The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 99, January, 1866
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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 99, January, 1866
Author: Various
Release date: July 26, 2010 [eBook #33262]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 17, NO. 99, JANUARY, 1866 ***
Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections.)
THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF
_Literature, Science, Art, and Politics_.
VOLUME XVII.
[Illustration]
BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
124 TREMONT STREET.
LONDON: TRUeBNER AND COMPANY.
1866.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866,
by TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of
Massachusetts.
UNIVERSITY PRESS:
ELECTROTYPED BY WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS.
Page
Amazonian Picnic, An _Mrs. Agassiz_ 313
Bad Symptoms _Edward Spenser_ 768
Beauty and the Beast _Bayard Taylor_ 13
Booth, Edwin _E. C. Stedman_ 585
Chimney-Corner for 1866, The.
I., II., III., IV., V., VI. _Mrs. H. B. Stowe_ 88, 214, 345,
490, 577, 737
Court-Cards _Charles J. Sprague_ 178
Communication with the Pacific _C. C. Coffin_ 333
Doctor Johns. XII., XIII., XIV., XV., XVI., XVII.
_Donald G. Mitchell_ 69, 204,
323, 466, 552, 707
English Opinion on the American War _W. M. Rossetti_ 129
Fenian "Idea," The _Frances Power Cobbe_ 572
Freedman's Story, The. I., II _William Parker_ 152, 276
Griffith Gaunt: or, Jealousy.
II., III., IV., V., VI., VII. _Charles Reade_ 100, 221, 365,
507, 596, 751
Gypsies, The Origin of the _G. W. Hosmer_ 167
Harmonists, The _Author of "Life in the Iron-Mills"_ 529
High Tide of December, The _Author of "Life in the Iron-Mills"_ 47
In the Hemlocks _John Burroughs_ 672
Kingdom Coming, The _Gail Hamilton_ 81
Landscape Painter, A _Henry W. James_ 182
Late Insurrection in Jamaica, The _G. Reynolds_ 480
Last Days of Walter Savage Landor.
I., II., III. _Kate Field_ 385, 540, 684
Lucy's Letters _Anne M. Brewster_ 64
Madam Waldoborough's Carriage _J. T. Trowbridge_ 407
Mephistophelean _Charles J. Sprague_ 632
Monuments, Question of _W. D. Howells_ 646
Nantucket _F. Sheldon_ 296
Passages from Hawthorne's Note-Books.
I., II., III., IV., V., VI. 1, 170, 257, 422, 565, 725
Pioneer Editor, A 743
Poor Chloe _Mrs. L. M. Child_ 352
President and Congress, The _E. P. Whipple_ 500
Quicksands _Mrs. C. A. Hopkinson_ 657
Ramble through the Market, A _B. W. Ball_ 268
Reconstructionists, Three Months
Among the _Sidney Andrews_ 237
Sainte-Beuve _John Foster Kirk_ 432
Snow-Walkers, The _John Burroughs_ 302
Struggle for Shelter, A _Caroline P. Hawes_ 456
Tied to a Rope _Charles J. Sprague_ 721
Were they Crickets? 397
What will it cost us? _E. H. Derby_ 621
Wilderness, The _J. T. Trowbridge_ 39
POETRY.
Abraham Davenport _John C. Whittier_ 539
Among the Laurels _Mrs. Akers_ 594
Bells of Lynn, The _H. W. Longfellow_ 47
Castles in the Air _W. C. Bryant_ 11
Dead Ship of Harpswell, The _John G. Whittier_ 705
De Spiridione Episcopo _C. G. Leland_ 454
Giotto's Tower _H. W. Longfellow_ 724
In the Sea _Hiram Rich_ 344
Killed at the Ford _H. W. Longfellow_ 479
Mountain, The _E. G. Stedman_ 734
Mr. Hosea Biglow's Speech in March Meeting _James Russell Lowell_ 635
My Annual _O. W. Holmes_ 395
Old Man's Idyl, An _Richard Realf_ 266
Riviera di Ponente _J. F. Clarke_ 202
Snow _T. B. Aldrich_ 364
To Hersa 311
To-morrow _H. W. Longfellow_ 552
Two Pictures _John G. Whittier_ 149
Wind the Clock _Hiram Rich_ 80
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
Andrews's South since the War 778
A Noble Life 650
Bigelow's Address on the Limits of Education 251
Bowles's Across the Continent 524
Brownson's American Republic 523
Clark's Mind in Nature 649
Croquet, Manuals of 772
Doolittle's Social Life of the Chinese 779
Foote's War of the Rebellion 653
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates 779
Herman; or, Young Knighthood 246
Hittell's Resources of California 522
Holcombe's Literature in Letters 650
Jean Ingelow's Songs of Seven 122
Lecky's Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe 248
Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson 119
Life of Michael Angelo 124
Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds 525
McGilchrist's Richard Cobden 253
Meta Lander's Esperance 525
Perry's Human Hair 255
Piatt's Poems 653
Savage's History of the Boston Watch and Police 122
Sarmiento's Vida de Abran. Lincoln 252
Smiles's Lives of Boulton and Watt 384
Taylor's Story of Kennett 775
Towle's History of Henry the Fifth 651
Tuckerman's Criterion 651
White's Poetry of the Civil War 724
Whittier's Snow-Bound 383
Winifred Bertram 384
Works of Edmund Burke, The 122
RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS 125, 256, 655
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
VOL. XVII.--JANUARY, 1866.--NO. XCIX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
I.
[Mr. Hawthorne's note-books, comprising several volumes of
closely written memoranda, were found in his study after his
decease. Extracts from these interesting pages will from
time to time be printed in this magazine, just as he left
them. They are the records of his every-day life, and as
such will be welcome to all who appreciate his genius and
love his memory.]
Salem, _June 15, 1835._--A walk down to the Juniper. The shore of the
coves strewn with bunches of sea-weed, driven in by recent winds.
Eel-grass, rolled and bundled up, and entangled with it,--large marine
vegetables, of an olive color, with round, slender, snake-like stalks,
four or five feet long, and nearly two feet broad: these are the herbage
of the deep sea. Shoals of fishes, at a little distance from the shore,
discernible by their fins out of water. Among the heaps of sea-weed
there were sometimes small pieces of painted wood, bark, and other
driftage. On the shore, with pebbles of granite, there were round or
oval pieces of brick, which the waves had rolled about, till they
resembled a natural mineral. Huge stones tossed about, in every variety
of confusion, some shagged all over with sea-weed, others only partly
covered, others bare. The old ten-gun battery, at the outer angle of the
Juniper, very verdant, and besprinkled with white-weed, clover, and
buttercups. The juniper-trees are very aged and decayed and moss-grown.
The grass about the hospital is rank, being trodden, probably, by nobody
but myself. There is a representation of a vessel under sail, cut with a
penknife, on the corner of the house.
Returning by the almshouse, I stopped a good while to look at the
pigs,--a great herd,--who seemed to be just finishing their suppers.
They certainly are types of unmitigated sensuality,--some standing in
the trough, in the midst of their own and others' victuals,--some
thrusting their noses deep into the food,--some rubbing their backs
against a post,--some huddled together between sleeping and waking,
breathing hard,--all wallowing about; a great boar swaggering round, and
a big sow waddling along with her huge paunch. Notwithstanding the
unspeakable defilement with which these strange sensualists spice all
their food, they seem to have a quick and delicate sense of smell. What
ridiculous-looking animals! Swift himself could not have imagined
anything nastier than what they practise by the mere impulse of natural
genius. Yet the Shakers keep their pigs very clean, and with great
advantage. The legion of devils in the herd of swine,--what a scene it
must have been!
Sunday evening, going by the jail, the setting sun kindled up the
windows most cheerfully; as if there were a bright, comfortable light
within its darksome stone wall.
* * * * *
_June 18._--A walk in North Salem in the decline of yesterday
afternoon,--beautiful weather, bright, sunny, with a western or
northwestern wind just cool enough, and a slight superfluity of heat.
The verdure, both of trees and grass, is now in its prime, the leaves
elastic, all life. The grass-fields are plenteously bestrewn with
white-weed, large spaces looking as white as a sheet of snow, at a
distance, yet with an indescribably warmer tinge than snow,--living
white, intermixed with living green. The hills and hollows beyond the
Cold Spring copiously shaded, principally with oaks of good growth, and
some walnut-trees, with the rich sun brightening in the midst of the
open spaces, and mellowing and fading into the shade,--and single trees,
with their cool spot of shade in the waste of sun: quite a picture of
beauty, gently picturesque. The surface of the land is so varied, with
woodland mingled, that the eye cannot reach far away, except now and
then in vistas perhaps across the river, showing houses, or a church and
surrounding village, in Upper Beverly. In one of the sunny bits of
pasture, walled irregularly in with oak-shade, I saw a gray mare
feeding, and, as I drew near, a colt sprang up from amid the grass,--a
very small colt. He looked me in the face, and I tried to startle him,
so as to make him gallop; but he stretched his long legs, one after
another, walked quietly to his mother, and began to suck,--just wetting
his lips, not being very hungry. Then he rubbed his head, alternately,
with each hind leg. He was a graceful little beast.
I bathed in the cove, overhung with maples and walnuts, the water cool
and thrilling. At a distance it sparkled bright and blue in the breeze
and sun. There were jelly-fish swimming about, and several left to melt
away on the shore. On the shore, sprouting amongst the sand and gravel,
I found samphire, growing somewhat like asparagus. It is an excellent
salad at this season, salt, yet with an herb-like vivacity, and very
tender. I strolled slowly through the pastures, watching my long shadow
making grave, fantastic gestures in the sun. It is a pretty sight to see
the sunshine brightening the entrance of a road which shortly becomes
deeply overshadowed by trees on both sides. At the Cold Spring, three
little girls, from six to nine, were seated on the stones in which the
fountain is set, and paddling in the water. It was a pretty picture, and
would have been prettier, if they had shown bare little legs, instead of
pantalets. Very large trees overhung them, and the sun was so nearly
gone down that a pleasant gloom made the spot sombre, in contrast with
these light and laughing little figures. On perceiving me, they rose up,
tittering among themselves. It seemed that there was a sort of playful
malice in those who first saw me; for they allowed the other to keep on
paddling, without warning her of my approach. I passed along, and heard
them come chattering behind.
* * * * *
_June 22._--I rode to Boston in the afternoon with Mr. Proctor. It was a
coolish day, with clouds and intermitting sunshine, and a pretty fresh
breeze. We stopped about an hour at the Maverick House, in the sprouting
branch of the city, at East Boston,--a stylish house, with doors painted
in imitation of oak; a large bar; bells ringing; the bar-keeper calls
out, when a bell rings, "Number --"; then a waiter replies, "Number --
answered"; and scampers up stairs. A ticket is given by the hostler, on
taking the horse and chaise, which is returned to the bar-keeper when
the chaise is wanted. The landlord was fashionably dressed, with the
whitest of linen, neatly plaited, and as courteous as a Lord
Chamberlain. Visitors from Boston thronging the house,--some standing at
the bar, watching the process of preparing tumblers of punch,--others
sitting at the windows of different parlors,--some with faces flushed,
puffing cigars. The bill of fare for the day was stuck up beside the
bar. Opposite this principal hotel there was another, called "The
Mechanics," which seemed to be equally thronged. I suspect that the
company were about on a par in each; for at the Maverick House, though
well dressed, they seemed to be merely Sunday gentlemen,--mostly young
fellows,--clerks in dry-goods stores being the aristocracy of them. One,
very fashionable in appearance, with a handsome cane, happened to stop
by me and lift up his foot, and I noticed that the sole of his boot
(which was exquisitely polished) was all worn out. I apprehend that some
such minor deficiencies might have been detected in the general
showiness of most of them. There were girls, too, but not pretty ones,
nor, on the whole, such good imitations of gentility as the young men.
There were as many people as are usually collected at a muster, or on
similar occasions, lounging about, without any apparent enjoyment; but
the observation of this may serve me to make a sketch of the mode of
spending the Sabbath by the majority of unmarried, young, middling-class
people, near a great town. Most of the people had smart canes and
bosom-pins.
Crossing the ferry into Boston, we went to the City Tavern, where the
bar-room presented a Sabbath scene of repose,--stage-folk lounging in
chairs, half asleep, smoking cigars, generally with clean linen and
other niceties of apparel, to mark the day. The doors and blinds of an
oyster and refreshment shop across the street were closed, but I saw
people enter it. There were two owls in a back court, visible through a
window of the bar-room,--speckled-gray, with dark-blue eyes,--the
queerest-looking birds that exist,--so solemn and wise,--dozing away the
day, much like the rest of the people, only that they looked wiser than
any others. Their hooked beaks looked like hooked noses. A dull scene
this. A stranger, here and there, poring over a newspaper. Many of the
stage-folk sitting in chairs on the pavement, in front of the door.
We went to the top of the hill which formed part of Gardiner Greene's
estate, and which is now in the process of levelling, and pretty much
taken away, except the highest point, and a narrow path to ascend to it.
It gives an admirable view of the city, being almost as high as the
steeples and the dome of the State House, and overlooking the whole mass
of brick buildings and slated roofs, with glimpses of streets far below.
It was really a pity to take it down. I noticed the stump of a very
large elm, recently felled. No house in the city could have reared its
roof so high as the roots of that tree, if indeed the church-spires did
so.
On our drive home we passed through Charlestown. Stages in abundance
were passing the road, burdened with passengers inside and out; also
chaises and barouches, horsemen and footmen. We are a community of
Sabbath-breakers!
* * * * *
_August 31._--A drive to Nahant yesterday afternoon. Stopped at Rice's,
and afterwards walked down to the steamboat wharf to see the passengers
land. It is strange how few good faces there are in the world,
comparatively to the ugly ones. Scarcely a single comely one in all this
collection. Then to the hotel. Barouches at the doors, and gentlemen and
ladies going to drive, and gentlemen smoking round the piazza. The
bar-keeper had one of Benton's mint-drops for a bosom-brooch! It made a
very handsome one. I crossed the beach for home about sunset. The tide
was so far down as just to give me a passage on the hard sand, between
the sea and the loose gravel. The sea was calm and smooth, with only the
surf-waves whitening along the beach. Several ladies and gentlemen on
horseback were cantering and galloping before and behind me.
* * * * *
A hint of a story,--some incident which should bring on a general war;
and the chief actor in the incident to have something corresponding to
the mischief he had caused.
* * * * *
_1835, September 7._--A drive to Ipswich with B----. At the tavern was
an old, fat, country major, and another old fellow, laughing and playing
off jokes on each other,--one tying a ribbon upon the other's hat. One
had been a trumpeter to the major's troop. Walking about town, we
knocked, for a whim, at the door of a dark old house, and inquired if
Miss Hannah Lord lived there. A woman of about thirty came to the door,
with rather a confused smile, and a disorder about the bosom of her
dress, as if she had been disturbed while nursing her child. She
answered us with great kindness.
Entering the burial-ground, where some masons were building a tomb, we
found a good many old monuments, and several covered with slabs of red
freestone or slate, and with arms sculptured on the slab, or an inlaid
circle of slate. On one slate grave-stone, of the Rev. Nathl. Rogers,
there was a portrait of that worthy, about a third of the size of life,
carved in relief, with his cloak, band, and wig, in excellent
preservation, all the buttons of his waistcoat being cut with great
minuteness,--the minister's nose being on a level with his cheeks. It
was an upright grave-stone. Returning home, I held a colloquy with a
young girl about the right road. She had come out to feed a pig, and was
confused, and also a little suspicious that we were making fun of her,
yet answered us with a shy laugh and good-nature,--the pig all the time
squealing for his dinner.
* * * * *
Displayed along the walls, and suspended from the pillars of the
original King's Chapel, were coats-of-arms of the king, the successive
governors, and other distinguished men. In the pulpit there was an
hour-glass on a large and elaborate brass stand. The organ was
surmounted by a gilt crown in the centre, supported by a gilt mitre on
each side. The governor's pew had Corinthian pillars, and crimson damask
tapestry. In 1727 it was lined with china, probably tiles.
* * * * *
Saint Augustin, at mass, charged all that were accursed to go out of the
church. "Then a dead body arose, and went out of the church into the
churchyard, with a white cloth on its head, and stood there till mass
was over. It was a former lord of the manor, whom a curate had cursed
because he refused to pay his tithes. A justice also commanded the dead
curate to arise, and gave him a rod; and the dead lord, kneeling,
received penance thereby." He then ordered the lord to go again to his
grave, which he did, and fell immediately to ashes. Saint Augustin
offered to pray for the curate, that he might remain on earth to confirm
men in their belief; but the curate refused, because he was in the place
of rest.
