commerce at this town has this year taken from my otherwise scanty income no less than L20.–That part of my salary depends upon the Imposts, and they are no more for one year. I inclose you three guineas; and shall soon settle all with you. I shall not mention your goodness to me; it is beyond my power to describe either the feelings of my wounded soul at not being able to pay you as I ought; or the grateful respect with which I have the honor to be
“Sir, Your deeply obliged humble servant,
“ROBT. BURNS.
“Dumfries, Jany. 29, 1795.”
And so I walk out of my friend’s leafy paradise this July afternoon, thinking of the bard who in all his songs and sorrows made
“rustic life and poverty
Grow beautiful beneath his touch,”
and whose mission it was
“To weigh the inborn worth of _man_.”
THE NAME IN THE BARK.
The self of so long ago,
And the self I struggle to know,
I sometimes think we are two,–or are we shadows of one? To-day the shadow I am
Comes back in the sweet summer calm To trace where the earlier shadow flitted awhile in the sun.
Once more in the dewy morn
I trod through the whispering corn, Cool to my fevered cheek soft breezy kisses were blown; The ribboned and tasselled grass
Leaned over the flattering glass,
And the sunny waters trilled the same low musical tone.
To the gray old birch I came,
Where I whittled my school-boy name: The nimble squirrel once more ran skippingly over the rail, The blackbirds down among
The alders noisily sung,
And under the blackberry-brier whistled the serious quail.
I came, remembering well
How my little shadow fell,
As I painfully reached and wrote to leave to the future a sign: There, stooping a little, I found
A half-healed, curious wound,
An ancient scar in the bark, but no initial of mine!
Then the wise old boughs overhead
Took counsel together, and said,– And the buzz of their leafy lips like a murmur of prophecy passed,– “He is busily carving a name
In the tough old wrinkles of fame; But, cut he as deep as he may, the lines will close over at last!”
Sadly I pondered awhile,
Then I lifted my soul with a smile, And I said,–“Not cheerful men, but anxious children are we, Still hurting ourselves with the knife, As we toil at the letters of life,
Just marring a little the rind, never piercing the heart of the tree.”
And now by the rivulet’s brink
I leisurely saunter, and think
How idle this strife will appear when circling ages have run, If then the real I am
Descend from the heavenly calm,
To trace where the shadow I seem once flitted awhile in the sun.
AGNES OF SORRENTO.
CHAPTER XII.
PERPLEXITIES.
Agnes returned from the confessional with more sadness than her simple life had ever known before. The agitation of her confessor, the tremulous eagerness of his words, the alternations of severity and tenderness in his manner to her, all struck her only as indications of the very grave danger in which she was placed, and the awfulness of the sin and condemnation which oppressed the soul of one for whom she was conscious of a deep and strange interest.
She had the undoubting, uninquiring reverence which a Christianly educated child of those times might entertain for the visible head of the Christian Church, all whose doings were to be regarded with an awful veneration which never even raised a question.
That the Papal throne was now filled by a man who had bought his election with the wages of iniquity, and dispensed its powers and offices with sole reference to the aggrandizement of a family proverbial for brutality and obscenity, was a fact well known to the reasoning and enlightened orders of society at this time; but it did not penetrate into those lowly valleys where the sheep of the Lord humbly pastured, innocently unconscious of the frauds and violence by which their dearest interests were bought and sold.
The Christian faith we now hold, who boast our enlightened Protestantism, has been transmitted to us through the hearts and hands of such,–who, while princes wrangled with Pope, and Pope with princes, knew nothing of it all, but, in lowly ways of prayer and patient labor, were one with us of modern times in the great central belief of the Christian heart, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.”
As Agnes came slowly up the path towards the little garden, she was conscious of a burden and weariness of spirit she had never known before. She passed the little moist grotto, which in former times she never failed to visit to see if there were any new-blown cyclamen, without giving it even a thought. A crimson spray of gladiolus leaned from the rock and seemed softly to kiss her cheek, yet she regarded it not; and once stopping and gazing abstractedly upward on the flower-tapestried walls of the gorge, as they rose in wreath and garland and festoon above her, she felt as if the brilliant yellow of the broom and the crimson of the gillyflowers, and all the fluttering, nodding armies of brightness that were dancing in the sunlight, were too gay for such a world as this, where mortal sins and sorrows made such havoc with all that seemed brightest and best, and she longed to fly away and be at rest.
Just then she heard the cheerful voice of her uncle in the little garden above, as he was singing at his painting. The words were those of that old Latin hymn of Saint Bernard, which, in its English dress, has thrilled many a Methodist class-meeting and many a Puritan conference, telling, in the welcome they meet in each Christian soul, that there is a unity in Christ’s Church which is not outward,–a secret, invisible bond, by which, under warring names and badges of opposition, His true followers have yet been one in Him, even though they discerned it not.
“Jesu dulcis memoria,
Dans vera cordi gaudia:
Sed super mel et omnia
Ejus dulcis praesentia.
“Nil canitur suavius,
Nil auditur jocundius,
Nil cogitatur dulcius,
Quam Jesus Dei Filius.
“Jesu, spes poenitentibus,
Quam pius es petentibus,
Quam bonus te quaerentibus,
Sed quis invenientibus!
Nec lingua valet dicere,
Nec littera exprimere:
Expertus potest credere
Quid sit Jesum diligere.”[A]
[Footnote A:
Jesus, the very thought of thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far thy face to see,
And in thy presence rest!
Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame, Nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound than thy blest name, O Saviour of mankind!
O hope of every contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
To those who fall how kind thou art, How good to those who seek!
But what to those who find! Ah, this Nor tongue nor pen can show!
The love of Jesus, what it is
None but his loved ones know.]
The old monk sang with all his heart; and his voice, which had been a fine one in its day, had still that power which comes from the expression of deep feeling. One often hears this peculiarity in the voices of persons of genius and sensibility, even when destitute of any real critical merit. They seem to be so interfused with the emotions of the soul, that they strike upon the heart almost like the living touch of a spirit.
Agnes was soothed in listening to him. The Latin words, the sentiment of which had been traditional in the Church from time immemorial, had to her a sacred fragrance and odor; they were words apart from all common usage, a sacramental language, never heard but in moments of devotion and aspiration,–and they stilled the child’s heart in its tossings and tempest, as when of old the Jesus they spake of walked forth on the stormy sea.
“Yes, He gave His life for us!” she said; “He is ever reigning for us!
“‘Jesu dulcissime, e throno gloriae
Ovem deperditam venisti quaerere!
Jesu suavissime, pastor fidissime, Ad te O trahe me, ut semper sequar te!'”[B]
[Footnote B:
Jesus most beautiful, from thrones in glory, Seeking thy lost sheep, thou didst descend! Jesus most tender, shepherd most faithful, To thee, oh, draw thou me, that I may follow thee, Follow thee faithfully world without end!]
“What, my little one!” said the monk, looking over the wall; “I thought I heard angels singing. Is it not a beautiful morning?”
“Dear uncle, it is,” said Agnes. “And I have been so glad to hear your beautiful hymn!–it comforted me.”
“Comforted you, little heart? What a word is that! When you get as far along on your journey as your old uncle, then you may talk of _comfort_. But who thinks of comforting birds or butterflies or young lambs?”
“Ah, dear uncle, I am not so very happy,” said Agnes, the tears starting into her eyes.
“Not happy?” said the monk, looking up from his drawing. “Pray, what’s the matter now? Has a bee stung your finger? or have you lost your nosegay over a rock? or what dreadful affliction has come upon you?–hey, my little heart?”
Agnes sat down on the corner of the marble fountain, and, covering her face with her apron, sobbed as if her heart would break.
“What has that old priest been saying to her in the confession?” said Father Antonio to himself. “I dare say he cannot understand her. She is as pure as a dew-drop on a cobweb, and as delicate; and these priests, half of them don’t know how to handle the Lord’s lambs.–Come now, little Agnes,” he said, with a coaxing tone, “what is its trouble?–tell its old uncle,–there’s a dear!”
“Ah, uncle, I can’t!” said Agnes, between her sobs.
“Can’t tell its uncle!–there’s a pretty go! Perhaps you will tell grandmamma?”
“Oh, no, no, no! not for the world!” said Agnes, sobbing still more bitterly.
“Why, really, little heart of mine, this is getting serious,” said the monk; “let your old uncle try to help you.”
“It isn’t for myself,” said Agnes, endeavoring to check her feelings,–“it is not for myself,–it is for another,–for a soul lost. Ah, my Jesus, have mercy!”
“A soul lost? Our Mother forbid!” said the monk, crossing himself. “Lost in this Christian land, so overflowing with the beauty of the Lord?–lost out of this fair sheepfold of Paradise?”
“Yes, lost,” said Agnes, despairingly,–“and if somebody do not save him, lost forever; and it is a brave and noble soul, too,–like one of the angels that fell.”
“Who is it, dear?–tell me about it,” said the monk. “I am one of the shepherds whose place it is to go after that which is lost, even till I find it.”
“Dear uncle, you remember the youth who suddenly appeared to us in the moonlight here a few evenings ago?”
“Ah, indeed!” said the monk,–“what of him?”
“Father Francesco has told me dreadful things of him this morning.”
“What things?”
“Uncle, he is excommunicated by our Holy Father the Pope.”
Father Antonio, as a member of one of the most enlightened and cultivated religious orders of the times, and as an intimate companion and disciple of Savonarola, had a full understanding of the character of the reigning Pope, and therefore had his own private opinion of how much his excommunication was likely to be worth in the invisible world. He knew that the same doom had been threatened towards his saintly master, for opposing and exposing the scandalous vices which disgraced the high places of the Church; so that, on the whole, when he heard that this young man was excommunicated, so far from being impressed with horror towards him, he conceived the idea that he might be a particularly honest fellow and good Christian. But then he did not hold it wise to disturb the faith of the simple-hearted by revealing to them the truth about the head of the Church on earth.
While the disorders in those elevated regions filled the minds of the intelligent classes with apprehension and alarm, they held it unwise to disturb the trustful simplicity of the lower orders, whose faith in Christianity itself they supposed might thus be shaken. In fact, they were themselves somewhat puzzled how to reconcile the patent and manifest fact, that the actual incumbent of the Holy See was not under the guidance of any spirit, unless it were a diabolical one, with the theory which supposed an infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit to attend as a matter of course on that position. Some of the boldest of them did not hesitate to declare that the Holy City had suffered a foul invasion, and that a false usurper reigned in her sacred palaces in place of the Father of Christendom. The greater part did as people now do with the mysteries and discrepancies of a faith which on the whole they revere: they turned their attention from the vexed question, and sighed and longed for better days.
Father Antonio did not, therefore, tell Agnes that the announcement which had filled her with such distress was far less conclusive with himself of the ill desert of the individual to whom it related.
“My little heart,” he answered, gravely, “did you learn the sin for which this young man was excommunicated?”
“Ah, me! my dear uncle, I fear he is an infidel,–an unbeliever. Indeed, now I remember it, he confessed as much to me the other day.”
“Where did he tell you this?”
“You remember, my uncle, when you were sent for to the dying man? When you were gone, I kneeled down to pray for his soul; and when I rose from prayer, this young cavalier was sitting right here, on this end of the fountain. He was looking fixedly at me, with such sad eyes, so full of longing and pain, that it was quite piteous; and he spoke to me so sadly, I could not but pity him.”
