"The wise for cure onexercisedepend."
"The wise for cure onexercisedepend."
Consumptives are advised to ride on horseback, to make long journeys in the saddle. This is doubtless one of the most valuable exercises. There are numerous well-authenticated instances of cures by its means, even in the advanced stages of the disease. But many persons cannot avail themselves of its advantages. In our cities, not one phthisical invalid in ten, especially among women, can command facilities for daily horseback-riding, still less can they take long journeys.
Hunting, fishing, and mountain-air are advised. But how can many who reside in towns and cities, and who most need muscular training, secure such recreations?
Walking is very generally prescribed, and is doubtless the most available of the exercises named. But in the case of women, the present mode of dress seriously interferes with the ease and physiological benefits of this exercise; and few would exchange the long skirt for the short one with pantalets or Turkish trousers. And yet this change is indispensable to the best results.
While I would encourage all out-door exercises and amusements, it is evident that exercises which can be introduced into every house, which may be practised by persons of both sexes, all ages and degrees of strength, and which possess such fascination as shall make them permanently attractive, are greatly to be desired, to meet wants not otherwise supplied.
Many exercises have been advised with reference to general health and strength. I submit a series possessing peculiar virtues for the consumptive. To him all exercises are not equally profitable. Ten movements of a sort adapted to his special needs are worth a hundred not so adapted. He has a narrow chest and drooping shoulders. This distortion results in displacement of the lungs. And yet he may have legs and hips comparatively vigorous. Ten movements concentrated upon those muscles whose deficiency permits the drooping of the shoulderswill be more valuable than a hundred for the legs. There are several hundred muscles in the human body. In every case of consumption certain groups of these muscles are defective. Restoration of the lost symmetry calls for those exercises which will develop the defective groups. Prescribing a walk for a patient whose legs are already vigorous, but whose arms and shoulders are contracted and weak, is like prescribing a medicine because itis a medicine, without regard to the nature of the malady.
A blister applied to the chest relieves pain within. It accomplishes this by drawing the blood to the surface, and thus subtracting from the congestion at the point of disease. If the blister were applied to the foot or leg, it would not sensibly relieve the congestion in the chest.
If, instead of applying a blister, we use exercise as the remedial measure, and by drawing blood into the muscles we would relieve the congestion within, the importance of subtracting from the vessels which bear the blood to the diseased part is not less than in the case of the blister. For the relief or cure of disease in any of the chest organs a few well-directed movements of those muscles about the chest which lack circulation will accomplish more than hours of walking.
The intelligent physician, in prescribing muscular training, will not say, simply and generally, "I advise you to exercise," but he will indicate the particular exercises applicable to the case. He will first thoughtfully ask, "What group of muscles is defective?" When he has answered this question accurately, he is prepared for a second,—"What exercises will bring into direct training the defective group?" When these points are settled, he can direct the training wisely. To recommend horseback-riding—good as it is—forallconsumptives, is not a whit more discriminating than to prescribe a particular variety of food for all invalids. The medical man who has a general formula for a certain class of patients is hardly more thoughtful than the vender of the "all-healing ointment."
Little or no attention has been given to the vital subject of exercise as a curative means. In many cases treated by Ling's methods, when skilfully applied, the results have been so marvellous that medical men who had not studied the philosophy of the Movement Cure have attributed the rapid improvement to Animal Magnetism. They could not conceive that muscular exercise alone could produce such wonderful results.
Symmetry of body and mind is vital to health. Its loss in the mind leads not unfrequently to insanity,—its loss in the body to numberless maladies. The great defect in our system of education lies just here. There is no discrimination between the members of a class, part of which needs one kind of culture to produce symmetry and health, while another part needs quite another. The gymnasium, where all perform the same exercises, may be charged with the same radical defect. In a school for thorough mental or physical training, pupils must be classified and trained with reference to their individual needs. This principle underlies the successful treatment of consumption. He who would contribute to its cure by exercise—the most efficient of all possible remedies—must not say to his patients simply, "Exercise, exercise, exercise," but he must distinctly mark out those exercises which are precisely adapted to the case of each.
As an additional reason for discrimination in prescribing physical exercises for consumptives, it may be mentioned that in almost every patient belonging to this class there are complications with other diseases each of which requires consideration.
Most consumptive invalids are indisposed to exercise, and particularly indisposedto employ their arms. Many attempt training of the shoulders and chest, and abandon it in disgust. But if in the systematic performance of the exercises other persons are interested, the patient cannot withdraw. Besides, those exercises in which others participate have social attractions, to which consumptives, as a class, are peculiarly susceptible.
For example, a consumptive young lady has brothers who assist her in certain prescribed exercises. These are to be executed twice a day, at hours when the brothers are at home. There is an affectionate interest in the group with reference to the pleasant duty. It is not forgotten. Suppose the brother is the patient, the sisters or mother will act as assistants. In every family such exercises are sure of the proper attention. I need scarcely say, that, if the patient undertake to exercise alone, with dumb-bells or some similar means, it will soon grow tiresome, and be abandoned.
Moreover, it is a matter of no small moment that other members of the family—who are not unlikely to be predisposed to the same malady—will thus secure a series of profitable exercises. I must add my conviction, that by no other variety of training can the efforts be so accurately directed to the muscles whose weakness permits the distortion of chest which is often the exciting cause of the malady.
With a good-sized room, and open windows, the air may be pure, while the exercise will prove the occasion of a thorough ventilation of the house.
I am indebted to Friedrich Robert Nitzsche of Dresden for the drawings of the accompanying cuts. His works are invaluable.
Fig. 1.Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Assistant, standing behind the patient, grasps his hands. Patient draws up the hands, as shown in the dotted lines, assistant resisting. Patient forces his hands back again to the first position, assistant resisting. Repeat five times.
In this, as in the other exercises advised,the resistance should be adapted to the patient's strength.
Fig. 2.Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Assistant, standing behind the patient, who is seated, grasps his uplifted hands. Patient draws down the hands, as shown by the dotted lines, assistant resisting. Patient forces the hands back to the first position, assistant resisting. Repeat three times.
Fig. 3.Fig. 3.
Fig. 3 shows an improvement on Fig. 2 for those cases in which, either from the strength of the patient or the weakness of the assistant, it might prove more agreeable to employ two assistants.
Fig. 4.Fig. 4.
Fig. 5.Fig. 5.
Figs. 4 and 5 represent an exercise which hardly needs description. The patient should exert the positive force in both directions, the assistants resisting.
Fig. 6.Fig. 6.
Fig. 7.Fig. 7.
Fig. 6 or 7 may be used next in order.
Fig. 8Fig. 8
Fig. 9Fig. 9
Fig. 8 shows an exercise valuable in the treatment of drooping shoulders. When the patient has raised his arms, as in the dotted lines, he may bring them back to the horizontal in front, without the interference of the assistant.
Fig. 9 illustrates an exercise which may be used twenty or thirty times, if managed with gentleness.
I cannot here undertake to say how often these exercises should be employed, nor in what cases; they are given merely as suggestive. A complete series of "Mutual Help Exercises," adapted to the treatment of the consumptive, includes a large number, many of which are not only valuable, but cannot fail to deeply interest all concerned.
If to the Mutual Help Exercises it is desired to add those in which the health-seeker can work alone, I would suggest the new exercises with the wooden dumbbell, wand, and club, and the one hundred and seven exercises with Schreber's Pangymnastikon.
