Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859
by
Various
Part 1 out of 5
Distributed Proofreaders
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS
VOL. IV, DECEMBER, 1859, NO. XXVI
THE EXPERIENCE OF SAMUEL ABSALOM, FILIBUSTER.
In the winter of 1856, the outlook of the present writer, known
somewhere as Samuel Absalom, became exceedingly troubled, and indeed
scarcely respectable. As gold-digger in California, Fortune had looked
upon him unkindly, and he was grown to be one of the indifferent,
ragged children of the earth. Those who came behind him might read as
they ran, stamped on canvas once white, "Stockton Mills. Self-Rising
Flour!"--the well-known label in California, at that day, of greatest
embarrassment.
One morning, after sleeping out the night in the streets of Oroville,
he got up, and read these words, or some like them, in the village
newspaper:--"The heavy frost which fell last night brings with it at
least one source of congratulation for our citizens. Soon the crowd of
vagrant street-sleepers, which infests our town, will be forced to go
forth and work for warmer quarters. It has throughout this summer been
the ever-present nuisance and eyesore of our otherwise beautiful and
romantic moonlit nights." "Listen to this scoundrel!" said he; "how he
can insult an unfortunate man! Makes his own living braying, lying, and
flinging dirt, and spits upon us sad devils who fail to do it in an
honest manner! Ah, the times are changing in California! Once, no one
knew but this battered hat I sit under might partially cover the head
of a nobleman or man of honor; but men begin to show their quality by
the outside, as they do elsewhere in the world, and are judged and
spoken to accordingly. I will shake California dust from my feet, and
be gone!"
In this mood, I thought of General Walker, down there in Nicaragua,
striving to regenerate the God-forsaken Spanish Americans. "I will go
down and assist General Walker," said I. So next morning found me on my
way to San Francisco, with a roll of blankets on my shoulder and some
small pieces of money in my pocket. Arrived in the city, I sought out
General Walker's agent, one Crittenden by name, a respectable,
honest-looking man, and obtained from him the promise of two hundred
and fifty acres of Nicaraguan land and twenty-five dollars per month
for service in the army of General Walker, and also a steerage-ticket
of free passage to the port of San Juan del Norte by one of the
steamers of the Nicaragua Transit Line. Of my voyage down I do not
intend to speak; several unpublished sensations might have been picked
up in that steerage crowd of bog Irish, low Dutch, New Yorkers, and
California savages of every tribe, returning home in red flannel shirts
and boots of cowhide large; but my business is not with them, and I say
only that after a brief and prosperous voyage we anchored early one
morning in the harbor of San Juan del Sur, at that time part of the
dominions of General Walker.
Whilst the great crowd of home-bound passengers, with infinite din and
shouting, are bustling down the gangways toward the shore, our little
party of twenty or thirty Central American regenerators assemble on the
ship's bow, and answer to our names as read out by a small,
mild-featured man, whom at a glance I should have thought no
filibuster. It seems he was our captain _pro tem._, and bore
recommendations from the agent at San Francisco to a commission in the
Nicaraguan service. He had made the voyage on the cabin side of the
ship, and I saw him now for the first time. His looks betokened no
fire-eating soul; but your brave man has not necessarily a truculent
countenance; and I was, indeed, thankful for the prospect of fighting
under an honest man and no cut-throat outwardly.
We followed this our chief down the vessel's side to the shore,
catching a glimpse of Fate as we passed over the old hulk in our
course. It was one of Walker's soldiers in the last stage of fever. His
skin was as yellow and glazed as parchment, and seemed drawn over a
mere fleshless skeleton. Poor man! he lay there watching the noisy
passengers descend from the ship. "His eyes are with his heart, and
that is far away," carried back by the bustling scene to another
shore,--the goal of that passing crowd,--never more to gladden _his_
dim eye. The unrelenting grasp of death was on him; and even now,
perhaps, the waves are rolling his bleaching bones to and fro on that
distant beach. I say that this dismal omen damped the spirit of us all.
But nothing in this world can long dishearten the brave; we soon grow
lighter, and, marching along in the crowd, blackguard effectively the
witty or witless dogs that crack jokes at us and forebode hard fate
ahead of us.
When we came into the town of San Juan, we found there a general and
colonel of the filibuster army, and reported ourselves forthwith as a
party of recruits just arrived and at their service. The general was
altogether absorbed hobnobbing with the old friends whom he had
discovered in the passenger crowd, and would not listen to us; but the
colonel pointed out an empty building, and told us to drop our luggage
there, and amuse ourselves until we heard further from him. This town
of San Juan del Sur is entirely the creation of the Nicaragua Transit
Company, and is the Pacific terminus of the Isthmus portage-road. It
consisted of half a dozen board hotels, and a litter of native
grass-thatched huts, and lay at the foot of a high, woody spur, which
curves out into the sea and forms the southern rim of a beautiful
little harbor, completed by another less elevated point jutting out on
the north. The country inland is entirely shut out by a dense forest,
into which the Transit road plunges and is immediately lost. Whilst I
was walking about this sequestered place, now all alive with the
California passengers, a party of Walker's cavalry came riding in from
the interior, and at once drew all eyes upon them. They were mounted on
horses or mules of every color, shape, and size,--themselves
yellow-faced, ragged, and dirty; nevertheless, their deadly garniture,
rifles, revolvers, and bowie-knives, and their fierce and shaggy looks,
kept them from being laughed at. They dismounted and tied their beasts
in front of one of the hotels, and then dispersed about the town in
search of whatever was refreshing.
From these men we learned that General Walker's prospects were never so
fair as now. His enemies, they said, worn out and ready to despair, had
drawn off to Granada, where they now lay irresolute and quarrelling
amongst themselves. General Walker held the Transit route from ocean to
ocean, and a single filibuster might walk all through the country
without danger. This news was not satisfactory to all of us. A small,
bright-eyed youth, from the California theatre, who had been noted on
the voyage down for his loud talking, declared that for his part he had
come to Nicaragua to fight, and, now that there was no more fighting to
be done, he would pass through and take ship for the United States. The
filibusters smiled at each other grimly, and told him, if that was the
difficulty, he had better not go, for Walker intended driving the enemy
out of Granada shortly, and he would there find all that he wanted. And
well it was that they satisfied him to stay; for on that day this youth
went without his dinner because he had no cent in his pocket to buy it,
and ship-captains refuse to assist all such as lie under that unhappy
cloud. Oh, thou light-bodied son of Thespis! Where art thou now? I saw
thee last, with heavy musket on thy shoulder, marching wearily to the
assault of San Jorge. Did the vultures tear thee there? Or art thou
still somewhere amongst men, blowing the great deeds wrought by thy
feathery arm that day? I hope thou wast not left on that dismal shore!
Late in the afternoon, when the Californians had departed for Virgin
Bay, where they were to embark on Lake Nicaragua, our party of recruits
took the road for the same place, on our way to Rivas, the
head-quarters of the filibuster army. A short distance from the
Pacific, we began the ascent of the Cordillera chain, not very
formidable here, but broken into spurs and irregular ridges, with deep
umbrageous hollows, and little streams of clear water winding noisily
among them. Coming down from this rugged high ground, we entered a wide
plain, stretching away to Lake Nicaragua, out of whose waters we saw
the blue cones of Ometepec and Madeira lifting their heads up above
all, and capped with clouds. Before we had crossed the twelve miles
between ocean and lake, and entered Virgin Bay, it was dark, and the
Californians were already hurrying aboard a little steamer, which
puffed and whistled at the wharf. In half an hour afterwards they were
steaming across the lake for the entrance or head of the Rio San Juan.
It was here that we ate our first meal at the expense of General
Walker, or, rather, at the expense of an innkeeper of Virgin Bay; for
he, our entertainer, looked upon us as little better than sorners,
declaring he had already fed filibusters to the value of six thousand
dollars, without other return than General Walker's promise to pay,
which he professed to esteem but slightly or not at all. These
hotel-keepers of Virgin Bay and San Juan, who came in the wake of the
Transit Company, and made their money by the California passengers,
seemed to be a good deal worried by General Walker. Their business was
no longer profitable, and their families lived in a state of continual
alarm between the combatants; yet they were not allowed the alternative
of flight; for it was General Walker's policy, wise or unwise, when he
had got a man into Nicaragua who was useful to him, to keep him there;
and the last Transit Company, being entirely in his interest, carried
no emigrant out of the Isthmus unfurnished with a passport from
President Walker himself.
That night we slept in an empty building, and were aroused next
morning at daybreak, and ordered to continue our march to Rivas, which
was said to lie nine miles to the north of us. We set forward,
grumbling sorely for lack of breakfast, and stiff from our
twelve-miles' march of the evening before. Our path led us sometimes
under the deep shades of a tangled forest, sometimes along the open
lake-beach, on which the waves rolled with almost the swell of an ocean
surf. A few miles short of Rivas we emerged from the ragged forest, and
entered a beautiful, cultivated country, through which we passed along
green lanes fringed with broad-leaved plantains, bending oranges,
tufted palms, and all tropical fruit-trees,--a very Nicaraguan paradise
to the sore-footed wayfarer. At last this enchanting approach brought
us to the outskirts of Rivas, and we entered a narrow, mud-walled
street, and never halted until we came out upon the central and only
_plaza_ of the miserable town. Our incumbered march, without breakfast,
after a long, inactive sea-voyage, had wearied us sadly; and we threw
our luggage upon, the ground, lay down upon it, and ruminated on a
scene of little comfort to the faint-hearted, if there were any such in
our little crowd of world-battered and battering strong men, topers,
and vagabonds.
The square we had entered was perhaps one hundred yards or more in
width, much overgrown with grass, and surrounded by buildings of mean
and gloomy aspect. Six narrow and sordid streets debouched into
it,--two coming with parallel courses from the west, two from the east,
and one entering at each eastern angle from the north and south. It was
at the opening of the last of these that we rested, and received our
first impressions of the wretched _plaza_,--since hung for us with a
thousand dirty reminiscences.
It displayed none of those architectural embellishments and attempts at
magnificence which usually centre about the _plazas_ of the
Spanish-American capitals,--not even a carved door-facing or trifling
ornament of any description. The entire side on our right, between the
two eastern streets, was occupied by the cracked and roofless walls of
an ancient church or convent, which had long been a neglected ruin. The
fallen stones and mortar had raised a sloping embankment high up its
venerable sides; and the small trees, here and there shooting above the
luxuriant grass and running vines which, covered this climbing pile of
rubbish, waved their branches over the top of the mouldering walls. The
interior of the crumbling structure was a wilderness of rank grass and
weeds, the elysium of reptiles, iguanas, centipedes, and ten thousand
poisonous insects. On our left, opposite the falling church, was
another ruin; but its vulgar features owned none of the green and mossy
dignity of age, which gave a melancholy beauty to the former. It was a
glaring pile of naked dust and rubbish, and its shot crumbled walls and
riddled doors told the tale of its destruction. The entire front on
that side of the _plaza_ was in ruins, with the exception of one stout
building on the corner diagonally opposed to us. The northern side was
inclosed by a long, low building, with its elevated doors partly hidden
by the far-projecting, red-tiled roof; and in front of it six or eight
grim pieces of cannon, mounted upon wheels, gaped their black mouths
toward us. Our own side of the square was occupied by a building
exactly like the one opposite. The low-reaching roof was supported by
wooden posts, and the long porch or corridor between the posts and the
wall was paved with large earthen tiles. The doors, elevated several
feet above this pavement to baffle the heat of a tropical sun, were
darkened by the overhanging roof; and this, together with the effect of
the small wooden-grated windows and the absence of furniture, gave the
rooms a gloomy and comfortless aspect. All these buildings, with the
exception of the ruined convent, which was of stone, were built of
_adobes_, or large sun-dried blocks of mud; and their walls, doors, and
staring red roofs were everywhere bruised or perforated with shot.