* * * * *
A sketch to be given of a modern reformer,--a type of the extreme
doctrines on the subject of slaves, cold water, and other such topics.
He goes about the streets haranguing most eloquently, and is on the
point of making many converts, when his labors are suddenly interrupted
by the appearance of the keeper of a mad-house, whence he has escaped.
Much may be made of this idea.
* * * * *
The world is so sad and solemn, that things meant in jest are liable, by
an overpowering influence, to become dreadful earnest,--gayly dressed
fantasies turning to ghostly and black-clad images of themselves.
* * * * *
A story, the hero of which is to be represented as naturally capable of
deep and strong passion, and looking forward to the time when he shall
feel passionate love, which is to be the great event of his existence.
But it so chances that he never falls in love; and although he gives up
the expectation of so doing, and marries calmly, yet it is somewhat
sadly, with sentiments merely of esteem for his bride. The lady might be
one who had loved him early in life, but whom then, in his expectation
of passionate love, he had scorned.
* * * * *
The scene of a story or sketch to be laid within the light of a
street-lantern; the time, when the lamp is near going out; and the
catastrophe to be simultaneous with the last flickering gleam.
* * * * *
The peculiar weariness and depression of spirits which is felt after a
day wasted in turning over a magazine or other light miscellany,
different from the state of the mind after severe study; because there
has been no excitement, no difficulties to be overcome, but the spirits
have evaporated insensibly.
* * * * *
To represent the process by which sober truth gradually strips off all
the beautiful draperies with which imagination has enveloped a beloved
object, till from an angel she turns out to be a merely ordinary woman.
This to be done without caricature, perhaps with a quiet humor
interfused, but the prevailing impression to be a sad one. The story
might consist of the various alterations in the feelings of the absent
lover, caused by successive events that display the true character of
his mistress; and the catastrophe should take place at their meeting,
when he finds himself equally disappointed in her person; or the whole
spirit of the thing may here be reproduced.
* * * * *
Last evening from the opposite shore of the North River, a view of the
town mirrored in the water, which was as smooth as glass, with no
perceptible tide or agitation, except a trifling swell and reflux on the
sand, although the shadow of the moon danced in it. The picture of the
town perfect in the water,--towers of churches, houses, with here and
there a light gleaming near the shore above, and more faintly glimmering
under water,--all perfect, but somewhat more hazy and indistinct than
the reality. There were many clouds flitting about the sky; and the
picture of each could be traced in the water,--the ghost of what was
itself unsubstantial. The rattling of wheels heard long and far through
the town. Voices of people talking on the other side of the river, the
tones being so distinguishable in all their variations that it seemed as
if what was there said might be understood; but it was not so.
* * * * *
Two persons might be bitter enemies through life, and mutually cause the
ruin of one another, and of all that were dear to them. Finally, meeting
at the funeral of a grandchild, the offspring of a son and daughter
married without their consent,--and who, as well as the child, had been
the victims of their hatred,--they might discover that the supposed
ground of the quarrel was altogether a mistake, and then be wofully
reconciled.
* * * * *
Two persons, by mutual agreement, to make their wills in each other's
favor, then to wait impatiently for one another's death, and both to be
informed of the desired event at the same time. Both, in most joyous
sorrow, hasten to be present at the funeral, meet, and find themselves
both hoaxed.
* * * * *
The story of a man, cold and hard-hearted, and acknowledging no
brotherhood with mankind. At his death they might try to dig him a
grave, but, at a little space beneath the ground, strike upon a rock, as
if the earth refused to receive the unnatural son into her bosom. Then
they would put him into an old supulchre, where the coffins and corpses
were all turned to dust, and so he would be alone. Then the body would
petrify; and he having died in some characteristic act and expression,
he would seem, through endless ages of death, to repel society as in
life, and no one would be buried in that tomb forever.
* * * * *
Cannon transformed to church-bells.
* * * * *
A scold and a blockhead,--brimstone and wood,--a good match.
* * * * *
To make one's own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story.
* * * * *
In a dream to wander to some place where may be heard the complaints of
all the miserable on earth.
* * * * *
Some common quality or circumstance that should bring together people
the most unlike in all other respects, and make a brotherhood and
sisterhood of them,--the rich and the proud finding themselves in the
same category with the mean and the despised.
* * * * *
A person to consider himself as the prime mover of certain remarkable
events, but to discover that his actions have not contributed in the
least thereto. Another person to be the cause, without suspecting it.
* * * * *
_October 25, 1835._--A person or family long desires some particular
good. At last it comes in such profusion as to be the great pest of
their lives.
* * * * *
A man, perhaps with a persuasion that he shall make his fortune by some
singular means, and with an eager longing so to do, while digging or
boring for water, to strike upon a salt-spring.
* * * * *
To have one event operate in several places,--as, for example, if a
man's head were to be cut off in one town, men's heads to drop off in
several towns.
* * * * *
Follow out the fantasy of a man taking his life by instalments, instead
of at one payment,--say ten years of life alternately with ten years of
suspended animation.
* * * * *
Sentiments in a foreign language, which merely convey the sentiment,
without retaining to the reader any graces of style or harmony of sound,
have somewhat of the charm of thoughts in one's own mind that have not
yet been put into words. No possible words that we might adapt to them
could realize the unshaped beauty that they appear to possess. This is
the reason that translations are never satisfactory,--and less so, I
should think, to one who cannot than to one who can pronounce the
language.
* * * * *
A person to be writing a tale, and to find that it shapes itself against
his intentions; that the characters act otherwise than he thought; that
unforeseen events occur; and a catastrophe comes which he strives in
vain to avert. It might shadow forth his own fate,--he having made
himself one of the personages.
* * * * *
It is a singular thing, that at the distance, say, of five feet, the
work of the greatest dunce looks just as well as that of the greatest
genius,--that little space being all the distance between genius and
stupidity.
* * * * *
Mrs. Sigourney says, after Coleridge, that "poetry has been its own
exceeding great reward." For the writing, perhaps; but would it be so
for the reading?
* * * * *
Four precepts: To break off customs; to shake off spirits ill-disposed;
to meditate on youth; to do nothing against one's genius.
* * * * *
_Salem, August 31, 1836._--A walk, yesterday, down to the shore, near
the hospital. Standing on the old grassy battery, that forms a
semicircle, and looking seaward. The sun not a great way above the
horizon, yet so far as to give a very golden brightness, when it shone
out. Clouds in the vicinity of the sun, and nearly all the rest of the
sky covered with clouds in masses, not a gray uniformity of cloud. A
fresh breeze blowing from land seaward. If it had been blowing from the
sea, it would have raised it in heavy billows, and caused it to dash
high against the rocks. But now its surface was not at all commoved with
billows; there was only roughness enough to take off the gleam, and give
it the aspect of iron after cooling. The clouds above added to the black
appearance. A few sea-birds were flitting over the water, only visible
at moments, when they turned their white bosoms towards me,--as if they
were then first created. The sunshine had a singular effect. The clouds
would interpose in such a manner that some objects were shaded from it,
while others were strongly illuminated. Some of the islands lay in the
shade, dark and gloomy, while others were bright and favored spots. The
white light-house sometimes very cheerfully marked. There was a schooner
about a mile from the shore, at anchor, laden apparently with lumber.
The sea all about her had the black, iron aspect which I have described;
but the vessel herself was alight. Hull, masts, and spars were all
gilded, and the rigging was made of golden threads. A small, white
streak of foam breaking around the bows, which were towards the wind.
The shadowiness of the clouds overhead made the effect of the sunlight
strange, where it fell.
* * * * *
_September._--The elm-trees have golden branches intermingled with their
green already, and so they had on the first of the month.
* * * * *
To picture the predicament of worldly people, if admitted to paradise.
* * * * *
As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures,
American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The
Egyptian is so of the cavern and mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the
Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.
* * * * *
"Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it,"--an
extempore prayer by a New England divine.
* * * * *
In old times it must have been much less customary than now to drink
pure water. Walker emphatically mentions, among the sufferings of a
clergyman's wife and family in the Great Rebellion, that they were
forced to drink water with crab-apples stamped in to relish it.
* * * * *
Mr. Kirby, author of a work on the History, Habits, and Instincts of
Animals, questions whether there may not be an abyss of waters within
the globe, communicating with the ocean, and whether the huge animals of
the Saurian tribe--great reptiles, supposed to be exclusively
antediluvian, and now extinct--may not be inhabitants of it. He quotes a
passage from Revelation, where the creatures under the earth are spoken
of as distinct from those of the sea, and speaks of a Saurian fossil
that has been found deep in the subterranean regions. He thinks, or
suggests, that these may be the dragons of Scripture.
* * * * *
The elephant is not particularly sagacious in the wild state, but
becomes so when tamed. The fox directly the contrary, and likewise the
wolf.
* * * * *
A modern Jewish adage,--"Let a man clothe himself beneath his ability,
his children according to his ability, and his wife above his ability."
* * * * *
It is said of the eagle, that, in however long a flight, he is never
seen to clap his wings to his sides. He seems to govern his movements by
the inclination of his wings and tail to the wind, as a ship is
propelled by the action of the wind on her sails.
* * * * *
In old country-houses in England, instead of glass for windows, they
used wicker, or fine strips of oak disposed checkerwise. Horn was also
used. The windows of princes and great noblemen of crystal; those of
Studley Castle, Holinshed says, of beryl. There were seldom chimneys;
and they cooked their meats by a fire made against an iron back in the
great hall. Houses, often of gentry, were built of a heavy timber frame,
filled up with lath and plaster. People slept on rough mats or straw
pallets, with a round log for a pillow; seldom better beds than a
mattress, with a sack of chaff for a pillow.
* * * * *
_October 25, 1836._--A walk yesterday through Dark Lane, and home
through the village of Danvers. Landscape now wholly autumnal. Saw an
elderly man laden with two dry, yellow, rustling bundles of Indian
corn-stalks,--a good personification of Autumn. Another man hoeing up
potatoes. White rows of cabbages lay ripening. Fields of dry Indian
corn. The grass has still considerable greenness. Wild rose-bushes
devoid of leaves, with their deep, bright red seed-vessels.
Meeting-house in Danvers seen at a distance, with the sun shining
through the windows of its belfry. Barberry-bushes,--the leaves now of a
brown red, still juicy and healthy; very few berries remaining, mostly
frost-bitten and wilted. All among the yet green grass, dry stalks of
weeds. The down of thistles occasionally seen flying through the sunny
air.
* * * * *
In this dismal chamber FAME was won. (Salem, Union Street.)
* * * * *
Those who are very difficult in choosing wives seem as if they would
take none of Nature's ready-made works, but want a woman manufactured
particularly to their order.
* * * * *
A council of the passengers in a street: called by somebody to decide
upon some points important to him.
* * * * *
All sorts of persons, and every individual, has a place to fill in the
world, and is important in some respects, whether he chooses to be so or
not.
* * * * *
A Thanksgiving dinner. All the miserable on earth are to be invited,--as
the drunkard, the bereaved parent, the ruined merchant, the
broken-hearted lover, the poor widow, the old man and woman who have
outlived their generation, the disappointed author, the wounded, sick,
and broken soldier, the diseased person, the infidel, the man with an
evil conscience, little orphan children, or children of neglectful
parents, shall be admitted to the table, and many others. The giver of
the feast goes out to deliver his invitations. Some of the guests he
meets in the streets, some he knocks for at the doors of their houses.
The description must be rapid. But who must be the giver of the feast,
and what his claims to preside? A man who has never found out what he is
fit for, who has unsettled aims or objects in life, and whose mind gnaws
him, making him the sufferer of many kinds of misery. He should meet
some pious, old, sorrowful person, with more outward calamities than any
other, and invite him with a reflection that piety would make all that
miserable company truly thankful.
* * * * *
_Merry_, in merry England, does not mean mirthful; but is corrupted from
an old Teutonic word signifying famous or renowned.
* * * * *
In an old London newspaper, 1678, there is an advertisement, among other
goods at auction, of a black girl of about fifteen years old, to be
sold.
* * * * *
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a
troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.
* * * * *
The race of mankind to be swept away, leaving all their cities and
works. Then another human pair to be placed in the world, with native
intelligence like Adam and Eve, but knowing nothing of their
predecessors or of their own nature and destiny. They, perhaps, to be
described as working out this knowledge by their sympathy with what they
saw, and by their own feelings.
* * * * *
Memorials of the family of Hawthorne in the church of the village of
Dundry, Somersetshire, England. The church is ancient and small, and has
a prodigiously high tower of more modern date, being erected in the time
of Edward IV. It serves as a landmark for an amazing extent of country.
* * * * *
A singular fact, that, when man is a brute, he is the most sensual and
loathsome of all brutes.
* * * * *
A snake, taken into a man's stomach and nourished there from fifteen
years to thirty-five, tormenting him most horribly. A type of envy or
some other evil passion.
* * * * *
A sketch illustrating the imperfect compensations which time makes for
its devastations on the person,--giving a wreath of laurel while it
causes baldness, honors for infirmities, wealth for a broken
constitution,--and at last, when a man has everything that seems
desirable, death seizes him. To contrast the man who has thus reached
the summit of ambition with the ambitious youth.
* * * * *
Walking along the track of the railroad, I observed a place where the
workmen had bored a hole through the solid rock, in order to blast it;
but striking a spring of water beneath the rock, it gushed up through
the hole. It looked as if the water were contained within the rock.
* * * * *
A Fancy Ball, in which the prominent American writers should appear,
dressed in character.
* * * * *
A lament for life's wasted sunshine.
* * * * *
A new classification, of society to be instituted. Instead of rich and
poor, high and low, they are to be classed,--First, by their sorrows:
for instance, whenever there are any, whether in fair mansion or hovel,
who are mourning the loss of relations and friends, and who wear black,
whether the cloth be coarse or superfine, they are to make one class.
Secondly, all who have the same maladies, whether they lie under damask
canopies or on straw pallets or in the wards of hospitals, they are to
form one class. Thirdly, all who are guilty of the same sins, whether
the world knows them or not; whether they languish in prison, looking
forward to the gallows, or walk honored among men, they also form a
class. Then proceed to generalize and classify the whole world together,
as none can claim utter exemption from either sorrow, sin, or disease;
and if they could, yet Death, like a great parent, comes and sweeps them
all through one darksome portal,--all his children.
* * * * *
Fortune to come like a peddler with his goods,--as wreaths of laurel,
diamonds, crowns; selling them, but asking for them the sacrifice of
health, of integrity, perhaps of life in the battle-field, and of the
real pleasures of existence. Who would buy, if the price were to be paid
down?
* * * * *
The dying exclamation of the Emperor Augustus, "Has it not been well
acted?" An essay on the misery of being always under a mask. A veil may
be needful, but never a mask. Instances of people who wear masks in all
classes of society, and never take them off even in the most familiar
moments, though sometimes they may chance to slip aside.
* * * * *
The various guises under which Ruin makes his approaches to his victims:
to the merchant, in the guise of a merchant offering speculations; to
the young heir, a jolly companion; to the maiden, a sighing,
sentimentalist lover.
* * * * *
What were the contents of the burden of Christian in the Pilgrim's
Progress? He must have been taken for a peddler travelling with his
pack.
* * * * *
To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the course
of the day,--events of ordinary occurrence: as, the clocks have struck,
the dead have been buried.
* * * * *
Curious to imagine what murmurings and discontent would be excited, if
any of the great so-called calamities of human beings were to be
abolished,--as, for instance, death.
* * * * *
Trifles to one are matters of life and death to another. As, for
instance, a farmer desires a brisk breeze to winnow his grain; and
mariners, to blow them out of the reach of pirates.
* * * * *
A recluse, like myself, or a prisoner, to measure time by the progress
of sunshine through his chamber.
* * * * *
Would it not be wiser for people to rejoice at all that they now sorrow
for, and _vice versa_? To put on bridal garments at funerals, and
mourning at weddings? For their friends to condole with them when they
attained riches and honor, as only so much care added?
* * * * *
If in a village it were a custom to hang a funeral garland or other
token of death on a house where some one had died, and there to let it
remain till a death occurred elsewhere, and then to hang that same
garland over the other house, it would have, methinks, a strong effect.
* * * * *
No fountain so small but that Heaven may be imaged in its bosom.
* * * * *
Fame! Some very humble persons in a town may be said to possess it,--as,
the penny-post, the town-crier, the constable,--and they are known to
everybody: while many richer, more intellectual, worthier persons are
unknown by the majority of their fellow-citizens. Something analogous in
the world at large.
* * * * *
The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of
the houses. All their interests extend over the earth's surface in a
layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their
sphere.
* * * * *
Nobody will use other people's experience, nor has any of his own till
it is too late to use it.