Consumption—genuine tuberculous consumption—can be cured, even in the stage of softening or abscess. Dr. J. Hughes Bennett, Professor Calkins, Dr. Parrish, Dr. Carswell, Laennec, Professor Lee, Dr. Abernethy, Sir James Clarke, and fifty other distinguished authors, declare their faith in its curability.
In not less than a thousandpost-mortemexaminations, the lungs have exhibited scars, concretions, or other indubitable evidences of recovery from genuine consumption. I have cured many cases with exercise and other hygienic agents.
The heavy apple-treesAre shaking off their snow in breezy play;The frail anemonesHave fallen, fading, from the lap of May;Lanterned with white the chestnut-branches wave,And all the woods are gay.Come, children, come away,And we will make a flower-bed to-dayAbout our dear one's grave!Oh, if we could but tell the wild-flowers whereLies his dear head, gloried with sunny hair,So noble and so fair,How would they haste to bloom and weep aboveThe heart that loved them with so fond a love!Come, children, come!From the sweet, ferny meads,Wherein he used to walk in days of yore,—From the green path that leads,Where the long dusty road seems wearisome,Up to his father's door,—Gather the tender shootsOf budding promise, fragrance, and delight,Fresh-sprouting violet-roots,That, when the first June nightShall draw about his bed its fragrant gloom,This grave-mound may be bathed in balmy bloom,With loving memories eloquently dumb.Come, children, come!No more, alas, alas!O fairest blossoms which the wild bee sips,Along your pleasant places shall he pass,Ere from your freshened leaves the night-dew drips,Culling your blooms in handfuls from the grass,Pressing your tender faces to his lips,—Ah, never any more!Yet I recall, a little while beforeHe passed behind this mystery of death,How, bringing home great handfuls, won awayFrom the dark wood-haunts where he loved to strayUntil his dewy garments were repleteWith wafts of odorous breath,With sods all mossy-sweetAnd all awake and purple with new bloomHe filled and crowded every window-seat,Until each pleasant roomWas fragrant with your mystical perfume:Now vainly do I watch beside the door,—Ah, never any more!Alas, how could I knowThat I so soon should strewYour blossoms, warm with tears, above his head?That your wet roots would clingAbout the hand that wears his bridal ring,When he who placed it there lay cold and dead?O violets, live and grow,That, ere the bright days go,This turf may be with rarest beauty crowned!—Nay, shrink not from my touch,For these are careful and most loving hands,Fearing and hoping much,Which thus disturb your fair and wondering bands,But to transfer them to more holy ground.Dear violets, bloom and live!To this beloved tombYour beauty and your bloomAre the most precious tribute we can give.And, oh, if your sweet soul of odor goes,Blended with the clear trills of singing-birds,Farther than my poor speechOr wailing cry can reachInto that realm of shadowy reposeToward which I blindly yearn,Praying in silence, "Oh, my love, return!"Yet dare not try to touch with groping words,So far it seems, and sweet,—That realm wherein I may not hope to beUntil my wayworn feetPut off the shoes of this mortality,—Oh, let your incense-breath,Laden with all this weight of love and woeFor him who went away so long ago,Bridge for me Time and Death!Blow, violets, blow!And tell him in your blooming, o'er and o'er,How in the places which he used to knowHis name is still breathed fondly as of yore;Tell him how often, in the dear old waysWhere bloomed our yesterdays,The radiant days which I shall find no more,My lingering footsteps shakeThe dew-drops from your leaves, for his dear sake.Wake, blue eyes, wake!The earliest breath of JuneBlows the white tassels from the cherry-boughs,And in the deepest shadow of the noonThe mild-eyed oxen browse.How tranquilly he sleeps,He, whom so bitterly we mourn as dead!—Although the new month sweepsThe over-blossomed spring-flower from his bed,Giving fresh buds therefor,—Although beside him still Love waits and weeps,And yonder goes the war.Wake, violets, wake!Open your blue eyes wide!Watch faithfully his lonely pillow here;Let no rude foot-fall breakYour slender stems, nor crush your leaves aside;See that no harm comes nearThe dust to me so dear;—O violets, hear!The clouds hang low and heavy with warm rain,—And when I come again,Lo, with your blossoms his loved grave shall beBlue as the marvellous seaLaving the borders of his Italy!
The heavy apple-treesAre shaking off their snow in breezy play;The frail anemonesHave fallen, fading, from the lap of May;Lanterned with white the chestnut-branches wave,And all the woods are gay.Come, children, come away,And we will make a flower-bed to-dayAbout our dear one's grave!Oh, if we could but tell the wild-flowers whereLies his dear head, gloried with sunny hair,So noble and so fair,How would they haste to bloom and weep aboveThe heart that loved them with so fond a love!
Come, children, come!From the sweet, ferny meads,Wherein he used to walk in days of yore,—From the green path that leads,Where the long dusty road seems wearisome,Up to his father's door,—Gather the tender shootsOf budding promise, fragrance, and delight,Fresh-sprouting violet-roots,That, when the first June nightShall draw about his bed its fragrant gloom,This grave-mound may be bathed in balmy bloom,With loving memories eloquently dumb.Come, children, come!
No more, alas, alas!O fairest blossoms which the wild bee sips,Along your pleasant places shall he pass,Ere from your freshened leaves the night-dew drips,Culling your blooms in handfuls from the grass,Pressing your tender faces to his lips,—Ah, never any more!Yet I recall, a little while beforeHe passed behind this mystery of death,How, bringing home great handfuls, won awayFrom the dark wood-haunts where he loved to strayUntil his dewy garments were repleteWith wafts of odorous breath,With sods all mossy-sweetAnd all awake and purple with new bloomHe filled and crowded every window-seat,Until each pleasant roomWas fragrant with your mystical perfume:Now vainly do I watch beside the door,—Ah, never any more!
Alas, how could I knowThat I so soon should strewYour blossoms, warm with tears, above his head?That your wet roots would clingAbout the hand that wears his bridal ring,When he who placed it there lay cold and dead?
O violets, live and grow,That, ere the bright days go,This turf may be with rarest beauty crowned!—Nay, shrink not from my touch,For these are careful and most loving hands,Fearing and hoping much,Which thus disturb your fair and wondering bands,But to transfer them to more holy ground.
Dear violets, bloom and live!To this beloved tombYour beauty and your bloomAre the most precious tribute we can give.And, oh, if your sweet soul of odor goes,Blended with the clear trills of singing-birds,Farther than my poor speechOr wailing cry can reachInto that realm of shadowy reposeToward which I blindly yearn,Praying in silence, "Oh, my love, return!"Yet dare not try to touch with groping words,So far it seems, and sweet,—That realm wherein I may not hope to beUntil my wayworn feetPut off the shoes of this mortality,—Oh, let your incense-breath,Laden with all this weight of love and woeFor him who went away so long ago,Bridge for me Time and Death!
Blow, violets, blow!And tell him in your blooming, o'er and o'er,How in the places which he used to knowHis name is still breathed fondly as of yore;Tell him how often, in the dear old waysWhere bloomed our yesterdays,The radiant days which I shall find no more,My lingering footsteps shakeThe dew-drops from your leaves, for his dear sake.Wake, blue eyes, wake!
The earliest breath of JuneBlows the white tassels from the cherry-boughs,And in the deepest shadow of the noonThe mild-eyed oxen browse.How tranquilly he sleeps,He, whom so bitterly we mourn as dead!—Although the new month sweepsThe over-blossomed spring-flower from his bed,Giving fresh buds therefor,—Although beside him still Love waits and weeps,And yonder goes the war.