Such was the _plaza_ and middle spot of Rivas, a town of some two or
three thousand inhabitants, where General Walker stood at bay many
weary days against the combined Costa Ricans, Guatemalans, and
Chamorristas, and was netted at last. But these observations of the
squalid _plaza_ were of another date. At present our eyes and thoughts
fasten upon the crowd of melancholy, fever-eaten filibusters, who walk
with heavy pace up and down the corridors, and along the paths which
cross the grass-grown plaza. There was a morbid, yellowish glaze,
almost universal, on their faces, and an unnatural listlessness and
utter lack of animation in all their movements and conversation, which
contrasted painfully with the boisterous hilarity and rugged
healthiness of our late Californian fellow-travellers. Their appearance
was most forlorn and despicable in a military view,--no soldier's
uniform or spirit amongst them, only the poor man's uniform of rags and
dirt, and the spirit of careless, disease-worn, doomed men.
Nevertheless, all bore about them some emblem of their trade; some, for
the most part with difficulty, carried muskets or rifles; some, the
better-dressed and healthier looking, wore swords,--a weapon, as I
afterwards found, distinctive of commissioned officers; some had with
them only their pistols or cartridge-boxes, which, belted around the
middle, served a double purpose in keeping up their ragged breeches.
Then almost all of them, as they moved about or lay in the shade of the
corridors, sucked or gnawed some fruit of the country,--the only thing
which they seemed to do with energy or due sensation.
Whilst I sat looking about at these miserable people, I was accosted by
an individual whom I had known in California. He professed to be glad
to see me; told me Nicaragua was the finest of countries; "but," said
he, with some latent humor of too ghastly a hue, "I'm sorry you didn't
come down with us three months ago, as you thought of doing; we've all
been promoted. The officers and two-thirds of the men have died, and
nearly all the rest of us are promoted. I myself am captain. You made a
great mistake, you see."
"My friend," said I, "you needn't try to frighten me. I've lived in a
tropical climate before, and it is the healthiest part of the world for
men of my temperament."
"Then you'll be promoted," said he. "A healthy man is sure of his
reward in this service. Do you see that fellow crossing the plaza with
the old shoes in his hand?"
"Yes," said I,--"poor man!"
"He has got them off of some dead man's feet out at the hospital. They
die out there night and day. All these men you see here will die in six
months."
After running through this humorous vein, he told me what adventures he
had seen since joining the filibuster army; which, however, I have no
intention to recount;--honor enough, if I may relate veridically, and
with passable phrase, my own tamer befallings.
Long after we had grown sufficiently hungry, one came from General
Walker, and led us to a house in the outer parts of the town, where, he
informed us, we had been allotted to quarter for the present. The same
person further instructed us to send to the commissary, and we should
obtain wherewith to satisfy our hunger. We did so gladly; and having
drawn a supply of beef, tortillas, and plantains, were comparatively
content for the rest of the day.
After several days of idle loitering about the camp, our party was
separated and ranked in divers old companies of the army. Myself and
some few others obtained seats amongst the horsemen, and had reason to
think ourselves happy; for the mounted part of the service was so much
more esteemed, that lieutenants of the foot companies had been known to
drop their rank voluntarily and take grade as private soldiers in the
saddle.
But first it was necessary to achieve our horses before we could mount;
and to that end we were permitted, and indeed commanded, by General
Walker, President of Nicaragua, to search the surrounding _haciendas_
and stables, until we were satisfactorily provided. Accordingly we set
out one morning on this errand, furnished, all of us, with rifles and
store of ammunition, against the possibility of collision with such
countryfolk as might desire over-ardently to keep their horses by them.
It will not be profitable to follow our search over that magnificent
country, diversified with groves of cocoa and plantain trees, patches
of sugar-cane and maize, with here and there a picturesque grange
embowered amidst orange and palm trees. Suffice it to say, that all the
animals in the vicinity of Rivas, fit for warlike purposes, had been
removed, and toward evening we found ourselves out amongst the hills to
the west, beyond the circle of cultivation, and as yet with no horses
in tow. From the summit of a high, grass-crowned hill we swept all the
surrounding country;--toward the east spread a vast sea of verdure,
rolled into gentle hollows and ridges, broken by the red roofs of
Rivas, San Jorge, and Obraja; and beyond all, the lake stretching into
misty remoteness, with its islands, and the ever-notable volcanoes,
Madeira and Ometepec, rising abruptly out of it. It was a glorious
scene, worthy of reverie. But we must scan it as Milton's Devil--to
compare us with one far above us--did the hardly fairer garden of
Paradise,--with thoughts of prey in our hearts. Nor were we
disappointed, any more than that other greater one; for on top of an
open ridge, a short distance west of us, we saw a solitary horse,
tethered, and feeding composedly, as if he had nothing to fear out here
amongst the hills. Part of us keep our eyes upon him, lest his tricky
owner should get the alarm and remove him; whilst others plunge into
the coppice which fills the intervening hollow, and soon reappear on
the ridge beyond.
Whilst we stood about the horse, communing doubtfully, not knowing
where to find another, an old man approached us, and, with rueful look
and gesture, besought us not to deprive him of the sole support of his
life.
"Beyond that hill," said he, "the Padre has many better horses. _El
Padre esta un rico hombre. Yo estoy muy pobre, Senores_."
Set it down to the credit of filibusters, that we gladly surrendered
this old man his horse, and betook ourselves to the rear of the hill
which he pointed out to us; and there, after some search, we found, in
close covert of tangled and almost impenetrable bushes, a small
_corral_ of mules and horses, which the Padre had begrudged the service
of General Walker. For my own share in the spoils of this Trojan
adventure, I chose a well-legged mule, young, lively, and well enough
looking generally; and thenceforward I was entitled to call myself
"Mounted Ranger," according to General Walker's rather high-sounding
classification.
Let no one reflect upon the writer because he assisted in robbing this
churchman of his horses. For him there was no choice; and if he is
chargeable with moral depravity, it must be elsewhere,--forsooth, in
joining with one who made war unprovided with a military chest
sufficient to cover expenses. However, this is no matter, one way or
the other. The private character of the relator, Samuel Absalom, is not
before the reader; nor is it to be expected that he will care to turn
his eye upon it for a moment.
The ranger company in which we had been ranked was stationed below, on
the Transit road; but as it would return to head-quarters as soon as
the California immigrants, now due, had crossed over to the Pacific, we
were ordered to await it there. We spent the interim foraging for our
animals or loitering about the camp. It may be that some short
exposition of filibuster spirit and circumstances, as we saw them at
this leisure time, will have interest for one or two. A few weeks
before our arrival, the prospect of the Americans in Nicaragua was
black enough, and, indeed, despaired of by most. General Henningsen,
with the greater part of the force, was cooped up and half starved in
Granada, by three or four thousand Costa Ricans and Chamorristas;
General Walker, with the remainder, lay lower down on the Isthmus,
watched by a second division of the enemy, and too weak to give him any
assistance. General Henningsen's men, reduced to a mere handful by
starvation and the bullets of the enemy, could hold out but a day or
two longer; and then the entire force of the allies would unite and
beat up General Walker, and end the squalid game. The Central Americans
were certain of their prey. But just at this juncture several hundred
healthy Americans landed on the Transit road, and, placing them on one
of the lake steamers, together with his old force, General Walker took
them up to Granada, sent them ashore in bungos under a heavy fire, told
them to do or die, and then paddled out into the lake with the steamer.
It was a good stroke. The men, without other hope, fought their way
over three successive barricades to General Henningsen, brought him
out, setting fire to the city, reembarked on the steamer, and finally
landed again at the fort of San Jorge, two miles east of Rivas. After
that, General Walker gathered all his force at Rivas, and the enemy
drew off to Granada, with some thirty or forty miles between.
When we reached Nicaragua, in the latter part of December, 1856, the
entire force of the filibusters was still in Rivas, with the exception
of a small party stationed on the Rio San Juan, beyond the lake, and
communicating with the Isthmus force only by means of two small
steamers, "La Virgen" and "San Carlos," which plied across the lake
between the head of the river and Virgin Bay, on the California
passenger-line. The allies had remained inactive at Granada, and were
said to be broken into factions, and daily deserting and returning home
in large bodies. The isthmus of Rivas was free ground to the
filibusters, and a score of rangers might forage with little danger
from the Costa Rican line almost to Granada. Their force outside of the
hospital, as we saw it at head-quarters, numbered probably from eight
hundred to one thousand men,--one-third mere skeletons, scarcely able
to go through drill on the _plaza_,--fit only to bury,--and the great
majority of the remainder turning yellow, shaken daily by chills and
fever, and soon to be as worthless as the others. They were all
foreigners,--Americans, Germans, Irish, French, and English,--with the
exception of one small company of natives, captained by a half-breed
Mexican. It was said, however, that many of the poorer natives were
willing to fight against the Chamorristas,--the aristocratic Nicaraguan
faction originally opposed to Patricio Rivas and the Liberals, now in
arms against General Walker,--but that they made miserable soldiers
outside of a barricade, and General Walker had no arms to throw away
upon them. For sustenance, the filibusters had the fruits around Rivas,
and a small ration of tortillas and beef, furnished them daily by
Walker's commissary. The beef, as we heard, was supplied by Senor
Pineda, General Walker's most powerful and faithful friend amongst the
natives; and the tortillas were bought from the native women in the
neighborhood of Rivas. It was the quality of the food--assisted largely
by exposure, irregular fasts, and _aguardiente_--which made Nicaragua
so fatal to the filibusters. The isthmus between the lake and the
Pacific, swept nine months of the year by cool eastern breezes, is not
unhealthy. But the ration of beef and tortillas (simple maize cakes
without salt) was too scanty and intermittent; and in the absence of
proper food, the men were driven to fill their stomachs with the
unwholesome fruits which everywhere surrounded their quarters, and but
few were able to stand it many months.
