With the last word Alice dropped the manuscript on the table, and hastily left the room. Charley shot forth, with a vigorous puff, a ring of heroic proportions.
“Upon my word, Jack, I didn’t think it was in the old girl! Capital! It is, by Jove!”
“Capital,” said I.
“Yes,” said he, “it is. But, I say, Jack—”
“What?” said I, with some expectancy, for he had lowered his voice to a confidential whisper.
“It is very clever in the old girl, and all that, you know. Jove! didn’t she hit out on a high line? ‘Incense-breathing mist,’—how does that strike you, Hein? And ‘tempestuous thud?’—what have you got to say to that? And ‘bickering eyes?’ But I say, Jack-Whack, old boy—”
“Well?”
“I say, you won’t tell her what I am going to say?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, I won’t deny that it is well written, and in a high, romantic vein; but—now you won’t tell her?—but before I would have it thought thatIwrote that chapter, you might shoot me with a brass-barrelled pistol.”
With that he took up the manuscript, and began running his eye over it and reading aloud passages here and there. We both (I am ashamed to say) soon got to laughing, and Charley at last went off into an almost hysterical state, the tears streaming down his cheeks. Just then Alice suddenly re-appeared, and his features snapped together like a steel trap. Charley, in point of fact, was not laughing at his wife, but rather at the inherent absurdity of all love-scenes; but he felt guilty when she entered the room, and looked preternaturally solemn.
“What is the matter?” asked Alice.
“I thought it was agreed that there were to be no criticisms?”
“Yes; but you and Jack have been criticising my chapter already.”
“In your absence, of course.”
“And I heard you laughing.”
“Laughing? What do you suppose there was to laugh at? In point of fact, I said it was capital; didn’t I, Jack?”
“Yes; and I agreed with him.”
“Really?” asked she, looking from one to the other of us with keen suspicion in her eyes.
“Yes; honestly, my dear, it does you credit.”
Alice looked pleased.
“Of course, however, any one could tell, at a glance, that it was from a woman’s pen.”
“I don’t see why,” said she, bridling. “So far from that being the case, I’ll bet you a box of gloves that when the book comes out, the critics will say that not one line of it was written by me, and that I am a purely mythical personage, invented out of the whole cloth.”
“Done,” said he; “they will say nothing of the kind. By the way, can you tell me, Alice, why it is that women always put so much hugging and kissing in their books?”
“I believe they do,” said Alice, laughing.
“Jack would not have dared to make that chapter so—so—warm, in fact. Why, it took away my breath, the brisk way in which you enveloped Mary in the Don’s arms. Jack could not have brought about such a consummation in less than three chapters.”
“So much the worse for Jack. It was human nature,—woman’s nature, at any rate.”
“Oho! live and learn, Jack!”
“I am taking notes.”
“Andacton them,” rejoined Alice, with a rather malicious allusion to certain recent incidents in my own personal career. “Women likeaggressivelovers; so next time—”
“But really, Alice,” said Charley, coming to my rescue, “that chapter of yours—such as it is,—now no offence,—I mean giving, as it does, a love-passage from a woman’s point of view, is very well done. And one thing, Jack, seems to me especially to be commended. It is positively artistic, the way in which she contrives to cast a shadow upon the pair, as they sit basking in the sunshine of—ah—in fact—sunshine of young love—ahem—match, Jack—thank you—ahem.” Charley reddened a little, conscious of having been betrayed into an unwonted burst of eloquence. “And very cleverly indeed,” added he, “that shadow is wrought by the very flash of light which will give our readers amomentary glimpse of certain lines in the nature of poor Dory, which you had not previously brought out.”
“Inexorabilis acer,” said I, musing.
“Oh, yes,” said Alice, turning to her husband; “how often have I heard you apply those words to your poor friend. They are not to be found—in—Virgil? At any rate, I cannot recall such a passage.”
“No; they are part of a verse in which Horace gives a characterization of Achilles.”
I have said that Mary was romantic; and I don’t know that I could give any clearer proof of the fact than this: as she lay sleepless that night, reviewing the scenes and events of the last few months, and more especially of the preceding day,—as she lay there silently pondering, and realized that she knew nothing of the history, and was far from sure that she knew even the name of the man to whom she had so thoroughly committed herself,—she felt no wish that matters stood otherwise. Nay, she even found herself rejoicing in the cloud of mystery that surrounded her lover; and, to tell the truth, it was with a feeling of relief that she had heard the sound of footsteps and the hum of voices, the day before, announcing the return from the Hall, just as she had gathered from the Don’s manner that he was on the verge of a revelation. But they had been interrupted, and she had, for one more day, at least, the privilege—a delicious one to a girl of her temperament—of allowing her imagination, unshackled by hard fact, to play around this strangely interesting man, who had shot like a meteor athwart her path. Singularly enough,—or it would have been strange, did we not all know the confidence without reserve which a woman ever places in the man to whom she has given her heart,—strangely enough, Mary felt not the slightest misgiving on the score ofthe revelation she had reason to look for on the morrow. She had not the least dread that that revelation might prove of such a character as to make imperative an instant breaking off of relations with the Don. What she dreaded was the dispersal of her illusions, the end of her sweet dreams. To-day she could imagine—to-morrow she would know.