“What did he say to you, child?”
“Ah, father, he said that he was all alone in the world, without friends, and utterly desolate, with no one to love him; but worse than that, he said he had lost his faith, that he could not believe.”
“What did you say to him?”
“Uncle, I tried, as a poor girl might, to do him some good. I prayed him to confess and take the sacrament; but he looked almost fierce when I said so. And yet I cannot but think, after all, that he has not lost all grace, because he begged me so earnestly to pray for him; he said his prayers could do no good, and wanted mine. And then I began to tell him about you, dear uncle, and how you came from that blessed convent in Florence, and about your master Savonarola; and that seemed to interest him, for he looked quite excited, and spoke the name over, as if it were one he had heard before. I wanted to urge him to come and open his case to you; and I think perhaps I might have succeeded, but that just then you and grandmamma came up the path; and when I heard you coming, I begged him to go, because you know grandmamma would be very angry, if she knew that I had given speech to a man, even for a few moments; she thinks men are so dreadful.”
“I must seek this youth,” said the monk, in a musing tone; “perhaps I may find out what inward temptation hath driven him away from the fold.”
“Oh, do, dear uncle! do!” said Agnes, earnestly. “I am sure that he has been grievously tempted and misled, for he seems to have a noble and gentle nature; and he spoke so feelingly of his mother, who is a saint in heaven; and he seemed so earnestly to long to return to the bosom of the Church.”
“The Church is a tender mother to all her erring children,” said the monk.
“And don’t you think that our dear Holy Father the Pope will forgive him?” said Agnes. “Surely, he will have all the meekness and gentleness of Christ, who would rejoice in one sheep found more than in all the ninety-and-nine who went not astray.”
The monk could scarcely repress a smile at imagining Alexander the Sixth in this character of a good shepherd, as Agnes’s enthusiastic imagination painted the head of the Church; and then he gave an inward sigh, and said, softly, “Lord, how long?”
“I think,” said Agnes, “that this young man is of noble birth, for his words and his bearing and his tones of voice are not those of common men; even though he speaks so humbly and gently, there is yet something princely that looks out of his eyes, as if he were born to command; and he wears strange jewels, the like of which I never saw, on his hands and at the hilt of his dagger,–yet he seems to make nothing of them. But yet, I know not why, he spoke of himself as one utterly desolate and forlorn. Father Francesco told me that he was captain of a band of robbers who live in the mountains. One cannot think it is so.”
“Little heart,” said the monk, tenderly, “you can scarcely know what things befall men in these distracted times, when faction wages war with faction, and men pillage and burn and imprison, first on this side, then on that. Many a son of a noble house may find himself homeless and landless, and, chased by the enemy, may have no refuge but the fastnesses of the mountains. Thank God, our lovely Italy hath a noble backbone of these same mountains, which afford shelter to her children in their straits.”
“Then you think it possible, dear uncle, that this may not be a bad man, after all?”
“Let us hope so, child. I will myself seek him out; and if his mind have been chafed by violence or injustice, I will strive to bring him back into the good ways of the Lord. Take heart, my little one,–all will yet be well. Come now, little darling, wipe your bright eyes, and look at these plans I have been making for the shrine we were talking of, in the gorge. See here, I have drawn a goodly arch with a pinnacle. Under the arch, you see, shall be the picture of our Lady with the blessed Babe. The arch shall be cunningly sculptured with vines of ivy and passion-flower; and on one side of it shall stand Saint Agnes with her lamb,–and on the other, Saint Cecilia, crowned with roses; and on this pinnacle, above all, Saint Michael, all in armor, shall stand leaning,–one hand on his sword, and holding a shield with the cross upon it.”
“Ah, that will be beautiful!” said Agnes.
“You can scarcely tell,” pursued the monk, “from this faint drawing, what the picture of our Lady is to be; but I shall paint her to the highest of my art, and with many prayers that I may work worthily. You see, she shall be standing on a cloud with a background all of burnished gold, like the streets of the New Jerusalem; and she shall be clothed in a mantle of purest blue from head to foot, to represent the unclouded sky of summer; and on her forehead she shall wear the evening star, which ever shineth when we say the Ave Maria; and all the borders of her blue vesture shall be cunningly wrought with fringes of stars; and the dear Babe shall lean his little cheek to hers so peacefully, and there shall be a clear shining of love through her face, and a heavenly restfulness, that it shall do one’s heart good to look at her. Many a blessed hour shall I have over this picture,–many a hymn shall I sing as my work goes on. I must go about to prepare the panels forthwith; and it were well, if there be that young man who works in stone, to have him summoned to our conference.”
“I think,” said Agnes, “that you will find him in the town; he dwells next to the cathedral.”
“I trust he is a youth of pious life and conversation,” said the monk. “I must call on him this afternoon; for he ought to be stirring himself up by hymns and prayers, and by meditations on the beauty of saints and angels, for so goodly a work. What higher honor or grace can befall a creature than to be called upon to make visible to men that beauty of invisible things which is divine and eternal? How many holy men have given themselves to this work in Italy, till, from being overrun with heathen temples, it is now full of most curious and wonderful churches, shrines, and cathedrals, every stone of which is a miracle of beauty! I would, dear daughter, you could see our great Duomo in Florence, which is a mountain of precious marbles and many-colored mosaics; and the Campanile that riseth thereby is like a lily of Paradise,–so tall, so stately, with such an infinite grace, and adorned all the way up with holy emblems and images of saints and angels; nor is there any part of it, within or without, that is not finished sacredly with care, as an offering to the most perfect God. Truly, our fair Florence, though she be little, is worthy, by her sacred adornments, to be worn as the lily of our Lady’s girdle, even as she hath been dedicated to her.”
Agnes seemed pleased with the enthusiastic discourse of her uncle. The tears gradually dried from her eyes as she listened to him, and the hope so natural to the young and untried heart began to reassert itself. God was merciful, the world beautiful; there was a tender Mother, a reigning Saviour, protecting angels and guardian saints: surely, then, there was no need to despair of the recall of any wanderer; and the softest supplication of the most ignorant and unworthy would be taken up by so many sympathetic voices in the invisible world, and borne on in so many waves of brightness to the heavenly throne, that the most timid must have hope in prayer.
In the afternoon, the monk went to the town to seek the young artist, and also to inquire for the stranger for whom his pastoral offices were in requisition, and Agnes remained alone in the little solitary garden.
It was one of those rich slumberous afternoons of spring that seem to bathe earth and heaven with an Elysian softness; and from her little lonely nook shrouded in dusky shadows by its orange-trees, Agnes looked down the sombre gorge to where the open sea lay panting and palpitating in blue and violet waves, while the little white sails of fishing-boats drifted hither and thither, now silvered in the sunshine, now fading away like a dream into the violet vapor bands that mantled the horizon. The weather would have been oppressively sultry but for the gentle breeze which constantly drifted landward with coolness in its wings. The hum of the old town came to her ear softened by distance and mingled with the patter of the fountain and the music of birds singing in the trees overhead. Agnes tried to busy herself with her spinning; but her mind constantly wandered away, and stirred and undulated with a thousand dim and unshaped thoughts and emotions, of which she vaguely questioned in her own mind. Why did Father Francesco warn her so solemnly against an earthly love? Did he not know her vocation? But still he was wisest and must know best; there must be danger, if he said so. But then, this knight had spoken so modestly, so humbly,–so differently from Giulietta’s lovers!–for Giulietta had sometimes found a chance to recount to Agnes some of her triumphs. How could it be that a knight so brave and gentle, and so piously brought up, should become an infidel? Ah, uncle Antonio was right,–he must have had some foul wrong, some dreadful injury! When Agnes was a child, in travelling with her grandmother through one of the highest passes of the Apennines, she had chanced to discover a wounded eagle, whom an arrow had pierced, sitting all alone by himself on a rock, with his feathers ruffled, and a film coming over his great, clear, bright eye,–and, ever full of compassion, she had taken him to nurse, and had travelled for a day with him in her arms; and the mournful look of his regal eyes now came into her memory. “Yes,” she said to herself, “he is like my poor eagle! The archers have wounded him, so that he is glad to find shelter even with a poor maid like me; but it was easy to see my eagle had been king among birds, even as this knight is among men. Certainly, God must love him,–he is so beautiful and noble! I hope dear uncle will find him this afternoon; he knows how to teach him;–as for me, I can only pray.”
Such were the thoughts that Agnes twisted into the shining white flax, while her eyes wandered dreamily over the soft hazy landscape. At last, lulled by the shivering sound of leaves, and the bird-songs, and wearied with the agitations of the morning, her head lay back against the end of the sculptured fountain, the spindle slowly dropped from her hand, and her eyes were closed in sleep, the murmur of the fountain still sounding in her dreams. In her dreams she seemed to be wandering far away among the purple passes of the Apennines, where she had come years ago when she was a little girl; with her grandmother she pushed through old olive-groves, weird and twisted with many a quaint gnarl, and rustling their pale silvery leaves in noonday twilight. Sometimes she seemed to carry in her bosom a wounded eagle, and often she sat down to stroke it and to try to give it food from her hand, and as often it looked upon her with a proud, patient eye, and then her grandmother seemed to shake her roughly by the arm and bid her throw the silly bird away;–but then again the dream changed, and she saw a knight lie bleeding and dying in a lonely hollow,–his garments torn, his sword broken, and his face pale and faintly streaked with blood; and she kneeled by him, trying in vain to stanch a deadly wound in his side, while he said reproachfully, “Agnes, dear Agnes, why would you not save me?” and then she thought he kissed her hand with his cold dying lips; and she shivered and awoke,–to find that her hand was indeed held in that of the cavalier, whose eyes met her own when first she unclosed them, and the same voice that spoke in her dreams said, “Agnes, dear Agnes!”
For a moment she seemed stupefied and confounded, and sat passively regarding the knight, who kneeled at her feet and repeatedly kissed her hand, calling her his saint, his star, his life, and whatever other fair name poetry lends to love. All at once, however, her face flushed crimson red, she drew her hand quickly away, and, rising up, made a motion to retreat, saying, in a voice of alarm,–
“Oh, my Lord, this must not be! I am committing deadly sin to hear you. Please, please go! please leave a poor girl!”
“Agnes, what does this mean?” said the cavalier. “Only two days since, in this place, you promised to love me; and that promise has brought me from utter despair to love of life. Nay, since you told me that, I have been able to pray once more; the whole world seems changed for me: and now will you take it all away,–you, who are all I have on earth?”
“My Lord, I did not know then that I was sinning. Our dear Mother knows I said only what I thought was true and right, but I find it was a sin.”
“A sin _to love_, Agnes? Heaven must be full of sin, then; for there they do nothing else.”
“Oh, my Lord, I must not argue with you; I am forbidden to listen even for a moment. Please go. I will never forget you, Sir,–never forget to pray for you, and to love you as they love in heaven; but I am forbidden to speak with you. I fear I have sinned in hearing and saying even this much.”
“Who forbids you, Agnes? Who has the right to forbid your good, kind heart to love, where love is so deeply needed and so gratefully received?”
“My holy father, whom I am bound to obey as my soul’s director,” said Agnes; “he has forbidden me so much as to listen to a word, and yet I have listened to many. How could I help it?”