* * * * *
Two lovers to plan the building of a pleasure-house on a certain spot of
ground, but various seeming accidents prevent it. Once they find a group
of miserable children there; once it is the scene where crime is
plotted; at last the dead body of one of the lovers or of a dear friend
is found there; and instead of a pleasure-house, they build a marble
tomb. The moral,--that there is no place on earth fit for the site of a
pleasure-house, because there is no spot that may not have been saddened
by human grief, stained by crime, or hallowed by death. It might be
three friends who plan it, instead of two lovers; and the dearest one
dies.
* * * * *
Comfort for childless people. A married couple with ten children have
been the means of bringing about ten funerals.
* * * * *
A blind man, on a dark nights, carried a torch, in order that people
might see him and not run against him, and direct him how to avoid
dangers.
* * * * *
To picture a child's (one of four or five years old) reminiscences at
sunset of a long summer's day,--his first awakening, his studies, his
sports, his little fits of passion, perhaps a whipping, etc.
* * * * *
The blind man's walk.
* * * * *
To picture a virtuous family, the different members examples of virtuous
dispositions in their way; then introduce a vicious person, and trace
out the relations that arise between him and them, and the manner in
which all are affected.
* * * * *
A man to flatter himself with the idea that he would not be guilty of
some certain wickedness,--as, for instance, to yield to the personal
temptations of the Devil,--yet to find, ultimately, that he was at that
very time committing that same wickedness.
* * * * *
What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry
heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?
* * * * *
A girl's lover to be slain and buried in her flower-garden, and the
earth levelled over him. That particular spot, which she happens to
plant with some peculiar variety of flowers, produces them of admirable
splendor, beauty, and perfume; and she delights, with an indescribable
impulse, to wear them in her bosom, and scent her chamber with them.
Thus the classic fantasy would be realized, of dead people transformed
to flowers.
* * * * *
Objects seen by a magic-lantern reversed. A street, or other location,
might be presented, where there would be opportunity to bring forward
all objects of worldly interest, and thus much pleasant satire might be
the result.
CASTLES IN THE AIR.
FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.
"But there is yet a region of the clouds
Unseen from the low earth. Beyond the veil
Of these dark volumes rolling through the sky,
Its mountain summits glisten in the sun,--
The realm of Castles in the Air. The foot
Of man hath never trod those shining streets;
But there his spirit, leaving the dull load
Of bodily organs, wanders with delight,
And builds its structures of the impalpable mist,
Glorious beyond the dream of architect,
And populous with forms of nobler mould
Than ever walked the earth." So said my guide,
And led me, wondering, to a headland height
That overlooked a fair broad vale shut in
By the great hills of Cloudland. "Now behold
The Castle-builders!" Then I looked; and, lo!
The vale was filled with shadowy forms, that bore
Each a white wand, with which they touched the banks
Of mist beside them, and at once arose,
Obedient to their wish, the walls and domes
Of stately palaces, Gothic or Greek,
Or such as in the land of Mahomet
Uplift the crescent, or, in forms more strange,
Border the ancient Indus, or behold
Their gilded friezes mirrored in the lakes
Of China,--yet of ampler majesty,
And gorgeously adorned. Tall porticos
Sprang from the ground; the eye pursued afar
Their colonnades, that lessened to a point
In the faint distance. Portals that swung back
On musical hinges showed the eye within
Vast halls with golden floors, and bright alcoves,
And walls of pearl, and sapphire vault besprent
With silver stars. Within the spacious rooms
Were banquets spread; and menials, beautiful
As wood-nymphs or as stripling Mercuries,
Ran to and fro, and laid the chalices,
And brought the brimming wine-jars. Enters now
The happy architect, and wanders on
From room to room, and glories in his work.
Not long his glorying: for a chill north wind
Breathes through the structure, and the massive walls
Are folded up; the proud domes roll away
In mist-wreaths; pinnacle and turret lean
Forward, like birds prepared for flight, and stream,
In trains of vapor, through the empty air.
Meantime the astonished builder, dispossessed,
Stands 'mid the drifting rack. A brief despair
Seizes him; but the wand is in his hand,
And soon he turns him to his task again.
"Behold," said the fair being at my side,
"How one has made himself a diadem
Out of the bright skirts of a cloud that lay
Steeped in the golden sunshine, and has bound
The bauble on his forehead! See, again,
How from these vapors he calls up a host
With arms and banners! A great multitude
Gather and bow before him with bare heads.
To the four winds his messengers go forth,
And bring him back earth's homage. From the ground
Another calls a winged image, such
As poets give to Fame, who, to her mouth
Putting a silver trumpet, blows abroad
A loud, harmonious summons to the world,
And all the listening nations shout his name.
Another yet, apart from all the rest,
Casting a fearful glance from side to side,
Touches the ground by stealth. Beneath his wand
A glittering pile grows up, ingots and bars
Of massive gold, and coins on which earth's kings
Have stamped their symbols." As these words were said,
The north wind blew again across the vale,
And, lo! the beamy crown flew off in mist;
The host of armed men became a scud
Torn by the angry blast; the form of Fame
Tossed its long arms in air, and rode the wind,
A jagged cloud; the glittering pile of gold
Grew pale and flowed in a gray reek away.
Then there were sobs and tears from those whose work
The wind had scattered: some had flung themselves
Upon the ground in grief; and some stood fixed
In blank bewilderment; and some looked on
Unmoved, as at a pageant of the stage
Suddenly hidden by the curtain's fall.
"Take thou this wand," my bright companion said.
I took it from her hand, and with it touched
The knolls of snow-white mist, and they grew green
With soft, thick herbage. At another touch,
A brook leaped forth, and dashed and sparkled by;
And shady walks through shrubberies cool and close
Wandered; and where, upon the open grounds,
The peaceful sunshine lay, a vineyard nursed
Its pouting clusters; and from boughs that drooped
Beneath their load an orchard shed its fruit;
And gardens, set with many a pleasant herb
And many a glorious flower, made sweet the air.
I looked, and I exulted; yet I longed
For Nature's grander aspects, and I plied
The slender rod again; and then arose
Woods tall and wide, of odorous pine and fir,
And every noble tree that casts the leaf
In autumn. Paths that wound between their stems
Led through the solemn shade to twilight glens,
To thundering torrents and white waterfalls,
And edge of lonely lakes, and chasms between
The mountain-cliffs. Above the trees were seen
Gray pinnacles and walls of splintered rock.
But near the forest margin, in the vale,
Nestled a dwelling half embowered by trees,
Where, through the open window, shelves were seen
Filled with old volumes, and a glimpse was given
Of canvas, here and there along the walls,
On which the hands of mighty men of art
Had flung their fancies. On the portico
Old friends, with smiling faces and frank eyes,
Talked with each other: some had passed from life
Long since, yet dearly were remembered still.
My heart yearned toward them, and the quick, warm tears
Stood in my eyes. Forward I sprang to grasp
The hands that once so kindly met my own,--
I sprang, but met them not: the withering wind
Was there before me. Dwelling, field, and brook,
Dark wood, and flowery garden, and blue lake,
And beetling cliff, and noble human forms,
All, all had melted into that pale sea
Of billowy vapor rolling round my feet.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
A STORY OF OLD RUSSIA.
I.
We are about to relate a story of mingled fact and fancy. The facts are
borrowed from the Russian author, Petjerski; the fancy is our own. Our
task will chiefly be to soften the outlines of incidents almost too
sharp and rugged for literary use, to supply them with the necessary
coloring and sentiment, and to give a coherent and proportioned shape to
the irregular fragments of an old chronicle. We know something, from
other sources, of the customs described; something of the character of
the people from personal observation, and may therefore the more freely
take such liberties as we choose with the rude, vigorous sketches of the
Russian original. One who happens to have read the work of Villebois can
easily comprehend the existence of a state of society, on the banks of
the Volga, a hundred years ago, which is now impossible, and will soon
become incredible. What is strangest in our narrative has been declared
to be true.
II.
We are in Kinesma, a small town on the Volga, between Kostroma and
Nijni-Novgorod. The time is about the middle of the last century, and
the month October.
There was trouble, one day, in the palace of Prince Alexis, of Kinesma.
This edifice, with its massive white walls, and its pyramidal roofs of
green copper, stood upon a gentle mound to the eastward of the town,
overlooking it, a broad stretch of the Volga, and the opposite shore. On
a similar hill, to the westward, stood the church, glittering with its
dozen bulging, golden domes. These two establishments divided the
sovereignty of Kinesma between them. Prince Alexis owned the bodies of
the inhabitants, (with the exception of a few merchants and tradesmen,)
and the Archimandrite Sergius owned their souls. But the shadow of the
former stretched also over other villages, far beyond the ring of the
wooded horizon. The number of his serfs was ten thousand, and his rule
over them was even less disputed than theirs over their domestic
animals.
The inhabitants of the place had noticed with dismay that the
slumber-flag had not been hoisted on the castle, although it was half an
hour after the usual time. So rare a circumstance betokened sudden wrath
or disaster, on the part of Prince Alexis. Long experience had prepared
the people for anything that might happen, and they were consequently
not astonished at the singular event which presently transpired.
The fact is, that, in the first place, the dinner had been prolonged
full ten minutes beyond its accustomed limit, owing to a discussion
between the Prince, his wife, the Princess Martha, and their son, Prince
Boris. The last was to leave for St. Petersburg in a fortnight, and
wished to have his departure preceded by a festival at the castle. The
Princess Martha was always ready to second the desires of her only
child. Between the two they had pressed some twenty or thirty thousand
rubles out of the old Prince, for the winter diversions of the young
one. The festival, to be sure, would have been a slight expenditure for
a noble of such immense wealth as Prince Alexis; but he never liked his
wife, and he took a stubborn pleasure in thwarting her wishes. It was no
satisfaction that Boris resembled her in character. That weak successor
to the sovereignty of Kinesma preferred a game of cards to a bear-hunt,
and could never drink more than a quart of vodki without becoming dizzy
and sick.
"Ugh!" Prince Alexis would cry, with a shudder of disgust, "the whelp
barks after the dam!"
A state dinner he might give; but a festival, with dances, dramatic
representations, burning tar-barrels, and cannon,--no! He knitted his
heavy brows and drank deeply, and his fiery gray eyes shot such
incessant glances from side to side that Boris and the Princess Martha
could not exchange a single wink of silent advice. The pet bear, Mishka,
plied with strong wines, which Prince Alexis poured out for him into a
golden basin, became at last comically drunk, and in endeavoring to
execute a dance lost his balance and fell at full length on his back.
The Prince burst into a yelling, shrieking fit of laughter. Instantly
the yellow-haired serfs in waiting, the Calmucks at the hall-door, and
the half-witted dwarf who crawled around the table in his tow shirt,
began laughing in chorus, as violently as they could. The Princess
Martha and Prince Boris laughed also; and while the old man's eyes were
dimmed with streaming tears of mirth, quickly exchanged nods. The sound
extended all over the castle, and was heard outside of the walls.
"Father!" said Boris, "let us have the festival, and Mishka shall
perform again. Prince Paul of Kostroma would strangle, if he could see
him."
"Good, by St. Vladimir!" exclaimed Prince Alexis. "Thou shalt have it,
my Borka![A] Where's Simon Petrovitch? May the Devil scorch that
vagabond, if he doesn't do better than the last time! Sasha!"
A broad-shouldered serf stepped forward and stood with bowed head.
"Lock up Simon Petrovitch in the southwestern tower. Send the tailor and
the girls to him, to learn their parts. Search every one of them before
they go in, and if any one dares to carry vodki to the beast,
twenty-five lashes on the back!"
Sasha bowed again and departed. Simon Petrovitch was the court-poet of
Kinesma. He had a mechanical knack of preparing allegorical diversions
which suited the conventional taste of society at that time; but he also
had a failing,--he was rarely sober enough to write. Prince Alexis,
therefore, was in the habit of locking him up and placing a guard over
him, until the inspiration had done its work. The most comely young
serfs of both sexes were selected to perform the parts, and the
court-tailor arranged for them the appropriate dresses. It depended very
much upon accident--that is to say, the mood of Prince Alexis--whether
Simon Petrovitch was rewarded with stripes or rubles.
The matter thus settled, the Prince rose from the table and walked out
upon an overhanging balcony, where an immense reclining arm-chair of
stuffed leather was ready for his siesta. He preferred this indulgence
in the open air; and although the weather was rapidly growing cold, a
pelisse of sables enabled him to slumber sweetly in the face of the
north wind. An attendant stood with the pelisse outspread; another held
the halyards to which was attached the great red slumber-flag, ready to
run it up and announce to all Kinesma that the noises of the town must
cease; a few seconds more, and all things would have been fixed in their
regular daily courses. The Prince, in fact, was just straightening his
shoulders to receive the sables; his eyelids were dropping, and his
eyes, sinking mechanically with them, fell upon the river-road, at the
foot of the hill. Along this road walked a man, wearing the long cloth
caftan of a merchant.
Prince Alexis started, and all slumber vanished out of his eyes. He
leaned forward for a moment, with a quick, eager expression; then a loud
roar, like that of an enraged wild beast, burst from his mouth. He gave
a stamp that shook the balcony.
"Dog!" he cried to the trembling attendant, "my cap! my whip!"
The sables fell upon the floor, the cap and whip appeared in a
twinkling, and the red slumber-flag was folded up again for the first
time in several years, as the Prince stormed out of the castle. The
traveller below had heard the cry,--for it might have been heard half a
mile. He seemed to have presentiment of evil, for he had already set off
towards the town at full speed.
To explain the occurrence, we must mention one of the Prince's many
peculiar habits. This was, to invite strangers or merchants of the
neighborhood to dine with him, and, after regaling them bountifully, to
take his pay in subjecting them to all sorts of outrageous tricks, with
the help of his band of willing domestics. Now this particular merchant
had been invited, and had attended; but, being a very wide-awake, shrewd
person, he saw what was coming, and dexterously slipped away from the
banquet without being perceived. The prince vowed vengeance, on
discovering the escape, and he was not a man to forget his word.
[Footnote A: Little Boris.]
Impelled by such opposite passions, both parties ran with astonishing
speed. The merchant was the taller, but his long caftan, hastily
ungirdled, swung behind him and dragged in the air. The short, booted
legs of the Prince beat quicker time, and he grasped his short, heavy,
leathern whip more tightly as he saw the space diminishing. They dashed
into the town of Kinesma a hundred yards apart. The merchant entered
the main street, or bazaar, looking rapidly to right and left, as he
ran, in the hope of espying some place of refuge. The terrible voice
behind him cried,--
"Stop, scoundrel! I have a crow to pick with you!"
And the tradesmen in their shops looked on and laughed, as well they
might, being unconcerned spectators of the fun. The fugitive, therefore,
kept straight on, notwithstanding a pond of water glittered across the
farther end of the street.
Although Prince Alexis had gained considerably in the race, such violent
exercise, after a heavy dinner, deprived him of breath. He again
cried,--
"Stop!"
But the merchant answered,--
"No, Highness! You may come to me, but I will not go to you."
"Oh, the villain!" growled the Prince, in a hoarse whisper, for he had
no more voice.
The pond cut off all further pursuit. Hastily kicking off his loose
boots, the merchant plunged into the water, rather than encounter the
princely whip, which already began to crack and snap in fierce
anticipation. Prince Alexis kicked off his boots and followed; the pond
gradually deepened, and in a minute the tall merchant stood up to his
chin in the icy water, and his short pursuer likewise, but out of
striking distance. The latter coaxed and entreated, but the victim kept
his ground.
"You lie, Highness!" he said, boldly. "If you want me, come to me."
"Ah-h-h!" roared the Prince, with chattering teeth, "what a stubborn
rascal you are! Come here, and I give you my word that I will not hurt
you. Nay,"--seeing that the man did not move,--"you shall dine with me
as often as you please. You shall be my friend; by St. Vladimir, I like
you!"
"Make the sign of the cross, and swear it by all the Saints," said the
merchant, composedly.
With a grim smile on his face, the Prince stepped back and shiveringly
obeyed. Both then waded out, sat down upon the ground and pulled on
their boots; and presently the people of Kinesma beheld the dripping
pair walking side by side up the street, conversing in the most cordial
manner. The merchant dried his clothes _from within_, at the castle
table; a fresh keg of old Cognac was opened; and although the
slumber-flag was not unfurled that afternoon, it flew from the staff and
hushed the town nearly all the next day.
III.