As to the spirit which seemed to animate these men, it was certainly
most discouraging. They had lost all thought--supposing them to have
ever had such thought--of regenerating Central America; and most of
them wished no better thing than to fill their bellies, or to escape
from Nicaragua. Many of them were sunk into a physical and mental
lethargy, thinking of nothing and caring for nothing, and were gone,
not a few, even into lunacy. Some cursed General Walker for enticing
them there under false pretences. There were men with families who
professed to have come there to settle and cultivate the soil, having
been persuaded that the war was ended and the country prepared for
peaceful immigration. Some had paid their own passage, purposing merely
to reconnoitre, and remain or not, as it pleased them; but when they
landed in Nicaragua, General Walker placed muskets in their unwilling
hands, and there he had kept them, fighting, not for himself or his
promises, but for life. It disgusted others that the service was not
only almost certain death and thankless, but was altogether
unprofitable. It was General Walker's practice, and had been always, to
discharge his soldiers' wages with scrip of no cash value whatever, or
so little that many neglected to draw it when due them. And this was
concealed at their enlistment. Indeed, the hatred towards General
Walker and the service seemed almost universal amongst the privates,
and they would have revolted and thrown away their arms at any moment,
had there been hope of escape in that. But they were held together by
common danger in a treacherous or hostile country, separated by broad
oceans and impassable forests from a land of safe refuge. There was,
besides, distrust of each other; and fear, though no love, of General
Walker. He was said to have the iron will and reckless courage of the
true man of destiny. At one time, so they told us, a large body of
fresh, able-bodied men, just arrived in Nicaragua, refused to join the
filibusters on account of some disappointment about the amount of
promised wages. General Walker led out his crowd of yellow men, whom
the newcomers might have knocked down with the wind of their fists, and
so overawed them by this display of resolution that they forthwith
swallowed their complaints and joined his ranks with as good a grace as
they might. I myself, in these first days, saw a little incident which
impressed me that the man was no trifler. I was in his quarters one
day, when an officer came in and made a report to him about some matter
of his duty.
"Captain," said General Walker, looking serenely over the man's head,
"if this is the way you are going to do business, Nicaragua has no
further need for you. We want nothing of this sort done here, Sir."
The fierce, big-whiskered officer said nothing, but looked cowed; and,
indeed, not without excuse; for though there was a nasal whine in the
tone of the little General, and no great fire in his unmeaning eye,
there was yet a quiet self-reliance about him extremely imposing, and
which, as I thought, reached back of any temporary sufflation as tyrant
of Rivas, and was based upon perennial character. Nor is it contrary,
so far as I know, to the laws of psychology, for a man to be endued
with all the self-reliance of Bonaparte, with, at the same time, an
unusually short gift of the great man's marvellous insight, military or
other.
Such an all-pervading demoralized spirit amongst the men as this I have
slightly marked was sure to be contagious; and I am persuaded that
there were few of us who came down there with enthusiasm or admiration
for General Walker, but lost most of it during our first days' mixture
in Rivas.
At the end of some six or eight days, our company came up from the
Transit road, without the California passengers having as yet made
their appearance. General Walker was expecting by this steamer, so long
due on the Atlantic side, a large body of recruits with cannon, bombs,
and other military stores, whose arrival would put him in condition to
attack the enemy at Granada. He began to grow uneasy; and at length
sent an armed row-boat across the lake to the head of the Rio San Juan
to get intelligence. The little party which held that river were
thought to be in no danger behind the walls of San Carlos and Castillo,
and still further protected by the impenetrable forests which stretched
backward from either bank; but now it began to be whispered that
General Walker had committed a fatal blunder in not using the surest
means to keep his only communication with the Atlantic open.
In the mean while our company of rangers was ordered back to the
Transit road, to remain until the passengers crossed. We rode down by a
trail that lay nearer the Pacific than the one by which we had first
approached Rivas.
We found the same desolate, vine-netted forest; but on this route it
was broken at several points by grassy savannas, dotted thinly with
calabash-trees, and browsed by a few wild mules and cattle. In one of
these openings, several miles from the Transit road, we passed a
red-tiled building, the only one of any sort on the trail beyond the
ring-fenced cultivation of Rivas. It was known as the Jocote
Ranch-house, and became afterwards the scene of a bloody defeat for the
filibusters.
Our ride terminated at a large open shed, standing on the Transit road,
two miles east of San Juan, which had been erected by the Transit
Company, and was used by them as shelter for their carriages. Here,
together with a second company of mounted rangers, we were to quarter
until the arrival of the California passengers; and then it was to be
our duty to guard those feeble travellers through the dominions of
President Walker to the Pacific. Our own company numbered some thirty
heads,--men and officers,--and being but lately come to Nicaragua, were
yet tolerably healthy and lively,--although shaken at times by chills
and melancholy, and nearly all turning perceptibly yellow. At all times
of the day, when not in the presence of food or drink, some of them
were bewailing the hour they came to Nicaragua, and sighing sadly to
escape; and had Samuel Absalom come there from any light motive of
vanity, he had surely repented with them: as it was, he had seen a
worse day; the life, too, was not without charms for some men, and his
heart stayed within him through all. The other company was even smaller
than ours, older soldiers, and in much worse health,--many of them
having a chill daily, others wasted with perpetual diarrhoea.
Our routine of duty at this camp was, to ride each day into the forest
and hunt our ration of beef, to water our horses, and to stand an
hour's guard occasionally at night; the remainder of consciousness we
spent broiling and eating cow's flesh, sucking sugar-cane, and waging
horrid warfare against a host of ravenous ticks and crawling creatures
of basest name.
One day, after we had so passed it off for a week or more, a report
reached us from Virgin Bay, that one of the Transit steamers had been
seen to pass up the lake toward Granada, without stopping to land the
passengers. A little after came an order from the colonel of the
rangers directing our party to ride with all haste to Virgin Bay, and
garrison it against the enemy. We mounted immediately and rode over the
Transit as fast as such beasts as we had could carry us. On the way we
met some of the American residents of Virgin Bay, with carpet-bags in
their hands, hurrying across to find comfort near the emigrant steamer,
which still awaited her passengers in the harbor of San Juan. They were
a good deal frightened, and said an attack was expected on Virgin Bay
at any hour.
When we came into the town, it was dark, and, having no time to lose in
getting out the pickets, our horses were left tied under saddle in the
street, and we took station, four at a post, out on the several
approaches to the town. It seemed that nothing was known with certainty
of the enemy; but it was doubted by no one, since the steamer had
passed in sight of her wharf without making or answering signals, that
the enemy were in possession of her; and it seemed probable that they
would land somewhere that night, and attack before General Walker had
time to prepare for them. Our force to oppose them, should they attempt
to land at Virgin Bay, the only convenient place with a pier on the
whole lake, was scarcely thirty in all,--a detachment from both
companies having been sent a few days before to Rivas; and of this
force, the privates, to a man nearly, were wanted to furnish out the
picket-guards,--leaving a reserve body in the citadel of some
half-dozen officers armed mostly with revolvers.
All that night we listened anxiously to the ceaseless din of the lake
breaking upon the shore; but it brought no enemy, and at morning we
were released from guard and sent out to forage. At our shed-camp of
the previous week the animals were turned out to feed in an inclosure,
and we were spared the troublesome duty of foraging. But at Virgin Bay
we were forced to go at it again under disadvantages; for the town had
no surrounding circle of cultivation like that of Rivas,--having been
but recently redeemed from the forest by the Transit Company,--and our
only resource was a few distant _ranchos_ scattered up and down the
lake shore. Beside this, we had the daily duty, as before, of searching
the open savannas in the forest for beef,--the commissary department
furnishing us no part of a ration but bread,--and other irregular
expeditions, which kept us in the saddle the greater part of the day.
Almost a week had passed in this manner, with no appearance or news of
the enemy, and we had grown heartily tired of riding and watching to no
purpose, when one day the steamer hove in sight towards the north; and
steaming down she went to land, almost directly opposite Virgin Bay,
against the island of Ometepec. Day after day she lay there immovable,
with her white side gleaming dimly across the water, and far out of the
reach of us wistful filibusters;--for although there was a small brig
of General Walker's floating beside the pier which ran out into the
lake, yet it was out of repair; and, in any state, the wind blew too
strongly and constantly from the northeast for a sail vessel to make
the island, which lay almost in its teeth. Nevertheless, carpenters
were set at work on it, and row-boats, borrowed of the vessels in San
Juan harbor, were hauled over the Transit road; and it was said that
the old brig was to be filled with soldiers and worked across to the
island by aid of the row-boats. The thing seemed far from impossible.
The space between the island and Virgin Bay was not above ten or twelve
miles, and for part of the distance, under lee of the great volcano,
the wind was lull. Could the brig be worked round the wind and brought
into this calm water, the towing thenceforward was easy; and all this
done in the space of one night, the surprise and recapture of the
steamer were certain. In the mean while a detachment of foot marched
down daily from Rivas, and, without giving us any relief, marched as
regularly back again. Our hard-worked garrison, almost worn down by
watching and riding, and, at sight of these men, hoping always to be
relieved, snarled bitterly at such apparently useless expenditure of
leg-muscle,--an article, truly, of which those lean, saffron-colored
trampers had but too scanty supply for ordinary need.
One night, after the detachment of foot had gone, and there was no
force but the rangers in the town, a large light, supposed to be under
the boilers of the steamer, was seen on the water approaching from the
north, and it was thought that the enemy were coming at last to attack
us. However, when the light came almost opposite, it made toward the
island and soon after disappeared. Next morning, looking across to the
island, we saw a dark-colored steamer lying beside the white one; and
we knew that the enemy were in possession of both the Transit steamers,
and held the lake wholly at command. It was the same day, I think, that
one of the boats was seen to be getting up steam, and shortly afterward
she paddled out from the island, and came directly toward Virgin Bay.
Things were quickly put in posture for a fight. The neutral residents,
who had returned from San Juan, again set out over the Transit road.
The squad of infantry which had just come in from Rivas was placed at
the extreme end of the wooden pier that ran some one hundred and fifty
yards into the lake. They were armed with rifled muskets and Minie
ball, and hoped to kill at eight hundred or a thousand yards. The
rangers, with arms of shorter range, waited on the shore. As the
steamer approached, she was seen to be covered with a crowd of
dark-skinned soldiers. She came steadily up within quarter of a mile of
the shore, and then, suddenly turning broadside to, opened with a
single cannon. The ball struck the water some little distance from the
end of the pier,--after an interval implying awkward handling, another
roar,--and then one or two nervous soldiers on the pier, not liking to
await the ball in that place, break for the shore; but they are
promptly knocked down by the others, and make no further progress. The
steamer continues her fire out there leisurely, and the officer on the
pier, being satisfied at last that she will come no closer, gives her a
volley of musketry. In a moment the decks are cleared with a scamper,
and no man is anywhere visible; whilst, at the same time, the steamer
hastily puts about, and never stops until she reaches the island.
This ill-supported bravado was as much as we saw of the enemy at Virgin
Bay; for next day we were recalled to headquarters, and gladly left
that post to the care of the infantry. When we came to Rivas, we found
many rumors about the enemy, but it was certain only that a bungo with
natives from the island had been captured, as it came to shore, by a
party of rangers, and it was these prisoners' report that the enemy
were gathering provisions on the island, and awaiting reinforcements,
on whose arrival they would land and attack us upon the isthmus.