“Ever these priests!” said the cavalier, his brow darkening with an impatient frown; “wolves in sheep’s clothing!”
“Alas!” said Agnes, sorrowfully, “why will you”–
“Why will I what?” he said, facing suddenly toward her, and looking down with a fierce, scornful determination.
“Why will you be at war with the Holy Church? Why will you peril your eternal salvation?”
“Is there a Holy Church? Where is it? Would there were one! I am blind and cannot see it. Little Agnes, you promised to lead me; but you drop my hand in the darkness. Who will guide me, if _you_ will not?”
“My Lord, I am most unfit to be your guide. I am a poor girl, without any learning; but there is my uncle I spoke to you of. Oh, my Lord, if you only would go to him, he is wise and gentle both. I must go in now, my Lord,–indeed, I must. I must not sin further. I must do a heavy penance for having listened and spoken to you, after the holy father had forbidden me.”
“No, Agnes, you shall _not_ go in,” said the cavalier, suddenly stepping before her and placing himself across the doorway; “you _shall_ see me, and hear me too. I take the sin on myself; you cannot help it. How will you avoid me? Will you fly now down the path of the gorge? I will follow you,–I am desperate. I had but one comfort on earth, but one hope of heaven, and that through you; and you, cruel, are so ready to give me up at the first word of your priest!”
“God knows if I do it willingly,” said Agnes; “but I know it is best; for I feel I should love you too well, if I saw more of you. My Lord, you are strong and can compel me, but I beg you to leave me.”
“Dear Agnes, could you really feel it possible that you might love me too well?” said the cavalier, his whole manner changing. “Ah! could I carry you far away to my home in the mountains, far up in the beautiful blue mountains, where the air is so clear, and the weary, wrangling world lies so far below that one forgets it entirely, you should be my wife, my queen, my empress. You should lead me where you would; your word should be my law. I will go with you wherever you will,–to confession, to sacrament, to prayers, never so often; never will I rebel against your word; if you decree, I will bend my neck to king or priest; I will reconcile me with anybody or anything only for your sweet sake; you shall lead me all my life; and when we die, I ask only that you may lead me to our Mother’s throne in heaven, and pray her to tolerate me for your sake. Come, now, dear, is not even one unworthy soul worth saving?”
“My Lord, you have taught me how wise my holy father was in forbidding me to listen to you. He knew better than I how weak was my heart, and how I might be drawn on from step to step till—-My Lord, I must be no man’s wife. I follow the blessed Saint Agnes. May God give me grace to keep my vows without wavering!–for then I shall gain power to intercede for you and bring down blessings on your soul. Oh, never, never speak to me so again, my Lord!–you will make me very, _very_ unhappy. If there is any truth in your words, my Lord, if you really love me, you will go, and you will never try to speak to me again.”
“Never, Agnes? never? Think what you are saying!”
“Oh, I do think! I know it must be best,” said Agnes, much agitated; “for, if I should see you often and hear your voice, I should lose all my strength. I could never resist, and I should lose heaven for you and me too. Leave me, and I will never, never forget to pray for you; and go quickly too, for it is time for my grandmother to come home, and she would be so angry,–she would never believe I had not been doing wrong, and perhaps she would make me marry somebody that I do not wish to. She has threatened that many times; but I beg her to leave me free to go to my sweet home in the convent and my dear Mother Theresa.”
“They shall never marry you against your will, little Agnes, I pledge you my knightly word. I will protect you from that. Promise me, dear, that, if ever you be man’s wife, you will be mine. Only promise me that, and I will go.”
“Will you?” said Agnes, in an ecstasy of fear and apprehension, in which there mingled some strange troubled gleams of happiness. “Well, then, I will. Ah! I hope it is no sin.”
“Believe me, dearest, it is not,” said the knight. “Say it again,–say, that I may hear it,–say, ‘If ever I am man’s wife, I will be thine,’–say it, and I will go.”
“Well, then, my Lord, if ever I am man’s wife, I will be thine,” said Agnes. “But I will be no man’s wife. My heart and hand are promised elsewhere. Come, now, my Lord, your word must be kept.”
“Let me put this ring on your finger, lest you forget,” said the cavalier. “It was my mother’s ring, and never during her lifetime heard anything but prayers and hymns. It is saintly, and worthy of thee.”
“No, my Lord, I may not. Grandmother would inquire about it. I cannot keep it; but fear not my forgetting: I shall never forget you.”
“Will you ever want to see me, Agnes?”
“I hope not, since it is not best. But you do not go.”
“Well, then, farewell, my little wife! farewell, till I claim thee!” said the cavalier, as he kissed her hand, and vaulted over the wall.
“How strange that I _cannot_ make him understand!” said Agnes, when he was gone. “I must have sinned, I must have done wrong; but I have been trying all the while to do right. Why would he stay so and look at me so with those deep eyes? I was very hard with him,–very! I trembled for him, I was so severe; and yet it has not discouraged him enough. How strange that he would call me so, after all, when I explained to him I never could marry!–Must I tell all this to Father Francesco? How dreadful! How he looked at me before! How he trembled and turned away from me! What will he think now? Ah, me! why must I tell _him_? If I could only confess to my mother Theresa, that would be easier. We have a mother in heaven to hear us; why should we not have a mother on earth? Father Francesco frightens me so! His eyes burn me! They seem to burn into my soul, and he seems angry with me sometimes, and sometimes looks at me so strangely! Dear, blessed Mother,” she said, kneeling at the shrine, “help thy little child! I do not want to do wrong: I want to do right. Oh that I could come and live with thee!”
Poor Agnes! a new experience had opened in her heretofore tranquil life, and her day was one of conflict. Do what she would, the words that had been spoken to her in the morning would return to her mind, and sometimes she awoke with a shock of guilty surprise at finding she had been dreaming over what the cavalier said to her of living with him alone, in some clear, high, purple solitude of those beautiful mountains which she remembered as an enchanted dream of her childhood. Would he really always love her, then, always go with her to prayers and mass and sacrament, and be reconciled to the Church, and should she indeed have the joy of feeling that this noble soul was led back to heavenly peace through her? Was not this better than a barren life of hymns and prayers in a cold convent? Then the very voice that said these words, that voice of veiled strength and manly daring, that spoke with such a gentle pleading, and yet such an undertone of authority, as if he had a right to claim her for himself,–she seemed to feel the tones of that voice in every nerve;–and then the strange thrilling pleasure of thinking that he loved her so. Why should he, this strange, beautiful knight? Doubtless he had seen splendid high-born ladies,–he had seen even queens and princesses,–and what could he find to like in her, a poor little peasant? Nobody ever thought so much of her before, and he was so unhappy without her;–it was strange he should be; but he said so, and it must be true. After all, Father Francesco might be mistaken about his being wicked. On the whole, she felt sure he was mistaken, at least in part. Uncle Antonio did not seem to be so much shocked at what she told him; he knew the temptations of men better, perhaps, because he did not stay shut up in one convent, but travelled all about, preaching and teaching. If only he could see him, and talk with him, and make him a good Christian,–why, then, there would be no further need of her;–and Agnes was surprised to find what a dreadful, dreary blank appeared before her when she thought of this. Why should she wish him to remember her, since she never could be his?–and yet nothing seemed so dreadful as that he should forget her. So the poor little innocent fly beat and fluttered in the mazes of that enchanted web, where thousands of her frail sex have beat and fluttered before her.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MONK AND THE CAVALIER.
Father Antonio had been down through the streets of the old town of Sorrento, searching for the young stonecutter, and, finding him, had spent some time in enlightening him as to the details of the work he wished him to execute.
He found him not so easily kindled into devotional fervors as he had fondly imagined, nor could all his most devout exhortations produce one-quarter of the effect upon him that resulted from the discovery that it was the fair Agnes who originated the design and was interested in its execution. Then did the large black eyes of the youth kindle into something of sympathetic fervor, and he willingly promised to do his very best at the carving.
“I used to know the fair Agnes well, years ago,” he said, “but of late she will not even look at me; yet I worship her none the less. Who can help it that sees her? I don’t think she is so hard-hearted as she seems; but her grandmother and the priests won’t so much as allow her to lift up her eyes when one of us young fellows goes by. Twice these five years past have I seen her eyes, and then it was when I contrived to get near the holy water when there was a press round it of a saint’s day, and I reached some to her on my finger, and then she smiled upon me and thanked me. Those two smiles are all I have had to live on for all this time. Perhaps, if I work very well, she will give me another, and perhaps she will say, ‘Thank you, my good Pietro!’ as she used to, when I brought her birds’ eggs or helped her across the ravine, years ago.”
“Well, my brave boy, do your best,” said the monk, “and let the shrine be of the fairest white marble. I will be answerable for the expense; I will beg it of those who have substance.”
“So please you, holy father,” said Pietro, “I know of a spot, a little below here on the coast, where was a heathen temple in the old days; and one can dig therefrom long pieces of fair white marble, all covered with heathen images. I know not whether your Reverence would think them fit for Christian purposes.”
“So much the better, boy! so much the better!” said the monk, heartily. “Only let the marble be fine and white, and it is as good as converting a heathen any time to baptize it to Christian uses. A few strokes of the chisel will soon demolish their naked nymphs and other such rubbish, and we can carve holy virgins, robed from head to foot in all modesty, as becometh saints.”
“I will get my boat and go down this very afternoon,” said Pietro; “and, Sir, I hope I am not making too bold in asking you, when you see the fair Agnes, to present unto her this lily, in memorial of her old playfellow.”
“That I will, my boy! And now I think of it, she spoke kindly of you as one that had been a companion in her childhood, but said her grandmother would not allow her to speak to you now.”
“Ah, that is it!” said Pietro. “Old Elsie is a fierce old kite, with strong beak and long claws, and will not let the poor girl have any good of her youth. Some say she means to marry her to some rich old man, and some say she will shut her up in a convent, which I should say was a sore hurt and loss to the world. There are a plenty of women, whom nobody wants to look at, for that sort of work; and a beautiful face is a kind of psalm which makes one want to be good.”
“Well, well, my boy, work well and faithfully for the saints on this shrine, and I dare promise you many a smile from this fair maiden; for her heart is set upon the glory of God and his saints, and she will smile on any one who helps on the good work. I shall look in on you daily for a time, till I see the work well started.”
So saying, the old monk took his leave. Just as he was passing out of the house, some one brushed rapidly by him, going down the street. As he passed, the quick eye of the monk recognized the cavalier whom he had seen in the garden but a few evenings before. It was not a face and form easily forgotten, and the monk followed him at a little distance behind, resolving, if he saw him turn in anywhere, to follow and crave an audience of him.
Accordingly, as he saw the cavalier entering under the low arch that led to his hotel, he stepped up and addressed him with a gesture of benediction.
“God bless you, my son!”
“What would you with me, father?” said the cavalier, with a hasty and somewhat suspicious glance.
“I would that you would give me an audience of a few moments on some matters of importance,” said the monk, mildly.
The tones of his voice seemed to have excited some vague remembrance in the mind of the cavalier; for he eyed him narrowly, and seemed trying to recollect where he had seen him before. Suddenly a light appeared to flash upon his mind; for his whole manner became at once more cordial.
“My good father,” he said, “my poor lodging and leisure are at your service for any communication you may see fit to make.”