The festival granted on behalf of Prince Boris was one of the grandest
ever given at the castle. In character it was a singular cross between
the old Muscovite revel and the French entertainments which were then
introduced by the Empress Elizabeth. All the nobility, for fifty versts
around, including Prince Paul and the chief families of Kostroma, were
invited. Simon Petrovitch had been so carefully guarded that his work
was actually completed and the parts distributed; his superintendence of
the performance, however, was still a matter of doubt, as it was
necessary to release him from the tower, and after several days of
forced abstinence he always manifested a raging appetite. Prince Alexis,
in spite of this doubt, had been assured by Boris that the dramatic part
of the entertainment would not be a failure. When he questioned Sasha,
the poet's strong-shouldered guard, the latter winked familiarly and
answered with a proverb,--
"I sit on the shore and wait for the wind,"--which was as much as to say
that Sasha had little fear of the result.
The tables were spread in the great hall, where places for one hundred
chosen guests were arranged on the floor, while the three or four
hundred of minor importance were provided for in the galleries above. By
noon the whole party were assembled. The halls and passages of the
castle were already permeated with rich and unctuous smells, and a
delicate nose might have picked out and arranged, by their finer or
coarser vapors, the dishes preparing for the upper and lower tables. One
of the parasites of Prince Alexis, a dilapidated nobleman, officiated as
Grand Marshal,--an office which more than compensated for the savage
charity he received, for it was performed in continual fear and
trembling. The Prince had felt the stick of the Great Peter upon his own
back, and was ready enough to imitate any custom of the famous monarch.
An orchestra, composed principally of horns and brass instruments,
occupied a separate gallery at one end of the dining-hall. The guests
were assembled in the adjoining apartments, according to their rank; and
when the first loud blast of the instruments announced the beginning of
the banquet, two very differently attired and freighted processions of
servants made their appearance at the same time. Those intended for the
princely table numbered two hundred,--two for each guest. They were the
handsomest young men among the ten thousand serfs, clothed in loose
white trousers and skirts of pink or lilac silk; their soft golden hair,
parted in the middle, fell upon their shoulders, and a band of
gold-thread about the brow prevented it from sweeping the dishes they
carried. They entered the reception-room, bearing huge trays of
sculptured silver, upon which were anchovies, the finest Finnish caviar,
sliced oranges, cheese, and crystal flagons of Cognac, rum, and
_kuemmel_. There were fewer servants for the remaining guests, who were
gathered in a separate chamber, and regaled with the common black
caviar, onions, bread, and vodki. At the second blast of trumpets, the
two companies set themselves in motion and entered the dining-hall at
opposite ends. Our business, however, is only with the principal
personages, so we will allow the common crowd quietly to mount to the
galleries and satisfy their senses with the coarser viands, while their
imagination is stimulated by the sight of the splendor and luxury below.
Prince Alexis entered first, with a pompous, mincing gait, leading the
Princess Martha by the tips of her fingers. He wore a caftan of green
velvet laced with gold; a huge vest of crimson brocade, and breeches of
yellow satin. A wig, resembling clouds boiling in the confluence of
opposing winds, surged from his low, broad forehead, and flowed upon his
shoulders. As his small, fiery eyes swept the hall, every servant
trembled: he was as severe at the commencement as he was reckless at the
close of a banquet. The Princess Martha wore a robe of pink satin
embroidered with flowers made of small pearls, and a train and headdress
of crimson velvet. Her emeralds were the finest outside of Moscow, and
she wore them all. Her pale, weak, frightened face was quenched in the
dazzle of the green fires which shot from her forehead, ears, and bosom,
as she moved.
Prince Paul of Kostroma and the Princess Nadejda followed; but on
reaching the table, the gentlemen took their seats at the head, while
the ladies marched down to the foot. Their seats were determined by
their relative rank, and woe to him who was so ignorant or so
absent-minded as to make a mistake! The servants had been carefully
trained in advance by the Grand Marshal; and whoever took a place above
his rank or importance found, when he came to sit down, that his chair
had miraculously disappeared, or, not noticing the fact, seated himself
absurdly and violently upon the floor. The Prince at the head of the
table, and the Princess at the foot, with their nearest guests of equal
rank, ate from dishes of massive gold; the others from silver. As soon
as the last of the company had entered the hall, a crowd of jugglers,
tumblers, dwarfs, and Calmucks followed, crowding themselves into the
corners under the galleries, where they awaited the conclusion of the
banquet to display their tricks, and scolded and pummelled each other in
the mean time.
On one side of Prince Alexis the bear Mishka took his station. By order
of Prince Boris he had been kept from wine for several days, and his
small eyes were keener and hungrier than usual. As he rose now and then,
impatiently, and sat upon his hind legs, he formed a curious contrast to
the Prince's other supporter, the idiot, who sat also in his tow shirt,
with a large pewter basin in his hand. It was difficult to say whether
the beast was most man or the man most beast. They eyed each other and
watched the motions of their lord with equal jealousy; and the dismal
whine of the bear found an echo in the drawling, slavering laugh of the
idiot. The Prince glanced from one to the other; they put him in a
capital humor, which was not lessened as he perceived an expression of
envy pass over the face of Prince Paul.
The dinner commenced with a _botvinia_--something between a soup and a
salad--of wonderful composition. It contained cucumbers, cherries, salt
fish, melons, bread, salt, pepper, and wine. While it was being served,
four huge fishermen, dressed to represent mermen of the Volga, naked to
the waist, with hair crowned with reeds, legs finned with silver tissue
from the knees downward, and preposterous scaly tails, which dragged
helplessly upon the floor, entered the hall, bearing a broad, shallow
tank of silver. In the tank flapped and swam four superb sterlets, their
ridgy backs rising out of the water like those of alligators. Great
applause welcomed this new and classical adaptation of the old custom of
showing the _living_ fish, before cooking them, to the guests at the
table. The invention was due to Simon Petrovitch, and was (if the truth
must be confessed) the result of certain carefully measured supplies of
brandy which Prince Boris himself had carried to the imprisoned poet.
After the sterlets had melted away to their backbones, and the roasted
geese had shrunk into drumsticks and breastplates, and here and there a
guest's ears began to redden with more rapid blood, Prince Alexis judged
that the time for diversion had arrived. He first filled up the idiot's
basin with fragments of all the dishes within his reach,--fish, stewed
fruits, goose-fat, bread, boiled cabbage, and beer,--the idiot grinning
with delight all the while, and singing, "_Ne uyesjai, golubchik moi_."
(Don't go away, my little pigeon,) between the handfuls which he crammed
into his mouth. The guests roared with laughter, especially when a
juggler or Calmuck stole out from under the gallery, and pretended to
have designs upon the basin. Mishka, the bear, had also been well fed,
and greedily drank ripe old Malaga from the golden dish. But, alas! he
would not dance. Sitting up on his hind legs, with his fore paws hanging
before him, he cast a drunken, languishing eye upon the company, lolled
out his tongue, and whined with an almost human voice. The domestics,
secretly incited by the Grand Marshal, exhausted their ingenuity in
coaxing him, but in vain. Finally, one of them took a goblet of wine in
one hand, and, embracing Mishka with the other, began to waltz. The bear
stretched out his paw and clumsily followed the movements, whirling
round and round after the enticing goblet. The orchestra struck up, and
the spectacle, though not exactly what Prince Alexis wished, was comical
enough to divert the company immensely.
But the close of the performance was not upon the programme. The
impatient bear, getting no nearer his goblet, hugged the man violently
with the other paw, striking his claws through the thin shirt. The
dance-measure was lost; the legs of the two tangled, and they fell to
the floor, the bear undermost. With a growl of rage and disappointment,
he brought his teeth together through the man's arm, and it might have
fared badly with the latter, had not the goblet been refilled by some
one and held to the animal's nose. Then, releasing his hold, he sat up
again, drank another bottle, and staggered out of the hall.
Now the health of Prince Alexis was drunk,--by the guests on the floor
of the hall in Champagne, by those in the galleries in _kislischi_ and
hydromel. The orchestra played; a choir of serfs sang an ode by Simon
Petrovitch, in which the departure of Prince Boris was mentioned; the
tumblers began to posture; the jugglers came forth and played their
tricks; and the cannon on the ramparts announced to all Kinesma, and far
up and down the Volga, that the company were rising from the table.
Half an hour later, the great red slumber-flag floated over the castle.
All slept,--except the serf with the wounded arm, the nervous Grand
Marshal, and Simon Petrovitch with his band of dramatists, guarded by
the indefatigable Sasha. All others slept,--and the curious crowd
outside, listening to the music, stole silently away; down in Kinesma,
the mothers ceased to scold their children, and the merchants whispered
to each other in the bazaar; the captains of vessels floating on the
Volga directed their men by gestures; the mechanics laid aside hammer
and axe, and lighted their pipes. Great silence fell upon the land, and
continued unbroken so long as Prince Alexis and his guests slept the
sleep of the just and the tipsy.
By night, however, they were all awake and busily preparing for the
diversions of the evening. The ball-room was illuminated by thousands of
wax-lights, so connected with inflammable threads, that the wicks could
all be kindled in a moment. A pyramid of tar-barrels had been erected on
each side of the castle-gate, and every hill or mound on the opposite
bank of the Volga was similarly crowned. When, to a stately march,--the
musicians blowing their loudest,--Prince Alexis and Princess Martha led
the way to the ball-room, the signal was given: candles and tar-barrels
burst into flame, and not only within the castle, but over the landscape
for five or six versts around, everything was bright and clear in the
fiery day. Then the noises of Kinesma were not only permitted, but
encouraged. Mead and _qvass_ flowed in the very streets, and the
castle-trumpets could not be heard for the sound of _troikas_ and
_balalaikas_.
After the Polonaise, and a few stately minuets, (copied from the court
of Elizabeth,) the company were ushered into the theatre. The hour of
Simon Petrovitch had struck: with the inspiration smuggled to him by
Prince Boris, he had arranged a performance which he felt to be his
masterpiece. Anxiety as to its reception kept him sober. The overture
had ceased, the spectators were all in their seats, and now the curtain
rose. The background was a growth of enormous, sickly toad-stools,
supposed to be clouds. On the stage stood a girl of eighteen, (the
handsomest in Kinesma,) in hoops and satin petticoat, powdered hair,
patches, and high-heeled shoes. She held a fan in one hand, and a bunch
of marigolds in the other. After a deep and graceful curtsy to the
company, she came forward and said,--
"I am the goddess Venus. I have come to Olympus to ask some questions of
Jupiter."
Thunder was heard, and a car rolled upon the stage. Jupiter sat therein,
in a blue coat, yellow vest, ruffled shirt, and three-cornered hat. One
hand held a bunch of thunderbolts, which he occasionally lifted and
shook; the other, a gold-headed cane.
"Here I am, Jupiter," said he; "what does Venus desire?"
A poetical dialogue then followed, to the effect that the favorite of
the goddess, Prince Alexis of Kinesma, was about sending his son, Prince
Boris, into the gay world, wherein himself had already displayed all the
gifts of all the divinities of Olympus. He claimed from her, Venus, like
favors for his son; was it possible to grant them? Jupiter dropped his
head and meditated. He could not answer the question at once: Apollo,
the Graces, and the Muses must be consulted: there were few precedents
where the son had succeeded in rivalling the father,--yet the father's
pious wishes could not be overlooked.
Venus said,--
"What I asked for Prince Alexis was for _his_ sake: what I ask for the
son is for the father's sake."
Jupiter shook his thunderbolt and called, "Apollo!"
Instantly the stage was covered with explosive and coruscating
fires,--red, blue, and golden,--and amid smoke, and glare, and fizzing
noises, and strong chemical smells, Apollo dropped down from above. He
was accustomed to heat and smoke, being the cook's assistant, and was
sweated down to a weight capable of being supported by the invisible
wires. He wore a yellow caftan, and wide blue silk trousers. His yellow
hair was twisted around and glued fast to gilded sticks, which stood out
from his head in a circle, and represented rays of light. He first bowed
to Prince Alexis, then to the guests, then to Jupiter, then to Venus.
The matter was explained to him.
He promised to do what he could towards favoring the world with a second
generation of the beauty, grace, intellect, and nobility of character
which had already won his regard. He thought, however, that their gifts
were unnecessary, since the model was already in existence, and nothing
more could be done than to _imitate_ it.
(Here there was another meaning bow towards Prince Alexis,--a bow in
which Jupiter and Venus joined. This was the great point of the evening,
in the opinion of Simon Petrovitch. He peeped through a hole in one of
the clouds, and, seeing the delight of Prince Alexis and the
congratulations of his friends, immediately took a large glass of
Cognac.)
The Graces were then summoned, and after them the Muses,--all in hoops,
powder, and paint. Their songs had the same burden,--intense admiration
of the father, and good-will for the son, underlaid with a delicate
doubt. The close was a chorus of all the deities and semi-deities in
praise of the old Prince, with the accompaniment of fireworks. Apollo
rose through the air like a frog, with his blue legs and yellow arms
wide apart; Jupiter's chariot rolled off; Venus bowed herself back
against a mouldy cloud; and the Muses came forward in a bunch, with a
wreath of laurel, which they placed upon the venerated head.
Sasha was dispatched to bring the poet, that he might receive his
well-earned praise and reward. But alas for Simon Petrovitch! His legs
had already doubled under him. He was awarded fifty rubles and a new
caftan, which he was not in a condition to accept until several days
afterward.
The supper which followed resembled the dinner, except that there were
fewer dishes and more bottles. When the closing course of sweetmeats had
either been consumed or transferred to the pockets of the guests, the
Princess Martha retired with the ladies. The guests of lower rank
followed; and there remained only some fifteen or twenty, who were
thereupon conducted by Prince Alexis to a smaller chamber, where he
pulled off his coat, lit his pipe, and called for brandy. The others
followed his example, and their revelry wore out the night.
Such was the festival which preceded the departure of Prince Boris for
St Petersburg.
IV.
Before following the young Prince and his fortunes in the capital, we
must relate two incidents which somewhat disturbed the ordered course of
life in the castle of Kinesma, during the first month or two after his
departure.
It must be stated, as one favorable trait in the character of Prince
Alexis, that, however brutally he treated his serfs, he allowed no other
man to oppress them. All they had and were--their services, bodies,
lives--belonged to him; hence injustice towards them was disrespect
towards their lord. Under the fear which his barbarity inspired lurked a
brute-like attachment, kept alive by the recognition of this quality.
One day it was reported to him that Gregor, a merchant in the bazaar at
Kinesma, had cheated the wife of one of his serfs in the purchase of a
piece of cloth. Mounting his horse, he rode at once to Gregor's booth,
called for the cloth, and sent the entire piece to the woman, in the
merchant's name, as a confessed act of reparation.
"Now, Gregor, my child," said he, as he turned his horse's head, "have a
care in future, and play me no more dishonest tricks. Do you hear? I
shall come and take your business in hand myself, if the like happens
again."
Not ten days passed before the like--or something fully as bad--_did_
happen. Gregor must have been a newcomer in Kinesma, or he would not
have tried the experiment. In an hour from the time it was announced,
Prince Alexis appeared in the bazaar with a short whip under his arm.
He dismounted at the booth with an ironical smile on his face, which
chilled the very marrow in the merchant's bones.
"Ah, Gregor, my child," he shouted, "you have already forgotten my
commands. Holy St. Nicholas, what a bad memory the boy has! Why, he
can't be trusted to do business: I must attend to the shop myself. Out
of the way! march!"
He swung his terrible whip; and Gregor, with his two assistants, darted
under the counter, and made their escape. The Prince then entered the
booth, took up a yard-stick, and cried out in a voice which could be
heard from one end of the town to the other,--"Ladies and gentlemen,
have the kindness to come and examine our stock of goods! We have silks
and satins, and all kinds of ladies' wear; also velvet, cloth, cotton,
and linen for the gentlemen. Will your Lordships deign to choose? Here
are stockings and handkerchiefs of the finest. We understand how to
measure, your Lordships, and we sell cheap. We give no change, and take
no small money. Whoever has no cash may have credit. Everything sold
below cost, on account of closing up the establishment. Ladies and
gentlemen, give us a call!"
Everybody in Kinesma flocked to the booth, and for three hours Prince
Alexis measured and sold, either for scant cash or long credit, until
the last article had been disposed of and the shelves were empty. There
was great rejoicing in the community over the bargains made that day.
When all was over, Gregor was summoned, and the cash received paid into
his hands.
"It won't take you long to count it," said the Prince; "but here is a
list of debts to be collected, which will furnish you with pleasant
occupation, and enable you to exercise your memory. Would your Worship
condescend to take dinner to-day with your very humble assistant? He
would esteem it a favor to be permitted to wait upon you with whatever
his poor house can supply."
Gregor gave a glance at the whip under the Prince's arm, and begged to
be excused. But the latter would take no denial, and carried out the
comedy to the end, by giving the merchant the place of honor at his
table, and dismissing him with the present of a fine pup of his favorite
breed. Perhaps the animal acted as a mnemonic symbol, for Gregor was
never afterwards accused of forgetfulness.