And so, next day, when our friends sallied forth for a walk, and it fell out, partly through the manœuvering of Alice, that Mary and the Don began to be farther and farther isolated from the rest, her heart began to beat so quick and hard that utterance became difficult. Her companion, too, seemed preoccupied, and their conversation became a tissue of the baldest commonplace. At last he stood still, and with eyes fixed upon the ground, was silent,—silent for an age, as it seemed to Mary. At last he looked up.
“Mary,” he began,—it was the first time he had ever addressed her thus, and her heart gave a quick beat of pleasure,—“Mary, there is something I must say to you, and we could not find a better opportunity. There is the Argo; let us take seats in it.”
She assented in silence and with a sudden sinking of the heart; for there rushed before her mind, in tumultuous throng, all the dreadful possibilities of the coming revelation.
“Is not this,” said she, as she took her seat upon one of the benches, “the first visit that you and I have made to the ‘Fateful’?”
“‘The Fateful,’” she repeated to herself. Was the name ominous? And she strove to hide, beneath a careless smile, the deep agitation that she felt. “Do you know, I feel that I have a right to quarrel with you? For I alone of all the girls have never been honored by you with an invitation to visit the Argo. It almost looks like an intentional slight. Was it?”
She was talking at random, hardly knowing what she said; anxious only to put off for a few brief moments the explanation which she had suddenly begun to look upon with genuine terror.
It is thus that, when, with swollen cheek, we havetaken our seat in his elaborate chair, we strive to delay the pitiless dentist (while he, adamantine soul, selects from his jingling store the instrument most diabolically suited to our case), happy with a happiness all too briefly bright, if he will but turn and admit that the day is fine. [Jack’s mocking pencil, again! I protest.Alice.]
“Yes, it was intentional.”
She looked up.
“Well, not a slight, of course, but intentional.”
“Why? I cannot imagine.” But she did imagine why, though but vaguely.
“Ah! I am glad you ask that question. It enables me to begin.”
But he did not begin. He knit his brows instead, and fixed his eyes in perplexity upon the shining sand. “I hardly know what to say to you.”
“Then don’t say anything,” exclaimed she, eagerly.
“Don’t say anything?”
“Well, not aboutthat!”
“Aboutthat?”
“Well, you know—”
“Yes, I dare say we are both thinking about the same thing.”
“‘Great minds will,’ etc., you know—”
“Say loving hearts.” And he took her hand. “Yes, I admit that I have studiously avoided finding myself alone with you.”
“Were you afraid of me? I am very little!”
“I was afraid of myself; yesterday proved how justly so.”
“Do you regret yesterday?”
“I am afraid I do not. But I ought to. I had no right to tell you I loved you.”
“It is an inalienable right of every man to tell his love.”
“At any rate, I beg your pardon for having spoken mine.”
“I find forgiveness amazingly easy,” said she, laughing. Then, seriously, “Indeed, your scruples are over-nice. The sweetest music that can fall on the ear of awoman is, as Alice says, loving words. Why should we be denied it? What else have we to live for?”
“But I owe it to you—”
“You owe me nothing!” exclaimed she, hastily.
“But I wish to tell you—”
“Tell me nothing! I know what you wish to say, but you shall not say it,—not yet, at least.”
He smiled.
“No; I see you before me, hear your voice; I have known you, such as you are, for months. I wish to know no more, just now. Let me dream on; do not awaken me. Let me float on,” she continued, realistically clasping the gunwale of the Argo, “over rose-tipped waves, careless what shores lie beyond. Let me dream yet a little longer.” And rising from her seat, she dropped on one knee in front of him, and bringing her two hands together, placed them within his. “Not one word. I trust you; I amsatisfied,” said she, with a voice low yet ringing, ringing with proud enthusiasm,—a voice full of strange thrills, vibrating, eloquent. This, her speaking attitude, and the impassioned faith that illumined her eyes, fired his breast with an indescribable glow of ecstasy. Pressing her hands between his and raising his eyes, he exclaimed with a fervor that was almost religious,—
“Adorable Mary! I have dreamed dreams, I have seen visions, but none could compare with this!”
The exaltation of his voice, the spiritual glory of his upturned eyes, the sudden burst of fervor, the overmastering force of his impetuous manhood, hurried Mary’s imagination to giddy heights. She could have fallen down and worshipped him.
“Come,” said he, more gently; “take that seat and listen to me for a moment.”
She made as though she would place two fingers on his lips.