So saying, he led the way up the damp, ill-smelling stone staircase, and opened the door of the deserted room where we have seen him once before. Closing the door, and seating himself at the one rickety table which the room afforded, he motioned to the monk to be seated also; then taking off his plumed hat, he threw it negligently on the table beside him, and passing his white, finely formed hand through the black curls of his hair, he tossed them carelessly from his forehead, and, leaning his chin in the hollow of his hand, fixed his glittering eyes on the monk in a manner that seemed to demand his errand.
“My Lord,” said the monk, in those gentle, conciliating tones which were natural to him, “I would ask a little help of you in regard of a Christian undertaking which I have here in hand. The dear Lord hath put it into the heart of a pious young maid of this vicinity to erect a shrine to the honor of our Lady and her dear Son in this gorge of Sorrento, hard by. It is a gloomy place in the night, and hath been said to be haunted by evil spirits; and my fair niece, who is full of all holy thoughts, desired me to draw the plan for this shrine, and, so far as my poor skill may go, I have done so. See here, my Lord, are the drawings.”
The monk laid them down on the table, his pale cheek flushing with a faint glow of artistic enthusiasm and pride, as he explained to the young man the plan and drawings.
The cavalier listened courteously, but without much apparent interest, till the monk drew from his portfolio a paper and said,–
“This, my Lord, is my poor and feeble conception of the most sacred form of our Lady, which I am to paint for the centre of the shrine.”
He laid down the paper, and the cavalier, with a sudden exclamation, snatched it up, looking at it eagerly.
“It is she!” he said; “it is her very self!–the divine Agnes,–the lily flower,–the sweet star,–the only one among women!”
“I see you have recognized the likeness,” said the monk, blushing. “I know it hath been thought a practice of doubtful edification to represent holy things under the image of aught earthly; but when any mortal seems especially gifted with a heavenly spirit outshining in the face, it may be that our Lady chooses that person to reveal herself in.”
The cavalier was gazing so intently on the picture that he scarcely heard the apology of the monk; he held it up, and seemed to study it with a long admiring gaze.
“You have great skill with your pencil, my father,” he said; “one would not look for such things from under a monk’s hood.”
“I belong to the San Marco in Florence, of which you may have heard,” said Father Antonio, “and am an unworthy disciple of the traditions of the blessed Angelico, whose visions of heavenly things are ever before us; and no less am I a disciple of the renowned Savonarola, of whose fame all Italy hath heard before now.”
“Savonarola?” said the other, with eagerness,–“he that makes these vile miscreants that call themselves Pope and Cardinals tremble? All Italy, all Christendom, is groaning and stretching out the hand to him to free them from these abominations. My father, tell me of Savonarola: how goes he, and what success hath he?”
“My son, it is now many months since I left Florence; since which time I have been sojourning in by-places, repairing shrines and teaching the poor of the Lord’s flock, who are scattered and neglected by the idle shepherds, who think only to eat the flesh and warm themselves with the fleece of the sheep for whom the Good Shepherd gave his life. My duties have been humble and quiet; for it is not given to me to wield the sword of rebuke and controversy, like my great master.”
“And you have not heard, then,” said the cavalier, eagerly, “that they have excommunicated him?”
“I knew that was threatened,” said the monk, “but I did not think it possible that it could befall a man of such shining holiness of life, so signally and openly owned of God that the very gifts of the first Apostles seem revived in him.”
“Does not Satan always hate the Lord,” said the cavalier. “Alexander and his councils are possessed of the Devil, if ever men were,–and are sealed as his children by every abominable wickedness. The Devil sits in Christ’s seat, and hath stolen his signet-ring, to seal decrees against the Lord’s own followers. What are Christian men to do in such case?”
The monk sighed and looked troubled.
“It is hard to say,” he answered. “So much I know,–that before I left Florence our master wrote to the King of France touching the dreadful state of things at Rome, and tried to stir him up to call a general council of the Church. I much fear me this letter may have fallen into the hands of the Pope.”
“I tell you, father,” said the young man, starting up and laying his hand on his sword, “_we must fight_! It is the sword that must decide this matter! Was not the Holy Sepulchre saved from the Infidels by the sword?–and once more the sword must save the Holy City from worse infidels than the Turks. If such doings as these are allowed in the Holy City, another generation there will be no Christians left on earth. Alexander and Caesar Borgia and the Lady Lucrezia are enough to drive religion from the world. They make us long to go back to the traditions of our Roman fathers,–who were men of cleanly and honorable lives and of heroic deeds, scorning bribery and deceit. They honored God by noble lives, little as they knew of Him. But these men are a shame to the mothers that bore them.”
“You speak too truly, my son,” said the monk. “Alas! the creation groaneth and travaileth in pain with these things. Many a time and oft have I seen our master groaning and wrestling with God on this account. For it is to small purpose that we have gone through Italy preaching and stirring up the people to more holy lives, when from the very hill of Zion, the height of the sanctuary, come down these streams of pollution. It seems as if the time had come that the world could bear it no longer.”
“Well, if it come to the trial of the sword, as come it must,” said the cavalier, “say to your master that Agostino Sarelli has a band of one hundred tried men and an impregnable fastness in the mountains, where he may take refuge, and where they will gladly hear the Word of God from pure lips. They call us robbers,–us who have gone out from the assembly of robbers, that we might lead honest and cleanly lives. There is not one among us that hath not lost houses, lands, brothers, parents, children, or friends, through their treacherous cruelty. There be those whose wives and sisters have been forced into the Borgia harem; there be those whose children have been tortured before their eyes,–those who have seen the fairest and dearest slaughtered by these hell-hounds, who yet sit in the seat of the Lord and give decrees in the name of Christ. Is there a God? If there be, why is He silent?”
“Yea, my son, there is a God,” said the monk; “but His ways are not as ours. A thousand years in His sight are but as yesterday, as a watch in the night. He shall come, and shall not keep silence.”
“Perhaps you do not know, father,” said the young man, “that I, too, am excommunicated. I am excommunicated, because, Caesar Borgia having killed my oldest brother, and dishonored and slain my sister, and seized on all our possessions, and the Pope having protected and confirmed him therein, I declare the Pope to be not of God, but of the Devil. I will not submit to him, nor be ruled by him; and I and my fellows will make good our mountains against him and his crew with such right arms as the good Lord hath given us.”
“The Lord be with you, my son!” said the monk; “and the Lord bring His Church out of these deep waters! Surely, it is a lovely and beautiful Church, made dear and precious by innumerable saints and martyrs who have given their sweet lives up willingly for it; and it is full of records of righteousness, of prayers and alms and works of mercy that have made even the very dust of our Italy precious and holy. Why hast Thou abandoned this vine of Thy planting, O Lord? The boar out of the wood doth waste it; the wild beast of the field doth devour it. Return, we beseech Thee, and visit this vine of Thy planting!”
The monk clasped his hands and looked upward pleadingly, the tears running down his wasted cheeks. Ah, many such strivings and prayers in those days went up from silent hearts in obscure solitudes, that wrestled and groaned under that mighty burden which Luther at last received strength to heave from the heart of the Church.
“Then, father, you do admit that one may be banned by the Pope, and may utterly refuse and disown him, and yet be a Christian?”
“How can I otherwise?” said the monk. “Do I not see the greatest saint this age or any age has ever seen under the excommunication of the greatest sinner? Only, my son, let me warn you. Become not irreverent to the true Church, because of a false usurper. Reverence the sacraments, the hymns, the prayers all the more for this sad condition in which you stand. What teacher is more faithful in these respects than my master? Who hath more zeal for our blessed Lord Jesus, and a more living faith in Him? Who hath a more filial love and tenderness towards our blessed Mother? Who hath more reverent communion with all the saints than he? Truly, he sometimes seems to me to walk encompassed by all the armies of heaven,–such a power goes forth in his words, and such a holiness in his life.”
“Ah,” said Agostino, “would I had such a confessor! The sacraments might once more have power for me, and I might cleanse my soul from unbelief.”
“Dear son,” said the monk, “accept a most unworthy, but sincere follower of this holy prophet, who yearns for thy salvation. Let me have the happiness of granting to thee the sacraments of the Church, which, doubtless, are thine by right as one of the flock of the Lord Jesus. Come to me some day this week in confession, and thereafter thou shalt receive the Lord within thee, and be once more united to Him.”
“My good father,” said the young man, grasping his hand, and much affected, “I will come. Your words have done me good; but I must think more of them. I will come soon; but these things cannot be done without pondering; it will take some time to bring my heart into charity with all men.”
The monk rose up to depart, and began to gather up his drawings.
“For this matter, father,” said the cavalier, throwing several gold pieces upon the table, “take these, and as many more as you need ask for your good work. I would willingly pay any sum,” he added, while a faint blush rose to his cheek, “if you would give me a copy of this. Gold would be nothing in comparison with it.”
“My son,” said the monk, smiling, “would it be to thee an image of an earthly or a heavenly love?”
“Of both, father,” said the young man. “For that dear face has been more to me than prayer or hymn; it has been even as a sacrament to me, and through it I know not what of holy and heavenly influences have come to me.”
“Said I not well,” said the monk, exulting, “that there were those on whom our Mother shed such grace that their very beauty led heavenward? Such are they whom the artist looks for, when he would adorn a shrine where the faithful shall worship. Well, my son, I must use my poor art for you; and as for gold, we of our convent take it not except for the adorning of holy things, such as this shrine.”
“How soon shall it be done?” said the young man, eagerly.
“Patience, patience, my Lord! Rome was not built in a day, and our art must work by slow touches; but I will do my best. But wherefore, my Lord, cherish this image?”
“Father, are you of near kin to this maid?”
“I am her mother’s only brother.”
“Then I say to you, as the nearest of her male kin, that I seek this maid in pure and honorable marriage; and she hath given me her promise, that, if ever she be wife of mortal man, she will be mine.”
“But she looks not to be wife of any man,” said the monk; “so, at least, I have heard her say; though her grandmother would fain marry her to a husband of her choosing. ‘Tis a wilful woman, is my sister Elsie, and a worldly,–not easy to persuade, and impossible to drive.”
“And she hath chosen for this fair angel some base peasant churl who will have no sense of her exceeding loveliness? By the saints, if it come to this, I will carry her away with the strong arm!”
“That is not to be apprehended just at present. Sister Elsie is dotingly fond of the girl, which hath slept in her bosom since infancy.”
“And why should I not demand her in marriage of your sister?” said the young man.
“My Lord, you are an excommunicated man, and she would have horror of you. It is impossible; it would not be to edification to make the common people judges in such matters. It is safest to let their faith rest undisturbed, and that they be not taught to despise ecclesiastical censures. This could not be explained to Elsie; she would drive you from her doors with her distaff, and you would scarce wish to put your sword against it. Besides, my Lord, if you were not excommunicated, you are of noble blood, and this alone would be a fatal objection with my sister, who hath sworn on the holy cross that Agnes shall never love one of your race.”
“What is the cause of this hatred?”
“Some foul wrong which a noble did her mother,” said the monk; “for Agnes is of gentle blood on her father’s side.”
“I might have known it,” said the cavalier to himself; “her words and ways are unlike anything in her class.–Father,” he added, touching his sword, “we soldiers are fond of cutting all Gordian knots, whether of love or religion, with this. The sword, father, is the best theologian, the best casuist. The sword rights wrongs and punishes evil-doers, and some day the sword may cut the way out of this embarrass also.”