I may as well state here the explanation, as we afterwards learned it,
of this most unexpected reappearance of the enemy,--which came upon
General Walker like a thunderclap, whilst he dreamed they had left him
for good and all. It seems that the Vanderbilt Company, whom Walker had
made enemies by ousting them from the Transit route, sent an agent (one
Spencer) to the disheartened Costa Ricans, who showed them that they
might easily strangle the filibuster force by seizing the ill-guarded
Rio San Juan. Led by Spencer, they secretly cut a road through the
forest on the Costa Rican side, found the forts scarcely watched by a
few spiritless sick men, and overwhelmed and scattered them without
difficulty. At the same time they surprised and seized all the Transit
steamers on the river and lake, so that thenceforward communication
with the Atlantic was closed to General Walker, and a large body of New
Orleans recruits under Lockridge, who had just arrived at the mouth of
the river, found themselves headed off, and began a long and skilless
fight to recover the steamers and make the junction with the isthmus
force. So, after all, Walker owes his defeat, not to the natives of
Central America, but to his own countrymen; and, had it not been for
the malice or revenge of Vanderbilt, he might have reigned in Nicaragua
at this day,--unless he had blundered himself out of it unassisted, as
many who lived with him thought he could hardly fail to do, were time
but granted him.--After capture of the lake steamers, the Costa Ricans,
impressing their American crews into service, took them up to Granada
to embark the old force of Costa Ricans and Chamorristas still
remaining there. They were on this errand when the steamer San Carlos
was first seen to pass Virgin Bay. But what other reinforcement they
expected, whilst they lay so long against the island after their return
from Granada, I do not know,--unless it was the Guatemalans, who we
knew soon afterward had joined them in large force.
The next day after we had returned to Rivas, our company, now united
again, had orders to ride to San Juan, on the Pacific, and convoy back
some cart-loads of lead. As we were bringing our charge on the return,
we were overtaken in the forest by an order to hasten to Virgin Bay, to
the assistance of the infantry about to be attacked by the enemy.
Leaving three or four of the company to follow the carts, we started
immediately at hard gallop for Virgin Bay. When we arrived there, we
found that the enemy, after a trifling cannonade of the town from one
of the steamers, had put back to the island again, leaving no greater
damage than a shot-hole in one of the row-boats,--which still lay at
Virgin Bay awaiting the bungling delay (better worthy of greasers than
earnest filibusters) about the brig. This demonstration against Virgin
Bay was probably a ruse to divide the filibuster force; for, next day,
as I recollect it, the Alcalde of Obraja, a native partisan of General
Walker, hurried into Rivas with the news that fifteen hundred of the
enemy had landed from the lake, ten or twelve miles above.
The Alcalde brought with him to Rivas his family and valuables, and
proved himself one of the few natives of the better class who, during
my sojourn, took active part with the Americans. It was said, that,
when Patricio Rivas was President, and Walker General-in-chief of his
army, many men of wealth and station amongst the Liberals--as Rivas's
democratic party, opposed to the Chamorristas or aristocratic party,
were called--encouraged and thought well of their American assistants.
But after the Chamorristas were worsted,--mainly by strength of
Walker's Californians,--and General Walker had broken with Rivas, and
set up for President of Nicaragua himself, almost all the natives of
any name or property had deserted him. However, many of them remained
on their _haciendas_, and took no part in the struggle on either side.
Those in the vicinity of Rivas feigned sympathy with us, but were
probably inimical at heart. Indeed, intelligence of some act of
disaffection was continually coming to General Walker; and thereupon he
would oust the offender, confiscate his estate to the government, and,
perhaps, grant it to some one of his officers, or pawn it to foreign
sympathizers for military stores. The neighborhood of Rivas was dotted
with ranch-houses, distenanted by these means,--rank grass growing in
the court-yards, the cactus-hedges gapped, and the crops swept away by
the foragers. Perhaps, had these men been let alone, jealousy toward
foreigners would not, of itself, have made them enemies; but General
Walker was obliged to provide arms and provisions for his soldiers,
and, having no other resource, he must come down heavily on the
Nicaraguans, so far as he could reach them. That this was a ground of
great disgust and odium toward us, throughout the country, our company
of rangers, which did some foraging and mule-gathering, had good reason
to know. I remember, on one occasion, a small party of us, armed only
with revolvers, were retreating out of a large _hacienda_, heavily
incumbered with horse-provender, when we saw the landlord and his
peons, with _machetes_ in their hands, coming to meet us. As we trotted
up toward them, the angry man stood at the roadside, lariat in hand,
frowning, and in the attitude to arrest our foremost horseman;--but the
filibuster drew his revolver, concealed hitherto by his burden, and
cocked it,--and the poor man, seeing that he was unequal, was fain to
vent his wrath in boiling words. This man, who doubtless became an
enemy, might have been soothed, had General Walker taken the pains to
furnish foraging-papers to the rangers. He professed himself a true
friend of Walker's, holding all he possessed at his service; but it was
out of his power, he said, to contain himself, whilst a troop of
_Americanos_ were leaping his fences and ravaging his fields, without
token of authority, or word of apology on any part. However, after all,
General Walker may have acted for the wisest in this matter. The writer
of this narrative was an unenlightened private in the filibuster army,
and, of course, though open-eyed to some extent, saw all things of
policy through a glass dimly. It may be that General Walker, who had
opportunities for thorough acquaintance with Spanish-American
character, held it weakness to place any trust or value upon their
friendship, and therefore took no care to conciliate it. This has a
look of wisdom, and would explain many apparently stupid and gratuitous
negligences. But what shall I think when he seemed as little
solicitous, and certainly was at no greater pains, to attach his own
men? Instead of treating us like fellow-soldiers and adventurers in
danger, upon whom he was wholly dependent, until his power was
established, he bore himself like an Eastern tyrant,--reserved and
haughty,--scarcely saluting when he met us,--mixing not at all, but
keeping himself dose in his quarters,--some said through fear, lest
some of his own men should shoot him, of which indeed there was great
danger to such a man. But his treatment of the wounded was his worst
policy. There was, it is true, a hospital at Rivas; but he never, or
rarely, visited it; and it was so badly kept, that every good captain
who had friends in the ranks chose the great inconvenience of nursing
his wounded at his own quarters, rather than send them into that
wretched hole whence few ever came out. It is true, the wounded seldom
got well in that climate, and Walker's best general said that the
government liked to have the enemy kill the men, rather than wound
them; yet, had they been wiser, they would have taken care of them
merely for the sake of the spirit of the rest.--But I have wandered
from my narrative.
Toward the evening of the same day that the faithful _alcalde_ brought
his report, I walked down to the _plaza_, to see what stir the news had
created among the skeleton foot-soldiers. There was no stir at all,
outwardly. They sat in their doors and talked listlessly, without
laughter or excitement, as they were always wont before. A hearty laugh
or a loud voice in conversation always sounded unnaturally in the
streets of Rivas; and, indeed, few amongst the foot found spirit for
such things,--unless new recruits, or under the stimulus of
_aguardiente_. As often as I have left the quarters of the more healthy
and animated rangers in the outskirts, and walked down into the
populous part of the camp, I have been reminded of one of those
enchanted cities of the "Arabian Nights," where the silent inhabitants,
though grouped about, seemingly engaged in their ordinary occupations,
are in reality soulless, and no better than dead men or frozen fish.
I took my seat in the porch of the guard-house,--that stout building
which I have mentioned as the only one surviving the ruin on the west
side of the _plaza_,--and watched the foot go through their evening
drill. Classed as musketeers, riflemen, and artillery-men, they were
trained to a part of the United States army-practice, each morning and
evening, on the _plaza_. The rangers were taught no drill of any kind;
and when I observed how some of the despicable officers pricked those
feeble creatures with their swords to make them look sharp and step
lively, I was glad enough to go without instruction in the military
science. The men, on the present occasion, were clothed in black felt
hats, blue cotton trousers, brogans, and blue flannel shirts, with the
letter of their company and the number of the regiment sewed upon the
breast in characters of white cloth. They had received this uniform, I
think, by the steamer on which I came down, and it was become somewhat
greasy and louse-seamed by this time; nevertheless, their appearance
was much more soldierlike and respectable than when I first saw them.
After the exercise was ended, the men gathered around a small brass
band, of half a dozen Germans, which began to play in front of General
Walker's quarters. The little General himself sat in his door, and
looked out with impassible countenance upon the crowd in the street. It
was an excellent conglomerate to study, for any one who could have the
head and feeling there. What General Walker made of it, not even his
staff-officers, who sat beside him, could tell,--if it were true, as
was said, that he had no confidant, even amongst them.
Toward dusk, as I was returning to quarters, I saw a detachment of some
one hundred riflemen marching out on the Obraja road, to the slow tap
of a kettle-drum, and dragging a small piece of artillery with them.
This, with the exception of some rangers, who had been sent forward to
scout, was the sole force yet dispatched to meet the enemy,--who were
now said to be advanced to Obraja, a hamlet nine miles northwest of
Rivas.
[To be continued.]
THE MINISTER'S WOOING.[1]
[Concluded]
CHAPTER XXXV.
OLD LOVE AND NEW DUTY.
The sun was just setting, and the whole air and sea seemed flooded with
rosy rays. Even the crags and rocks of the sea-shore took purple and
lilac hues, and savins and junipers, had a painter been required to
represent them, would have been found not without a suffusion of the
same tints. And through the tremulous rosy sea of the upper air, the
silver full-moon looked out like some calm superior presence which
waits only for the flush of a temporary excitement to die away, to make
its tranquillizing influence felt.
Mary, as she walked homeward with this dreamy light around her, moved
with a slower step than when borne along by the vigorous arm and
determined motion of her young friend.
It is said that a musical sound uttered with decision by one instrument
always makes the corresponding chord of another vibrate; and Mary felt,
as she left her positive, but warm-hearted friend, a plaintive
vibration of something in her own self, in which she was conscious her
calm friendship for her future husband had no part. She fell into one
of those reveries which she thought she had forever forbidden to
herself, and there rose before her mind the picture of a
marriage-ceremony,--but the eyes of the bridegroom were dark, and his
curls were clustering in raven ringlets, and her hand throbbed in his
as it had never throbbed in any other.
It was just as she was coming out of a little grove of cedars, where
the high land overlooks the sea, and the dream which came to her
overcame her with a vague and yearning sense of pain. Suddenly she
heard footsteps behind her, and some one said, "Mary!" It was spoken in
a choked voice, as one speaks in the crisis of a great emotion; and she
turned and saw those very eyes, that very hair, yes, and the cold
little hand throbbed with that very throb in that strong, living, manly
hand; and, whether in the body or out of the body God knoweth, she felt
herself borne in those arms, and words that spoke themselves in her
inner heart, words profaned by being repeated, were on her ear.
"Oh! is this a dream? is this a dream? James! are we in heaven? Oh, I
have lived through such an agony! I have been so worn out! Oh, I
thought you never would come!" And then the eyes closed, and heaven and
earth faded away together in a trance of blissful rest.
But it was no dream; for an hour later you might have seen a manly form
sitting in that selfsame place, bearing in his arms a pale figure which
he cherished as tenderly as a mother her babe. And they were talking
together,--talking in low tones; and in all this wide universe neither
of them knew or felt anything but the great joy of being thus side by
side.
They spoke of love mightier than death, which many waters cannot
quench. They spoke of yearnings, each for the other,--of longing
prayers,--of hopes deferred,--and then of this great joy,--for _one_
had hardly yet returned to the visible world.
Scarce wakened from deadly faintness, she had not come back fully to
the realm of life,--only to that of love,--to love which death cannot
quench. And therefore it was, that, without knowing that she spoke, she
had said all, and compressed the history of those three years into one
hour.
But at last, thoughtful of her health, provident of her weakness, he
rose up and passed his arm around her to convey her home. And as he did
so, he spoke one word that broke the whole charm.
"You will allow me, Mary, the right of a future husband, to watch over
your life and health."
Then came back the visible world,--recollection, consciousness, and
the great battle of duty,--and Mary drew away a little, and said,--
"Oh, James, you are too late! that can never be!"