“No!” said he (placing his lips on the two fingers). “Since you wish it, I will leave unsaid what I purposed saying. It is a strange whim on your part, but an altogether charming one to me, since it gives me the right to believe that you value me for myself alone. Ishall, therefore, respect this fancy of yours as long as you desire. But if I may not tell you who I am, I may at least say what I am not. I am not an adventurer. You toss your head; your faith is lovely, but you know I might have been one. No? Well, at any rate, I am not. I am, in fact, your equal in social position; so that, if you can spare a place for me in your heart, without knowing who I am, you will not have to expel me when you condescend to hear what I have to say.”
“Do you know,” said Mary, with a merry twinkle in her eyes, “I believe you are just dying to tell me all about yourself?”
“And you wild to have me do so.”
The sun sparkled upon the River, the waves murmured softly at their feet, beneath a gentle breeze laden with the mysterious breath of awakening spring; and these two sat there bantering one another, like children, gleefully. Mary no longer recognized the man who sat before her. Every line had passed from his face; and but for his Olympic beard, he might have seemed a great jolly boy just come home for his holidays. She could not take her eyes off his face. She was scrutinizing it, wondering where could be lurking those ambuscades of passion that she thought she had detected more than once. And the fire-darting flashes, where were they hidden, beneath those ingenuous glances, so tender, so soft, so caressing?
To four people at Elmington that was a happy week. I suspect it was rather a dull one to every one else.
The friendship of Alice and Mary had renewed its youth. Each had told the other everything. That is, they did what they could; for there was always no end left to tell. Not a word was wasted, not a moment spent on any subject but one. Never had two young men been more talked about.
“We are both so well suited,” said Alice. “To a matter-of-fact body like me, Mr. Frobisher—”
“Oh, Alice, he is just too charming, with his quaint, humorous ways; and thensodevoted!”
“Do youthinkso?”
“Why, the poor man isjust dyingwith love, and—”
“But just think of your affair, Mary!Whenare you going to let him tell you who he is? Oh, I’ll tell you. Suppose we let them both come up to Richmond at the same time to interview our respective and respected papas. Oh, won’t it bedreadful!” And with that they fell on each other’s necks and giggled.
“Mr. Frobisher says he will be hanged if he speaks to my father. He says he thinks it a liberty to ask any man for his daughter; so he intends to speak to mother. Bashful? O-o-o-oh!”
Charley and the Don, too, had their confabulations, but how was any one to find out what they said? But a merrier, jollier soul than the latter it would have been hard to find. (I believe my grandfather would have been somewhat scandalized at the way he profaned the Guarnerius with his jigs, had not Charley made casual mention of thegigasof Corelli and the old Italian school; which seemed to lend a certain air of classicity to their homely Virginia descendants.)
These four, then, were happy. But upon the horizon of Mary’s dreams there hung a speck of cloud. It was no bigger than a man’s hand, but its jagged edges, splotching the rosy east, marred the perfection of the dawn.
To say what that cloud was, brings up a subject upon which I touch with extreme reluctance.
A Bushwhacker discussing the problems of religion,—what will be said of him? Love—feeling my inability to depict that, I accepted the kind offices of our friend Alice. But where, among the bishops and other clergy—regular officers,—am I to find one willing to be associated with a guerilla like myself? Who among them would write a few chapters for this book? But the chapters must be written.
The reader will recall, I beg, one of the earlier incidentsrecorded in this narrative; where the writer calls upon the Don at his rooms in Richmond, to invite him to spend Christmas at Elmington. It will be remembered that I found him reading a small book, which he laid down upon my entrance, and that chancing to glance at the little volume as I passed out of the room, I saw with surprise that it was a copy of the New Testament. With surprise. I would not be understood (not for the world) as casting a slur upon the youth of Virginia. They read their Bibles, of course; but generally, I believe, at the beginning and end of the day. At any rate, whether it was the hour of the evening or the man himself, I was astonished.
When I told the girls what I had seen, they were variously affected, according to their several natures. Here, thought Lucy, is one more good young man,—good not being, with her, a term of contempt. Mary’s imagination was fired. Behold, thought she, a high, brave young spirit that hath chosen the better part. Alice, being what neither of the others was, in the main an average Virginia girl,—Alice could not help it,—the little scamp laughed. I don’t know that it occurred to her that these very good young men are, take them “by and large,” no better than the bad young men (and not half so interesting); all I know is that she laughed, and made the others laugh, too, though against their will.
And not once only. For weeks afterwards she never spoke of the Don save as Parson (or, rather, Pass’n) Smith. Her merry fancy played countless variations upon this single string; but it snapped one day,—snapped very suddenly, the first Sunday after her and Mary’s arrival at Elmington.
“I wonder,” said Alice, as she and the other girls were getting ready for church,—“I wonder whether the Pass’n will go with us? Has any one heard him inquiring about a meeting-house? What a favorite he would be among the sistern of the county!”
As they went down-stairs, they could see him leaning against a pillar on the porch.