“Gently, my son! gently!” said the monk; “nothing is lost by patience. See how long it takes the good Lord to make a fair flower out of a little seed; and He does all quietly, without bluster. Wait on Him a little in peacefulness and prayer, and see what He will do for thee.”
“Perhaps you are right, my father,” said the cavalier, cordially. “Your counsels have done me good, and I shall seek them further. But do not let them terrify my poor Agnes with dreadful stories of the excommunication that hath befallen me. The dear saint is breaking her good little heart for my sins, and her confessor evidently hath forbidden her to speak to me or look at me. If her heart were left to itself, it would fly to me like a little tame bird, and I would cherish it forever; but now she sees sin in every innocent, womanly thought,–poor little dear child-angel that she is!”
“Her confessor is a Franciscan,” said the monk, who, good as he was, could not escape entirely from the ruling prejudice of his order,–“and, from what I know of him, I should think might be unskilful in what pertaineth to the nursing of so delicate a lamb. It is not every one to whom is given the gift of rightly directing souls.”
“I’d like to carry her off from him!” said the cavalier, between his teeth. “I will, too, if he is not careful!” Then he added aloud, “Father, Agnes is mine,–mine by the right of the truest worship and devotion that man could ever pay to woman,–mine because she loves me. For I know she loves me; I know it far better than she knows it herself, the dear innocent child! and I will not have her torn from me to waste her life in a lonely, barren convent, or to be the wife of a stolid peasant. I am a man of my word, and I will vindicate my right to her in the face of God and man.”
“Well, well, my son, as I said before, patience,–one thing at a time. Let us say our prayers and sleep to-night, to begin with, and to-morrow will bring us fresh counsel.”
“Well, my father, you will be for me in this matter?” said the young man.
“My son, I wish you all happiness; and if this be for your best good and that of my dear niece, I wish it. But, as I said, there must be time and patience. The way must be made clear. I will see how the case stands; and you may be sure, when I can in good conscience, I will befriend you.”
“Thank you, my father, thank you!” said the young man, bending his knee to receive the monk’s parting benediction.
“It seems to me not best,” said the monk, turning once more, as he was leaving the threshold, “that you should come to me at present where I am,–it would only raise a storm that I could not allay; and so great would be the power of the forces they might bring to bear on the child, that her little heart might break and the saints claim her too soon.”
“Well, then, father, come hither to me to-morrow at this same hour, if I be not too unworthy of your pastoral care.”
“I shall be too happy, my son,” said the monk. “So be it.”
And he turned from the door just as the bell of the cathedral struck the Ave Maria, and all in the street bowed in the evening act of worship.
* * * * *
A NIGHT IN A WHERRY.
As the summer vacation drew near, and the closed shutters and comparative quiet of the west end made one for a moment believe in the phrase, “Nobody in town,” I had, after some thought, determined to resist the many temptations of a walking tour, and, instead of trusting to shoe-leather, try what virtue lay in a stout pair of oars, and make a trip by water instead of land.
But first, in what direction? The careful search of a huge chart and some knowledge of the Northern and Eastern seaboard led me to mark out a course along the shore of Massachusetts and among the beautiful islands which stud the coast of Maine.
The cruise was at that time a novel one, and many were the doubts expressed as to the seaworthiness of my boat. She was twenty-two feet long, nine inches high, and thirty-two wide,–canvas-covered, except about four feet of the middle section, with sufficient space to stow two days’ food and water, and to carry all the baggage necessary for a week’s voyage. The oars were made especially strong for the occasion, of spruce, ten feet three inches in length, and nicely balanced. In addition to provision and clothes, a gun, a couple of hundred feet of stout line, and a boat-hook were stowed in the bottom.
The day fixed for departure rose clear. An east wind tempered the heat of the sun; but the tide, which by starting earlier would have been in my favor, was dead low, and would turn before I could round the northern point of the city. After all my traps had been put on board, seating myself carefully, the oars were handed in, and a few strokes sent me ahead of the raft. The tide was low, dead low, in the fullest meaning of the word; the sea-weed slowly circled and eddied round, floating neither up nor down; while the unrippled surface of the Back Bay reflected the city and bridges so perfectly that it was hard to tell where reality ended and seeming began. Passing beneath the Cambridge draw, I turned the boat’s head for the next one, and kept close to the northern point of the city. Seven bridges must be passed ere the bay opened before me. The boat had just cleared the last, when, remembering that no matches had been provided, and not knowing where a landing might be made, I decided to lay in a stock before putting to sea. With a narrow shave past the Chelsea ferry-boat, I backed water, and came alongside a raft of ship-timber seasoning near one of the docks, tenanted by a score or more of semi-amphibious urchins, who were running races over the half-sunken logs, and taking all sizes of duckings, from the slight spatter to the complete souse. Engaging the services of one of these water-rats, by a judicious promise of a larger sum as payment than the one intrusted to him for the purchase, I had soon a sufficient supply, and, resting the boat-hook on one of the logs, pushed off. East Boston ferry was quickly passed, my boat lifting and falling gracefully in the swell of the steamer, and I began to feel the flow of the rising tide setting steadily against her. Governor’s Island showed rather hazy three miles off; Apple Island, tufted with trees, looked in the shimmering light like one of the palm-crowned Atolls of the Pacific; and, just discernible through the foggy air, Deer Island and the Hospital loomed up. A straight course would have saved at least two miles and avoided the strength of the tide; but, though my boat drew only three inches, and there was water enough and to spare on the flats, the sea-weed, growing thick as grain in the harvest-field, and half floating where the depth was three or four feet, collecting round the sharp bow as a long tress of hay gathers round a tooth of a rake, and burying the oar-blade, impeded all progress, and obliged me to pull almost double the distance against the rapid tide-set of the circuitous channels. I worked through the bends and reaches, till the deep, strong current of Shirley Gut was to be stemmed, where the tide runs with great force,–nearly fifty feet in depth of pure green water, eddying and whirling round, all sorts of ripples and small whirlpools dimpling its surface,–with the rushing sound which deep and swift water makes against its banks. A few moments’ tough pulling brought me through, and, once outside Deer Island, nothing lay between me and Nahant. The well-known beach and the sandy headland called “Grover” stood out at the edge of Lynn Bay, and the rise and fall of the white surf, too distant to be heard, marked the long reef stretching seaward. After dining, and allowing the boat to drift while rearranging my provisions, I took my place, and, getting the proper bearings astern, bent on the oars.
To those who have rowed only clumsy country-boats, with their awkward row-locks and wretched oars, slimy, dirty, and leaking, trailing behind tags and streamers of pond-weed, or who have only experimented with that most uncivilized style of digging up the water called paddling, the real pleasure of rowing is unknown.
Grover’s Head went astern; Nahant grew more and more distinct. There was but little wind, and the boat went rocking over the long roll of the huge waves, cutting smoothly through their wrinkled surface. In sight to the south and the east were the Brewsters, the outer light, and the sails of vessels of all sizes and shapes which were slowly making their way into the harbor. The afternoon was cloudy; but now and then a brilliant ray of sunshine would fall on islands and vessels, lighting them up for an instant, and then closing over again. My route took me about three miles outside Nahant and in full view of the end of the promontory. There was now a clear course, except that occasionally a huge patch of floating seaweed would suddenly deaden and then stop the boat’s headway, compelling me to back water and clear the bow of the long strands. It was at first very startling to be thus checked when running at full speed; the sensation being that some one has grasped the boat and is pushing her back. With the resistance come the rush and ripple, as the sharp stem plunges through the floating mass of weed. The wind, which had been light and baffling all the forenoon, after I had passed Nahant, and was abreast of Egg Rock with its little whitewashed light-house, freshened, and, veering to the southeast, blew across my track. The vessels began to lean to its force, and the waves to rise. I was then outside Swampscott Bay, about eight miles from land. The shore was plainly visible, with the buildings dotted along like specks of white, and the outlying reefs showing by the sparkle of the foam upon them. Phillips’s Beach, and the island called by the romantic name of Ram, were now opposite. Half-Way Rock, so named from being half way from Boston to Gloucester, was the point towards which I had been pulling for two hours, and it could now for the first time be seen. It came in sight as the boat was rising on a huge wave which broke under her and went rushing shoreward, roaring savagely, with long streaks of foam down its green back. The elevation of the eyes above the water was so small, that, when my boat sank away in the trough of the sea, nothing could be seen above the top of the advancing wave. I had, therefore, to watch my chance, and when she rose, get my bearings.
Half-Way Rock is a water-washed mass of porphyritic stone, the top about twenty feet above high tide, shaped much like a pyramid, and a few years since was capped with a conical granite beacon, strongly built and riveted down, but which had been two-thirds washed away by the tremendous surf of the easterly storms. The rock stands at the outer edge of a long sand-shoal, and is east of Salem. To the northward, a dim blue line on the horizon, lay Cape Ann, by my reckoning, about eighteen miles distant. I kept on pulling over the swell, which was growing larger, not quite in the trough of the sea,–but when a particularly large wave came easing up a little, so as to take the boat more on the bow, the motion was not a pleasant one. It was a sort of half rolling, half pitching,–very unlike the even, smooth slide of the early part of the afternoon. The rock soon became plainer, and at last I rested on my oars to watch the waves as they broke on its furrowed face. The great rollers, which became higher as the water shoaled toward its foot, fell upon it bursting into foam, and jetting the spray high above the half-broken beacon. It was a beautiful sight as the spray broke under the shadow of the seaward face and was thrown up into the sunlight.
Not heeding whither I was drifting, a nasal hail suddenly roused me to the fact that there were other navigators in those seas. “Bo-oat ahoy! Whar’ ye bo-ound?” Giving a stroke with the larboard oar, I saw, hove to, a fishing-schooner,–her whole crew of skipper, three men, and a boy standing at the gangway and looking with all their ten eyes to make out, if possible, what strange kind of sea-monster had turned up. My boat could not have seemed very seaworthy, only seven inches above water, disappearing in the trough of every sea that passed, then lifting its long and slender bow of brilliant crimson above the white foam, and the occupant apparently on a level with the water. The hail was repeated. The answer, “Cape Ann,” did not satisfy them; and the question, “Wa-ant any he-elp?” was next bawled out. My only reply was by a shake of the head; and settling back into my place, I gave way on the oars, and left my fishing friends still looking and evidently very uncertain whether it were not better to make an attempt at a rescue.