If this trick put the Prince in a good humor, something presently
occurred which carried him to the opposite extreme. While taking his
customary siesta one afternoon, a wild young fellow--one of his noble
poor relations, who "sponged" at the castle--happened to pass along a
corridor outside of the very hall where his Highness was snoring. Two
ladies in waiting looked down from an upper window. The young fellow
perceived them, and made signs to attract their attention. Having
succeeded in this, he attempted, by all sorts of antics and grimaces, to
make them laugh or speak; but he failed, for the slumber-flag waved over
them, and its fear was upon them. Then, in a freak of incredible
rashness, he sang, in a loud voice, the first line of a popular ditty,
and took to his heels.
No one had ever before dared to insult the sacred quiet. The Prince was
on his feet in a moment, and rushed into the corridor, (dropping his
mantle of sables by the way,) shouting,--
"Bring me the wretch who sang!"
The domestics scattered before him, for his face was terrible to look
upon. Some of them had heard the voice, indeed, but not one of them had
seen the culprit, who already lay upon a heap of hay in one of the
stables, and appeared to be sunk in innocent sleep.
"Who was it? who was it?" yelled the Prince, foaming at the mouth with
rage, as he rushed from chamber to chamber.
At last he halted at the top of the great flight of steps leading into
the court-yard, and repeated his demand in a voice of thunder. The
servants, trembling, kept at a safe distance, and some of them ventured
to state that the offender could not be discovered. The Prince turned
and entered one of the state apartments, whence came the sound of
porcelain smashed on the floor, and mirrors shivered on the walls.
Whenever they heard that sound, the inmates of the castle knew that a
hurricane was let loose.
They deliberated hurriedly and anxiously. What was to be done? In his
fits of blind animal rage, there was nothing of which the Prince was not
capable, and the fit could be allayed only by finding a victim. No one,
however, was willing to be a Curtius for the others, and meanwhile the
storm was increasing from minute to minute. Some of the more active and
shrewd of the household pitched upon the leader of the band, a
simple-minded, good-natured serf, named Waska. They entreated him to
take upon himself the crime of having sung, offering to have his
punishment mitigated in every possible way. He was proof against their
tears, but not against the money which they finally offered, in order to
avert the storm. The agreement was made, although Waska both scratched
his head and shook it, as he reflected upon the probable result.
The Prince, after his work of destruction, again appeared upon the
steps, and, with hoarse voice and flashing eyes, began to announce that
every soul in the castle should receive a hundred lashes, when a noise
was heard in the court, and amid cries of "Here he is!" "We've got him,
Highness!" the poor Waska, bound hand and foot, was brought forward.
They placed him at the bottom of the steps. The Prince descended until
the two stood face to face. The others looked on from court-yard, door,
and window. A pause ensued, during which no one dared to breathe.
At last Prince Alexis spoke, in a loud and terrible voice,--
"It was you who sang, was it?"
"Yes, your Highness, it was I," Waska replied, in a scarcely audible
tone, dropping his head and mechanically drawing his shoulders together,
as if shrinking from the coming blow.
It was full three minutes before the Prince again spoke. He still held
the whip in his hand, his eyes fixed and the muscles of his face rigid.
All at once the spell seemed to dissolve: his hand fell, and he said, in
his ordinary voice,--
"You sing remarkably well. Go, now: you shall have ten rubles and an
embroidered caftan for your singing."
But any one would have made a great mistake, who had dared to awaken
Prince Alexis a second time in the same manner.
V.
Prince Boris, in St. Petersburg, adopted the usual habits of his class.
He dressed elegantly; he drove a dashing _troika_; he played, and lost
more frequently than he won; he took no special pains to shun any form
of fashionable dissipation. His money went fast, it is true; but
twenty-five thousand rubles was a large sum in those days, and Boris did
not inherit his father's expensive constitution. He was presented to the
Empress; but his thin face, and mild, melancholy eyes did not make much
impression upon that ponderous woman. He frequented the salons of the
nobility, but saw no face so beautiful as that of Parashka, the
serf-maiden who personated Venus for Simon Petrovitch. The fact is, he
had a dim, undeveloped instinct of culture, and a crude, half-conscious
worship of beauty,--both of which qualities found just enough
nourishment in the life of the capital to tantalize and never satisfy
his nature. He was excited by his new experience, but hardly happier.
Although but three-and-twenty, he would never know the rich, vital glow
with which youth rushes to clasp all forms of sensation. He had seen,
almost daily, in his father's castle, excess in its most excessive
development. It had grown to be repulsive, and he knew not how to fill
the void in his life. With a single spark of genius, and a little more
culture, he might have become a passable author or artist; but he was
doomed to be one of those deaf-and-dumb natures that see the movement of
the lips of others, yet have no conception of sound. No wonder his
savage old father looked upon him with contempt, for even his vices were
without strength or character.
The dark winter days passed by, one by one, and the first week of Lent
had already arrived to subdue the glittering festivities of the court,
when the only genuine adventure of the season happened to the young
Prince. For adventures, in the conventional sense of the word, he was
not distinguished: whatever came to him must come by its own force or
the force of Destiny.
One raw, gloomy evening, as dusk was setting in, he saw a female figure
in a droschky, which was about turning from the Great Morskoi into the
Gorokhovaya (Pea) Street. He noticed, listlessly, that the lady was
dressed in black, closely veiled, and appeared to be urging the
_istoostchik_ (driver) to make better speed. The latter cut his horse
sharply: it sprang forward, just at the turning, and the droschky,
striking a lamp-post, was instantly overturned. The lady, hurled with
great force upon the solidly frozen snow, lay motionless, which the
driver observing, he righted the sled and drove off at full speed
without looking behind him. It was not inhumanity, but fear of the
knout, that hurried him away.
Prince Boris looked up and down the Morskoi, but perceived no one near
at hand. He then knelt upon the snow, lifted the lady's head to his
knee, and threw back her veil. A face so lovely, in spite of its deadly
pallor, he had never before seen. Never had he even imagined so perfect
an oval, such a sweet, fair forehead, such delicately pencilled brows,
so fine and straight a nose, such wonderful beauty of mouth and chin. It
was fortunate that she was not very severely stunned, for Prince Boris
was not only ignorant of the usual modes of restoration in such cases,
but he totally forgot their necessity, in his rapt contemplation of the
lady's face. Presently she opened her eyes, and they dwelt,
expressionless, but bewildering in their darkness and depth, upon his
own, while her consciousness of things slowly returned.
She strove to rise, and Boris gently lifted and supported her. She would
have withdrawn from his helping arm, but was still too weak from the
shock. He, also, was confused and (strange to say) embarrassed; but he
had self-possession enough to shout, "_Davai!_" (Here!) at random. The
call was answered from the Admiralty Square; a sled dashed up the
Corokhovaya and halted beside him. Taking the single seat, he lifted her
gently upon his lap and held her very tenderly in his arms.
"Where?" asked the istoostchik.
Boris was about to answer "Anywhere!" but the lady whispered, in a voice
of silver sweetness, the name of a remote street, near the Smolnoi
Church.
As the Prince wrapped the ends of his sable pelisse about her, he
noticed that her furs were of the common foxskin, worn by the middle
classes. They, with her heavy boots and the threadbare cloth of her
garments, by no means justified his first suspicion,--that she was a
_grande dame_, engaged in some romantic "adventure." She was not more
than nineteen or twenty years of age, and he felt--without knowing what
it was--the atmosphere of sweet, womanly purity and innocence which
surrounded her. The shyness of a lost boyhood surprised him.
By the time they reached the Litenie, she had fully recovered her
consciousness and a portion of her strength. She drew away from him as
much as the narrow sled would allow.
"You have been very kind, Sir, and I thank you," she said; "but I am now
able to go home without your further assistance."
"By no means, Lady!" said the Prince. "The streets are rough, and here
are no lamps. If a second accident were to happen, you would be
helpless. Will you not allow me to protect you?"
She looked him in the face. In the dusky light she saw not the peevish,
weary features of the worldling, but only the imploring softness of his
eyes, the full and perfect honesty of his present emotion. She made no
further objection: perhaps she was glad that she could trust the elegant
stranger.
Boris, never before at a loss for words, even in the presence of the
Empress, was astonished to find how awkward were his attempts at
conversation. She was presently the more self-possessed of the two, and
nothing was ever so sweet to his ears as the few commonplace remarks she
uttered. In spite of the darkness and the chilly air, the sled seemed to
fly like lightning. Before he supposed they had made half the way, she
gave a sign to the istoostchik, and they drew up before a plain house of
squared logs.
The two lower windows were lighted, and the dark figure of an old man,
with a skull-cap upon his head, was framed in one of them. It vanished
as the sled stopped; the door was thrown open and the man came forth
hurriedly, followed by a Russian nurse with a lantern.
"Helena, my child, art thou come at last? What has befallen thee?"
He would evidently have said more, but the sight of Prince Boris caused
him to pause, while a quick shade of suspicion and alarm passed over his
face. The Prince stepped forward, instantly relieved of his unaccustomed
timidity, and rapidly described the accident. The old nurse, Katinka,
had meanwhile assisted the lovely Helena into the house.
The old man turned to follow, shivering in the night-air. Suddenly
recollecting himself, he begged the Prince to enter and take some
refreshments, but with the air and tone of a man who hopes that his
invitation will not be accepted. If such was really his hope, he was
disappointed; for Boris instantly commanded the istoostchik to wait for
him, and entered into the humble dwelling.
The apartment into which he was ushered was spacious, and plainly, yet
not shabbily furnished. A violoncello and clavichord, with several
portfolios of music and scattered sheets of ruled paper, proclaimed the
profession or the taste of the occupant. Having excused himself a
moment, to look after his daughter's condition, the old man, on his
return, found Boris turning over the leaves of a musical work.
"You see my profession," he said: "I teach music."
"Do you not compose?" asked the Prince.
"That was once my ambition. I was a pupil of Sebastian Bach.
But--circumstances--necessity--brought me here. Other lives changed the
direction of mine. It was right."
"You mean your daughter's?" the Prince gently suggested.
"Hers and her mother's. Our story was well known in St. Petersburg
twenty years ago, but I suppose no one recollects it now. My wife was
the daughter of a Baron von Plauen, and loved music and myself better
than her home and a titled bridegroom. She escaped, we united our lives,
suffered and were happy together,--and she died. That is all."
Further conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Helena, with
steaming glasses of tea. She was even lovelier than before. Her
close-fitting dress revealed the symmetry of her form, and the quiet,
unstudied grace of her movements. Although her garments were of
well-worn material, the lace which covered her bosom was genuine point
d'Alencon, of an old and rare pattern. Boris felt that her air and
manner were thoroughly noble; he rose and saluted her with the
profoundest respect.
In spite of the singular delight which her presence occasioned him, he
was careful not to prolong his visit beyond the limits of strict
etiquette. His name, Boris Alexeivitch, only revealed to his guests the
name of his father, without his rank; and when he stated that he was
employed in one of the Departments, (which was true in a measure, for he
was a staff officer,) they could only look upon him as being, at best, a
member of some family whose recent elevation to the nobility did not
release them from the necessity of Government service. Of course he
employed the usual pretext of wishing to study music, and either by that
or some other stratagem managed to leave matters in such a shape that a
second visit could not occasion surprise.
As the sled glided homewards over the crackling snow, he was obliged to
confess the existence of a new and powerful excitement. Was it the
chance of an adventure, such as certain of his comrades were continually
seeking? He thought not: no, decidedly not. Was it--could it be--love?
He really could not tell: he had not the slightest idea what love was
like.
VI.
It was something, at least, that the plastic and not unvirtuous nature
of the young man was directed towards a definite object. The elements
out of which he was made, although somewhat diluted, were active enough
to make him uncomfortable, so long as they remained in a confused state.
He had very little power of introversion, but he was sensible that his
temperament was changing,--that he grew more cheerful and contented with
life,--that a chasm somewhere was filling up,--just in proportion as his
acquaintance with the old music-master and his daughter became more
familiar. His visits were made so brief, were so adroitly timed and
accounted for by circumstances, that by the close of Lent he could feel
justified in making the Easter call of a friend, and claim its attendant
privileges, without fear of being repulsed.
That Easter call was an era in his life. At the risk of his wealth and
rank being suspected, he dressed himself in new and rich garments, and
hurried away towards the Smolnoi. The old nurse, Katinka, in her scarlet
gown, opened the door for him, and was the first to say, "Christ is
arisen!" What could he do but give her the usual kiss? Formerly he had
kissed hundreds of serfs, men and women, on the sacred anniversary, with
a passive good-will,--but Katinka's kiss seemed bitter, and he secretly
rubbed his mouth after it. The music-master came next: grisly though he
might be, he was the St. Peter who stood at the gate of heaven. Then
entered Helena, in white, like an angel. He took her hand, pronounced
the Easter greeting, and scarcely waited for the answer, "Truly he is
arisen!" before his lips found the way to hers. For a second they warmly
trembled and glowed together; and in another second some new and sweet
and subtile relation seemed to be established between their natures.
That night Prince Boris wrote a long letter to his "_chere maman_," in
piquantly misspelt French, giving her the gossip of the court, and such
family news as she usually craved. The purport of the letter, however,
was only disclosed in the final paragraph, and then in so negative a way
that it is doubtful whether the Princess Martha fully understood it.
"_Poing de mariajes pour moix!_" he wrote,--but we will drop the
original,--"I don't think of such a thing yet. Pashkoff dropped a hint
the other day, but I kept my eyes shut. Perhaps you remember her?--fat,
thick lips, and crooked teeth. Natalie D---- said to me, 'Have you ever
been in love, Prince?' _Have I, maman?_ I did not know what answer to
make. What is love? How does one feel, when one has it? They laugh at it
here, and of course I should not wish to do what is laughable. Give me
a hint: forewarned is forearmed, you know,"--etc., etc.
Perhaps the Princess Martha _did_ something; perhaps some word in her
son's letter touched a secret spot far back in her memory, and renewed a
dim, if not very intelligible, pain. She answered his question at
length, in the style of the popular French romances of that day. She had
much to say of dew and roses, turtle-doves and the arrows of Cupid.
"Ask thyself," she wrote, "whether felicity comes with her presence, and
distraction with her absence,--whether her eyes make the morning
brighter for thee, and her tears fall upon thy heart like molten
lava,--whether heaven would be black and dismal without her company, and
the flames of hell turn into roses under her feet."
It was very evident that the good Princess Martha had never felt--nay,
did not comprehend--a passion such as she described.
Prince Boris, however, whose veneration for his mother was unbounded,
took her words literally, and applied the questions to himself. Although
he found it difficult, in good faith and sincerity, to answer all of
them affirmatively, (he was puzzled, for instance, to know the sensation
of molten lava falling upon the heart,) yet the general conclusion was
inevitable: Helena was necessary to his happiness.
Instead of returning to Kinesma for the summer, as had been arranged, he
determined to remain in St. Petersburg, under the pretence of devoting
himself to military studies. This change of plan occasioned more
disappointment to the Princess Martha than vexation to Prince Alexis.
The latter only growled at the prospect of being called upon to advance
a further supply of rubles, slightly comforting himself with the
muttered reflection,--
"Perhaps the brat will make a man of himself, after all."
It was not many weeks, in fact, before the expected petition came to
hand. The Princess Martha had also foreseen it, and instructed her son
how to attack his father's weak side. The latter was furiously jealous
of certain other noblemen of nearly equal wealth, who were with him at
the court of Peter the Great, as their sons now were at that of
Elizabeth. Boris compared the splendor of these young noblemen with his
own moderate estate, fabled a few "adventures" and drinking-bouts, and
announced his determination of doing honor to the name which Prince
Alexis of Kinesma had left behind him in the capital.
There was cursing at the castle, when the letter arrived. Many serfs
felt the sting of the short whip, the slumber-flag was hoisted five
minutes later than usual, and the consumption of Cognac was alarming;
but no mirror was smashed, and when Prince Alexis read the letter to his
poor relations, he even chuckled over some portions of it. Boris had
boldly demanded twenty thousand rubles, in the desperate hope of
receiving half that amount,--and he had calculated correctly.
Before midsummer he was Helena's accepted lover. Not, however, until
then, when her father had given his consent to their marriage in the
autumn, did he disclose his true rank. The old man's face lighted up
with a glow of selfish satisfaction; but Helena quietly took her lover's
hand, and said,--
"Whatever you are, Boris, I will be faithful to you."
VII.
Leaving Boris to discover the exact form and substance of the passion of
love, we will return for a time to the castle of Kinesma.