Wake, violets, wake!Open your blue eyes wide!Watch faithfully his lonely pillow here;Let no rude foot-fall breakYour slender stems, nor crush your leaves aside;See that no harm comes nearThe dust to me so dear;—O violets, hear!The clouds hang low and heavy with warm rain,—And when I come again,Lo, with your blossoms his loved grave shall beBlue as the marvellous seaLaving the borders of his Italy!
You do not like this Lizzy Gurney? I know. There are a dozen healthy girls in that country-town whose histories would have been pleasanter to write and to read. I chose hers purposely. I chose a bilious, morbid woman to talk to you of, because American women are bilious and morbid. Men all cling desperately to the old book-type of women, delicate, sunny, helpless. I confess to even a man's hungry partiality for them,—these roses of humanity, their genus and species emphasized by but the faintest differing pungency of temper and common sense,—mere crumpling of the rose-leaves. But how many of them do you meet on the street?
McKinstry (with most men) kept this ideal in his brain, and bestowed it on every woman in a street-car possessed of soft eyes, gaiter-boots, and a blush. Dr. Blecker (with all women) saw through that mask, and knew them as they are. He knew there was no more prurient sign of the age of groping and essay in which we live than the unrest and diseased brains of its women.
Lizzy Gurney was but like nine-tenths of the unmarried young girls of the Northern States; there was some inactive, dumb power within,—she called it genius; there was a consciousness that with a man's body she would have been more of a man than her brother; there was, stronger than all, the unconquerablecraving of Nature for a husband's and child's love,—she, powerless. So it found vent in this girl, as in the others, in perpetual self-analyzing, in an hysteric clinging to one creed after another,—in embracing the chimera of the Woman's-Rights prophets with her brain, and thrusting it aside with her heart: after a while, to lapse all into a marriage, made in heaven or hell, as the case might be.
Dr. Blecker used no delicate euphuism in talking of women, which, maybe, was as well. He knew, that, more than men, though quietly, they are facing the problem of their lives, their unused powers, their sham marriages, and speak of these things to their own souls with strong, plebeian words. So much his Northern education opened his eyes to see, but he stopped there; if he had been a clear-sighted truth-seeker, he would have known that some day the problem would be solved, and by no foul Free Love-ism. But Paul was enough Southerner by birth to shrink from all inquiry or disquiet in women. If there were any problem of life for them, Grey Gurney held it solved in her nature: that was all he cared to know. Did she?
After the regiment was gone, she went into the old work,—cooking, sewing, nursing Pen. Very little of her brain or heart was needed for that; the heavy surplus lay dormant. No matter; God knew. Jesus waited thirty years in a carpenter's shop before He began His work,—to teachusto wait: hardest lesson of all. Grey understood that well. Not only at night or morning, but through the day, at the machine, or singing songs to Pen, she used to tell her story over and over to this Jesus, her Elder Brother, as she loved to call Him:Hewould not be tired of hearing it, how happy she was,—she knew. She did not often speak of the war to Him,—knowing how stupid she was, near-sighted, apt to be prejudiced,—afraid to pray for one side or the other, there was such bitter wrong on both; she knew it all lay in His hand, though; so she was dumb, only saying, "Heknows." But for herself, out of the need of her woman's nature, she used to say, "I can do more than I do here. Give me room, Lord. Let me be Paul Blecker's wife, for I love him." She blushed, when even praying that silently in her heart. Then she used to sing gayer songs, and have a good romp with the children and Pen in the evenings, being so sure it would all come right. How, nobody could see: who could keep this house up, with the ten hungry mouths, if she were gone? But she only changed the song to an earnest hearty hymn, with the thought of that. It would come at last:Heknew.
Was the problem solved in her?
It being so sure a thing to her that this was one day to be, she began in a shy way to prepare for it,—after the day's work was done to the last stitch, taking from the bottom of her work-basket certain pieces of muslin that fitted herself, and sewing on them in the quiet of her own room. She did not sing when she worked at these; her cheeks burned, though, and there was a happy shining in her eyes bright enough for tears.
Sitting, sewing there, when that July night came, she had no prescience that her trial day was at hand: for to stoop-shouldered women over machines, as well as to Job, a trial day does come, when Satan obtains leave in heaven to work his will on them, straining the fibre they are made of, that God may see what work they are fit for in the lives to come. This was the way it came to the girl. That morning, when she was stretching out some muslin to bleach in a light summer shower, there was a skirmish down yonder in among some of the low coal-hills along the Shenandoah, and half a dozen men were brought wounded in to Harper's Ferry. There was no hospital there then; one of the half-burnt Government offices was used for the purpose; and as the surgeon at that post, Dr. Blecker, was one of the wounded, young Dr. Nott came over from the next camp to see to them. His first cases: he had opened an office only for six months, out in Portage, Ohio, before he got into the army; in those six months he played chess principally, anddid the poetry for the weekly paper,—his tastes being innocent: the war has been a grand outlet into a career for doctors and chaplains of that calibre. Dr. Nott, coming into the low arsenal-room that night, stopped to brush the clay off his trousers before going his rounds, and to whisk the attar of rose from his handkerchief. "No fever? All wounds?" of the orderly who carried the flaring tallow candle.
All wounds: few of them, but those desperate. Even the vapid eyes of Nott grew grave before he was through, and he ceased tipping on his toes, and tittering: he was a good-hearted fellow, at bottom, growing silent altogether when he came to operate on the surgeon, who had waited until the last. "The ball is out, Dr. Blecker,"—looking up at length, but not meeting the wounded man's eye.
"I know. Cross the bandage now. You'll send a despatch for me, Nott? There is some one I want to see, before——I'll hold out two or three days?"
"Pooh, pooh! Not so bad as that. We'll hope at least, Dr. Blecker, not so bad as that. I've paper and pencil here." So Dr. Blecker sent the despatch.
It was a hot July night, soon after the seven days' slaughter at Richmond. You remember how the air for weeks after that lay torpid with a suppressed heat,—as though the very earth held her breath to hear the sharp tidings of death. It never was fully told aloud,—whispered only,—and even that hoarse whisper soon died out. We were growing used to the taste of blood by that time, in North and South, like bulls in a Spanish arena. This night, and in one or two following it, the ashy sultriness overhead was hint of some latent storm. It is one of the vats of the world where storms are brewed,—Harper's Ferry: stagnant mountain-air shut in by circling peaks whose edges cut into the sky; the sun looking straight down with a torrid compelling eye into the water all the day long, until at evening it goes wearily up to him in a pale sigh of mist, lingering to rest and say good-bye among the wooded sides of the hills. Our hill-storms are generally bred there: it was not without a certain meaning that the political cloud took its rise in this town, whose thunder has shaken the continent with its bruit.
Paul Blecker lay by a window: he could see the tempest gathering for days: it was a stimulus that pleased him well. Death, or that nearness to it which his wound had brought, fired his brain with a rare life, like some wine of the old gods. The earth-life cleared to him, so tired he grew then of paltry words and thoughts, standing closer to the inner real truth of things. So, when he had said to the only creature who cared for him, "They say I will not live, come and stay with me," he never had doubted, as a more vulgar man might have done, that she would come,—never doubted either, that, if it were true that he should die, she would come again after him some day, to work and love yonder with him,—his wife. Nature sends this calmness, quiet reliance on the real verities of life, down there into that border-ground of death,—kind, as is her wont to be. When the third day was near its close, he knew she would come that night; half smiling to himself, as he thought of what an ignorant, scared traveller she would be; wishing he could have seen her bear down all difficulties in that turbulent house with her child-like "He wants me,—I must go." How kind people would be to her on the road, hearing her uncertain timid voice! Why, that woman might pass through the whole army, even Blenker's division, unscathed: no roughness could touch her, remembering the loving trust in her little freckled face, and how innocently her soul looked out of her hazel eyes. He used to call her Una sometimes: it was the only pet name he gave her. She was in the Virginia mountains now. If he could but have been with her when she first saw them! She would understand there why God took his prophets up into the heights when He would talk to them.