I now kept on about a mile farther toward the Cape, but found that the time before sundown was too short to reach it. About seven miles distant, perched on a cliff overlooking the sea, was the hospitable mansion of Mr. T., where I was sure of a welcome and a good berth for my boat, and which snug harbor could just be reached by nightfall. The way lay straight across Gooseberry Shoal, on the outside of which stands Half-Way Rock. The sea for my small boat was very heavy; but, having full confidence in her buoyancy, I drove straight on. Upon the shoal the color of the water changed from deep to light green; the sea was shorter, much higher, and broke quicker; the waves washed over the stern of the boat, burying it two feet or more, and coming almost into the seat-room. Then she would lift herself free, and ride high and clear on the backs of the great rollers, which would break and crush down under her, sending her well ahead. The sunlight, falling from behind, shone through the body of each wave, making it of the most transparent brilliant emerald, and tinting the foam with every hue of the rainbow. Pulling with the sea is very easy work, if the boat be long enough to keep from broaching to,–that is, swinging sideways and rolling over, a performance which dories are apt to indulge in. There are on the shoal several reefs, whose black ridges are just awash at high tide; past these the inner edge of the water deepens and the sea becomes smoother. About an hour brought me inside what is called by the dwellers thereabout the “outer island,”–its gray-red rocks tufted here and there with patches of coarse grass, and weather-worn and seamed by surf and storm, with the usual accompaniment of mackerel-gulls screaming and soaring aloft at the approach of a stranger. When within about a quarter of a mile of the shore, I backed round to come upon the beach stern foremost through the surf. If the surf be high, coming ashore is a delicate operation; for, should the boat be turned broadside on, she would be thrown over upon the oarsman, and both washed up the beach in a flood of sandy salt-water; so it requires some little steadiness to sit back to the coming wave, hear the increasing roar, and feel the sudden lift and toss shoreward which each roller gives you as it plunges down upon the sand. Just before coming to the outer edge of the surf, I was seen by my friends, who hastened down the cliff-road to receive me. Resting on my oars, I waited, till, hearing a large roller coming, whose voice gained in strength and depth as it drew nearer to the shore, I looked behind. The crest was already beginning to curl, as it dashed under the boat and swept me in-shore, breaking, as the stern passed, the top of the sea, and carrying me in, full speed, with the flood of foam and spray. After three or four quick strokes I jerked the oars out of the row-locks, jumped into the water knee-deep, and wading dragged the boat backwards as far as she would float, when the receding surf let her gently down upon the sand, and before the next wave the servant had taken the bow and I the stern and lifted her high and dry upon the beach. And so my afternoon’s pull of thirty miles was safely and successfully finished, my boat having proved herself thoroughly seaworthy, though my friends could hardly believe that such a craft could be safely trusted. After removing the stores and arranging other matters, we took her up, placed her quietly upon the grass, and left her for the night.
The next morning was rather hazy. About nine o’clock I took my way to the beach, and began to prepare for departure. Mr. T.’s house lies several miles to the south and west of Cape Ann. Eastern Point, on the Cape, was therefore the place to be steered for in a straight line,–perhaps six miles distant. Two miles on, the white light-house on the Point can be plainly seen. The tide was rising, and the two lines of ripple met across the sand-bar which connects a little island with the beach. My boat was now carried down from her night’s resting-place and set at the edge of the water. The oars being placed in readiness, two of us waded out with her till she would just float, when, quickly and cautiously stepping in, I met the advancing wave in time to ride over it. The line of surf is hard to cross, unless one can catch the roller before it begins to crest. Once outside the line, I turned and pulled swiftly across the bar, over which the tide had risen a few inches, and, bidding good-morning to my hospitable entertainers, set off for Eastern Point. There was considerable swell, though not much wind. The shore being familiar to me, I was rowing along leisurely, recognizing one well-known cliff after another, as they came in sight, and was between Kettle Island and the main, when a slight dampness in the air caused me to turn my face to the eastward, and I saw coming in from the sea, preceded by an advance guard of feathery mist, a dense bank of fog. It swept in, blotting out sea, shore, everything but the view a few feet around the boat. Fortunately knowing the place, and guided by the sound of the surf, I soon neared the wet, brown rocks at the inner edge of Kettle Island. Backing up into a little cove between two huge sea-weedy boulders I waited, hoping that a turn in the wind might drive the mist seaward and allow me to keep on. There I sat a full hour, watching the star-fish, and the crabs scrambling about among the loose strands of the olive-green and deep purple rock-weed, which looked almost black in the shadow, while here and there, as it waved to and fro with the sea, disclosing patches of yellow sand. Very beautiful was this natural aquarium; but time was flying, and “The Shoals” were more than thirty miles distant. The mist began to drive in long rifts, and a gleam of sunshine came out, but only for a moment. I took advantage of it at once, and pushed out from port.
The opposite shore of the cove, in the mouth of which the island lies, was dimly discernible, and the dense foliage of the willows surrounding the fishermen’s houses loomed up in the distance, while at the extreme end of the Point the sea broke heavily on the long protruding reef which slanted eastward. I made rapidly for the Point, and reached the outside line of rollers just in time; for the fog, which had been drifting backwards and forwards and torn in long rents, now closed over again, shutting down darker than ever. It was with the utmost difficulty that I could make out the faint gray line of cliff and surf. On the whole, however, it appeared best to keep on and feel my way along the coast, navigating rather by sound than by sight. The shore grows higher as you go northward towards Gloucester harbor, and is, if possible, more rugged and broken than to the south. The chief danger was from sunken rocks, which every wave submerged three or four feet, and which in the hollow of the sea were wholly above water. I came upon one very suddenly, as the wave was swelling above it, and the rock-weed afloat on its sunken head looked, for the instant, like the hair of a drowning person. My boat went directly over it, and the next moment its black crest rose in the trough of the wave. One such chance of wreck was enough, and so I kept farther out, losing sight almost entirely of the cliffs. The sun, meanwhile, was pouring down an intense heat, making the fog luminous, but not rendering the coast any more visible. I knew that before me, somewhere, lay the reef of Norman’s Woe. The huge rock on the inside of the reef, separated from the shore by a narrow strait, I judged must be right ahead, but not knowing how near, I kept on, cautiously looking behind, every few strokes, and began to think I must have passed it in the fog, when suddenly, as if it had stepped in the way, it rose before me, its top lost in the mist, and with the sullen drip and splash of the sea on its almost perpendicular sides. I had to back water with some force, and, skirting the reef, stood on till fairly outside,–when, turning shoreward again, I went on to the edge of the surf.
Resuming my former style of navigation, almost twisting my head off to keep a sharp look-out for rocks and reefs, I came to what seemed to be the mouth of Gloucester harbor, and there stopped for a moment. There was no use in pulling up one side of the harbor and down the other, four miles, while in a straight line to the Point it was only one and a half. I had almost decided on rowing the longer distance, however, when I heard a bell ringing somewhere in the direction of Eastern Point. It was striking in measured time, and the sound came across the water with great distinctness. It puzzled me a little, till I remembered there was a fog-bell as well as a light-house on the Point. Hoping that the tolling would continue, I aimed for the bell as straight as possible. With a couple of strokes the shore vanished, and nothing could be seen but fog. Rowing where there is plenty of light and yet nothing visible is embarrassing business. One must rely wholly upon the sense of hearing, as eyes are of no use in such a case. Fearing that the bell might cease before I got across, I bent with a will upon the oars and went racing through the fog. The sound grew more and more distinct with each peal, when, suddenly as the apparition of Norman’s Woe, right before me sprang up the black dripping hull of a fishing-schooner, becalmed, and rocking with the roll of the sea; one turn and I shot beneath her bows, passed her, and was lost in the fog before the fat darkey who was lazily fishing by the bowsprit could shift from one side of the deck to the other to keep me in sight. The creaking of blocks and the heavy flap of wet sails warned me of the neighborhood of other vessels. In a short time I could hear the rusty grating of the pivot as the bell turned; then my boat glided close under the rock on which the light-house stands. At that moment the fog opened half across the bay, showing clearly my track with more than a dozen vessels lying close by it. The lifting was but for a moment; back rolled the cloud and all was invisible again. I rounded the Point, however, and went ahead, pulling along the eastern coast of the Cape in the fog.
It was hard work, this groping through the mist, and made me wish for the Janus power of gazing out of the back of my head to save the trouble of continually turning. The look-out was now necessarily more vigilant than when on the lower shore, as I was entirely ignorant of the coast and could not see twenty feet before me. The sea was calm, save the ever-swinging ground-swell, which does not show its power till it meets with some resistance; and though without crest, the surf on the rocks was very high. There was nothing to deaden the force of the sea, and it came on in huge green masses, sliding bodily up on the rocks with a sound like distant thunder, making one feel that a boat would be shivered to splinters, should she fall into its power. Once the breakers nearly caught me broadside on, as I had begun to pull along the shore, compelling me to keep outside the line of surf and thus follow it till the rocky headland loomed up on the other side of the bay, then past the reefs again till another bay curved inward,–nothing to be seen but fog, dim white surf, and dimmer rocks. Once, when passing an outlying point, I saw, for a moment, a couple of men fishing; they shouted something which the surf rendered inaudible; then rock and fishers melted away into the mist. After rowing in this manner for about an hour, the water shoaled, the fog lightened, and an island appeared to the east, with the sea rippling over the sand-bar which joined it to the shore. I pulled on and found the depth but a few inches, just enough to cross without touching. The island was very picturesque, and the end towards the west was broken into ledges, on which were perched eight or ten small weather-beaten houses. Half floating by the beach under the cliff, or drawn up on it, were a number of dories, while a troop of little children were wading, splashing, and shouting in the shallow water on the bar. They stopped when they saw me, clustered together watching as I passed, and when I was fairly over set up a shout and resumed their play. I rowed on until two in the afternoon, when the fog became thinner, and finding myself between two rocky headlands, in “Milk Island Strait,” as I conjectured, and it being dinner-time, I went ashore in a little inlet, took out my provisions, and dined.
The mist, meanwhile, had disappeared, leaving the sky perfectly clear. It was nearly three when dinner was finished. The Isles of Shoals were full twenty-one miles distant, and if they were to be reached before night, there was no time to be lost. So I backed out of the inlet, and, getting the bearings, aimed for a point on the horizon where I supposed the islands to be, and pulled without stopping for three hours. The wind was fresh from the southeast, the sea high, and there was not the least trace of the fog. The hills of Cape Ann, as I went on, changed from green to blue, and the color grew fainter in the distance. The land, which was ten miles inside to the westward, had now come nearer, and the dark line of the woods was just visible.
It was time to see the Shoals. I turned, but the heavy sea tossed the boat about so that it was not at all certain whether they were or were not in sight. The only objects in view were a few small white clouds about the horizon and the distant sails of a schooner; so again bringing the Cape astern, I rowed on till sunset. The hills had then almost sunk below the water, and it was full time to see White Island and the light which would be kindled in a few moments. The boat swung into the trough of the sea, and when on the top of a wave I looked up to the northward. The sight was not a pleasant one for an evening pull: the sky was covered with the dark clouds of a gathering storm rapidly rolling up, and my old friend the fog was again working in, as the wind had shifted to the east and north. In the distance nothing could be seen but black sky and blacker water, while nearer crept on the line of mist, shutting out all prospect. The Shoals were doubtless somewhere in the darkness, but just where I could not determine. Something must be done at once before the fog reached me. Calling a council of war, I debated. There was no certainty of hitting the Shoals, and if I did come on them in any other than the exact spot, my boat would be beaten into chips in five minutes on some of the reefs which abound in that region. It would be entirely dark when I reached the islands, and the wind and sea were rising; it looked very much like the beginning of an easterly gale. So the council concluded to let the Shoals go for that night, and stay out at sea till morning. Should the gale come on, the boat could be beached on the coast to the westward; and if the wind lulled, as it probably would for a few hours on the next day, there was time enough to get ashore. I was from eight to ten miles at sea, and six miles east and south of the Shoals, as nearly as I could reckon. It was necessary to get more to the westward to clear the islands in the night, when the tide set in. Rowing for half an hour brought me far enough in to stop. The fog was again all around me, and the thick clouds made it so dark that it was impossible to see twice my boat’s length. Resting on my oars for a moment, I began to stow a few things more closely in the seat-room, when a huge sea broke just ahead, and, striking the bow a little on one side, whirled the boat round and rolled her half over, pitching the crest into the seat-room and filling it with water. I caught her with the oars barely in time to save her, and turned her again head to the sea, keeping a watchful eye to windward. Then baling out the seat-room, I took some crackers and a draught of water, and turned the boat stern foremost to the sea.