“Look, Mary; your Pass’n has his Sunday face on.How dreadfully serious he looks! Mind, girls, no frivolity! I’ll be bound he says ‘Sabbath.’”
“No gentleman ever speaks of Sunday as ‘the Sabbath,’” said Mary, reproachfully.
“Very true; and he is a gentleman if heisa pass’n. Hang this glove! Mr. Whacker,” she continued, “here we are; and all ready, for a wonder, in time.”
Wheels were crunching along up to the steps; horses, held by boys, were pawing the earth; and on the piazza there was the rustle of dresses and the subdued hum of preparation. The Don alone seemed to have no part in the proceedings. Alice drew two girls’ heads together.
“The exhorter looks solemn! The drive will be hilarious in the carriage that takeshim! Listen!”
“By the way,” Mr. Whacker was saying, “I had forgotten to ask you,—will you take a seat in the carriage, or would you prefer going on horseback?”
“Horseback, by all means,” whispered Alice; “the jolting might cheer up his Riverence.”
The Don, looking down, changed color, and was visibly embarrassed. “I remember,” said he, presently, raising his eyes to those of Mr. Whacker, “that one of the first things you said to me, when you welcomed me to Elmington, was that it was ‘Liberty Hall.’”
“Certainly, oh, certainly,” rejoined my grandfather, in his cordial way. “Choose for yourself. That pair of thoroughbreds may look a trifle light; but you will find they will take you spinning. Then there is the buggy. But perhaps you would prefer to ride? I can recommend that sorrel that Zip is holding.” (Zip gave a furtive pressure on the curb which made the sorrel arch his neck and paw the ground.)
“I have not made myself clear,” said the Don, with a constrained smile. “I meant to beg you to—to let me take care of ‘Liberty Hall’ to-day.”
“You mean,” said my grandfather, taking in the idea with some difficulty, “that you do not wish to go to church to-day?”
The Don bowed.
“Oh, certainly,” said Mr. Whacker, with some eagerness;for he felt that he had inadvertently pressed his guest beyond the limits of good breeding. “Certainly, of course, I had not thought of it. Of course you have not yet quite recovered your strength.”
The Don bowed his head deferentially, as though willing to let this explanation of his host pass unchallenged; but a certain something that lurked beneath his rather mechanical smile showed that that explanation was Mr. Whacker’s, not his. A sudden constraint came over the company, and they were glad to get off.
When the party returned, the Don was absent, walking; and when, at dinner, there was the usual rambling discussion of the sermon, the singing, and so forth, he took no part in the conversation. The next Sunday, when the vehicles and horses came up to the door, the Don was found to be missing; having absented himself purposely, as seemed likely; and so on the next Sunday—and on the next—to the end.
It was remarked, too, that never once did he take part in those innocent little theological discussions which are apt to spring up in Virginia homes, around the family hearth, after tea, Sunday evenings. As he was not a talker, as a rule, his silence would not have been obtrusive, save for his persistency in maintaining it. As it was, in the end his very silence seemed a sort of crying aloud. Alice had called him “Pass’n” for the last time.
All this gave Mary, for reasons of her own, great concern,—far greater concern than an average girl would have felt. What those reasons were I shall explain at the proper time. Suffice it to say at present, that just in proportion as her interest in this singular man deepened did her anxiety as to his religious views grow keener. The time had come, at last, when she felt that she had the right to question him; but the very thought (though ever in her mind) of asking him why he never went to church made her shiver. Strange! Now that he was her avowed lover, her awe of him was greater than ever before. He was now frank, joyous, playful—
But even when a caged lion is romping with his mate, you shall ofttimes see the glitter of his mighty teeth!
My grandfather was looking serious. Mr. Carter had come down from Richmond, and, next day, the great American Undulator and Boneless Vertebrate was to leave Elmington, taking with her Alice and Mary; and these notable Christmas holidays would come to an end.
It was late in the afternoon of one of those delicious days in February, which every year (in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave) delude us with the hope of an early spring (though we all know that we never have any spring, late or early); deceiving even yonder pair of bluebirds, who, warmed into forgetfulness of that March which lies between them and the abundant and nutritious worm of summer, go gallivanting up and down the orchard, chirruping eternal fidelity; peering into this old tree and into that, in quest of some hollow knot, so suggestive (to the bluebirdish mind) of matrimony.
Where Charley and Alice were on this bright afternoon does not much matter. No doubt they were together and happy; or, if wretched, wretched with that sweet wretchedness which makes the tearful partings of young lovers so truly delicious.
There’s your Araminta. Nineteen years of her life had she passed, ignorant of your existence. T’other day you met; and now, she who gave you not so much as a sigh during all those nineteen years, cannot hear you speak of a month’s absence but she distils upon your collar the briny tear! She has found out during the last few days, your Araminta, that she cannot breathe where you are not.
Absurd Araminta—but nice?
Wherever else they may have been, they were not inthe Argo. The Don and Mary were there; and in the then infancy of naval architecture row-boats were not built large enough to hold, comfortably, two pairs of lovers.