He drew back from her.
"Mary, are you married?"
"Before God, I am," she said, "My word is pledged. I cannot retract it.
I have suffered a good man to place his whole faith upon it,--a man who
loves me with his whole soul."
"But, Mary, you do not love _him_. _That_ is impossible!" said James,
holding her off from him, and looking at her with an agonized
eagerness. "After what you have just said, it is not possible."
"Oh, James! I am sure I don't know what I have said,--it was all so
sudden, and I didn't know what I was saying,--but things that I must
never say again. The day is fixed for next week. It is all the same as
if you had found me his wife."
"Not quite," said James, his voice cutting the air with a decided
manly ring. "I have some words to say to that yet."
"Oh, James, will you be selfish? will you tempt me to do a mean,
dishonorable thing? to be false to my word deliberately given?"
"But," said James, eagerly, "you know, Mary, you _never_ would have
given it, if you had known that I was living."
"That is true, James; but I _did_ give it. I have suffered him to build
all his hopes of life upon it. I _beg_ you not to tempt me,--help me to
do right!"
"But, Mary, did you not get my letter?"
"Your letter?"
"Yes,--that long letter that I wrote you."
"I never got any letter, James."
"Strange!" he said. "No wonder it seems sudden to you!"
"Have you seen your mother?" said Mary, who was conscious this moment
only of a dizzy instinct to turn the conversation from where she felt
too weak to bear it.
"No; do you suppose I should see anybody before you?"
"Oh, then, you must go to her!" said Mary. "Oh, James, you don't know
how she has suffered!"
They were drawing near to the cottage-gate.
"Do, pray!" said Mary. "Go, hurry to your mother! Don't be too sudden,
either, for she's very weak; she is almost worn out with sorrow. Go, my
dear brother! _Dear_ you always will be to me."
James helped her into the house, and they parted. All the house was yet
still. The open kitchen-door let in a sober square of moonlight on the
floor. The very stir of the leaves on the trees could be heard. Mary
went into her little room, and threw herself upon the bed, weak, weary,
yet happy,--for deep and high above all other feelings was the great
relief that he was living still. After a little while she heard the
rattling of the wagon, and then the quick patter of Miss Prissy's
feet, and her mother's considerate tones, and the Doctor's grave
voice,--and quite unexpectedly to herself, she was shocked to find
herself turning with an inward shudder from the idea of meeting him.
"How very wicked!" she thought,--"how ungrateful!"--and she prayed that
God would give her strength to check the first rising of such feelings.
Then there was her mother, so ignorant and innocent, busy putting away
baskets of things that she had bought in provision for the
wedding-ceremony.
Mary almost felt as if she had a guilty secret. But when she reflected
upon the last two hours, she felt no wish to take them back again. Two
little hours of joy and rest they had been,--so pure, so perfect! she
thought God must have given them to her as a keepsake to remind her of
His love, and to strengthen her in the way of duty.
Some will, perhaps, think it an unnatural thing that Mary should have
regarded her pledge to the Doctor as of so absolute and binding force;
but they must remember the rigidity of her education. Self-denial and
self-sacrifice had been the daily bread of her life. Every prayer,
hymn, and sermon, from her childhood, had warned her to distrust her
inclinations and regard her feelings as traitors. In particular had she
been brought up to regard the sacredness of a promise with a
superstitious tenacity; and in this case the promise involved so deeply
the happiness of a friend whom she had loved and revered all her life,
that she never thought of any way of escape from it. She had been
taught that there was no feeling so strong but that it might be
immediately repressed at the call of duty; and if the thought arose to
her of this great love to another, she immediately answered it by
saying, "How would it have been, if I had been married? As I could have
overcome then, so I can now."
Mrs. Scudder came into her room with a candle in her hand, and Mary,
accustomed to read the expression of her mother's countenance, saw at a
glance a visible discomposure there. She held the light so that it
shone upon Mary's face.
"Are you asleep?" she said.
"No, mother."
"Are you unwell?"
"No, mother,--only a little tired."
Mrs. Scudder set down the candle, and shut the door, and, after a
moment's hesitation, said,--
"My daughter, I have some news to tell you, which I want you to prepare
your mind for. Keep yourself quite quiet"
"Oh, mother!" said Mary, stretching out her hands towards her, "I know
it. James has come home."
"How did you hear?" said her mother, with astonishment.
"I have seen him, mother."
Mrs. Scudder's countenance fell.
"Where?"
"I went to walk home with Cerinthy Twitchel, and, as I was coming back,
he came up behind me, just at Savin Rock."
Mrs. Scudder sat down on the bed and took her daughter's hand.
"I trust, my dear child," she said. She stopped.
"I think I know what you are going to say, mother. It is a great joy,
and a great relief; but of course I shall be true to my engagement with
the Doctor."
Mrs. Scudder's face brightened.
"That is my own daughter! I might have known that you would do so. You
would not, certainly, so cruelly disappoint a noble man who has set his
whole faith upon you."
"No, mother, I shall not disappoint him. I told James that I should be
true to my word."
"He will probably see the justice of it," said Mrs. Scudder, in that
easy tone with which elderly people are apt to dispose of the feelings
of young persons. "Perhaps it may be something of a trial, at first."
Mary looked at her mother with incredulous blue eyes. The idea that
feelings which made her hold her breath when she thought of them could
be so summarily disposed of! She turned her face wearily to the wall,
with a deep sigh, and said,--
"After all, mother, it is mercy enough and comfort enough to think that
he is living. Poor Cousin Ellen, too,--what a relief to her! It is like
life from the dead. Oh, I shall be happy enough; no fear of that!"
"And you know," said Mrs. Scudder, "that there has never existed any
engagement of any kind between you and James. He had no right to found
any expectations on anything you ever told him."
"That is true also, mother," said Mary, "I had never thought of such a
thing as marriage, in relation to James."
"Of course," pursued Mrs. Scudder, "he will always be to you as a near
friend."
Mary assented.
"There is but a week now, before your wedding," continued Mrs. Scudder;
"and I think Cousin James, if he is reasonable, will see the propriety
of your mind being kept as quiet as possible. I heard the news this
afternoon in town," pursued Mrs. Scudder, "from Captain Staunton, and,
by a curious coincidence, I received from him this letter from James,
which came from New York by post. The brig that brought it must have
been delayed out of the harbor."
"Oh, please, mother, give it to me!" said Mary, rising up with
animation; "he mentioned having sent me one."
"Perhaps you had better wait till morning," said Mrs. Scudder; "you are
tired and excited."
"Oh, mother, I think I shall be more composed when I know all that is
in it," said Mary, still stretching out her hand.
"Well, my daughter, you are the best judge," said Mrs. Scudder; and she
set down the candle on the table, and left Mary alone.
It was a very thick letter of many pages, dated in Canton, and ran as
follows:--
CHAPTER XXXVI.
JACOB'S VOW.
"My Dearest Mary:--
"I have lived through many wonderful scenes since I saw you last. My
life has been so adventurous, that I scarcely know myself when I think
of it. But it is not of _that_ I am going now to write. I have written
all that to mother, and she will show it to you. But since I parted
from you, there has been another history going on within me; and that
is what I wish to make you understand, if I can.
"It seems to me that I have been a changed man from that afternoon when
I came to your window, where we parted. I have never forgot how you
looked then, nor what you said. Nothing in my life ever had such an
effect upon me. I thought that I loved you before; but I went away
feeling that love was something so deep and high and sacred, that I was
not worthy to name it to you. I cannot think of the man in the world
who is worthy of what you said you felt for me.
"From _that_ hour there was a new purpose in my soul,--a purpose which
has led me upward ever since. I thought to myself in this way: 'There
is some secret source from whence this inner life springs,'--and I knew
that it was connected with the Bible which you gave me; and so I
thought I would read it carefully and deliberately, to see what I could
make of it.
"I began with the beginning. It impressed me with a sense of something
quaint and strange,--something rather fragmentary; and yet there were
spots all along that went right to the heart of a man who had to deal
with life and things as I did. Now I must say that the Doctor's
preaching, as I told you, never impressed me much in any way. I could
not make out any connection between it and the men I had to manage and
the things I had to do in my daily life. But there were things in the
Bible that struck me otherwise. There was _one_ passage in particular,
and that was where Jacob started off from all his friends to go and
seek his fortune in a strange country, and laid down to sleep all alone
in the field, with only a stone for his pillow. It seemed to me exactly
the image of what every young man is like, when he leaves his home and
goes out to shift for himself in this hard world. I tell you, Mary,
that one man alone on the great ocean of life feels himself a very weak
thing. We are held up by each other more than we know till we go off by
ourselves into this great experiment. Well, there he was as lonesome as
_I_ upon the deck of my ship. And so lying with the stone under his
head, he saw a ladder in his sleep between him and heaven, and angels
going up and down. That was a sight which came to the very point of his
necessities. He saw that there was a way between him and God, and that
there were those above who did care for him, and who could come to him
to help him.
"Well, so the next morning he got up, and set up the stone to mark the
place; and it says Jacob vowed a vow, saying, 'If God will be with me,
and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat
and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in
peace, _then_ shall the Lord be my God.' Now _there_ was something that
looked to me like a tangible foundation to begin upon.
"If I understand Dr. H., I believe he would have called that all
selfishness. At first sight it does look a little so; but then I
thought of it in this way: 'Here he was all alone. God was entirely
invisible to him; and how could he feel certain that He really existed,
unless he could come into some kind of connection with Him? the point
that he wanted to be sure of, more than merely to know that there was a
God who made the world;--he wanted to know whether He cared anything
about men, and would do anything to help them. And so, in fact, it was
saying, "If there is a God who interests Himself at all in me, and will
be my Friend and Protector, I will obey Him, so far as I can find out
His will."'
"I thought to myself, 'This is the great experiment, and I will try
it.' I made in my heart exactly the same resolution, and just quietly
resolved to assume for a while as a fact that there _was_ such a God,
and, whenever I came to a place where I could not help myself, just to
ask His help honestly in so many words, and see what would come of it.
"Well, as I went on reading through the Old Testament, I was more and
more convinced that all the men of those times had tried this
experiment, and found that it would bear them; and in fact, I did begin
to find, in my own experience, a great many things happening so
remarkably that I could not but think that _Somebody_ did attend even
to my prayers,--I began to feel a trembling faith that _Somebody_ was
guiding me, and that the events of my life were not happening by
accident, but working themselves out by His will.
"Well, as I went on in this way, there were other and higher thoughts
kept rising in my mind. I wanted to be better than I was. I had a sense
of a life much nobler and purer than anything I had ever lived, that I
wanted to come up to. But in the world of men, as I found it, such
feelings are always laughed down as romantic, and impracticable, and
impossible. But about this time I began to read the New Testament, and
then the idea came to me, that the same Power that helped me in the
lower sphere of life would help me carry out those higher aspirations.
Perhaps the Gospels would not have interested me so much, if I had
begun with them first; but my Old Testament life seemed to have
schooled me, and brought me to a place where I wanted something higher;
and I began to notice that my prayers now were more that I might be
noble, and patient, and self-denying, and constant in my duty, than
for any other kind of help. And then I understood what met me in the
very first of Matthew: 'Thou shall call his name Jesus, for he shall
save his people from their sins.'