So thinking vaguely, but always of her, not of the fate that waited him, if he should die. Literally, the woman was dearer to him than his own soul.
The room was low-ceiled, but broad, with windows opening on each side. Overhead the light broke in through broken chinks in the rafters,—the house being, in fact, but a ruin.
A dozen low cots were scattered about the bare floor: on one a man lay dead, ready for burial in the morning; on the others the men who were wounded with him, bearing trouble cheerfully enough, trying, some of them, to hum a chorus to "We're marching along," which the sentry sang below.
The room was dark: he was glad of that; when she came, she could not see his altered face: only a dull sconce spattered at one end, under which an orderly nodded over a dirty game of solitaire.
Outside, he could see the reddish shadow of the sky on the mountains: a dark shadow, making the unending forests look like dusky battalions of giants scaling the heights. Below, the great tide of water swelled and frothed angrily, trying to bury and hide the traces of the battles fought on its shore: ruined bridges, masses of masonry, blackened beams of cars and engines. One might fancy that Nature, in her grand temperance, was ashamed of man's petty rage, and was striving to hide it even from himself. Laurel and sumach bushes were thrusting green foliage and maroon velvet flowers over the sand ledges on the rock where the Confederate cannon had been placed; and even over the great masses of burnt brick and granite that choked the valley, the delicate moss, undaunted and indefatigable, was beginning to work its veiling way. Near him he saw a small square building, uninjured,—the one in which John Brown had been held prisoner: the Federal troops used it as a guard-house now for captured Confederates.
One of these men, a guerrilla, being sick, had been brought in to the hospital, and lay in the bed next to Blecker's,—a raw-boned, wooden-faced man, with oiled yellow whiskers, and cold, gray, sensual eye: complaining incessantly in a whining voice,—a treacherous humbug of a voice, Blecker fancied: it irritated him.
"Move that man's bed away from mine to-morrow," he said to the nurse that evening. "If I must die, let me hear something at the last that has grit in it."
He heard the man curse him; but even that was softly done.
The storm was gathering slowly. Low, sharp gusts of wind crept along the ground at intervals, curdling the surface of the water, shivering the grass: far-off moans in the mountain-passes, beyond the Maryland Heights, heard in the dead silence: abrupt frightened tremors in the near bushes and tree-tops, then the endless forests swaying with a sullen roar. The valley darkened quickly into night; a pale greenish light, faint and fierce, began to flash in the north.
"Thunder-storm coming," said the sleepy orderly, Sam, coming closer to fasten the window.
"Let it be open," said Blecker, trying nervously to rise on one arm. "It is ten o'clock. I must hear the train come in."
The man turned away, stopping by the bed of the prisoner to gossip awhile before going down to camp. He thought, as they talked in a desultory way, as men do, thrown together in the army, of who and what they had been, that the Yankee doctor listened attentively, starting forward, and throwing off the bed-clothes.
"But he was an uneasy chap always, always," thought Sam, "as my old woman would say,—in a kippage about somethin' or other. But darned ef this a'n't somethin' more 'n usual,"—catching a glimpse of Blecker's face turned toward the prisoner, a curious tigerish look in his half-closed eyes.
The whistle of the train was heard that moment far-off in the gorge. Blecker did not heed it, beckoning silently to the orderly.
"Go for the Colonel, for Sheppard," in a breathless way; "bring some men,stout fellows that can lift. Quick, Sam, for God's sake!"
The man obeyed, glancing at the prisoner, who lay with his eyes closed as though asleep.
"Blecker glowers at him as though he were the Devil,"—stopping outside to light a cigar at the oil-lamp. "That little doctor has murder writ in his face plain as print this minute."
Sam may not have been wrong. Paul Blecker was virulent in hates, loves, or opinions: in this sudden madness of a moment that possessed him, if his feet would have dragged him to that bed yonder, and his wrists been strong enough, he would have wrung the soul out of the man's body, and flung him from his way. Looking at the limbs stretched out under the sheet, the face, an obscene face, even with the eyes closed, as at a deadly something that had suddenly reared itself between him and his chance of heaven. The man was Grey Gurney's husband. She was coming: in a moment, it might be, would be here. She thought that man dead. She always should think him dead. He held back his breath in his clinched teeth: that was all the sign of passion; his brain was never cooler, more alert.
Sheppard, the colonel of the regiment, a thick-set, burly little fellow, with stubbly black whiskers and honest eyes, came stumping down the room.
"What is it, hey? Life and death, Blecker?"
"More, to me," with a smile. "Make your men remove that man Gurney into the lower ward. Don't stop to question, Colonel: I'll explain afterwards. I'm surgeon of this post."
"You're crotchety as a woman, Paul," laughed the other, as he gave the order.
"What d' ye mean to do, old fellow, with this wound of yours? Go under for it, as you said at first?"
"This morning I would have told you yes. I don't know now. I can't afford to leave the world just yet. I'll fight death to the last breath." Watching the removal of the prisoner as he spoke; when the door closed on him, letting his head fall on the pillow with a sigh of relief. "Sheppard, there was another matter I wished to see you about. Your mother came to see me yesterday."
"Yes; was the soup good she sent this morning? We're famous for our broths on the farm, but old Nance isn't here, and"——
"Very good;—but there was another favor I wished to ask."
"Well?"—staring into the white-washed wall to avoid seeing how red poor crotchety Blecker's face grew.
"By the way, Paul, my mother desired me to bring that young lady you told her of home with me. She means to adopt her for the present, I believe."
The redness grew hotter.
"It was that I meant to ask of her,—you knew?"
"Yes, I knew. Bah, man, don't wring my fingers off. If the girl's good and pure enough to do this thing, my mother's the woman to appreciate it. She knows true blood in horses or men, mother. Not a better eye for mules in Kentucky than that little woman's. A Shelby, you know? Stock-raisers. By George, here she comes, with her charge in tow already!"
Blecker bit his parched lips: among the footsteps coming up the long hall, he heard only one, quick and light; it seemed to strike on his very brain, glancing to the yellow-panelled door, behind which the prisoner lay. She thought that man dead. She always should think him dead. She should be his wife before God; if He had any punishment for that crime, he took it on his own soul,—now. And so turned with a smile to meet her.
"Don't mind Paul's face, if it is skin and bone," said the Colonel, hastily interposing his squat figure between it and the light. "Needs shaving, that's all. He'll be round in no time at all, with a bit of nursing; 's got no notion of dying."
"I knew he wouldn't die," she said, half to herself, not speaking to Paul,—onlyhe held both her hands in his, and looked in her eyes.
Sheppard, after the first glance over the little brown figure and the face under the Shaker hood, had stood, hat in hand, with something of the same home-trusty smile he gave his wife on his mouth. The little square-built body in black seeded silk and widow's cap, that had convoyed the girl in, touched the Colonel's elbow, and they turned their backs to the bed,—talking of hot coffee and sandwiches. Paul drew her down.
"My wife, Grey?Mine?" his breath thin and cold,—because no oath now could make that sure.
"Yes, Paul."