Whether the Princess Martha conjectured what had transpired in St.
Petersburg, or was partially informed of it by her son, cannot now be
ascertained. She was sufficiently weak, timid, and nervous, to be
troubled with the knowledge of the stratagem in which she had assisted
in order to procure money, and that the ever-present consciousness
thereof would betray itself to the sharp eyes of her husband. Certain it
is, that the demeanor of the latter towards her and his household began
to change about the end of the summer. He seemed to have a haunting
suspicion, that, in some way, he had been, or was about to be,
overreached. He grew peevish, suspicious, and more violent than ever in
his excesses.
When Mishka, the dissipated bear already described, bit off one of the
ears of Basil, a hunter belonging to the castle, and Basil drew his
knife and plunged it into Mishka's heart, Prince Alexis punished the
hunter by cutting off his other ear, and sending him away to a distant
estate. A serf, detected in eating a few of the pickled cherries
intended for the Prince's _botvinia_, was placed in a cask, and pickled
cherries packed around him up to the chin. There he was kept until
almost flayed by the acid. It was ordered that these two delinquents
should never afterwards be called by any other names than "Crop-Ear" and
"Cherry."
But the Prince's severest joke, which, strange to say, in no wise
lessened his popularity among the serfs, occurred a month or two later.
One of his leading passions was the chase,--especially the chase in his
own forests, with from one to two hundred men, and no one to dispute his
Lordship. On such occasions, a huge barrel of wine, mounted upon a sled,
always accompanied the crowd, and the quantity which the hunters
received depended upon the satisfaction of Prince Alexis with the game
they collected.
Winter had set in early and suddenly, and one day, as the Prince and his
retainers emerged from the forest with their forenoon's spoil, and found
themselves on the bank of the Volga, the water was already covered with
a thin sheet of ice. Fires were kindled, a score or two of hares and a
brace of deer were skinned, and the flesh placed on sticks to broil;
skins of mead foamed and hissed into the wooden bowls, and the cask of
unbroached wine towered in the midst. Prince Alexis had a good appetite;
the meal was after his heart; and by the time he had eaten a hare and
half a flank of venison, followed by several bowls of fiery wine, he was
in the humor for sport. He ordered a hole cut in the upper side of the
barrel, as it lay; then, getting astride of it, like a grisly Bacchus,
he dipped out the liquor with a ladle, and plied his thirsty serfs until
they became as recklessly savage as he.
They were scattered over a slope gently falling from the dark, dense
fir-forest towards the Volga, where it terminated in a rocky palisade,
ten to fifteen feet in height. The fires blazed and crackled merrily in
the frosty air; the yells and songs of the carousers were echoed back
from the opposite shore of the river. The chill atmosphere, the lowering
sky, and the approaching night could not touch the blood of that wild
crowd. Their faces glowed and their eyes sparkled; they were ready for
any deviltry which their lord might suggest.
Some began to amuse themselves by flinging the clean-picked bones of
deer and hare along the glassy ice of the Volga. Prince Alexis,
perceiving this diversion, cried out in ecstasy,--
"Oh, by St. Nicholas the Miracle-Worker, I'll give you better sport than
that, ye knaves! Here's the very place for a _reisak_,--do you hear me,
children?--a _reisak_! Could there be better ice? and then the rocks to
jump from! Come, children, come! Waska, Ivan, Daniel, you dogs, over
with you!"
Now the _reisak_ was a gymnastic performance peculiar to old Russia, and
therefore needs to be described. It could become popular only among a
people of strong physical qualities, and in a country where swift rivers
freeze rapidly from sudden cold. Hence we are of the opinion that it
will not be introduced into our own winter diversions. A spot is
selected where the water is deep and the current tolerably strong; the
ice must be about half an inch in thickness. The performer leaps head
foremost from a rock or platform, bursts through the ice, is carried
under by the current, comes up some distance below, and bursts through
again. Both skill and strength are required to do the feat successfully.
Waska, Ivan, Daniel, and a number of others, sprang to the brink of the
rocks and looked over. The wall was not quite perpendicular, some large
fragments having fallen from above and lodged along the base. It would
therefore require a bold leap to clear the rocks and strike the smooth
ice. They hesitated,--and no wonder.
Prince Alexis howled with rage and disappointment.
"The Devil take you, for a pack of whimpering hounds!" he cried. "Holy
Saints! they are afraid to make a _reisak_!"
Ivan crossed himself, and sprang. He cleared the rocks, but, instead of
bursting through the ice with his head, fell at full length upon his
back.
"O knave!" yelled the Prince--"not to know where his head is! Thinks
it's his back! Give him fifteen stripes."
Which was instantly done.
The second attempt was partially successful. One of the hunters broke
through the ice, head foremost, going down, but he failed to come up
again; so the feat was only half performed.
The Prince became more furiously excited.
"This is the way I'm treated!" he cried. "He forgets all about finishing
the _reisak_, and goes to chasing sterlet! May the carps eat him up for
an ungrateful vagabond! Here, you beggars!" (addressing the poor
relations,) "take your turn, and let me see whether you are men."
Only one of the frightened parasites had the courage to obey. On
reaching the brink, he shut his eyes in mortal fear, and made a leap at
random. The next moment he lay on the edge of the ice with one leg
broken against a fragment of rock.
This capped the climax of the Prince's wrath. He fell into a state
bordering on despair, tore his hair, gnashed his teeth, and wept
bitterly.
"They will be the death of me!" was his lament. "Not a man among them!
It wasn't so in the old times. Such beautiful _reisaks_ as I have seen!
But the people are becoming women,--hares,--chickens,--skunks! Villains,
will you force me to kill you? You have dishonored and disgraced me; I
am ashamed to look my neighbors in the face. Was ever a man so treated?"
The serfs hung down their heads, feeling somehow responsible for their
master's misery. Some of them wept, out of a stupid sympathy with his
tears.
All at once he sprang down from the cask, crying in a gay, triumphant
tone,--
"I have it! Bring me Crop-Ear. He's the fellow for a _reisak_,--he can
make three, one after another."
One of the boldest ventured to suggest that Crop-Ear had been sent away
in disgrace to another of the Prince's estates.
"Bring him here, I say! Take horses, and don't draw rein going or
coming. I will not stir from this spot until Crop-Ear comes."
With these words, he mounted the barrel, and recommenced ladling out the
wine. Huge fires were made, for the night was falling, and the cold had
become intense. Fresh game was skewered and set to broil, and the tragic
interlude of the revel was soon forgotten.
Towards midnight the sound of hoofs was heard, and the messengers
arrived with Crop-Ear. But, although the latter had lost his ears, he
was not inclined to split his head. The ice, meanwhile, had become so
strong that a cannon-ball would have made no impression upon it.
Crop-Ear simply threw down a stone heavier than himself, and, as it
bounced and slid along the solid floor, said to Prince Alexis,--
"Am I to go back, Highness, or stay here?"
"Here, my son. Thou'rt a man. Come hither to me."
Taking the serf's head in his hands, he kissed him on both cheeks. Then
he rode homeward through the dark, iron woods, seated astride on the
barrel, and steadying himself with his arms around Crop-Ear's and
Waska's necks.
VIII.
The health of the Princess Martha, always delicate, now began to fail
rapidly. She was less and less able to endure her husband's savage
humors, and lived almost exclusively in her own apartments. She never
mentioned the name of Boris in his presence, for it was sure to throw
him into a paroxysm of fury. Floating rumors in regard to the young
Prince had reached him from the capital, and nothing would convince him
that his wife was not cognizant of her son's doings. The poor Princess
clung to her boy as to all that was left her of life, and tried to prop
her failing strength with the hope of his speedy return. She was now too
helpless to thwart his wishes in any way; but she dreaded, more than
death, the terrible _something_ which would surely take place between
father and son, if her conjectures should prove to be true.
One day, in the early part of November, she received a letter from
Boris, announcing his marriage. She had barely strength and presence of
mind enough to conceal the paper in her bosom before sinking in a swoon.
By some means or other the young Prince had succeeded in overcoming all
the obstacles to such a step: probably the favor of the Empress was
courted, in order to obtain her consent. The money he had received, he
wrote, would be sufficient to maintain them for a few months, though not
in a style befitting their rank. He was proud and happy; the Princess
Helena would be the reigning beauty of the court, when he should present
her, but he desired the sanction of his parents to the marriage, before
taking his place in society. He would write immediately to his father,
and hoped, that, if the news brought a storm, Mishka might be on hand to
divert its force, as on a former occasion.
Under the weight of this imminent secret, the Princess Martha could
neither eat nor sleep. Her body wasted to a shadow; at every noise in
the castle, she started and listened in terror, fearing that the news
had arrived.
Prince Boris, no doubt, found his courage fail him, when he set about
writing the promised letter; for a fortnight elapsed before it made its
appearance. Prince Alexis received it on his return from the chase. He
read it hastily through, uttered a prolonged roar like that of a wounded
bull, and rushed into the castle. The sound of breaking furniture, of
crashing porcelain and shivered glass, came from the state apartments;
the domestics fell on their knees and prayed; the Princess, who heard
the noise and knew what it portended, became almost insensible from
fright.
One of the upper servants entered a chamber as the Prince was in the act
of demolishing a splendid malachite table, which had escaped all his
previous attacks. He was immediately greeted with a cry of,--
"Send the Princess to me!"
"Her Highness is not able to leave her chamber," the man replied.
How it happened he could never afterwards describe, but he found himself
lying in a corner of the room. When he arose, there seemed to be a
singular cavity in his mouth: his upper front teeth were wanting.
We will not narrate what took place in the chamber of the Princess. The
nerves of the unfortunate woman had been so wrought upon by her fears,
that her husband's brutal rage, familiar to her from long experience,
now possessed a new and alarming significance. His threats were terrible
to hear; she fell into convulsions, and before morning her tormented
life was at an end.
There was now something else to think of, and the smashing of porcelain
and cracking of whips came to an end. The Archimandrite was summoned,
and preparations, both religious and secular, were made for a funeral
worthy the rank of the deceased. Thousands flocked to Kinesma; and when
the immense procession moved away from the castle, although very few of
the persons had ever known or cared in the least for the Princess
Martha, all, without exception, shed profuse tears. Yes, there was one
exception,--one bare, dry rock, rising alone out of the universal
deluge,--Prince Alexis himself, who walked behind the coffin, his eyes
fixed and his features rigid as stone. They remarked that his face was
haggard, and that the fiery tinge on his cheeks and nose had faded into
livid purple. The only sign of emotion which he gave was a convulsive
shudder, which from time to time passed over his whole body.
Three archimandrites (abbots) and one hundred priests headed the solemn
funeral procession from the castle to the church on the opposite hill.
There the mass for the dead was chanted, the responses being sung by a
choir of silvery boyish voices. All the appointments were of the
costliest character. Not only all those within the church, but the
thousands outside, spared not their tears, but wept until the fountains
were exhausted. Notice was given, at the close of the services, that
"baked meats" would be furnished to the multitude, and that all beggars
who came to Kinesma would be charitably fed for the space of six weeks.
Thus, by her death, the amiable Princess Martha was enabled to dispense
more charity than had been permitted to her life.
At the funeral banquet which followed, Prince Alexis placed the Abbot
Sergius at his right hand, and conversed with him in the most edifying
manner upon the necessity of leading a pure and godly life. His remarks
upon the duty of a Christian, upon brotherly love, humility, and
self-sacrifice, brought tears into the eyes of the listening priests. He
expressed his conviction that the departed Princess, by the piety of her
life, had attained unto salvation,--and added, that his own life had now
no further value, unless he should devote it to religious exercises.
"Can you not give me a place in your monastery?" he asked, turning to
the Abbot. "I will endow it with a gift of forty thousand rubles, for
the privilege of occupying a monk's cell."
"Pray, do not decide too hastily, Highness," the Abbot replied. "You
have yet a son."
"What!" yelled Prince Alexis, with flashing eyes, every trace of
humility and renunciation vanishing like smoke,--"what! Borka? The
infamous wretch who has ruined me, killed his mother, and brought
disgrace upon our name? Do you know that he has married a wench of no
family and without a farthing,--who would be honored, if I should allow
her to feed my hogs? Live for _him?_ live for _him?_ Ah-z-z-z!"
This outbreak terminated in a sound between a snarl and a bellow. The
priests turned pale, but the Abbot devoutly remarked,--
"Encompassed by sorrows, Prince, you should humbly submit to the will of
the Lord."
"Submit to Borka?" the Prince scornfully laughed. "I know what I'll do.
There's time enough yet for a wife and another child,--ay, a dozen
children! I can have my pick in the province; and if I couldn't, I'd
sooner take Masha, the goose-girl, than leave Borka the hope of stepping
into my shoes. Beggars they shall be,--beggars!"
What further he might have said was interrupted by the priests rising to
chant the _Blajennon uspennie_, (Blessed be the dead,)--after which, the
_trisna_, a drink composed of mead, wine, and rum, was emptied to the
health of the departed soul. Every one stood during this ceremony,
except Prince Alexis, who fell suddenly prostrate before the consecrated
pictures, and sobbed so passionately that the tears of the guests flowed
for the third time. There he lay until night; for whenever any one dared
to touch him, he struck out furiously with fists and feet. Finally he
fell asleep on the floor, and the servants then bore him to his sleeping
apartment.
For several days afterward his grief continued to be so violent that
the occupants of the castle were obliged to keep out of his way. The
whip was never out of his hand, and he used it very recklessly, not
always selecting the right person. The parasitic poor relations found
their situation so uncomfortable, that they decided, one and all, to
detach themselves from the tree upon which they fed and fattened, even
at the risk of withering on a barren soil. Night and morning the serfs
prayed upon their knees, with many tears and groans, that the Saints
might send consolation, in any form, to their desperate lord.
The Saints graciously heard and answered the prayer. Word came that a
huge bear had been seen in the forest stretching towards Juriewetz. The
sorrowing Prince pricked up his ears, threw down his whip, and ordered a
chase. Sasha, the broad-shouldered, the cunning, the ready, the untiring
companion of his master, secretly ordered a cask of vodki to follow the
crowd of hunters and serfs. There was a steel-bright sky, a low, yellow
sun, and a brisk easterly wind from the heights of the Ural. As the
crisp snow began to crunch under the Prince's sled, his followers saw
the old expression come back to his face. With song and halloo and blast
of horns, they swept away into the forest.
Saint John the Hunter must have been on guard over Russia that day. The
great bear was tracked, and, after a long and exciting chase, fell by
the hand of Prince Alexis himself. Halt was made in an open space in the
forest, logs were piled together and kindled on the snow, and just at
the right moment (which no one knew better than Sasha) the cask of vodki
rolled into its place.
When the serfs saw the Prince mount astride of it, with his ladle in his
hand, they burst into shouts of extravagant joy. "_Slava Bogu!_" (Glory
be to God!) came fervently from the bearded lips of those hard, rough,
obedient children. They tumbled headlong over each other, in their
efforts to drink first from the ladle, to clasp the knees or kiss the
hands of the restored Prince. And the dawn was glimmering against the
eastern stars, as they took the way to the castle, making the ghostly
fir-woods ring with shout and choric song, Nevertheless, Prince Alexis
was no longer the same man: his giant strength and furious appetite were
broken. He was ever ready, as formerly, for the chase and the
drinking-bout; but his jovial mood no longer grew into a crisis which
only utter physical exhaustion or the stupidity of drunkenness could
overcome. Frequently, while astride the cask, his shouts of laughter
would suddenly cease, the ladle would drop from his hand, and he would
sit motionless, staring into vacancy for five minutes at a time. Then
the serfs, too, became silent, and stood still, awaiting a change. The
gloomy mood passed away as suddenly. He would start, look about him, and
say, in a melancholy voice,--
"Have I frightened you, my children? It seems to me that I am getting
old. Ah, yes, we must all die, one day. But we need not think about it,
until the time comes. The Devil take me for putting it into my head!
Why, how now? can't you sing, children?" Then he would strike up some
ditty which they all knew: a hundred voices joined in the strain, and
the hills once more rang with revelry.
Since the day when Princess Martha was buried, the Prince had not again
spoken of marriage. No one, of course, dared to mention the name of
Boris in his presence.
IX.
The young Prince had, in reality, become the happy husband of Helena.
His love for her had grown to be a shaping and organizing influence,
without which his nature would have fallen into its former confusion. If
a thought of a less honorable relation had ever entered his mind, it was
presently banished by the respect which a nearer intimacy inspired; and
thus Helena, magnetically drawing to the surface only his best
qualities, loved, unconsciously to herself, her own work in him. Erelong
she saw that she might balance the advantages he had conferred upon her
in their marriage by the support and encouragement which she was able to
impart to him; and this knowledge, removing all painful sense of
obligation, made her both happy and secure in her new position.