Mary was seated in the boat, he lounging around it; now leaning against the gunwale, now stalking idly to and fro in the shining sand, rejoicing in his youth. They talked of the passing sea-gulls, the twittering bluebirds, the rippling waves, the rosy clouds, the generous sunlight,—of everything, of nothing, it mattered not; for love hath power to transfigure the plainest things.
Presently the Don said, standing with fingers interlaced behind his back, and looking far away down the River, “Do you know, it would be hard for me to live at a spot remote from salt water? All the great thoughts that have moved the world have arisen within sound of the sea-waves. She is the mother of civilization. It is the land which separates the peoples of the earth, not the water. It thrills me to think that, as I stand here, this river which splashes against my foot is part of that ocean which washes the shores of England, of France, of Italy, of Greece, of Palestine.”
Palestine! Strange word on the lips of a man who never went to church.
“Then, again,” continued he, with a smile, “I love the sea because it reminds me—I don’t mind telling you, since I have let you into my little secret—because it reminds me of Homer, and the epithets he has applied to it.”
“Ah, that remindsmeof something! Have you forgotten your promise to talk to me about Homer? Have you that little copy of the Iliad in your pocket now?”
“Of course,” said he, tapping his vest.
“Will you not let me have it in my handnow?”
He shook his head, smiling. “No; but have you not the right to command me now? Speak, and I obey!”
“Ah! Then I command you, on your allegiance, to deliver that book into my hands.”
He hesitated for a moment, and his hand shook alittle when he placed the book in hers. She took the left lid between finger and thumb; but his look of ill-suppressed agitation made her hesitate, andherhand began to tremble now, she knew not why.
“May I look?” she asked, in a rather shaky voice.
“If you will! But I warn you that that fly-leaf will tell you what you have forbidden me to reveal.”
“Oh!” cried she, with a start. And the book fell upon the shining sand.
He stooped and picked it up. “Have you had enough of it?”
“More than enough,—for the present, at least,” she replied, smiling faintly. “However,” she added, “I should like to look at the outside of it. How very old it looks,” said she, as she took it in her hand. “Why, the corners are worn perfectly round; you must know it all by heart.”
“Almost,” said he.
“And the back—what!” exclaimed she, with astonishment. “Why, this is not the Iliad! It is a copy of the New Testament!” And she held up the faded title before his eyes.
With a black look of annoyance, but without a word, the Don seized the book, thrust it into his pocket, and began striding to and fro. Presently he stopped in front of her.
“I put my hand into the wrong pocket,” said he, with obvious vexation.
“Why, yes. But what’s the harm?” said she, in a soothing voice. “Carrying a Testament in one’s pocket is nothing to be ashamed of, I hope?”
“Certainly not! But,” he added, with a half smile, “taking it out is different.”
“And so,” she began, feeling her way, “you carry the Iliad in one pocket and the Testament in the other.” But it was not now of the Iliad that she wished to hear him talk.
“Yes; a rather ill-assorted couple, you would say?”
“Very! One might suppose you either a—Greek professor in disguise—or—a—minister.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “I neverthought of that; so one might. We generally look too deep for motives. Truth is not often found in the bottom of a well. I carry these two books simply because—”
She looked up.
“Because,” he added, gravely, “they were given to me by—people that I—cared for.”
Constituted as she was, these few words affected Mary strongly. He had said so little, yet so much; revealing, in the unconscious simplicity of his nature, the very intensity of feeling that he strove to hide. And as she looked upon the two little volumes that he had carried all these years, saw how they had been worn away against his heart, a feeling of awe came over her. She found herself comparing, in her imaginative way, the man before her with one of the great, silent powers of nature,—the dark-floating tide, for instance, so noiseless when unresisted; or a black cloud charged with thunder, that seems, at first, but to mutter in its sleep, like a Cyclops in a battle-dream, but when yonder mountain dares to rear his crest in its path—
“You value them very highly on account of the givers,” put in Mary, as an entering wedge.
“Naturally; but not exclusively on that account.” And he drew the two little volumes from his pockets, and, placing them side by side, surveyed them lovingly.
Here was Mary’s opportunity. Painfully anxious as she had been as to her lover’s religious convictions, she had shrunk, hitherto, from a direct question. But it would be easy now, she saw, to lead him on to a full confession of his faith without seeming to interrogate him.
She began by drawing him out on Homer; but what he said she hardly heard, so tremulously eager was she to know what he thought of that other little book which he held in his hand. One thing struck her at the time, and she had cause to remember it afterwards: the strong admiration he evinced for the character of Achilles, the flinty-hearted captain of the Myrmidons.
Presently she said, in a low voice, “You hold them side by side; but could two books be more different?”