He shut his eyes. She wondered that he did not smile when she put her timorous fingers in his tangled hair. He thought he would die, maybe. He could not die. Her feet seemed to take firmer root into the ground. A clammy damp broke out over her body. He did not know how she had wrestled in prayer; he did not believe in prayer. He could not die. That which a believer asked of God, believing He would grant, was granted. She held him in life by her hand on Christ's arm.
"Were you afraid to travel alone, eh?"
Grey looked up. The little figure facing her had a body that somehow put you in mind of unraised dough: and there was nothing spongy or porous or delusive in the solid little soul either, inside of the body,—that was plain. She looked as if Kentucky had sent her out, a tight, right, compact drill-sergeant, an embodiment of Western reason, to try by herself at drum-head court-martial the whole rank and file of Northernisms, airy and intangible illusions. Nothing about her that did not summon you to stand and deliver common sense; the faint down on her upper-lip, the clog-soled shoes, the stiff dress, the rope of a gold watch-chain, the single pure diamond blazing on one chubby white hand, the general effect of a lager-bier keg, unmovable, self-poised, the round black eyes, the two black puffs of hair on each temple, said with one voice, "No fooling now; no chance for humbug here." Why should there be? One of the Shelbys; well-built in bone and blood, honest, educated,—mule-raisers; courted by General Sheppard according to form, a modest, industrious girl, a dignified, eminently sensible wife, a blindly loving mother, a shrewd business-woman as a widow. Her son was a Christian, her slaves were fat and contented, her mules the best stock imported. She hated the Abolitionists, lank, uncombed, ill-bred fanatics; despised the Secessionists as disappointed Democrats; clung desperately to the Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the laws, not knowing she was holding to the most airy and illusive nothings of all. So she was here with Pratt, her son, at Harper's Ferry, nursing the sick, keeping a sharp eye on the stock her overseer sold to Government, looking into the face of every Rebel prisoner brought in, with a very woman's sick heart, but colder growing eyes. For Buckner, you know, had induced Harry to go into the Southern army. Harry Clay, (they lived near Ashland,)—Harry was his mother's pet, before this, the youngest. If he was wounded, like to die, not all their guerrillas or pickets should keep her back; though, when he was well, she would leave him without a word. He had gone, like the prodigal son, to fill his belly with the husks the swine did eat,—and not until he came back, like the prodigal son, would she forgive him. But if he was wounded—If Grey had stopped one hour before coming to this man she loved, she would have despised her.
"Were you afraid to travel alone?"
"Yes; but I brought Pen for company, Paul. You did not see that I brought Pen."
But Pen shied from the outstretched hand, and had recourse to a vial of spirituous-looking liquorice-water.
It was raining now, heavily. By some occult influence, Mrs. Sheppard had caused a table to spring up beside the bed,whereon a cozy round-stomached oil-lamp burned and flared in the wind, in a jolly, drunken fashion, and a coffee-pot sent out mellow whiffs of brown steam.
"It's Mocha, my dear,—not rye. I mean to support my Government, and I'll not shirk the duty when it comes to taxes on coffee. So you were afraid? It's the great glory of our country that a woman can travel unprotected from one end to——Well. But you are young and silly yet."
And she handed Grey a cup with a relaxing mouth, which showed, that, though she were a woman herself, capable of swallowing pills without jelly, she did not hope for as much from weaker human nature.
Paul Blecker had not heard the thunder the first hour Grey was there, nor seen the livid flashes lighting up those savagest heights in the mountains: his eye was fixed on that yellow door yonder in the flickering darkness of the room, and on the possibility that lay beyond it.
Now, while Grey, growing used to her new home, talked to Pen and her hostess, Paul's thoughts came in cheerier and warmer: noting how the rain plashed like a wide sweep of loneliness outside, forcing all brightness and comfort in,—how the red lamp-light glowed, how even the pale faces of the men, in the cold beds yonder, grew less dour and rigid, looking at them; hearing the low chirp of Grey's voice now and then,—her eyes turned always on him, watchful, still. It was like home, that broad, half-burnt arsenal-room. Even the comfortable little black figure, sturdily clicking steel needles through an uncompromising pair of gray socks, fitted well and with meaning into the picture, and burly Pratt Sheppard holding little Pen on his knee, his grizzly black brows knitted. Because Mary, down at home there, was nursing his baby boy now, most likely, just as he held this one. His baby was only a few months old: he had never seen it: perhaps he might never see it.
"She looks like Mary, a bit, mother, eh?"—nodding to Grey, and steadying one foot on the rung of his chair.
Mrs. Sheppard shot a sharp glance.
"About the nose? Mary's is sharper."
"The forehead,Ithink. Hair has the same curly twist."
Grey, hearing the whisper, colored, and laughed, and presently took off the Shaker hood.
"'Pon my soul, mother, it's a remarkable likeness.—You'renotrelated to the Furnesses, Miss Gurney,—Furnesses of Tennessee?"
"Pratt sees his wife in every woman he meets," said his mother, toeing off her sock.
She had not much patience with Pratt's wife-worship: some of these days he'd be sold to those Furnesses, soul and body. They were a mawkish, "genteel" set: from genteel people might the Lord deliver her!
"Does the boy look like this one at all, mother?—I never saw my boy, Miss Gurney,"—explaining. "Fellows are shirking so now, I won't ask for a furlough."
"The child's a Shelby, out and out,"—angrily enough. "Look here, Dr. Blecker,"—pulling up her skirt, to come at an enormous pocket in her petticoat. "Here's the daguerreotype, taken when he was just four weeks old, and there's Pratt's eyes and chin to a T. D'ye see? Prattwasa fine child,—weighed fourteen pounds. But he was colicky to the last degree. And as for croup——Does your Pen have croup, Miss Grey? Sit here. These men won't care to hear our talk."
They did care to hear it. It was not altogether because Blecker was weakened by sickness that he lay there listening and talking so earnestly about their home and Grey's, the boy and Mary,—telling trifles, too, which he remembered, of his own childhood. It was such a new, cordial, heartsome life which this bit of innocent gossip opened to him. What a happy fellow old Pratt was, with his wife and child! Good fighter, too. Well, some day, maybe, he, too——
They were all quiet that night, coming closer together, maybe because they heard the rain rushing down the gorges, and knew what ruin and grief and slaughter waited without. Looking back at that night often through the vacancy of coming days, Paul used to say, "I was at home then," and after that try to whistle its thought off in a tune. He never had been at home before.
So, after that night, the summer days crept on, and out of sight: the sea of air in which the earth lay coloring and massing the sunlight down into its thin ether, until it ebbed slowly away again in yellow glows, tinctured with smells of harvest-fields and forests, clear and pungent, more rare than that of flowers. Here and there a harvest-field in the States was made foul with powder, mud,—the grain flat under broken artillery-wheels, canteens, out of which oozed the few drops of whiskey, torn rags of flesh, and beyond, heaped in some unploughed furrow, a dozen, a hundred, thousands, it may be, of useless bodies, dead to no end. Up yonder in New England, or down in some sugar-plantation, or along the Lakes, some woman's heart let the fresh life slip out of it, to go down into the grave with that dead flesh, to grovel there, while she dragged her tired feet the rest of the way through the world. Her pain was blind; but that was all that was blind. The wind, touching the crimson moccasin-flower in the ditch, and the shining red drops beside it, said only, "It is the same color; God wills they shall be there," and went unsaddened on its appointed way. The white flesh, the curly hair, (every ring of that hair the woman yonder knew by heart,) gave back their color cheerily in the sunlight, and sank into the earth to begin their new work of roots and blossoming, and the soul passed as quietly into the next wider range of labor and of rest. And God's eternal laws of sequence and order worked calmly, and remained under all.