The Princess Martha, under some presentiment of her approaching death,
had intrusted one of the ladies in attendance upon her with the secret
of her son's marriage, and such presents of money and jewelry as she was
able to procure without her husband's knowledge. These presents reached
Boris very opportunely; for, although Helena developed a wonderful skill
in regulating his expenses, the spring was approaching, and even the
limited circle of society in which they had moved during the gay season
had made heavy demands upon his purse. He became restless and
abstracted, until his wife, who by this time clearly comprehended the
nature of his trouble, had secretly decided how it must be met.
The slender hoard of the old music-master, with a few thousand rubles
from Prince Boris, sufficed for his modest maintenance. Being now free
from the charge of his daughter, he determined to visit Germany, and, if
circumstances were propitious, to secure a refuge for his old age in his
favorite Leipsic. Summer was at hand, and the court had already removed
to Oranienbaum. In a few weeks the capital would be deserted.
"Shall we go to Germany with your father?" asked Boris, as he sat at a
window with Helena, enjoying the long twilight.
"No, my Boris," she answered; "we will go to Kinesma."
"But--Helena,--_golubchik_,--_mon ange_,--are you in earnest?"
"Yes, my Boris. The last letter from your--our cousin Nadejda convinces
me that the step must be taken. Prince Alexis has grown much older since
your mother's death; he is lonely and unhappy. He may not welcome us,
but long he will surely suffer us to come to him; and we must then begin
the work of reconciliation. Reflect, my Boris, you have keenly wounded
him in the tenderest part,--his pride,--and you must therefore cast away
your own pride, and humbly and respectfully, as becomes a son, solicit
his pardon."
"Yes," said he, hesitatingly, "you are right. But I know his violence
and recklessness, as you do not. For myself, alone, I am willing to meet
him; yet I fear for your sake. Would you not tremble to encounter a
maddened and brutal _mujik_?--then how much more to meet Alexis
Pavlovitch of Kinesma!"
"I do not and shall not tremble," she replied. "It is not your marriage
that has estranged your father, but your marriage with _me_. Having
been, unconsciously, the cause of the trouble, I shall deliberately, and
as a sacred duty, attempt to remove it. Let us go to Kinesma, as humble,
penitent children, and cast ourselves upon your father's mercy. At the
worst, he can but reject us; and you will have given me the consolation
of knowing that I have tried, as your wife, to annul the sacrifice you
have made for my sake."
"Be it so, then!" cried Boris, with a mingled feeling of relief and
anxiety.
He was not unwilling that the attempt should be made, especially since
it was his wife's desire; but he knew his father too well to anticipate
immediate success. All threatening _possibilities_ suggested themselves
to his mind; all forms of insult and outrage which he had seen
perpetrated at Kinesma filled his memory. The suspense became at last
worse than any probable reality. He wrote to his father, announcing a
speedy visit from himself and his wife; and two days afterwards the pair
left St. Petersburg in a large travelling _kibitka_.
X.
When Prince Alexis received his son's letter, an expression of fierce,
cruel delight crept over his face, and there remained, horribly
illuminating its haggard features. The orders given for swimming horses
in the Volga--one of his summer diversions--were immediately
countermanded; he paced around the parapet of the castle-wall until near
midnight, followed by Sasha with a stone jug of vodki. The latter had
the useful habit, notwithstanding his stupid face, of picking up the
fragments of soliloquy which the Prince dropped, and answering them as
if talking to himself. Thus he improved upon and perfected many a hint
of cruelty and was too discreet ever to dispute his master's claim to
the invention.
Sasha, we may be sure, was busy with his devil's work that night. The
next morning the stewards and agents of Prince Alexis, in castle,
village, and field, were summoned to his presence.
"Hark ye!" said he; "Borka and his trumpery wife send me word that they
will be here to-morrow. See to it that every man, woman, and child, for
ten versts out on the Moskovskoi road, knows of their coming. Let it be
known that whoever uncovers his head before them shall uncover his back
for a hundred lashes. Whomsoever they greet may bark like a dog, mee-ouw
like a cat, or bray like an ass, as much as he chooses; but if he speaks
a decent word, his tongue shall be silenced with stripes. Whoever shall
insult them has my pardon in advance. Oh, let them come!--ay, let them
come! Come they may: but how they go away again"--
The Prince Alexis suddenly stopped, shook his head, and walked up and
down the hall, muttering to himself. His eyes were bloodshot, and
sparkled with a strange light. What the stewards had heard was plain
enough; but that something more terrible than insult was yet held in
reserve they did not doubt. It was safe, therefore, not only to fulfil,
but to exceed, the letter of their instructions. Before night the whole
population were acquainted with their duties; and an unusual mood of
expectancy, not unmixed with brutish glee, fell upon Kinesma.
By the middle of the next forenoon, Boris and his wife, seated in the
open kibitka, drawn by post-horses, reached the boundaries of the
estate, a few versts from the village. They were both silent and
slightly pale at first, but now began to exchange mechanical remarks, to
divert each other's thoughts from the coming reception.
"Here are the fields of Kinesma at last!" exclaimed Prince Boris. "We
shall see the church and castle from the top of that hill in the
distance. And there is Peter, my playmate, herding the cattle! Peter!
Good day, brotherkin!"
Peter looked, saw the carriage close upon him, and, after a moment of
hesitation, let his arms drop stiffly by his sides, and began howling
like a mastiff by moonlight. Helena laughed heartily at this singular
response to the greeting; but Boris, after the first astonishment was
over, looked terrified.
"That was done by order," said he, with a bitter smile. "The old bear
stretches his claws out. Dare you try his hug?"
"I do not fear," she answered; her face was calm.
Every serf they passed obeyed the order of Prince Alexis according to
his own idea of disrespect. One turned his back; another made
contemptuous grimaces and noises; another sang a vulgar song; another
spat upon the ground or held his nostrils. Nowhere was a cap raised, or
the stealthy welcome of a friendly glance given.
The Princess Helena met these insults with a calm, proud indifference,
Boris felt them more keenly; for the fields and hills were prospectively
his property, and so also were the brutish peasants. It was a form of
chastisement which he had never before experienced, and knew not how to
resist. The affront of an entire community was an offence against which
he felt himself to be helpless.
As they approached the town, the demonstrations of insolence were
re-doubled. About two hundred boys, between the ages of ten and
fourteen, awaited them on the hill below the church, forming themselves
into files on either side of the road. These imps had been instructed to
stick out their tongues in derision, and howl, as the carriage passed
between them. At the entrance of the long main street of Kinesma, they
were obliged to pass under a mock triumphal arch, hung with dead dogs
and drowned cats; and from this point the reception assumed an
outrageous character. Howls, hootings, and hisses were heard on all
sides; bouquets of nettles and vile weeds were flung to them; even
wreaths of spoiled fish dropped from the windows. The women were the
most eager and uproarious in this carnival of insult: they beat their
saucepans, threw pails of dirty water upon the horses, pelted the
coachman with rotten cabbages, and filled the air with screeching and
foul words.
It was impossible to pass through this ordeal with indifference. Boris,
finding that his kindly greetings were thrown away.--that even his old
acquaintances in the bazaar howled like the rest,--sat with head bowed
and despair in his heart. The beautiful eyes of Helena were heavy with
tears; but she no longer trembled, for she knew the crisis was yet to
come.
As the kibitka slowly climbed the hill on its way to the castle-gate,
Prince Alexis, who had heard and enjoyed the noises in the village from
a balcony on the western tower, made his appearance at the head of the
steps which led from the court-yard to the state apartments. The dreaded
whip was in his hand; his eyes seemed about to start from their sockets,
in their wild, eager, hungry gaze; the veins stood out like cords on his
forehead; and his lips, twitching involuntarily, revealed the glare of
his set teeth. A frightened hush filled the castle. Some of the
domestics were on their knees; others watching, pale and breathless,
from the windows: for all felt that a greater storm than they had ever
experienced was about to burst. Sasha and the castle-steward had taken
the wise precaution to summon a physician and a priest, provided with
the utensils for extreme unction. Both of these persons had been
smuggled in through a rear entrance, and were kept concealed until their
services should be required.
The noise of wheels was heard outside the gate, which stood invitingly
open. Prince Alexis clutched his whip with iron fingers, and
unconsciously took the attitude of a wild beast about to spring from its
ambush. Now the hard clatter of hoofs and the rumbling of wheels echoed
from the archway, and the kibitka rolled into the court-yard. It stopped
near the foot of the grand staircase. Boris, who sat upon the farther
side, rose to alight, in order to hand his wife down; but no sooner had
he made a movement than Prince Alexis, with lifted whip and face
flashing fire, rushed down the steps. Helena rose, threw back her veil,
let her mantle (which Boris had grasped, in his anxiety to restrain her
action) fall behind her, and stepped upon the pavement.
Prince Alexis had already reached the last step, and but a few feet
separated them. He stopped as if struck by lightning,--his body still
retaining, in every limb, the impress of motion. The whip was in his
uplifted fist; one foot was on the pavement of the court, and the other
upon the edge of the last step; his head was bent forward, his mouth
open, and his eyes fastened upon the Princess Helena's face.
She, too, stood motionless, a form of simple and perfect grace, and met
his gaze with soft, imploring, yet courageous and trustful eyes. The
women who watched the scene from the galleries above always declared
that an invisible saint stood beside her in that moment, and surrounded
her with a dazzling glory. The few moments during which the suspense of
a hundred hearts hung upon those encountering eyes seemed an eternity.
Prince Alexis did not move, but he began to tremble from head to foot.
His fingers relaxed, and the whip fell ringing upon the pavement. The
wild fire of his eyes changed from wrath into an ecstasy as intense, and
a piercing cry of mingled wonder, admiration, and delight burst from his
throat. At that cry Boris rushed forward and knelt at his feet. Helena,
clasping her fairest hands, sank beside her husband, with upturned face,
as if seeking to hold the old man's eyes, and perfect the miracle she
had wrought.
The sight of that sweet face, so near his own, tamed the last lurking
ferocity of the beast. His tears burst forth in a shower; he lifted and
embraced the Princess, kissing her brow, her cheeks, her chin, and her
hands, calling her his darling daughter, his little white dove, his
lambkin.
"And, father, my Boris too!" said she.
The pure, liquid voice sent thrills of exquisite delight through his
whole frame. He embraced and blessed Boris, and then, throwing an arm
around each, held them to his breast, and wept passionately upon their
heads. By this time the whole castle overflowed with weeping. Tears fell
from every window and gallery; they hissed upon the hot saucepans of the
cooks; they moistened the oats in the manger; they took the starch out
of the ladies' ruffles, and weakened the wine in the goblets of the
guests. Insult was changed into tenderness in a moment. Those who had
barked or stuck out their tongues at Boris rushed up to kiss his boots;
a thousand terms of endearment were showered upon him.
Still clasping his children to his breast, Prince Alexis mounted the
steps with them. At the top he turned, cleared his throat, husky from
sobbing, and shouted,--
"A feast! a feast for all Kinesma! Let there be rivers of vodki, wine,
and hydromel! Proclaim it everywhere that my dear son Boris and my dear
daughter Helena have arrived, and whoever fails to welcome them to
Kinesma shall be punished with a hundred stripes! Off, ye scoundrels, ye
vagabonds, and spread the news!"
It was not an hour before the whole sweep of the circling hills
resounded with the clang of bells, the blare of horns, and the songs and
shouts of the rejoicing multitude. The triumphal arch of unsavory
animals was whirled into the Volga; all signs of the recent reception
vanished like magic; festive fir-boughs adorned the houses, and the
gardens and window-pots were stripped of their choicest flowers to make
wreaths of welcome. The two hundred boys, not old enough to comprehend
this sudden _bouleversement_ of sentiment, did not immediately desist
from sticking out their tongues: whereupon they were dismissed with a
box on the ear. By the middle of the afternoon all Kinesma was eating,
drinking, and singing; and every song was sung, and every glass emptied,
in honor of the dear, good Prince Boris, and the dear, beautiful
Princess Helena. By night all Kinesma was drunk.
XI.
In the castle a superb banquet was improvised. Music, guests, and rare
dishes were brought together with wonderful speed, and the choicest
wines of the cellar were drawn upon. Prince Boris, bewildered by this
sudden and incredible change in his fortunes, sat at his father's right
hand, while the Princess filled, but with much more beauty and dignity,
the ancient place of the Princess Martha. The golden dishes were set
before her, and the famous family emeralds--in accordance with the
command of Prince Alexis--gleamed among her dark hair and flashed around
her milk-white throat. Her beauty was of a kind so rare in Russia that
it silenced all question and bore down all rivalry. Every one
acknowledged that so lovely a creature had never before been seen.
"Faith, the boy has eyes!" the old Prince constantly repeated, as he
turned away from a new stare of admiration, down the table.
The guests noticed a change in the character of the entertainment. The
idiot, in his tow shirt, had been crammed to repletion in the kitchen,
and was now asleep in the stable. Razboi, the new bear,--the successor
of the slaughtered Mishka,--was chained up out of hearing. The jugglers,
tumblers, and Calmucks still occupied their old place under the gallery,
but their performances were of a highly decorous character. At the least
sign of a relapse into certain old tricks, more grotesque than refined,
the brows of Prince Alexis would grow dark, and a sharp glance at Sasha
was sufficient to correct the indiscretion. Every one found this natural
enough; for they were equally impressed with the elegance and purity of
the young wife. After the healths had been drunk and the slumber-flag
was raised over the castle, Boris led her into the splendid apartments
of his mother,--now her own,--and knelt at her feet.
"Have I done my part, my Boris?" she asked.
"You are an angel!" he cried. "It was a miracle! My life was not worth a
_copek_, and I feared for yours. If it will only last!--if it will only
last!
"It _will_," said she. "You have taken me from poverty, and given me
rank, wealth, and a proud place in the world: let it be my work to keep
the peace which God has permitted me to establish between you and your
father!"
The change in the old Prince, in fact, was more radical than any one who
knew his former ways of life would have considered possible. He stormed
and swore occasionally, flourished his whip to some purpose, and rode
home from the chase, not outside of a brandy-cask, as once, but with too
much of its contents inside of him: but these mild excesses were
comparative virtues. His accesses of blind rage seemed to be at an end.
A powerful, unaccustomed feeling of content subdued his strong nature,
and left its impress on his voice and features. He joked and sang with
his "children," but not with the wild recklessness of the days of
_reisaks_ and indiscriminate floggings. Both his exactions and his
favors diminished in quantity. Week after week passed by, and there was
no sign of any return to his savage courses.
Nothing annoyed him so much as a reference to his former way of life, in
the presence of the Princess Helena. If her gentle, questioning eyes
happened to rest on him at such times, something very like a blush rose
into his face, and the babbler was silenced with a terribly significant
look. It was enough for her to say, when he threatened an act of cruelty
or injustice, "Father, is that right?" He confusedly retracted his
orders, rather than bear the sorrow of her face.
The promise of another event added to his happiness: Helena would soon
become a mother. As the time drew near, he stationed guards at the
distance of a verst around the castle, that no clattering vehicles
should pass, no dogs bark loudly, nor any other disturbance occur which
might agitate the Princess. The choicest sweetmeats and wines, flowers
from Moscow and fruits from Astrakhan, were procured for her; and it was
a wonder that the midwife performed her duty, for she had the fear of
death before her eyes. When the important day at last arrived, the
slumber-flag was instantly hoisted, and no mouse dared to squeak in
Kinesma until the cannon announced the advent of a new soul.
That night Prince Alexis lay down in the corridor, outside of Helena's
door: he glared fiercely at the nurse as she entered with the
birth-posset for the young mother. No one else was allowed to pass, that
night, nor the next. Four days afterwards, Sasha, having a message to
the Princess, and supposing the old man to be asleep, attempted to step
noiselessly over his body. In a twinkle the Prince's teeth fastened
themselves in the serf's leg, and held him with the tenacity of a
bull-dog. Sasha did not dare to cry out: he stood, writhing with pain,
until the strong jaws grew weary of their hold, and then crawled away to
dress the bleeding wound. After that, no one tried to break the
Prince's guard.
The christening was on a magnificent scale. Prince Paul of Kostroma was
godfather, and gave the babe the name of Alexis. As the Prince had paid
his respects to Helena just before the ceremony, it may be presumed that
the name was not of his own inspiration. The father and mother were not
allowed to be present, but they learned that the grandfather had
comported himself throughout with great dignity and propriety. The
Archimandrite Sergius obtained from the Metropolitan at Moscow a very
minute fragment of the true cross, which was encased in a hollow bead of
crystal, and hung around the infant's neck by a fine gold chain, as a
precious amulet.