"I began now to live a new life,--a life in which I felt myself coming
into sympathy with you; for, Mary, when I began to read the Gospels, I
took knowledge of you, that you had been with Jesus.
"The crisis of my life was that dreadful night of the shipwreck. It was
as dreadful as the Day of Judgment. No words of mine can describe to
you what I felt when I knew that our rudder was gone, and saw those
hopeless rocks before us. What I felt for our poor men! But, in the
midst of it all, the words came into my mind, 'And Jesus was in the
hinder part of the ship asleep on a pillow,' and at once I felt He was
there; and when the ship struck I was only conscious of an intense
going out of my soul to Him, like Peter's when he threw himself from
the ship to meet Him in the waters.
"I will not recapitulate what I have already written,--the wonderful
manner in which I was saved, and in which friends and help and
prosperity and worldly success came to me again, after life had seemed
all lost; but now I am ready to return to my country, and I feel as
Jacob did when he said, 'With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and
now I am become two bands.'
"I do not need any arguments now to convince me that the Bible is from
above. There is a great deal in it that I cannot understand, a great
deal that seems to me inexplicable; but all I can say is, that I have
tried its directions, and find that in my case they do work,--that it
is a book that I can live by; and that is enough for me.
"And now, Mary, I am coming home again, quite another man from what I
went out,--with a whole new world of thought and feeling in my heart,
and a new purpose, by which, please God, I mean to shape my life. All
this, under God, I owe to you; and if you will let me devote my whole
life to you, it will be a small return for what you have done for me.
"You know I left you wholly free. Others must have seen your loveliness
and felt your worth; and you may have learnt to love some better man
than me. But I know not what hope tells me that this will not be; and I
shall find true what the Bible says of love, that 'many waters cannot
quench it, nor floods drown.' In any case, I shall be always, from my
very heart, yours, and yours only.
"JAMES MARVYN."
Mary rose, after reading this letter, rapt into a divine state of
exaltation,--the pure joy, in contemplating an infinite good to
another, in which the question of self was utterly forgotten.
He was, then, what she had always hoped and prayed he would be, and she
pressed the thought triumphantly to her heart. He was that true and
victorious man, that Christian able to subdue life, and to show, in a
perfect and healthy manly nature, a reflection of the image of the
superhuman excellence. Her prayers that night were aspirations and
praises, and she felt how possible it might be so to appropriate the
good and the joy and the nobleness of others as to have in them an
eternal and satisfying treasure. And with this came the dearer thought,
that she, in her weakness and solitude, had been permitted to put her
hand to the beginning of a work so noble. The consciousness of good
done to an immortal spirit is wealth that neither life nor death can
take away.
And so, having prayed, she lay down to that sleep which God giveth to
his beloved.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE QUESTION OF DUTY.
It is a hard condition, of our existence here, that every exaltation
must have its depression. God will not let us have heaven here below,
but only such glimpses and faint showings as parents sometimes give to
children, when they show them beforehand the jewelry and pictures and
stores of rare and curious treasures which they hold for the possession
of their riper years. So it very often happens that the man who has
gone to bed an angel, feeling as if all sin were forever vanquished,
and he himself immutably grounded in love, may wake the next morning
with a sick-headache, and, if he be not careful, may scold about his
breakfast like a miserable sinner.
We will not say that our dear little Mary rose in this condition next
morning,--for, although she had the headache, she had one of those
natures in which, somehow or other, the combative element seems to be
left out, so that no one ever knew her to speak a fretful word. But
still, as we have observed, she had the headache and the
depression,--and there came the slow, creeping sense of waking up,
through all her heart and soul, of a thousand, thousand things that
could be said only to one person, and that person one that it would be
temptation and danger to say them to.
She came out of her room to her morning work with a face resolved and
calm, but expressive of languor, with slight signs of some inward
struggle.
Madame de Frontignac, who had already heard the intelligence, threw two
or three of her bright glances upon her at breakfast, and at once
divined how the matter stood. She was of a nature so delicately
sensitive to the most refined shades of honor, that she apprehended at
once that there must be a conflict,--though, judging by her own
impulsive nature, she made no doubt that all would at once go down
before the mighty force of reawakened love.
After breakfast she would insist upon following Mary about through all
her avocations. She possessed herself of a towel, and would wipe the
cups and saucers, while Mary washed. She clinked the glasses, and
rattled the cups and spoons, and stepped about as briskly as if she had
two or three breezes to carry her train, and chattered half English and
half French, for the sake of bringing into Mary's cheek the shy, slow
dimples that she liked to watch. But still Mrs. Scudder was around,
with an air as provident and forbidding as that of a sitting hen who
watches her nest; nor was it till after all things had been cleared
away in the house, and Mary had gone up into her little attic to spin,
that the long-sought opportunity came of diving to the bottom of this
mystery.
"_Enfin, Marie, nous voici!_ Are you not going to tell me anything,
when I have turned my heart out to you like a bag? _Chere enfant!_ how
happy you must be!" she said, embracing her.
"Yes, I am very happy," said Mary, with calm gravity.
"_Very happy!_" said Madame de Frontignac, mimicking her manner. "Is
that the way you American girls show it, when you are very happy? Come,
come, _ma belle_! tell little Virginie something. Thou hast seen this
hero, this wandering Ulysses. He has come back at last; the tapestry
will not be quite as long as Penelope's? Speak to me of him. Has he
beautiful black eyes, and hair that curls like a grape-vine? Tell me,
_ma belle_!"
"I only saw him a little while," said Mary, "and I felt a great deal
more than I saw. He could not have been any clearer to me than he
always has been in my mind."
"But I think," said Madame de Frontignac, seating Mary, as was her
wont, and sitting down at her feet, "I think you are a little _triste_
about this. Very likely you pity the good priest. It is sad for him;
but a good priest has the Church for his bride, you know."
"You do not think," said Mary, speaking seriously, "that I shall break
my promise given before God to this good man?"
"_Mon Dieu, mon enfant!_ you do not mean to marry the priest, after
all? _Quelle idee!_"
"But I _promised_ him," said Mary.
Madame de Frontignac threw up her hands, with an expression of
vexation.
"What a pity, my little one, you are not in the True Church! Any good
priest could dispense you from that."
"I do not believe," said Mary, "in any earthly power that can dispense
us from solemn obligations which we have assumed before God, and on
which we have suffered others to build the most precious hopes. If
James had won the affections of some girl, thinking as I do, I should
not think it right for him to leave her and come to me. The Bible says,
that the just man is 'he that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth
not.'"
"_C'est le sublime de devoir!_" said Madame de Frontignac, who, with
the airy frailty of her race, never lost her appreciation of the fine
points of anything that went on under her eyes. But, nevertheless, she
was inwardly resolved, that, picturesque as this "sublime of duty" was,
it must not be allowed to pass beyond the limits of a fine art, and so
she recommenced.
"_Mais c'est absurde_. This beautiful young man, with his black eyes,
and his curls,--a real hero,--a Theseus, Mary,--just come home from
killing a Minotaur,--and loves you with his whole heart,--and this
dreadful promise! Why, haven't you any sort of people in your Church
that can unbind you from promises? I should think the good priest
himself would do it!"
"Perhaps he would," said Mary, "if I should ask him; but that would be
equivalent to a breach of it. Of course, no man would marry a woman
that asked to be dispensed."
"You are an angel of delicacy, my child; _c'est admirable!_ but, after
all, Mary, this is not well. Listen now to me. You are a very sweet
saint, and very strong in goodness. I think you must have a very strong
angel that takes care of you. But think, _chere enfant,_--think what it
is to marry one man while you love another!"
"But I love the Doctor," said Mary, evasively.
"_Love!_" said Madame de Frontignac. "Oh, Marie! you may love him well,
but you and I both know that there is something deeper than that. What
will you _do_ with this young man? Must he move away from this place,
and not be with his poor mother any more? Or can you see him, and hear
him, and be with him, after your marriage, and not feel that you love
him more than your husband?"
"I should hope that God would help me to feel right," said Mary.
"I am very much afraid He will not, _ma chere._ I asked Him a great
many times to help _me,_ when I found how wrong it all was; but He did
not. You remember what you told me the other day,--that, if I would do
right, I must not _see_ that man any more. You will have to ask him to
go away from this place; you can never see him; for this love will
never die till you die;--that you may be sure of. Is it wise? is it
right, dear little one? _Must_ he leave his home forever for you? or
must you struggle always, and grow whiter and whiter, and fall away
into heaven, like the moon this morning, and nobody know what is the
matter? People will say you have the liver-complaint, or the
consumption, or something. Nobody ever knows what we women die of."
Poor Mary's conscience was fairly posed. This appeal struck upon her
sense of right as having its grounds. She felt inexpressibly confused
and distressed.
"Oh, I wish somebody would tell me exactly what is right!" she said.
"Well, _I_ will," said Madame de Frontignac. "Go down to the dear
priest, and tell him the whole truth. My dear child, do you think, if
he should ever find it out after your marriage, he would think you used
him right?"
"And yet _mother_ does not think so; mother does not wish me to tell
him."
"_Pauvrette, toujours les meres!_ Yes, it is always the mothers that
stand in the way of the lovers. Why cannot she marry the priest
herself?" she said between her teeth, and then looked up, startled and
guilty, to see if Mary had heard her.
"I _cannot,_" said Mary,--"I cannot go against my conscience, and my
mother, and my best friend."
At this moment, the conference was cut short by Mrs. Scudder's
provident footsteps on the garret-stairs. A vague suspicion of
something French had haunted her during her dairy-work, and she
resolved to come and put a stop to the interview, by telling Mary that
Miss Prissy wanted her to come and be measured for the skirt of her
dress.
Mrs. Scudder, by the use of that sixth sense peculiar to mothers, had
divined that there had been some agitating conference, and, had she
been questioned about it, her guesses as to what it might have been
would probably have given no bad _resume_ of the real state of the
case. She was inwardly resolved that there should be no more such for
the present, and kept Mary employed about various matters relating to
the dresses, so scrupulously that there was no opportunity for anything
more of the sort that day.
In the evening James Marvyn came down, and was welcomed with the
greatest demonstrations of joy by all but Mary, who sat distant and
embarrassed, after the first salutations had passed.
The Doctor was innocently paternal; but we fear that on the part of the
young man there was small reciprocation of the sentiments he expressed.
Miss Prissy, indeed, had had her heart somewhat touched, as good little
women's hearts are apt to be by a true love-story, and had hinted
something of her feelings to Mrs. Scudder, in a manner which brought
such a severe rejoinder as quite humbled and abashed her, so that she
coweringly took refuge under her former declaration, that, "to be sure,
there couldn't be any man in the world better _worthy_ of Mary than the
Doctor," while still at her heart she was possessed with that
troublesome preference for unworthy people which stands in the way of
so many excellent things. But she went on vigorously sewing upon the
wedding-dress, and pursing up her small mouth into the most perfect and
guarded expression of non-committal; though she said afterwards, "it
went to her heart to see how that poor young man did look, sitting
there just as noble and as handsome as a picture. She didn't see, for
_her_ part, how anybody's heart _could_ stand it; though, to be sure,
as Miss Scudder said, the poor Doctor ought to be thought about, dear
blessed man! What a pity it was things _would_ turn out so! Not that it
was a pity that Jim came home,--that was a great providence,--but a
pity they hadn't known about it sooner. Well, for her part, she didn't
pretend to say; the path of duty did have a great many hard places in
it."