It was, by guess, about nine o’clock; and there was no light except the phosphorescence of the water. When a wave came rushing through the fog, its black body invisible in the darkness, the crest glanced like quicksilver and broke into ten thousand coruscations as the boat balanced on the top,–pouring a flood of glittering water past the stern and over the canvas cover, and dripping from the sides in sparkling drops. Wherever a foam-bubble burst or oar dipped, it was like opening a silver-lined casket. The boat left a luminous track, which rose with the waves as they swelled behind her, and disappeared in the night. It required a strong hand to keep her in her course; had she broached to, I should have been rolled out and obliged to swim for it. A quick eye was necessary to watch, lest, in spite of the oars, she might swing round and turn over. The utter darkness and the storm so threatening at sundown had come in full force. It was raining and blowing heavily, and the strong wind driving the rain and mist in sheets across the water deepened the hoarse roar of the sea. I was very wet, and not so fresh, after my forty miles or more of hard, steady pulling, as in the morning; I was also very sleepy, so that it was not easy to keep even one eye open to look out for passing coasters,–the chief danger. My craft was so slender they could have gone over her in the darkness and storm and never have known it. The tide was still setting out, the sea was very high, and there was not a ray of light from White Island. My best course seemed to be to continue pulling slowly and keep the boat stern to the sea till after midnight, when the tide would change and the wind would lull for a short time,–unless it should prove to be the beginning of the gale, and not its forerunner, as I had thought. The hours passed slowly. There was much to do in heading straight and in easing up when the great waves loomed through the fog. Midnight would decide whether at day-dawn I must pull for it, and run, if possible, the line of breakers on Rye Beach, with rather less than an even chance of coming out right-end uppermost, or whether the wind and sea would go down so that I could slip quietly ashore before the gale returned.
Midnight came at last; the rain ceased and the wind began to shift to the south, and I knew that now the probability of going ashore decently was good. The tide having turned, the wind moderated, and the sea, though still high, was longer and did not break so quickly. Still farther to the south veered the wind, and a little after three, as well as I could tell by my watch, the fog thinned, so that, looking up, I caught the faint glimmer of a star; then another peeped through the cloud. The mist broke in several places, then drifted over, then broke again; and, chancing to look seaward, a light flared into full blaze for a moment, swung smaller, then vanished. There was no mistaking it,–White Island light at last!
Backing with one oar, pulling with the other, I rose on the top of a great sea, and caught the light again just as it began to come into sight. Off I went, at a splendid pace, driving along in the trough and over the crest of the waves, steering by a star behind me, for about ten minutes; then light and stars sank back into the mist, and all was black again. I waited a few moments, and again the light shone out; but meantime the boat’s bow had veered several points. Turning toward it, I was off full speed this time for about five minutes, before the fog swept in again. Then another rest on my oars. The fog drifted out and drifted in backwards and forwards, now thinning here, then thinning there; but no other glimpse of the light did I get that night. For a moment, a shadowy-looking schooner glided slowly along a few hundred feet ahead of me, and directly across my track,–then melted out into the darkness. After waiting some time longer, finding no chance of another glimpse of the light, I secured my oars, and, as the wind and sea had decreased, got ready to turn in. The seat-room was only four feet long,–two feet short of my length; and the washboard, which was three inches in height, surrounded the seat-room and obliged me to use the boat-sponge as a pillow. But trusting to chance that my craft would come across nothing either fixed or floating, I retreated at once to the land of Nod. What the weather was during the rest of that night, or what might have been seen, I cannot say; for I did not wake till my watch told seven in the morning. Then my eyes opened to, or rather in, as choice a specimen of mist as had yet been met with.
It was perfectly calm; the sea was undulating slightly, and not a breath of wind stirring. I sat up and looked around. Nothing visible but misty atmosphere and leaden-colored water; the phosphorescent sparkle had quite gone out of it. I listened, and with the low dull roar of the surf on Rye Beach on one side came the break of the waves on the Shoals, but so faint that it was doubtful whether it were really audible, when another most unmistakable sound assured me Landlord Laighton was blowing his breakfast-horn on Appledore Island. The familiar notes of that very peculiar performance came clearly through the fog. Had he kept on blowing twenty minutes longer, he would have had another guest; but he stopped before ten strokes could be taken. So, reluctantly turning my boat for the other shore, I pulled for the sound of the surf, which increased as I approached it. The beach was still several miles distant, when the short, quick rap of oars came to my ears. I knew at once the fisherman’s stroke, and, supposing that he had put out from the shore and did not mean to stay out long, I gave chase at once, and pulled till he stopped rowing and was apparently near. Then I hailed, and after a twenty minutes’ hunt caught a glimpse of his dory and immediately introduced myself. He was fishing with two lines, one on each side of the boat, and was about returning when I came up. He had never before beheld such a craft as mine, and did not know what to make of her as she came through the fog. He soon, however, drew in his lines, and, acting as pilot, set out for the beach, from which we were then three miles distant. After various twistings and circlings through the mist, the row of sandy hillocks which backs Rye Beach appeared, and in a few moments we pulled through the surf and landed, thus ending one part of my summer’s cruise.
* * * * *
A STORY OF TO-DAY.
PART I.
Let me tell you a story of To-Day,–very homely and narrow in its scope and aim. Not of the To-Day whose significance in the history of humanity only those shall read who will live when you and I are dead. Let us bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, while the nations of the earth stand far off pitying. I have no word of this To-Day to speak. I write from the border of the battle-field, and I find in it no theme for shallow argument or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of death has fallen on us; it chills the very heaven. No child laughs in my face as I pass down the street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten to pray; only in the bitterness of endurance they say “in the morning, ‘Would God it were even!’ and in the evening, ‘Would God it were morning!'” Neither I nor you have the prophet’s vision to see the age as its meaning stands written before God. Those who shall live when we are dead may tell their children, perhaps, how, out of anguish and darkness such as the world seldom has borne, the enduring morning evolved of the true world and the true man. It is not clear to us. Hands wet with a brother’s blood for the Right, a slavery of intolerance, the hackneyed cant of men or the bloodthirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to us of the great To-Morrow of content and right that holds the world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if God lives, it is there. The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we have deafened down as ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of the hour, renews the quiet promise of its coming in simple, humble things. Let us go down and look for it. There is no need that we should feebly vaunt and madden ourselves over our self-seen lights, whatever they may be, forgetting what broken shadows they are of eternal truths in that calm where He sits and with His quiet hand controls us.
Patriotism and Chivalry are powers in the tranquil, unlimited lives to come, as well as here, I know; but there are less partial truths, higher hierarchies who serve the God-man, that do not speak to us in bayonets and victories,–Humility, Mercy, and Love. Let us not quite neglect them, however humble the voices they use may be. Why, the very low glow of the fire upon the hearth tells me something of recompense coming in the hereafter,–Christmas-days, and heartsome warmth; in these bare hills trampled down by armed men, the yellow clay is quick with pulsing fibres, hints of the great heart of life and love throbbing within; God’s slanted sunlight would show me, in these sullen smoke-clouds from the camp, walls of amethyst and jasper, outer ramparts of the Promised Land. Do not call us traitors, then, who choose to be cool and silent through the fever of the hour,–who choose to search in common things for auguries of the hopeful, helpful calm to come, finding even in these poor sweet-peas, thrusting their tendrils through the brown mould, a deeper, more healthful lesson for the eye and soul than warring evils or truths. Do not call me a traitor, if I dare weakly to hint that there are yet other characters besides that of Patriot in which a man may appear creditably in the great masquerade, and not blush when it is over; or if I tell you a story of To-Day, in which there shall be none of the red glare of war,–only those homelier, subtler lights which we have overlooked. If it prove to you that the sun of old times still shines, and the God of old times still lives, is not that enough?
My story is very crude and homely, as I said,–only a rough sketch of one or two of those people whom you see every day, and call “dregs” sometimes,–a dull, plain bit of prose, such as you might pick for yourself out of any of these warehouses or back-streets. I expect you to call it stale and plebeian, for I know the glimpses of life it pleases you best to find here: New England idyls delicately tinted; passion-veined hearts, cut bare for curious eyes; prophetic utterances, concrete and clear; or some word of pathos or fun from the old friends who have indenizened themselves in everybody’s home. You want something, in fact, to lift you out of this crowded, tobacco-stained commonplace, to kindle and chafe and glow in you. I want you to dig into this commonplace, this vulgar American life, and see what is in it. Sometimes I think it has a new and awful significance that we do not see.
Your ears are openest to the war-trumpet now. Ha! that is spirit-stirring!–that wakes up the old Revolutionary blood! Your manlier nature had been smothered under drudgery, the poor daily necessity for bread and butter. I want you to go down into this common, every-day drudgery, and consider if there might not be in it also a great warfare. Not a serfish war; not altogether ignoble, though even its only end may appear to be your daily food. A great warfare, I think, with a history as old as the world, and not without its pathos. It has its slain. Men and women, lean-jawed, crippled in the slow, silent battle, are in your alleys, sit beside you at your table; its martyrs sleep under every green hill-side.
You must fight in it; money will buy you no discharge from that war. There is room in it, believe me, whether your post be on a judge’s bench, or over a wash-tub, for heroism, for knightly honor, for purer triumph than his who falls foremost in the breach. Your enemy, Self, goes with you from the cradle to the coffin; it is a hand-to-hand struggle all the sad, slow way, fought in solitude,–a battle that began with the first heart-beat, and whose victory will come only when the drops ooze out, and sudden halt in the veins,–a victory, if you can gain it, that will drift you not a little way upon the coasts of the wider, stronger range of being, beyond death.
Let me roughly outline for you one or two lives that I have known, and how they conquered or were worsted in the fight. Very common lives, I know,–such as are swarming in yonder market-place; yet I dare to call them voices of God,–all!
My reason for choosing this story to tell you is simple enough.
An old book, which I happened to find to-day, recalled it. It was a ledger, iron-bound, with the name of the firm on the outside,–Knowles & Co. You may have heard of the firm: they were large woollen manufacturers: supplied the home market in Indiana for several years. This ledger, you see by the writing, has been kept by a woman. That is not unusual in Western trading towns, especially in factories where the operatives are chiefly women. In such establishments, women can fill every post successfully, but that of overseer: they are too hard with the hands for that.