He laid the Iliad upon the seat beside him, and taking the other little volume in his hand, held it up before him. As he did so, there was something in his look that thrilled her with expectancy. While he had been indicating the clear-cut outlines of Homer’s marvellous creation, she had felt (though hardly hearing with more than her outward ear) that he spoke admirably, and remarked the high intellectuality that illumined his features; but now a sudden glow suffused his countenance, and strange, soft lights danced in his eyes. She hung upon his opening lips with deep suspense; for something told her that upon the words he was about to utter her own happiness depended.
The hour that followed was passed in a way which is probably rare with parting lovers.
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
“No. I have never read Chateaubriand’sGenie du Christianisme, and,” added he, with an admiring glance, “I am glad of it; for otherwise I should not have heard your brilliant version of what he says. I am afraid, however, that, well as he puts it, I am hardly frank enough to admit that parts of the Old Testament are superior, as mere literature, to everything that the Greeks have left us. The truth is, however, that I know so little of the Old Testament that I have no right to an opinion; but this little book,” continued he, holding it up, “I know by heart. I mean the gospels,” he added, quickly; “and I don’t hesitate to say that in all literature you shall not find such a gem.”
The gospels a gem of literature! A weight seemed to press on Mary’s heart.
“Listen!” And he opened the book, and turning a few pages with nervous eagerness, found a passage. “Listen! Could anything be more beautiful?”
His lips parted; but, without reading a word, he closed the volume upon his forefinger. “Pardon me; but do you know, I fear you can hardly have more thana suspicion of how divinely beautiful this little book really is?”
She looked up, puzzled.
“You have heard it read, week after week, it is true, but read with a saintly snivel,—a holy whine.”
Mary would have protested, but a certain dark flash of bitter disdain that accompanied these words checked her; and she was silent.
“Let me read you,” said he, after a pause, “a few of my favorite passages, in the voice of a mere man.”
He read and commented, commented and read, for perhaps an hour; commented without rhetoric, read without art. He merely gave himself up to that wondrous story.
And what an hour for Mary! For weeks she had longed to know what he thought upon the one great subject which overshadowed all others in her mind. Yes, overshadowed,—for hers was not a blithe spirit. Had longed to know, yet feared to ask. And now that he had been reading and talking so long, did he—as she had so often and so fervently prayed that he should—did he think as she did? Alas, it was but too clear that he did not! But what did he think? That she could not tell, so strange and bewildering were the flashes that came from his words. Her Virginia theology gave her no clue. As though a mariner bore down upon a coast not to be found upon his chart: the lights are there, but have no meaning for him.
Equally bewildered was Mary. How did he regard the central figure of that wondrous drama? As he read and talked and talked and read, a will-o’-the-wisp danced before her eyes, leading her here, there, everywhere, but not to be seized!
How tender his voice now! borrowing pathos not from art, but from the narrative itself. A voice full of tears. And do not his eyes answer the fading sunlight with a dewy shimmer?
He was right, she thought, when he said she knew not the beauties of this little book. Not a month ago, and she had dozed under this very passage.
And now there rose before her—he read on but sheheard him not (so the trooping fancies evoked by music have power to dull the mere outward ear)—rose before her soul a vision of ineffable softness,—a vision of one with a face full of sorrow, but a sun-lit head; and he beckoned to little children, and they followed him; and as he passed, the burdens of the heavy-laden grew lighter, and the weary smiled again and forgot their weariness, and rose and followed, they too. And as he passed (he read on but she heeded not)—as he passed along his stony path, violets seemed to spring from beneath his feet,—violets shedding perfume. And along the roadside lilies nodded. And sinners beat their breasts, but lifted up their hearts. And one of her own sex followed,—one who had loved much; and as she followed she dried her tears with her sunny hair—
“GENERATION OF VIPERS!”
She started from her seat and clutched the gunwale of the boat. As he towered above her, his nostrils breathed defiance, his white teeth glittered with scorn, his dark eyes gleamed, his whole figure was eloquent with indignation. ’Twas but a bunch of dry sea-weed that he held aloft, crushed in his right hand; but to her he seemed to brandish the serpent-thongs of Tisiphone; and the milksop ideal of Raphael and the rest vanished from her mind. In its stead there rose before her exalted imagination the heroic figure of a valiant young Jew. He stands before a mob that thirsts for his blood. Alone, but intrepid. He knows full well, O Jerusalem, that thou dost stone thy prophets (for what land doth not?), but though his face be pale beneath the shadow of approaching death, his brave spirit is undaunted. He is willing that the cup shall pass from him; but, being such as he is, he may turn neither to the right nor to the left. If he must drain it, then be it so. His mission is to live for man—and, if need be, to die for him.
But is this the vision of a manlike God? Is it not rather that of a godlike man?
The Argo stands firm in its bed of shining sand; but tempest-tossed is the soul of the young girl who sitstherein, straining her eager eyes for a sight of land. Every now and then a glorious mirage seems to spring into the air, gladdening, for a moment, the darkening horizon, and then to fall as suddenly, dispersed by a word.