This world without the valley grew widely vague to Blecker, as he lay there for weeks. These battles he read of every morning subserved no end: the cause stood motionless; only so many blue-coated machines rendered useless: but behind the machines—what? That was what touched him now: every hour some touch of Grey's, some word of the home-loving Kentuckians, even Pen's giant-stories, told as he sat perched on Blecker's bolster, made him think of this, when he read of a battle. So many thousand somethings dead, who pulled a trigger well or ill, for money or otherwise; so much brute force lost; behind that, a home somewhere, clinging little hands, a man's aspirations, millions of fears and hopes, religion, chances of a better foothold in the next life. It was that background, after all, the home-life, the notions of purity, honor, bravery absorbed there, that made the man a man in the battle-field.
So, lying on the straw mattress there, this man, who had been making himself from the first, got into the core of the matter at last, into his own soul-life, brought himself up face to face with God and the Devil, letting the outside world, the great war, drift out of sight for the time. His battle-field was here in this ruined plat of houses, prisoned by peaks that touched the sky. The issues of the great struggles without were not in his hands; this was. What should he do with this woman, with himself?
He gained strength day by day. They did not know it, he was so grave and still, not joining in the hearty, cheery life of the arsenal-room; for Mrs. Sheppard had swept the half-drunken Dutch nurses out of the hospital, and she and Grey took charge of the dozen wounded men (many dainty modiste-made ladies find that they are God-made women in this war). So the room had whitened and brightened every day; the red, unshaved faces slept sounder on their clean pillows; the men ate with a relish; and Grey, being the best of listeners, had carried from every bed a story of some home in Iowa or Georgia or the North. Only behind the yellow door yonder she never went. Blecker had ordered that,and she obeyed like a child in everything.
So like a child, that Mrs. Sheppard, very tender of her, yet treated her with as much deference as she might a mild kitten. That girl was just as anxious that Bill Sanders's broth should be properly salted, and Pen's pinafore white, as she was to know Banks's position. Pish! Yet Mrs. Sheppard told Pen pages of "Mother Goose" in the evenings, that the girl might have time to read to Doctor Blecker. She loved him as well as if he were her husband; and a good wife she would be to him! Paul, looking at the two, as they sat by his bedside, knew better than she; saw clearly in which woman lay the spring of steel, that he never could bend, if her sense of right touched it. He used to hold her freckled little hands, growing yellow and rough with the hard work, in his, wondering what God meant him to do. If they both could lie dead together in that great grave-pit behind the Virginia Heights, it would have been relief to him. If he should let her go blindfold into whatever hell lay beyond death, it would be more merciful to her than to give her to her husband yonder. For himself—No, he would think only of her, how she could be pure and happy. Yet bigamy? No theory, no creed could put that word out of his brain, when he looked into her eyes. Never were eyes so genial or so pure. The man Gurney, he learned from Sheppard and Nott, recovered but slowly; yet there was no time to lose; a trivial accident might reveal all to her. Whatever struggle was in Blecker's mind came to an end at last; he would go through with what he purposed; if there were crime in it, he took it to his own soul's reckoning, as he said before.
It was a cool morning in early August, when the Doctor first crept out of bed; a nipping north-wind, with a breath of far-off frost in it, just enough to redden the protruding cheek of the round gum-trees on the mountain-ledges and make them burn and flame in among the swelling green of the forests. He dragged himself slowly to the wooden steps and waited in the sunshine. The day would be short, but the great work of his life should be done in it.
"Sheppard!" he called, seeing the two square, black figures of the Colonel and his mother trotting across the sunny street.
"Hillo! you'll report yourself ready for service soon, at this rate, Doctor."
"In a week. That man Gurney. When can he be removed?"
"What interest can you have in that dirty log, Blecker? I've noticed the man since you asked of him. He's only a Northern rogue weakened into a Southern bully."
"I know. But his family are known to me. I have an order for his exchange: it came yesterday. He holds rank as captain in the other service, I believe?"
"Yes,—but he's in no hurry to leave his bed, Nott tells me."
"This order may quicken his recovery, eh?"
"Perhaps."
Sheppard laughed.
"You are anxious to restore him to his chances of promotion down yonder; yet I fancied I saw no especial love for him in your eyes, heh? Maybe you'd promote him to the front rank, as was done with Uriah,—what d' ye say, Paul?"
He went on laughing, without waiting for an answer.
"As was done with Uriah?" Pah, what folly was this? He took out his handkerchief, wiping his face and neck; he felt cold and damp,—from weakness, it might be.
"You will tell that man Gurney, Sam," beckoning to the orderly who was loitering near, "that an order for his exchange is made out, when he is able to avail himself of it."
"Won't you see him yerself, Doctor?" insinuated Sam. "He's a weak critter, an' 'll be monstrous thankful, I'm thinkin'."
Blecker shook his head and turned off,waiting for Mrs. Sheppard. She was on the sidewalk, laying down the law to the chaplain, who, with his gilt-banded cap, looked amazingly like a footman. The lady's tones had the Kentucky, loud, mellow ring; her foot tapped, and her nervous fingers emphasized the words against her palm.
"Ill-bred," thought the young man; but he bowed, smiling suavely. "If I have been derelict in duty, Madam, I will be judged by a Higher Power."
"But it's my way, young Sir, to go to the root of the matter, when I see things rotting,—be it a potato-field or a church. We're plain-tongued in my State. And I think the Higher Power needs a mouth-piece just now."
And something nobler of mien than good-breeding gave to Sarah Sheppard's earnest, pursy little figure meaning just then, before which the flimsy student of the Thirty-Nine Articles stood silent.
"I'm an old woman, young man; you're a boy, and the white cravat about your neck gives me no more respect for you than the bit of down on your chin, so long as you are unworthy to wear either. We Virginians and Kentuckians may be shelled up yet in our old-fogy notions; it's likely, as you say. We don't understand the rights of man, maybe, or know just where Humanity has got to in its progress. But we've a grip on the old-fashioned Christianity, and we mean to make it new again. And when I see hundreds of young, penniless preachers, and old, placeless preachers, shoving into the army for the fat salaries, drinking, card-playing with the men, preaching murder instead of Christ's gospel of peace, I'll speak, though I am a woman. I'll call them the Devil's servants instead of the Lord's, and his best and helpfullest servants, too, nowadays. If there's a time when a man's soul cries out to get a clear sight of God, it's when he's standing up for what he thinks right, with his face to the foe, and his country behind him. And it's not the droning, slovenly prayers nor hashed-up political speeches of such men as you, that will show Him to them. Oh, my son!" putting her hand on the young man's arm, her voice unsteady, choking a minute, "I wish you'd be earnest, a peace-teacher like your Master. It's no wonder the men complain of the Federal chaplains as shams and humbugs. I don't know how it is on the other side. I've a son there,—Harry. I'd like to think he'd hear some live words of great truth before he goes into battle. Not vapid gabbling over the stale, worn-out cant, nor abuse of the enemy. When he's lying there, the blood coming from his heart on the sod, life won't be stale to him, nor death, nor the helping blood of the cross. And for his enemy, when he lies dead there, my Harry, would God love his soul better because it came to Him filled with hate of his brother?"
She was half talking to herself now, and the young man drew his coat-sleeve out of her hold and slipped away. Afterwards he said that old lady was half-Secesh, because she had a son in the Rebel army; but I think her words left some meaning in his brain other than that.