The writing here is curious: concise, square, not flowing,–very legible, however, exactly suited to its purpose. People who profess to read character in chirography would decipher but little from these cramped, quiet lines. Only this, probably: that the woman, whoever she was, had not the usual fancy of her sex for dramatizing her soul in her writing, her dress, her face,–kept it locked up instead, intact; that her words and looks, like her writing, were most likely simple, mere absorbents by which she drew what she needed of the outer world to her, not flaunting helps to fling herself, or the tragedy or comedy that lay within, before careless passers-by. The first page has the date, in red letters, _October 2, 1860_, largely and clearly written. I am sure the woman’s hand trembled a little when she took up the pen; but there is no sign of it here; for it was a new, desperate adventure to her, and she was young, with no faith in herself. She did not look desperate, at all,–a quiet, dark girl, coarsely dressed in brown.
There was not much light in the office where she sat; for the factory was in one of the close by-streets of the town, and the office they gave her was only a small square closet in the seventh story. It had but one window, which overlooked a back-yard full of dyeing vats. The sunlight that did contrive to struggle in obliquely through the dusty panes and cobwebs of the window had a sleepy odor of copperas latent in it. You smelt it when you stirred. The manager, Pike, who brought her up, had laid the day-books and this ledger open on the desk for her. As soon as he was gone, she shut the door, listening until his heavy boots had thumped creaking down the rickety ladder leading to the frame-rooms. Then she climbed up on the high office-stool (climbed, I said, for she was a little, little thing) and went to work, opening the books, and copying from one to the other as steadily, monotonously, as if she had been used to it all her life. Here are the first pages: see how sharp the angles are of the blue and black lines, how even the long columns: one would not think, that, as the steel pen traced them out, it seemed to be lining out her life, narrow and black. If any such morbid fancy were in the girl’s head, there was no tear to betray it. The sordid, hard figures seemed to her the types of the years coming, but she wrote them down unflinchingly: perhaps life had nothing better for her, so she did not care. She finished soon: they had given her only an hour or two’s work for the first day. She closed the books, wiped the pens in a quaint, mechanical fashion, then got down and examined her new home.
It was soon understood. There were the walls with their broken plaster, showing the laths underneath, with here and there, over them, sketches with burnt coal, showing that her predecessor had been an artist in his way,–his name, P. Teagarden, emblazoned on the ceiling with the smoke of a candle; heaps of hanks of yarn in the dusty corners; a half-used broom; other heaps of yarn on the old toppling desk covered with dust; a raisin-box, with P. Teagarden done on the lid in bas-relief, half full of ends of cigars, a pack of cards, and a rotten apple. That was all, except an impalpable sense of dust and worn-outness pervading the whole. One thing more, odd enough there: a wire cage, hung on the wall, and in it a miserable pecking chicken, peering dolefully with suspicious eyes out at her, and then down at the mouldy bit of bread on the floor of his cage,–left there, I suppose, by the departed Teagarden. That was all inside. She looked out of the window. In it, as if set in a square black frame, was the dead brick wall, and the opposite roof, with a cat sitting on the scuttle. Going closer, two or three feet of sky appeared. It looked as if it smelt of copperas, and she drew suddenly back.
She sat down, waiting until it was time to go; quietly taking the dull picture into her slow, unrevealing eyes; a sluggish, hackneyed weariness creeping into her brain; a curious feeling, that all her life before had been a silly dream, and this dust, these desks and ledgers, were real, –all that was real. It was her birthday; she was twenty. As she happened to remember that, another fancy floated up before her, oddly life-like: of the old seat she made for herself under the currant-bushes at home when she was a child, and the plans she laid for herself when she should be a woman, sitting there,–how she would dig down into the middle of the world, and find the kingdom of the griffins, or would go after Mercy and Christiana in their pilgrimage. It was only a little while ago since these things were more alive to her than anything else in the world. The seat was under the currant-bushes still. Very little time ago; but she was a woman now,–and, look here! A chance ray of sunlight slanted in, falling barely on the dust, the hot heaps of wool, waking a stronger smell of copperas; the chicken saw it, and began to chirp a weak, dismal joy, more sorrowful than tears. She went to the cage, and put her finger in for it to peck at. Standing there, if the life coming rose up before her in that hard, vacant blare of sunlight, she looked at it with the same still, waiting eyes, that told nothing.
The door opened at last, and a man came in,–Dr. Knowles, the principal owner of the factory. He nodded shortly to her, and, going to the desk, turned over the books, peering suspiciously at her work. An old man, overgrown, looking like a huge misshapen mass of flesh, as he stood erect, facing her.
“You can go now,” he said, gruffly. “To-morrow you must wait for the bell to ring, and go–with the rest of the hands.”
A curious smile flickered over her face like a shadow; but she said nothing. He waited a moment.
“So!” he growled, “the Howth blood does not blush to go down into the slime of the gutter? is sufficient to itself?”
A cool, attentive motion,–that was all. Then she stooped to tie her sandals. The old man watched her, irritated. She had been used to the keen scrutiny of his eyes since she was a baby, so was cool under it always. The face watching her was one that repelled most men: dominant, restless, flushing into red gusts of passion, a small, intolerant eye, half hidden in folds of yellow fat,–the eye of a man who would give to his master (whether God or Satan) the last drop of his own blood, and exact the same of other men.
She had tied her bonnet and fastened her shawl, and stood ready to go.
“Is that all you want?” he demanded. “Are you waiting to hear that your work is well done? Women go through life as babies learn to walk,–a mouthful of pap every step, only they take it in praise or love. Pap is better. Which do you want? Praise, I fancy.”
“Neither,” she said, quietly brushing her shawl. “The work is well done, I know.”
The old man’s eye glittered for an instant, satisfied; then he turned to the books. He thought she had gone, but, hearing a slight clicking sound, turned round. She was taking the chicken out of the cage.
“Let it alone!” he broke out, sharply. “Where are you going with it?”
“Home,” she said, with a queer, quizzical face. “Let it smell the green fields, Doctor. Ledgers and copperas are not good food for a chicken’s soul, or body either.”
“Let it alone!” he growled. “You take it for a type of yourself, eh? It has another work to do than to grow fat and sleep about the barnyard.”
She opened the cage.
“I think I will take it.”
“No,” he said, quietly. “It has a master here. Not P. Teagarden. Why, Margaret,” pushing his stubby finger between the tin bars, “do you think the God you believe in would have sent it here without a work to do?”
She looked up; there was a curious tremor in his flabby face, a shadow in his rough voice.
“If it dies here, its life won’t have been lost. Nothing is lost. Let it alone.”
“Not lost?” she said, slowly, refastening the cage. “Only I think”—-
“What, child?”
She glanced furtively at him.
“It’s a hard, scraping world where such a thing as that has work to do!”
He vouchsafed no answer. She waited to see his lip curl bitterly, and then, amused, went down the stairs. She had paid him for his sneer.
The steps were but a long ladder set in the wall, not the great staircase used by the hands: that was on the other side of the factory. It was a huge, unwieldy building, such as crowd the suburbs of trading towns. This one went round the four sides of a square, with the yard for the vats in the middle. The ladders and passages she passed down were on the inside, narrow and dimly lighted: she had to grope her way sometimes. The floors shook constantly with the incessant thud of the great looms that filled each story, like heavy, monotonous thunder. It deafened her, made her dizzy, as she went down slowly. It was no short walk to reach the lower hall, but she was down at last. Doors opened from it into the ground-floor ware-rooms; glancing in, she saw vast, dingy recesses of boxes piled up to the dark ceilings. There was a crowd of porters and draymen cracking their whips, and lounging on the trucks by the door, waiting for loads, talking politics, and smoking. The smell of tobacco, copperas, and burning logwood was heavy to clamminess here. She stopped, uncertain. One of the porters, a short, sickly man, who stood aloof from the rest, pushed open a door for her with his staff. Margaret had a quick memory for faces; she thought she had seen this one before, as she passed,–a dark face, sullen, heavy-lipped, the hair cut convict-fashion, close to the head. She thought, too, one of the men muttered “jail-bird,” jeering him for his forwardness. “Load for Clinton! Western Railroad!” sung out a sharp voice behind her, and, as she went into the street, a train of cars rushed into the hall to be loaded, and men swarmed out of every corner,–red-faced and pale, whiskey-bloated and heavy-brained, Irish, Dutch, black, with souls half asleep somewhere, and the destiny of a nation in their grasp,–hands, like herself, going through the slow, heavy work, for, as Pike the manager would have told you, “three dollars a week,–good wages these tight times.” For nothing more? Some other meaning may have fallen from their faces into this girl’s quiet intuition in the instant’s glance,–cheerfuller, remoter aims, hidden in the most sensual face,–homeliest home-scenes, low climbing ambitions, some delirium of pleasure to come,–whiskey, if nothing better: aims in life like yours, differing in degree, needing only to make them the same—-did you say what?
She had reached the street now,–a back-street, a crooked sort of lane rather, running between endless piles of ware-houses. She hurried down it to gain the suburbs, for she lived out in the country. It was a long, tiresome walk through the outskirts of the town, where the dwelling-houses were,–long rows of two-story bricks drabbled with soot-stains. It was two years since she had been in the town. Remembering this, and the reason why she had shunned it, she quickened her pace, her face growing stiller than before. One might have fancied her a slave putting on a mask, fearing to meet her master. The town, being unfamiliar to her, struck her newly. She saw the expression on its face better. It was a large trading city, compactly built, shut in by hills. It had an anxious, harassed look, like a speculator concluding a keen bargain; the very dwelling-houses smelt of trade, having shops in the lower stories; in the outskirts, where there are cottages in other cities, there were mills here; the trees, which some deluded dreamer had planted on the flat pavements, had all grown up into abrupt Lombardy poplars, knowing their best policy was to keep out of the way; the boys, playing marbles under them, played sharply “for keeps”; the bony old dray-horses, plodding through the dusty crowds, had speculative eyes, that measured their oats at night with a “you-don’t-cheat-me” look. Even the churches had not the grave repose of the old brown house yonder in the hills, where the few field-people–Arians, Calvinists, Churchmen– gathered every Sunday, and air and sunshine and God’s charity made the day holy. These churches lifted their hard stone faces insolently, registering their yearly alms in the morning journals. To be sure, the back-seats were free for the poor; but the emblazoned crimson of the windows, the carving of the arches, the very purity of the preacher’s style, said plainly that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a man in a red _warm-us_ to enter the kingdom of heaven through that gate.
Nature itself had turned her back on the town: the river turned aside, and but half a river crept reluctant by; the hills were but bare banks of yellow clay. There was a cinder-road leading through these. Margaret climbed it slowly. The low town-hills, as I said, were bare, covered at their bases with dingy stubble-fields. In the sides bordering the road gaped the black mouths of the coal-pits that burrowed under the hills, under the town. Trade everywhere,–on the earth and under it. No wonder the girl called it a hard, scraping world. But when the road had crept through these hills, it suddenly shook off the cinders, and turned into the brown mould of the meadows,–turned its back on trade and the smoky town, and speedily left it out of sight contemptuously, never looking back once. This was the country now in earnest.
Margaret slackened her step, drawing long breaths of the fresh cold air. Far behind her, panting and puffing along, came a black, burly figure, Dr. Knowles. She had seen him behind her all the way, but they did not speak. Between the two there lay that repellant resemblance which made them like close relations,–closer when they were silent. You know such people? When you speak to them, the little sharp points clash. Yet they are the people whom you surely know you will meet in the life beyond death, “saved” or not. The Doctor came slowly along the quiet country-road, watching the woman’s figure going as slowly before him. He had a curious interest in the girl,–a secret reason for the interest,