“Yes, Rousseau was right; Socrates did die like a philosopher, but Jesus like a God!”
Mary leaned forward and held her breath.
He clasped his hands, and uplifting his face that was pale with emotion: “My God,” cried he, in a voice that made her shiver—“my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The mirage vanished,—for a mere tone may outline a whole system of theology. That cry, as he gave it, was one of bitter human anguish. In her lover’s eyes ’twas not a God that died, but a man,—godlike, but a man.
“With that cry” (he added), “the bitterest that ever broke from mortal lips—”
She heard but heeded not; she knew more than enough already.
“With that cry there burst the grandest heart that ever beat for mankind. Who can wonder that sixty generations of men have worshipped him as a God!”
Mary rose, and, descending from the Argo, took his arm. She needed its support.
Just before reaching the piazza, she stopped suddenly, and, wheeling in front of him, fixed her gaze upon his face. A gaze long, wistful, pitiful-tender. As though a mother learned by heart the features of her boy just going forth to battle, not knowing what may happen.
She tried to answer the smile that greeted this burst of feminine impulse; but the soulful eyes were swimming with tears.
The Pythia was a woman—and Cassandra—
I picture thee to my fancy, my Ah Yung Whack, popping thine almond eyes out of all almond shape. No? Then thou hast not read my last chapter. Couldst not? Ah, but thou must. I felt that it would be so much Choctaw to thee. Still, thou must read it; for in that chapter I strike the key-note of this, my Symphonic Monograph.
I know it is Choctaw to thee; nay, Comanche; but I rejoice, rather, in that; for it gives me a pretext for writing an entire chapter for thine enlightenment. Nor exclusively for thine; for I would make matters clear for the contemporary reader, who will, I trust (or else alas for my poor publishers!),—who will, I trust, outnumber thee.
This, then, is my case. I have thrown upon my canvas a young person who has had the misfortune to fall in love with a man of whom she may be fairly said to know nothing. (Her feminine intuitions cannot, of course, pass muster as knowledge with us Bushwhackers and philosophers.) And this young person, so far as is made to appear, is anxious to know but one thing in regard to her lover. Had she been a good sensible girl, with no nonsense about her, it might have been supposed that she would have been curious to know whether he were rich. Then, being but just turned of eighteen, who could have blamed her if she had wondered whether he were of a jealous temper, and likely to put an end to her dancing with other men? Again; many women have a pardonable ambition to shine in the eyes of their friends; and was he, if rich, generous as well? And was she likely to dazzle Alice with her diamonds, perhaps, or beam upon Lucy from a handsome equipage? He had shown, too, some fondness for field sports, and would he—ah, would he (harrowing thought to every truly feminine bosom)—would he bring her into the country, there to drag outa weary, dreary life, and shoppinglessly vegetate? Nay, was this splendid creature (as is too often the case with splendid creatures), was he, perhaps, a slave to creature comforts? Would he be an exacting critic of her housekeeping? Might not muddy coffee exacerbate even an heroic soul? Could it be that a roast not done to a turn might corrugate that admirable brow?
No; we have not painted her as anxious in respect to any of these things. Yet I beg the reader will not accuse me of drawing a monstrosity of a girl, one destitute of the common instincts of her sex. Far from it. She, very likely, trusting implicitly to her intuitions (as women will), felt too confident as to these possibilities of her future to give them a second thought. Besides, was she not desperately in love? And we all know (or, at least,Ibelieve, which amounts to the same thing, so far as this book is concerned) that there are women who, if but deeply enamoured, would scorn such thoughts, as a degradation to true love. At any rate, the fact was as I have stated it. Mary, while seemingly careless (though that may have been due to confidence) as to the mere details of her destiny in this world, was morbidly solicitous touching her lover’s views as to the next.
Laugh not, gentle reader. True, I am a humoristic Bushwhacker by trade; but I would not have you smile out of order. And as for thee, my great-to-the-tenth-power-grandson, brush the wrinkles from thy yellow brow, lest thou crack, not this nut, but thine addled pate, instead.
Know, then, all men (and by all men I mean, of course, all women and clergymen, who, alone, in these busy days, have leisure to read symphonic monographs)—
Know, all women and clergymen, of this and more or less future generations, that the story I am telling has very narrow limitations, as well in time as in space. It is of Virginia[1]alone that I am writing. Of Virginianotin the fourth quarter, but Virginia in the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century.Strolling through this narrow field, at this particular harvest-time, I have selected three sheaves wherewith to fashion such rural picture as my hand should have cunning to form.
Lucy, I chose, originally, as symbolizing the purity and simplicity of the womanhood of our old Virginia life. But of her I am conscious that I have given the merest outline; and I find that I cannot fill in the picture adequately, and at the same time maintain the rigidly monographic type of my work. Let her stand, therefore, just outside of our central group (where the full light falls), illumining the half-shadow with her gentle, St. Cecilia look. Is that a smile that lights her eye, or is it the glancing of a tear?