As for James, during his interview at the cottage, he waited and tried
in vain for one moment's private conversation. Mrs. Scudder was
immovable in her motherly kindness, sitting there, smiling and chatting
with him, but never stirring from her place by Mary.
Madame de Frontignac was out of all patience, and determined, in her
small way, to do something to discompose the fixed state of things. So,
retreating to her room, she contrived, in very desperation, to upset
and break a water-pitcher, shrieking violently in French and English at
the deluge which came upon the sanded floor and the little piece of
carpet by the bedside.
What housekeeper's instincts are proof against the crash of breaking
china?
Mrs. Scudder fled from her seat, followed by Miss Prissy.
"Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro," while Mary sat quiet as a
statue, bending over her sewing, and James, knowing that it must be now
or never, was, like a flash, in the empty chair by her side, with his
black moustache very near to the bent brown head.
"Mary," he said, "you _must_ let me see you once more. All is not said,
is it? Just hear me,--hear me once alone!"
"Oh, James, I am too weak!--I dare not!--I am afraid of myself!"
"You think," he said, "that you _must_ take this course, because it is
right. But _is_ it right? Is it right to marry one man, when you love
another better? I don't put this to your inclination, Mary,--I know it
would be of no use,--I put it to your conscience."
"Oh, I was never so perplexed before!" said Mary. "I don't know what I
_do_ think. I must have time to reflect. And you,--oh, James!--you
_must_ let me do right! There will never be any happiness for me, if I
do wrong,--nor for you, either."
All this while the sounds of running and hurrying in Madame de
Frontignac's room had been unintermitted; and Miss Prissy, not without
some glimmerings of perception, was holding tight on to Mrs. Scudder's
gown, detailing to her a most capital receipt for mending broken china,
the history of which she traced regularly through all the families in
which she had ever worked, varying the details with small items of
family history, and little incidents as to the births, marriages, and
deaths of different people for whom it had been employed, with all the
particulars of how, where, and when, so that James's time for
conversation was by this means indefinitely extended.
"Now," he said to Mary, "let me propose one thing. Let _me_ go to the
Doctor, and tell him the truth."
"James, it does not seem to me that I can. A friend who has been so
considerate, so kind, so self-sacrificing and disinterested, and whom I
have allowed to go on with this implicit faith in me so long. Should
you, James, think of _yourself_ only?"
"I do nor, I trust, think of myself only," said James; "I hope that I
am calm enough, and have a heart to think for others. But, I ask you,
is it doing right to _him_ to let him marry you in ignorance of the
state of your feelings? Is it a kindness to a good and noble man to
give yourself to him only seemingly, when the best and noblest part of
your affections is gone wholly beyond your control? I am quite sure of
_that_, Mary. I know you do love him very well,--that you would make a
most true, affectionate, constant wife to him; but what I know you feel
for me is something wholly out of your power to give to him,--is it
not, now?"
"I think it is," said Mary, looking gravely and deeply thoughtful "But
then, James, I ask myself, 'What if this had happened a week hence?' My
feelings would have been just the same, because they are feelings over
which I have no more control than over my existence. I can only control
the expression of them. But in _that_ case you would not have asked me
to break my marriage-vow; and why now shall I break a solemn vow
deliberately made before God? If what I can give him will content him,
and he never knows that which would give him pain, what wrong is done
him?"
"I should think the deepest possible wrong done me," said James, "if,
when I thought I had married a wife with a whole heart, I found that
the greater part of it had been before that given to another. If you
tell him, or if I tell him, or your mother,--who is the proper person,
and he chooses to hold you to your promise, then, Mary, I have no more
to say. I shall sail in a few weeks again, and carry your image forever
in my heart;--nobody can take that away; that dear shadow will be the
only wife I shall ever know."
At this moment Miss Prissy came rattling along towards the door,
talking--we suspect designedly--on quite a high key. Mary hastily
said,--
"Wait, James,--let me think,--tomorrow is the Sabbath-day. Monday I
will send you word, or see you."
And when Miss Prissy returned into the best room, James was sitting at
one window and Mary at another,--he making remarks, in a style of most
admirable commonplace, on a copy of Milton's "Paradise Lost," which he
had picked up in the confusion of the moment, and which, at the time
Mrs. Katy Scudder entered, he was declaring to be a most excellent
book,--a really, truly, valuable work.
Mrs. Scudder looked keenly from one to the other, and saw that Mary's
cheek was glowing like the deepest heart of a pink shell, while, in all
other respects, she was as cold and calm. On the whole, she felt
satisfied that no mischief had been done.
We hope our readers will do Mrs. Scudder justice. It is true that she
yet wore on her third finger the marriage-ring of a sailor lover, and
his memory was yet fresh in her heart; but even mothers who have
married for love themselves somehow so blend a daughter's existence
with their own as to conceive that she must marry their love, and not
her own. Besides this, Mrs. Scudder was an Old Testament woman, brought
up with that scrupulous exactitude of fidelity in relation to promises
which would naturally come from familiarity with a book in which
covenant-keeping is represented as one of the highest attributes of
Deity, and covenant-breaking as one of the vilest sins of humanity. To
break the word that had gone forth out of one's mouth was to lose
self-respect, and all claim to the respect of others, and to sin
against eternal rectitude.
As we have said before, it is almost impossible to make our
light-minded times comprehend the earnestness with which those people
lived. It was, in the beginning, no vulgar nor mercenary ambition that
made her seek the Doctor as a husband for her daughter. He was poor,
and she had had offers from richer men. He was often unpopular; but he
of all the world was the man she most revered, the man she believed in
with the most implicit faith, the man who embodied her highest ideas of
the good; and therefore it was that she was willing to resign her child
to him.
As to James, she had felt truly sympathetic with his mother, and with
Mary, in the dreadful hour when they supposed him lost; and had it not
been for the great perplexity occasioned by his return, she would have
received him, as a relative, with open arms. But now she felt it her
duty to be on the defensive,--an attitude not the most favorable for
cherishing pleasing associations in regard to another. She had read the
letter giving an account of his spiritual experience with very sincere
pleasure, as a good woman should, but not without an internal
perception how very much it endangered her favorite plans. When Mary,
however, had calmly reiterated her determination, she felt sure of her;
for had she ever known her to say a thing she did not do?
The uneasiness she felt at present, was not the doubt of her daughter's
steadiness, but the fear that she might have been unsuitably harassed
or annoyed.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE TRANSFIGURED.
The next morning rose calm and fair. It was the Sabbath-day,--the last
Sabbath in Mary's maiden life, if her promises and plans were
fulfilled.
Mary dressed herself in white,--her hands trembling with unusual
agitation, her sensitive nature divided between two opposing
consciences and two opposing affections. Her devoted filial love toward
the Doctor made her feel the keenest sensitiveness at the thought of
giving him pain. At the same time, the questions which James had
proposed to her had raised serious doubts in her mind whether it was
altogether right to suffer him blindly to enter into this union. So,
after she was all prepared, she bolted the door of her chamber, and,
opening her Bible, read, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of
God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall
be given him"; and then, kneeling down by the bedside, she asked that
God would give her some immediate light in her present perplexity. So
praying, her mind grew calm and steady, and she rose up at the sound of
the bell which marked that it was time to set forward for church.
Everybody noticed, as she came into church that morning, how beautiful
Mary Scudder looked. It was no longer the beauty of the carved statue,
the pale alabaster shrine, the sainted virgin, but a warm, bright,
living light, that spoke of some summer breath breathing within her
soul.
When she took her place in the singers' seat, she knew, without turning
her head, that he was in his old place, not far from her side; and
those whose eyes followed her to the gallery marvelled at her face
there,--
"her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought
That you might almost say her body thought";
for a thousand delicate nerves were becoming vital once more,--the holy
mystery of womanhood had wrought within her.
When they rose to sing, the tune must needs be one which they had often
sung together, out of the same book, at the singing-school,--one of
those wild, pleading tunes, dear to the heart of New England,--born, if
we may credit the report, in the rocky hollows of its mountains, and
whose notes have a kind of grand and mournful triumph in their warbling
wail, and in which different parts of the harmony, set contrary to all
the canons of musical Pharisaism, had still a singular and romantic
effect, which a true musical genius would not have failed to recognize.
The four parts, tenor, treble, bass, and counter, as they were then
called, rose and swelled and wildly mingled, with the fitful
strangeness of Aeolian harp, or of winds in mountain-hollows, or the
vague moanings of the sea on lone, forsaken shores. And Mary, while her
voice rose over the waves of the treble, and trembled with a pathetic
richness, felt, to her inmost heart, the deep accord of that other
voice which rose to meet hers, so wildly melancholy, as if the soul in
that manly breast had come to meet her soul in the disembodied, shadowy
verity of eternity. The grand old tune, called by our fathers "China,"
never, with its dirge-like melody, drew two souls more out of
themselves, and entwined them more nearly with each other.
The last verse of the hymn spoke of the resurrection of the saints with
Christ:
"Then let the last dread trumpet sound
And bid the dead arise;
Awake, ye nations under ground!
Ye saints, ascend the skies!"
And as Mary sang, she felt sublimely upborne with the idea that life is
but a moment and love is immortal, and seemed, in a shadowy trance, to
feel herself and him past this mortal fane, far over on the shores of
that other life, ascending with Christ, all-glorified, all tears wiped
away, and with full permission to love and to be loved forever. And as
she sang, the Doctor looked upward, and marvelled at the light in her
eyes and the rich bloom on her cheek,--for where she stood, a sunbeam,
streaming aslant through the dusty panes of the window, touched her
head with a kind of glory,--and the thought he then received
outbreathed itself in the yet more fervent adoration of his prayer.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE ICE BROKEN.
Our fathers believed in special answers to prayer. They were not
stumbled by the objection about the inflexibility of the laws of
Nature; because they had the idea, that, when the Creator of the world
promised to answer human prayers, He probably understood the laws of
Nature as well as they did. At any rate, the laws of Nature were His
affair, and not theirs. They were men, very apt, as the Duke of
Wellington said, to "look to their marching-orders,"--which, being
found to read, "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto
God," they did it. "They looked unto Him and were lightened, and their
faces were not ashamed." One reads, in the Memoirs of Dr. Hopkins, of
Newport Gardner, one of his African catechumens, a negro of singular
genius and ability, who, being desirous of his freedom, that he might
be a missionary to Africa, and having long worked without being able to
raise the amount required, was counselled by Dr. Hopkins that it might
be a shorter way to seek his freedom from the Lord, by a day of solemn
fasting and prayer. The historical fact is, that, on the evening of a
day so consecrated, his master returned from church, called Newport to
him, and presented him with his freedom. Is it not possible that He who
made the world may have established laws for prayer as invariable as
those for the sowing of seed and raising of grain? Is it not as
legitimate a subject of inquiry, when petitions are not answered, which
of these laws has been neglected?
But be that as it may, certain it is, that Candace, who on this morning
in church sat where she could see Mary and James in the singers' seat,
had certain thoughts planted in her mind which bore fruit afterwards in
a solemn and select consultation held with Miss Prissy at the end of
the horse-shed by the meeting-house, during the intermission between
the morning and afternoon services.