She met Blecker, her face redder, her eyebrows blacker than usual.
"You up and out, Doctor Blecker? Very well! You'll pay for it in fever to-morrow. But every young man is wiser in his own conceit, to-day, than seven men that can render a reason. It was not so in my day. Young people knew their age. I never sat down before my mother without permission granted, nor had an opinion of my own."
She stood silent a moment, cooling.
"Pha, pha! I'm a foolish old body. Fretting and fuming to no purpose, likely. There's Pratt, now, laughing, down the street. 'Mother, if you're going to have one of your brigazoos with that young parson, I'm off,' he says. He says,—'You're not in your own country, where the Shelbys rule the roast.' What if I'm not, Doctor Blecker? Truth's truth. I'm tired of cant, whether it belongs to the New-England new age of reason, their Humanity and Fourierismand Broad-Church and Free-Love, or what not, or our own Southern hard-bit, tight-reined men's creeds. Not God's,—driving men headlong into one pit, all but a penned-up dozen. I'm going back of all churches to the words of Jesus. There's my platform. But you said you wanted to speak with me. What'syourtrouble?"
Blecker hesitated,—not knowing how this sturdy interpreter of the words of Jesus would look on his marriage with another man's wife, if she understood the matter clearly. He fumbled his cravat a minute, feeling alone, as if the earth and heaven were vacant,—no background for him to lean against. Men usually do stand thus solitary, when they are left to choose by God.
"You're hard on the young fellow, Mrs. Sheppard. I wish for my own sake he was a better specimen of his cloth. There's no one else here to marry me."
"Tut! no difference whatheis,"—growing graver, as she spoke. "God's blessing comes pure, if the lips are not the cleanest that speak it. You are resolved, then, on your course, as you spoke to me last night?"
"Yes, I am, if Grey will listen to reason. You and the Colonel leave to-morrow?"
"Yes, and she cannot stay here behind me, to a certainty. Pratt is ordered off, and I must go see to my three-year-olds. Morgan will have them before I know what I'm about. I'll take the girl back to Wheeling, so far on her way home. As to this marriage"——
She stopped, with her fingers on her chin. The Doctor laughed to himself. She was deciding on Grey's fate and his, as if they were a pair of her three-year-olds that Government wanted to buy.
"It's unseemly, when the child's father is not here. That's how it seems to me, Dr. Blecker. As for love, and that, it will keep. Pha, pha! There's one suggestion of weight in favor of it. If you were killed in battle, the girl would have some provision as your widow that she could not have now. D'ye see?"
Blecker laughed uneasily.
"I see; you come at the bone of the matter, certainly. I have concluded, Mrs. Sheppard, Grey must go with you; but she shall leave here as my wife. If there is any evil consequence, it shall come to me."
There was a moment's silence. He avoided the searching black eyes fixed on his face.
"It is not for me to judge in this matter," she said, with some reserve. "The girl is a good girl, however, and I will try and take the place of a mother to her. You have reasons for this haste unknown to me, probably. When do you wish the ceremony, and where, Doctor? The church up yonder," sliding into her easy, dogmatic tone again; "it's one of the few whole roofs in the place. That is best,—yes. And for time, say sunset. That will suit me. I must go write to that do nothing M'Key about the trousers for Pratt's men. They're boxed up in New York yet: and then I've to see to getting a supply of blue pills. If you'll only give one to each man two nights before going into battle, just enough to stir their livers up, you'll find it work like a charm in helping them to fight. Sundown,—yes. I cannot attend to it possibly before."
"It was the time I had fixed upon, if Grey consents."
"Pah! she's a bit of linen rag, that child. You can turn her round your finger, and you know it. You will find her down on the shore, I think. I must go and tell my young parson he had better read over the ceremony once or twice to be posted up in it."
"To be sure, Pratt," she said, a few moments after, as she detailed the intended programme to the Colonel, farther down the street,—"to be sure, it's too hasty. I have not had time to give it consideration as I ought. These wartimes, my brain is so thronged night and day. But I think it's a good match. There's an honest, downright vein inyoung Blecker that'll make a healthy life. Wants birth, to be sure. Girl's got that. You needn't sneer, Pratt. It is only men and women that come of the old rooted families, bad or good, that are self-poised. Made men always have an unsteady flicker, a hitch in their brains somewhere,—like your Doctor, eh? Grey's out of one of the solid old Pennsylvania stocks. Better blooded the mule, the easier goer, fast or not."
She shut her porte-monnaie with a click, and repinned her little veil that struck out behind her, stiff, pennant-wise, as she walked.
"Well, I've no time now. I'm going to drop in and see that Gurney, and tell him he's exchanged. And the sooner he's up and out, the better for him. Dyspepsia's what ailshim. I'll get him out for a walk to-day. 'S cool and bracing."
It was a bracing day, the current of wind coming in between the Maryland Heights fresh and vigorous, driving rifts of gray cloud across the transparent blue overhead. A healthy, growing day, the farmers called it; one did fancy, too, that the late crops, sowed after the last skirmish about the town, did thrust out their green blades more hopefully to-day than before; the Indian corn fattened and yellowed under its tresses of soft sun-burnt silk. Grey, going with Pen that afternoon through a great field of it, caught the clean, damp perfume of its husk; it put her in mind of long ago, somehow, when she was no older than Pen. So she stopped to gather the scarlet poppies along the fence, to make "court-ladies" out of them for him, as she used to do for herself in those old times.
"Make me some shawls for them," said Pen, presenting her some lilac-leaves, which she proceeded to ornament by biting patterns with her teeth.
"Oth said, if I eat poppy-seeds, I'd sleep, an' never waken again. Is that true, Sis?"
"I believe it is. I don't know."
Death and eternal sleeps were dim, far-off matters to Grey always,—very trivial to-day. She was a healthy, strong-nerved woman, loving God and her kin with every breath of her body, not likely to trouble herself about death, or ever to take her life as a mean, stingy makeshift and cheat, a mere rotten bridge to carry her over to something better, as more spiritually-minded women do. It was altogether good and great; every minute she wanted a firmer hold on it, to wring more work and pleasure out of it. She was so glad to live. God was in this world. Sure. She knew that, every moment she prayed. In the other? Yes; but then that was shadowy, and there were no shadows nor affinity for them in Grey. This was a certainty,—here. And to-day——So content to be alive to-day, that a something dumb in her brown eyes made Pen, looking up, laugh out loud.
"Kiss me, Sis. You're a mighty good old Sis to-day. Let's go down to the river."
They went down by the upper road, leaving the town behind them. The road was only a wide, rutted cow-path on the side of the hill. Here and there a broken artillery-wheel, or bomb-shell, or a ragged soldier's jacket lay among the purple iron-weed. She would not see them—to-day. Instead, she saw how dark the maple-leaves were growing,—it was nearly time for them to turn now; the air was clear and strong this morning, as if it brought a new lease of life into the world; on the hill-banks, brown and ash-colored lichen, and every shade of green, from pale apple-tint to the blackish shadows like moss in October, caught the sunshine, in the cheeriest fashion. Yellow butterflies chased each other about the grass, tipsily; the underbrush was full of birds, chattering, chirping calls, stopping now and then to thrill the air up to heaven with a sudden shiver of delight,—so glad even they were to be alive. Mere flecks of birds, some of them, bits of shining blue and scarlet and brown, trembling in and out of the bushes: chippeys, for instance,—you know?—so contemptibly little; it wasridiculous, in these sad times, to see how much joy they made their small bodies hold. But it isn't their fault that they only have instinct, and not reason. I'm afraid Grey, with most women, was very near their predicament. That day was so healthy, though, that the very bees got out of their drowsiness, and made a sort of song of their everlasting hum; and that old coffin-maker of a woodpecker in the hollow beech down by the bridge set to work at his funereal "thud, thud," with such sudden vigor, it sounded like a heartsome drum, actually, beating the reveille. Not much need of that: Grey thought the whole world was quite awake: looking up to the mountains, she did not feel their awful significance of rest, as Paul Blecker might have done. They only looked to her like the arms this world had to lift up to heaven its forests and flowers,—to say, "See how glad and beautiful I am!" Why, up there in those barest peaks above the clouds she had seen delicate little lakes nestling, brimming with light and lilies.