Our Alice illustrates for us, as I have said elsewhere, the careless freedom of those old days, and shows how our democratic-aristocratic Virginia girls could be gay without being indiscreet, joyous yet not loud, unconventional yet full of real dignity; how, in the hundreds of years that separate them from the mother-country, they have shaken off English stiffness, while clinging fast to English love of liberty. But she is fully capable of speaking for herself; and we pass on to Mary Rolfe.
The reader has already, I hope, a tolerably clear conception of this young person. Stature below the average, eyes full of soul, a manner painfully shy with strangers, childlike and confiding with intimates; a mind admirably stored, considering her years, with all that can adorn; often silent, and preferring to hear rather than to be heard, but murmuring, when, forgetting her reserve, she does speak, like a brook, and in a voice of such surpassing sweetness that one could have wished that, like the brook, she would go on forever. Eloquent rather than witty. And I fear few would have called her wise. For the rest, full of high imaginings, and a born hero-worshipper.
Such was Mary Rolfe in herself; and to know her as such has sufficed for the reader, so far. But a crisis is approaching in Mary’s life; and to foretell how people are going to act in crises, it is not enough to know what they are in themselves, merely. What they areis something; the where and the when are more. Do you see that pleasant, genial-looking man walking along the streets of a Southern city? Could anything be gentler than his look, kinder than his eye? Yet it was but the other day that he went out, deliberately, to a secluded spot called the Field of Honor, and sent a ball through the person of an excellent gentleman, who at the same time was addressing a bullet to his care. These worthy persons were no worse than other people (true, they were editors), but they lived in the South. That was the trouble. In the North the same man would have simply said,you’re another, and called the account square. And I, for one, applaud the North, and say she is right and the South wrong.
No; if you would forecast the actions of men, you must be acquainted with their environment, as Herbert Spencer would call it. To use an illustration that this leader of modern scientific thought would not object to; you strike that white ball with your cue. The table being smooth, it would seem that it would maintain its initial direction till the initial force was exhausted, or at least till it struck the opposite cushion; but, lo! it strikes a light red ball that lies in its path, and off it flies at a tangent. If Mr. Spencer held the cue and were conducting the experiment in person, our illustration would now be at an end (for I am told that he is the worst billiard-player in all England); but let us suppose that that cue-thrust was delivered by one of those solid-headed young men (in shirt-sleeves) who delight in what they humorously call the scientific game. The white strikes the light red and darts away; but click! and off it speeds along a different track. It has carromed on the dark red.
And are we not, we mortals, so many billiard-balls, launched forth upon our little arena by we know not what force, and rolling we know not whither? It may be a little wider or a trifle narrower, perhaps, the stage on which we play our several parts; but all the same, around it rise the unscalable barriers of human life, the adamantine limitations of human endeavor. And we, embracing within our little selves (as did the tuskwhence that ball was cut) countless conflicting forces, the inextricably intermingled traits, that is, of numberless ancestors,—fashioned, too, by the loving hands of father, mother, brother, sister, teacher; we spin forth on the journey of life. And a seemly roll of it we may have, and a safe, perhaps, if we be but smooth and round and mediocre (not bulging on this side, say, with big thoughts, or jagged on that with untamable conscience). There stands the goal, and making for it, merrily we spin forth,—but, click! click! and where are we? Nay, may not a pinch of cigar-ashes wrest victory from an expert? And hath not, sometime, a mere rumpled thread sufficed to bring triumph to a tyro? Surely it is not a great matter to stoop and pick up a pin; but was it not enough, once, as we are told, to make a beggar a millionaire? And who shall say that the merest casual fly, alighting on the intent nose of some gunner in beleaguered Toulon, might not have so warped the parabola of a shell as to have rendered needless the slaughter of Waterloo?
I have made life a parallelogram, I see, though it is notoriously a circle; and I have symbolized failure in life by carroming on the light and dark reds; whereas, as we all know, that is success in billiards. But, my Ah Yung Whack, is it not night in China when it is day with us? And does not white raiment signify grief there? And do they not take off their shoes instead of their hats when calling on a friend, and shake their own hands rather than the other fellow’s? We will let the illustration stand, my boy, for your sake; for, in the new Flowery Kingdom which is coming, all things will be changed. In that day, when the wielder of the cue shall also wear one (spell it how he will), the game will be to miss rather than to hit; so that what seemed, at the first blush, to be due to the buck-jumping of a mustang Pegasus, turns out to be, in reality, the prophetic vision of a philosophic Bushwhacker.
But the environment of Mary?
And now, at last, it has come,—that chapter which I have so long dreaded,—my chapter on Virginia theology.
“Dearest Alice, could you not manage it for me?”
A backward toss in her rocking-chair, one ejaculatory clapping together of her plump hands, one shout of laughing amazement was her answer.
“I?” said Charley. “You must have forgotten that I am hard at work on thatEssay on Military Glorywhich you say you will shortly need.”