Candace sat on a fragment of granite boulder which lay there, her black
face relieved against a clump of yellow mulleins, then in majestic
altitude. On her lap was spread a checked pocket-handkerchief,
containing rich slices of cheese, and a store of her favorite brown
doughnuts.
"Now, Miss Prissy," she said, "dar's _reason_ in all tings, an' a good
deal _more_ in some tings dan dar is in oders. Dar's a good deal more
reason in two young, handsome folks comin' togeder dan dar is in"----
Candace finished the sentence by an emphatic flourish of her doughnut.
"Now, as long as eberybody thought Jim Marvyn was dead, dar wa'n't
nothin' else in de world _to_ be done _but_ marry de Doctor. But, good
lan! I hearn him a-talkin' to Miss Marvyn las' night; it kinder' mos'
broke my heart. Why, dem two poor creeturs, dey's jest as onhappy's dey
can be! An' she's got too much feelin' for de Doctor to say a word; an'
_I_ say _he oughter be told on't!_ dat's what _I_ say," said Candace,
giving a decisive bite to her doughnut.
"I say so, too," said Miss Prissy. "Why, I never had such bad feelings
in my life as I did yesterday, when that young man came down to our
house. He was just as pale as a cloth. I tried to say a word to Miss
Scudder, but she snapped me up so! She's an awful decided woman when
her mind's made up. I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel,--she came
round me this noon,--that it didn't exactly seem to me right that
things should go on as they are going. And says I, 'Cerinthy Ann, I
don't know anything what to do.' And says she, 'If I was you, I know
what _I'd_ do,--I'd tell the Doctor,' says she. 'Nobody ever takes
offence at anything _you_ do, Miss Prissy.' To be sure," added Miss
Prissy, "I have talked to people about a good many things that it's
rather strange I should; 'cause I a'n't one, somehow, that can let
things go that seem to want doing. I always told folks that I should
spoil a novel before it got half-way through the first volume, by
blurting out some of those things that they let go trailing on so, till
everybody gets so mixed up they don't know what they're doing."
"Well, now, honey," said Candace, authoritatively, "ef you's got any
notions o' dat kind, I tink it mus' come from de good Lord, an' I
'dvise you to be 'tendin' to't, right away. You jes' go 'long an' tell
de Doctor yourself all you know, an' den le's see what'll come on't. I
tell you, I b'liebe it'll be one o' de bes' day's works you eber did in
your life!"
"Well," said Miss Prissy, "I guess tonight, before I go to bed, I'll
make a dive at him. When a thing's once out, it's out, and can't be got
in again, even if people don't like it; and that's a mercy, anyhow. It
really makes me feel 'most wicked to think of it, for he is the most
blessedest man!"
"Dat's what he _is_" said Candace. "But de blessedest man in de world
oughter know de truth; dat's what _I_ tink!"
"Yes,--true enough!" said Miss Prissy. "I'll tell him, anyway."
Miss Prissy was as good as her word; for that evening, when the Doctor
had retired to his study, she took her life in her hand, and, walking
swiftly as a cat, tapped rather timidly at the study-door, which the
Doctor opening said, benignantly,--
"Ah, Miss Prissy!"
"If you please, Sir," said Miss Prissy, "I'd like a little
conversation."
The Doctor was well enough used to such requests from the female
members of his church, which, generally, were the prelude to some
disclosures of internal difficulties or spiritual experiences. He
therefore graciously motioned her to a chair.
"I thought I must come in," she began, busily twirling a bit of her
Sunday gown. "I thought--that is--I felt it my duty--I thought--
perhaps--I ought to tell you--that perhaps you ought to know."
The Doctor looked civilly concerned. He did not know but Miss Prissy's
wits were taking leave of her. He replied, however, with his usual
honest stateliness,--
"I trust, dear Madam, that you will feel perfect freedom to open to me
any exercises of mind that you may have."
"It isn't about myself," said Miss Prissy. "If you please, it's about
you and Mary!"
The Doctor now looked awake in right earnest, and very much astonished
besides; and he looked eagerly at Miss Prissy, to have her go on.
"I don't know how you would view such a matter," said Miss Prissy; "but
the fact is, that James Marvyn and Mary always did love each other,
ever since they were children."
Still the Doctor was unawakened to the real meaning of the words, and
he answered, simply,--
"I should be far from wishing to interfere with so very natural and
universal a sentiment, which, I make no doubt, is all quite as it
should be."
"No,--but," said Miss Prissy, "you don't understand what I mean. I mean
that James Marvyn wanted to marry Mary, and that she was--well--she
wasn't engaged to him, but"----
"Madam!" said the Doctor, in a voice that frightened Miss Prissy out of
her chair, while a blaze like sheet-lightning shot from his eyes, and
his face flushed crimson.
"Mercy on us! Doctor, I hope you'll excuse me; but there the fact
is,--I've said it out,--the fact is, they wa'n't engaged; but that Mary
loved him ever since he was a boy, as she never will and never can love
any man again in this world, is what I'm just as sure of as that I'm
standing here; and I've felt you ought to know it: 'cause I'm quite
sure, that, if he'd been alive, she'd never given the promise she
has,--the promise that she means to keep, if her heart breaks, and his
too. They wouldn't anybody tell you, and I thought I must tell you;
'cause I thought you'd know what was right to do about it."
During all this latter speech the Doctor was standing with his back to
Miss Prissy, and his face to the window, just as he did some time
before, when Mrs. Scudder came to tell him of Mary's consent. He made a
gesture backward, without speaking, that she should leave the
apartment; and Miss Prissy left, with a guilty kind of feeling, as if
she had been striking a knife into her pastor, and, rushing
distractedly across the entry into Mary's little bedroom, she bolted
the door, threw herself on the bed, and began to cry.
"Well, I've done it!" she said to herself. "He's a very strong, hearty
man," she soliloquized, "so I hope it won't put him in a
consumption;--men do go into a consumption about such things sometimes.
I remember Abner Seaforth did; but then he was always narrow-chested,
and had the liver-complaint, or something. I don't know what Miss
Scudder will say;--but I've done it. Poor man! such a good man, too! I
declare, I feel just like Herod taking off John the Baptist's head.
Well, well! it's done, and can't be helped."
Just at this moment Miss Prissy heard a gentle tap at the door, and
started, as if it had been a ghost,--not being able to rid herself of
the impression, that, somehow, she had committed a great crime, for
which retribution was knocking at the door.
It was Mary, who said, in her sweetest and most natural tones, "Miss
Prissy, the Doctor would like to see you."
Mary was much astonished at the frightened, discomposed manner with
which Miss Prissy received this announcement, and said,--
"I'm afraid I've waked you up out of sleep, I don't think there's the
least hurry."
Miss Prissy didn't, either; but she reflected afterwards that she might
as well get through with it at once; and therefore, smoothing her
tumbled cap-border, she went to the Doctor's study. This time he was
quite composed, and received her with a mournful gravity, and requested
her to be seated.
"I beg, Madam," he said, "you will excuse the abruptness of my manner
in our late interview. I was so little prepared for the communication
you had to make, that I was, perhaps, unsuitably discomposed. Will you
allow me to ask whether you were requested by any of the parties to
communicate to me what you did?"
"No, Sir," said Miss Prissy.
"Have any of the parties ever communicated with you on the subject at
all?" said the Doctor.
"No, Sir," said Miss Prissy.
"That is all," said the Doctor. "I will not detain you. I am very much
obliged to you, Madam."
He rose, and opened the door for her to pass out, and Miss Prissy,
overawed by the stately gravity of his manner, went out in silence.
CHAPTER XL.
THE SACRIFICE.
When Miss Prissy left the room, the Doctor sat down by the table and
covered his face with his hands. He had a large, passionate, determined
nature; and he had just come to one of those cruel crises in life in
which it is apt to seem to us that the whole force of our being, all
that we can hope, wish, feel, enjoy, has been suffered to gather itself
into one great wave, only to break upon some cold rock of inevitable
fate, and go back, moaning, into emptiness.
In such hours men and women have cursed God and life, and thrown
violently down and trampled under their feet what yet was left of
life's blessings, in the fierce bitterness of despair. "This, or
nothing!" the soul shrieks, in her frenzy. At just such points as
these, men have plunged into intemperance and wild excess,--they have
gone to be shot down in battle,--they have broken life, and thrown it
away, like an empty goblet, and gone, like wailing ghosts, out into the
dread unknown.
The possibility of all this lay in that heart which had just received
that stunning blow. Exercised and disciplined as he had been, by years
of sacrifice, by constant, unsleeping self-vigilance, there was rising
there, in that great heart, an ocean-tempest of passion, and for a
while his cries unto God seemed as empty and as vague as the screams of
birds tossed and buffeted in the clouds of mighty tempests.
The will that he thought wholly subdued seemed to rise under him as a
rebellious giant. A few hours before, he thought himself established in
an invincible submission to God's will that nothing could shake. Now he
looked into himself as into a seething vortex of rebellion, and against
all the passionate cries of his lower nature could, in the language of
an old saint, cling to God only by the naked force of his will. That
will rested unmelted amid the boiling sea of passion, waiting its hour
of renewed sway. He walked the room for hours, and then sat down to his
Bible, and roused once or twice to find his head leaning on its pages,
and his mind far gone in thoughts from which he woke with a bitter
throb. Then he determined to set himself to some definite work, and,
taking his Concordance, began busily tracing out and numbering all the
proof-texts for one of the chapters of his theological system! till, at
last, he worked himself down to such calmness that he could pray; and
then he schooled and reasoned with himself, in a style not unlike, in
its spirit, to that in which a great modern author has addressed
suffering humanity:--
"What is it that thou art fretting and self-tormenting about? Is it
because thou art not happy? Who told thee that thou wast to be happy?
Is there any ordinance of the universe that thou shouldst be happy? Art
thou nothing but a vulture screaming for prey? Canst thou not do
without happiness? Yea, thou canst do without happiness, and, instead
thereof, find blessedness."
The Doctor came, lastly, to the conclusion, that blessedness, which was
all the portion his Master had on earth, might do for him also; and
therefore he kissed and blessed that silver dove of happiness, which he
saw was weary of sailing in his clumsy old ark, and let it go out of
his hand without a tear.
He slept little that night; but when he came to breakfast, all noticed
an unusual gentleness and benignity of manner, and Mary, she knew not
why, saw tears rising in his eyes when he looked at her.
After breakfast he requested Mrs. Scudder to step with him into his
study, and Miss Prissy shook in her little shoes as she saw the matron
entering. The door was shut for a long time, and two voices could be
heard in earnest conversation.
Meanwhile James Marvyn entered the cottage, prompt to remind Mary of
her promise that she would talk with him again this morning.
They had talked with each other but a few moments, by the
sweetbrier-shaded window in the best room, when Mrs. Scudder appeared
at the door of the apartment, with traces of tears upon her cheeks.
"Good morning, James," she said. "The Doctor wishes to see you and Mary
a moment, together."
Both looked sufficiently astonished, knowing, from Mrs. Scudder's
looks, that something was impending. They followed her, scarcely
feeling the ground they trod on.
The Doctor was sitting at his table, with his favorite large-print
Bible open before him. He rose to receive them, with a manner at once
gentle and grave.
There was a pause of some minutes, during which he sat with his head
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