They came to the river, she and Pen, where it bends through the gorge, and sat down there under a ledge of sandstone, one groping finger of the sunshine coming in to hold her freckled cheek and soft reddish hair. They say the sun does shine the same on just and unjust; but he likes best to linger, I know, on things wholesome and pure like this girl. When Pen began to play "jacks" with the smooth stones on the shore, she spread out her skirt for him to sit on,—to keep him close, hugging him now and then, with the tears coming to her eyes: because she had seen Paul an hour before, and promised all he asked. And Pen was the only thing there of home, you know. And on this her wedding-day she loved them all with a hungry pain, somehow, as never before. She was going back to-morrow; she could work and help them just as before; and yet a gulf seemed opening between them forever. She had been selfish and petulant,—she saw that now; sometimes impatient with her old father's trumpery rocks, or Lizzy's discontent; in a rage, often, at Joseph. Now she saw how hardly life had dealt with them, how poor and bare their lives were.Shemight have made them warmer and softer, if she had chosen. Please God, she would try, when she went home again,—wiping the hot tears off, and kissing Pen's dismal face, until he rebelled. The shadows were lengthening, the rock above her threw a jagged, black boundary about her feet. When the sun was behind yon farthest hill she was going back, up to the little church, with Pen; then she would give herself to her master, forever.
Whatever feeling this brought into her soul, she kept it there silent, not coming to her face as the other had done in blushes or tears. She waited, her hands clutched together, watching the slow sinking of the sun. Not even to Paul had she said what this hour was to her. She had come a long journey; this was the end.
"I would like to be alone until the time comes," she had said, and had left him. He did not know what he was to the girl; she loved him, moderately, he thought, with a temperate appreciation that taunted his hot passion. She did not choose that even he should know with what desperate abandonment of self she had absorbed his life into hers. She chose to be alone, shrinking, with a sort of hatred, from the vulgar or strange eyes that would follow her into the church. In this beginning of her new life she wanted to be alone with God and this soul, only kinsman of her own. If they could but go, Paul and she, up into one of these mountain-peaks, with Him that made them very near, and there give themselves to each other, before God, forever!
She sat, her hands clasped about her knees, looking into the gurgling water. The cool, ashen hue that precedes sunset in the mountains began to creep through the air. The child had crouched down at her feet, and fallen into a half doze. It was so still that she heard far down the path a man's footsteps crushing the sand, coming close. She did not turnher head,—only the sudden blood dyed her face and neck.
"Paul!"
She knew he was coming for her. No answer. She stood up then, and looked around. It was the prisoner Gurney, leaning against the rock, motionless, only that he twisted a silk handkerchief nervously in his hand, looking down at it, and crunching tobacco vehemently in his teeth.
"I've met you at last, Grey. I knew you were at the Ferry."
The girl said nothing. Sudden death, or a mortal thrust of Fate, like this, brings only dumb astonishment at first: no pain. She put her fingers to her throat: there was a lump in it, choking her. He laughed, uneasily.
"It's a devilish cool welcome, considering you are my wife."
Pen woke and began to cry. She patted his shoulder in a dazed way, her eyes never leaving the man's face; then she went close, and caught him by the arm.
"It is flesh and blood,"—shaking her off. "I'm not dead. You thought I was dead, did you? I got that letter written from Cuba,"—toying with his whiskers, with a complacent smirk. "That was the sharpest dodge of my life, Grey. Fact is, I was damnably in debt, and tied up with your people, and I cut loose. So, eh? What d' ye think of it, Puss?" putting his hand on her arm. "Wife, eh?"
She drew back against the sandstone with a hoarse whisper of a cry such as can leave a woman's lips but once or twice in a lifetime: an animal tortured near its death utters something like it, trying to speak.
"Well, well, I don't want to incommode you,"—shifting his feet uncertainly. "I—it's not my will I came across you. Single life suits me. And you too, heh? I've been rollicking round these four years,—Tom Crane and I: you don't know Tom, though. Plains,—Valparaiso,—New Orleans. Well, I'm going to see this shindy out in the States now. Tom's in it, head-devil of a guerrilla-band.Ikeep safe. Let Jack Gurney alone for keeping a whole skin! But, eh, Grey?"—mounting a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses over his thick nose. "You've grown. Different woman, by George! Nothing but a puling, gawky girl, when I went away. Your eyes and skin have got color,—luscious-looking: why, your eyes flash like a young bison's we trapped out in Nevada. Come, kiss me, Grey. Eh?"—looking in the brown eyes that met his, and stopping short in his approach.
Of the man and woman standing there face to face the woman's soul was the more guilty, it may be, in God's eyes, that minute. She loathed him with such intensity of hatred. The leer in his eyes was that of a fiend, to her. In which she was wrong. There are no thorough-bred villains, out of novels: even Judas had a redeeming trait (out of which he hanged himself). This man Gurney had a weak, incomplete brain, strong sensual instincts, and thick blood thirsty for excitement,—all, probably, you could justly say of Nero. He did not care especially to torment the woman,—would rather she were happy than not,—unless, indeed, he needed her pain. So he stopped, regarding her. Enough of a true voluptuary, too, to shun turmoil.
"There! hush! For God's sake don't begin to cry out. I'm weak yet; can't bear noise."
"I'm not going to cry," her voice so low he had to stoop to hear. Something, too, in her heart that made her push Pen from her, when he fumbled to unclasp her clinched hands,—some feeling she knew to be so foul she dared not touch him.
"Do you mean to claim me as your wife, John?"
He did not reply immediately; leisurely inspecting her from head to foot, as she stood bent, her eyes lying like a dead weight on his, patting and curling his yellow whiskers meanwhile.
"Wife, heh? I don't know. Your face is getting gray. Where's that prettycolor gone you had a bit ago, Puss? By George!"—laughing,—"I don't think it would need much more temptation to make a murderer out of you. I did not expect you to remember the old days so well. I was hard on you then,"—stopping, with a look of half admiration, half fear, to criticize her again. "Well, well, I'll be serious. Will I claim you again? N—o. On the whole, I believe not. I'll be candid, Grey,—I always was a candid man, you know. I'd like well enough to have the taming of you. It would keep a man alive to play Petruchio to such a Kate, 'pon honor! But I do hate the trammels,—I've cut loose so long, you see. You're not enough to tempt a fellow to hang out as family man again. It's the cursedest slavery! So I think," poising his ringed finders on his chin, thoughtfully, "we'd best settle it this way. I'll take my exchange and go South, and we'll keep our own counsel. Nobody's wiser. If it suits you to say I'm dead, why, I'm dead at your service. I won't trouble you again. Or if you would rather, you can sue out a divorce in some of the States,—wilful desertion, etc. I'm willing."