Prince Alexis was never tired of gazing at his grandson and namesake.
"He has more of his mother than of Boris," he would say. "So much the
better! Strong dark eyes, like the Great Peter,--and what a goodly leg
for a babe! Ha! he makes a tight little fist already,--fit to handle a
whip,--or" (seeing the expression of Helena's face)--"or a sword. He'll
be a proper Prince of Kinesma, my daughter, and we owe it to you."
Helena smiled, and gave him a grateful glance in return. She had had her
secret fears as to the complete conversion of Prince Alexis; but now she
saw in this babe a new spell whereby he might be bound. Slight as was
her knowledge of men, she yet guessed the tyranny of long-continued
habits; and only her faith, powerful in proportion as it was ignorant,
gave her confidence in the result of the difficult work she had
undertaken.
XII.
Alas! the proud predictions of Prince Alexis, and the protection of the
sacred amulet, were alike unavailing. The babe sickened, wasted away,
and died in less than two months after its birth. There was great and
genuine sorrow among the serfs of Kinesma. Each had received a shining
ruble of silver at the christening; and, moreover, they were now
beginning to appreciate the milder _regime_ of their lord, which this
blow might suddenly terminate. Sorrow, in such natures as his,
exasperates instead of chastening: they knew him well enough to
recognize the danger.
At first the old man's grief appeared to be of a stubborn, harmless
nature. As soon as the funeral ceremonies were over, he betook himself
to his bed, and there lay for two days and nights, without eating a
morsel of food. The poor Princess Helena, almost prostrated by the blow,
mourned alone, or with Boris, in her own apartments. Her influence, no
longer kept alive by her constant presence, as formerly, began, to
decline. When the old Prince aroused somewhat from his stupor, it was
not meat that he demanded, but drink; and he drank to angry excess. Day
after day the habit resumed its ancient sway, and the whip and the
wild-beast yell returned with it. The serfs, even, began to tremble as
they never had done, so long as his vices were simply those of a strong
man; for now a fiendish element seemed to be slowly creeping in. He
became horribly profane: they shuddered, when he cursed the venerable
Metropolitan of Moscow, declaring that the old sinner had deliberately
killed his grandson, by sending to him, instead of the true cross of the
Saviour, a piece of the tree to which the impenitent thief was nailed.
Boris would have spared his wife the knowledge of this miserable
relapse, in her present sorrow, but the information soon reached her in
other ways. She saw the necessity of regaining, by a powerful effort,
what she had lost. She therefore took her accustomed place at the table,
and resumed her inspection of household matters. Prince Alexis, as if
determined to cast off the yoke which her beauty and gentleness had laid
upon him, avoided looking at her face or speaking to her, as much as
possible: when he did so, his manner was cold and unfriendly. During her
few days of sad retirement, he had brought back the bear Razboi and the
idiot to his table, and vodki was habitually poured out to him and his
favorite serfs in such measure that the nights became hideous with
drunken tumult.
The Princess Helena felt that her beauty no longer possessed the potency
of its first surprise. It must now be a contest of nature with nature,
spiritual with animal power. The struggle would be perilous, she
foresaw, but she did not shrink; she rather sought the earliest occasion
to provoke it.
That occasion came. Some slight disappointment brought on one of the old
paroxysms of rage, and the ox-like bellow of Prince Alexis rang through
the castle. Boris was absent, but Helena delayed not a moment to venture
into his father's presence. She found him in a hall overlooking the
court-yard, with his terrible whip in his hand, giving orders for the
brutal punishment of some scores of serfs. The sight of her, coming thus
unexpectedly upon him, did not seem to produce the least effect.
"Father!" she cried, in an earnest, piteous tone, "what is it you do?"
"Away, witch!" he yelled. "I am the master in Kinesma, not thou! Away,
or"--
The fierceness with which he swung and cracked the whip was more
threatening than any words. Perhaps she grew a shade paler, perhaps her
hands were tightly clasped in order that they might not tremble; but she
did not flinch from the encounter. She moved a step nearer, fixed her
gaze upon his flashing eyes, and said, in a low, firm voice,--
"It is true, father, you are master here. It is easy to rule over those
poor, submissive slaves. But you are not master over yourself; you are
lashed and trampled upon by evil passions, and as much a slave as any of
these. Be not weak, my father, but strong!"
An expression of bewilderment came into his face. No such words had ever
before been addressed to him, and he knew not how to reply to them. The
Princess Helena followed up the effect--she was not sure that it was an
advantage--by an appeal to the simple, childish nature which she
believed to exist under his ferocious exterior. For a minute it seemed
as if she were about to reestablish her ascendency: then the stubborn
resistance of the beast returned.
Among the portraits in the hall was one of the deceased Princess Martha.
Pointing to this, Helena cried,--
"See, my father! here are the features of your sainted wife! Think that
she looks down from her place among the blessed, sees you, listens to
your words, prays that your hard heart may be softened! Remember her
last farewell to you on earth, her hope of meeting you"--
A cry of savage wrath checked her. Stretching one huge, bony hand, as if
to close her lips, trembling with rage and pain, livid and convulsed in
every feature of his face, Prince Alexis reversed the whip in his right
hand, and weighed its thick, heavy butt for one crashing, fatal blow.
Life and death were evenly balanced. For an instant the Princess became
deadly pale, and a sickening fear shot through her heart. She could not
understand the effect of her words: her mind was paralyzed, and what
followed came without her conscious volition.
Not retreating a step, not removing her eyes from the terrible picture
before her, she suddenly opened her lips and sang. Her voice, of
exquisite purity, power, and sweetness, filled the old hall and
overflowed it, throbbing in scarcely weakened vibrations through
court-yard and castle. The melody was a prayer,--the cry of a tortured
heart for pardon and repose; and she sang it with almost supernatural
expression. Every sound in the castle was hushed: the serfs outside
knelt and uncovered their heads.
The Princess could never afterwards describe, or more than dimly recall,
the exaltation of that moment. She sang in an inspired trance: from the
utterance of the first note the horror of the imminent fate sank out of
sight. Her eyes were fixed upon the convulsed face, but she beheld it
not: all the concentrated forces of her life flowed into the music. She
remembered, however, that Prince Alexis looked alternately from her face
to the portrait of his wife; that he at last shuddered and grew pale;
and that, when with the closing note her own strength suddenly
dissolved, he groaned and fell upon the floor.
She sat down beside him, and took his head upon her lap. For a long time
he was silent, only shivering as if in fever.
"Father!" she finally whispered, "let me take you away!"
He sat up on the floor and looked around; but as his eyes encountered
the portrait, he gave a loud howl and covered his face with his hands.
"She turns her head!" he cried. "Take her away,--she follows me with her
eyes! Paint her head black, and cover it up!"
With some difficulty he was borne to his bed, but he would not rest
until assured that his orders had been obeyed, and the painting covered
for the time with a coat of lamp-black. A low, prolonged attack of fever
followed, during which the presence of Helena was indispensable to his
comfort. She ventured to leave the room only while he slept. He was like
a child in her hands; and when she commended his patience or his good
resolutions, his face beamed with joy and gratitude. He determined (in
good faith, this time) to enter a monastery and devote the rest of his
life to pious works.
But, even after his recovery, he was still too weak and dependent on his
children's attentions to carry out this resolution. He banished from the
castle all those of his poor relations who were unable to drink vodki in
moderation; he kept careful watch over his serfs, and those who became
intoxicated (unless they concealed the fact in the stables and
outhouses) were severely punished: all excess disappeared, and a reign
of peace and gentleness descended upon Kinesma.
In another year another Alexis was born, and lived, and soon grew strong
enough to give his grandfather the greatest satisfaction he had ever
known in his life, by tugging at his gray locks, and digging the small
fingers into his tamed and merry eyes. Many years after Prince Alexis
was dead, the serfs used to relate how they had seen him, in the bright
summer afternoons, asleep in his arm-chair on the balcony, with the rosy
babe asleep on his bosom, and the slumber-flag waving over both.
Legends of the Prince's hunts, _reisaks_, and brutal revels are still
current along the Volga; but they are now linked to fairer and more
gracious stories; and the free Russian farmers (no longer serfs) are
never tired of relating incidents of the beauty, the courage, the
benevolence, and the saintly piety of the Good Lady of Kinesma.
THE WILDERNESS.
In conversation with a young Rebel on the field of Fredericksburg, I
learned that a certain Elijah of his acquaintance sometimes conveyed
travellers over the more distant battle-fields. Him, therefore, I sent
to engage, with his horse and buggy, for the following day.
Breakfast was scarcely over the next morning, when, as I chanced to look
from my hotel window, I saw a thin-faced countryman drive up to the door
in an old one-horse wagon with two seats and a box half filled with
corn-stalks. I was admiring the anatomy of the horse, every prominent
bone of which could be counted through his skin, when I heard the man
inquiring for me. It was Elijah, with his "horse and buggy."
I was inclined to criticize the establishment, which was not altogether
what I had been led to expect.
"I allow he a'n't a fust-class hoss," said Elijah. "Only give three
dollars for him. Feed is skurce and high. But let him rest this winter,
and git some meal in him, and he'll make a plough crack next spring."
"What are you going to do with those corn-stalks?"
"Fodder for the hoss. They're all the fodder he'll git till night; for
we're go'n' into a country whar thar's noth'n' mo' for an animal to eat
than thar is on the palm of my hand."
I took a seat beside him, and made use of the stalks by placing a couple
of bundles between my back and the sharp board which travellers were
expected to lean against. Elijah cracked his whip, the horse frisked his
tail, and struck into a cow-trot which pleased him.
"You see, he'll snake us over the ground right peart!"
He proceeded to tantalize me by telling what a mule he had, and what a
little mare he had, at home.
"She certainly goes over the ground! I believe she can run ekal to
anything in this country for about a mile. But she's got a set of legs
under her jest like a sheep's legs."
He could not say enough in praise of the mule.
"Paid eight hundred dollars for him in Confederate money. He earned a
living for the whole family last winter. I used to go reg'lar up to
Chancellorsville and the Wilderness, buy up a box of clothing, and go
down in Essex and trade it off for corn."
"What sort of clothing?"
"Soldiers' clothes, from the battle-fields. Some was flung away, and
some, I suppose, was stripped off the dead. Any number of families jest
lived on what they got from the Union armies in that way. They'd pick up
what garments they could lay hands on, wash 'em up, and sell 'em. I'd
take a blanket, and git half a bushel of meal for it down in Essex. Then
I'd bring the meal back, and git may-be two blankets, or a blanket and a
coat, for it. All with that little mule. He'll haul a load for ye! He'll
stick to the ground go'n' up hill jest like a dry-land tarrapin! But I
take the mare when I'm in a hurry; she makes them feet rattle ag'in' the
ground!"
We took the plank road to Chancellorsville, passing through a waste
country of weeds or undergrowth, like every other part of Virginia which
I had yet seen.
"All this region through yer," said Elijah, "used to be grow'd up to
corn and as beautiful clover as ever you see. But since the wa', it's
all turned out to bushes and briers and hog-weeds. It's gittin' a start
ag'in now. I'll show 'em how to do it. If we git in a crap o' wheat this
fall, which I don't know if we sha'n't, we kin start three big teams,
and whirl up twenty acres of land directly. That mule," etc.
Elijah praised the small farmers.
"People in ordinary sarcumstances along yer are a mighty industrious
people. It's the rich that keep this country down. The way it generally
is, a few own too much and the rest own noth'n'. I know hundreds of
thousands of acres of land put to no uset, which, if it was cut up into
little farms, would make the country look thrifty. This is mighty good
land; clay bottom; holds manure jest like a chany bowl does water. But
the rich ones jest scratched over a little on 't with their slave labor,
and let the rest go. They wouldn't sell: let a young man go to 'em to
buy, and they'd say they didn't want no poo' whites around 'em; they
wouldn't have one, if they could keep shet of 'em. And what was the
result? Young men would go off to the west, if they was enterpris'n',
and leave them that wa'n't enterpris'n' hyer to home. Then as the old
heads died off, the farms would run down. The young women would marry
the lazy young men, and raise up families of lazy children."
The country all about Fredericksburg was very unhealthy. Elijah, on
making inquiries, could hear of scarcely a family on the road exempt
from sickness.
"It was never so till since the wa'. Now we have chills and fever, jest
like they do in a new country. It's owin' to the land all comin' up to
weeds; the dew settles in 'em, and they rot, and that fills the air with
the agur. I've had the agur myself till about a fortnight ago; then,
soon as I got shet of that, the colic took me. Eat too much on a big
appetite, I suppose. I like to live well; like to see plenty of
everything on the table, and then I like to see every man eat a heap."
I commended Elijah's practical sense; upon which he replied,--
"The old man is right ignorant; can't read the fust letter; never went
to school a day; but the old man is right sharp!"
He was fond of speaking of himself in this way. He thought education a
good thing, but allowed that all the education in the world could not
give a man sense. He was fifty years old, and had got along thus far in
life very well.
"I reckon thar's go'n' to be a better chance for the poo' man after
this. The Union bein' held together was the greatest thing that could
have happened for us."
"And yet you fought against it."
"I was in the Confederate army two year and a half. I was opposed to
Secession; but I got my head a little turned after the State went out,
and I enlisted. Then, when I had time to reconsider it all over, I
diskivered we was wrong. I told the boys so.
"'Boys,' says I, 'when my time's up, I'm go'n' out of the army, and you
won't see me in ag'in.'
"'You can't help that, old man,' says they; 'fo' by that time the
conscript law'll be changed so 's to go over the heads of older men than
you.'
"'Then,' says I, 'the fust chance presents itself, I fling down my
musket and go spang No'th.'
"They had me put under arrest for that, and kep' me in the guard-house
seven months. I liked that well enough. I was saved a deal of hard
march'n' and lay'n' out in the cold, that winter.
"'Why don't ye come in, boys,' says I, 'and have a warm?'
"I knowed what I was about! The old man was right ignorant, but the old
man was right sharp!"
We passed the line of Sedgwick's retreat a few miles from
Fredericksburg.
"Shedrick's men was in line acrost the road hyer, extendin' into the
woods on both sides; they had jest butchered their meat, and was ishyin'
rations and beginnin' to cook their suppers, when Magruder struck 'em on
the left flank." (Elijah was wrong; it was not Magruder, but McLaws.
These local guides make many such mistakes, and it is necessary to be on
one's guard against them.) "They jest got right up and skedaddled! The
whole line jest faced to the right, and put for Banks's Ford. Thar's the
road they went. They left it piled so full of wagons, Magruder couldn't
follah; but his artillery jest run around by another road I'll show ye,
hard as ever they could lay their feet to the ground, wheeled their guns
in position on the bluffs by the time Shedrick got cleverly to crossin',
and played away. The way they heaped up Shedrick's men was awful!"
Every mile or two we came to a small farm-house, commonly of logs, near
which there was usually a small crop of corn growing.
"Every man after he got home, after the fall of Richmond, put in to
raise a little somethin' to eat. Some o' the corn looks poo'ly, but it
beats no corn at all, all to pieces."
We came to one field which Elijah pronounced a "monstrous fine crap."
But he added,--
"I've got thirty acres to home not a bit sorrier'n that. Ye see, that
mule of mine," etc.
I noticed--what I never saw in the latitude of New England--that the
fodder had been pulled below the ears and tied in little bundles on the
stalks to cure. Ingenious shifts for fences had been resorted to by the
farmers. In some places the planks of the worn-out plank road had been
staked and lashed together to form a temporary inclosure. But the most
common fence was what Elijah called "bresh wattlin'." Stakes were first
driven into the ground, then pine or cedar brush bent in between them
and beaten down with a maul.
"Ye kin build a wattlin' fence that way so tight a rabbit can't git
through."
On making inquiries, I found that farms of fine land could be had all
through this region for ten dollars an acre.
Elijah hoped that men from the North would come in and settle.
"But," said he, "'twould be dangerous for any one to take possession of
a confiscated farm. He wouldn't live a month."
The larger land-owners are now more willing to sell.
"Right smart o' their property was in niggers; they're pore now, and
have to raise money.
"The emancipation of slavery," added Elijah, "is wo'kin' right for the
country mo'e ways 'an one. The' a'n't two men in twenty, in middlin'
sarcumstances, but that's beginnin' to see it. I'm no friend to the
niggers, though. They ought all to be druv out of the country. They
won't wo'k as long as they can steal. I have my little crap o' corn, and
wheat, and po'k; when night comes, I must sleep; then the niggers come
and steal all I've got."
I pressed him to give an instance of the negroes' stealing his property.
He could not say that they had taken anything from him lately, but they
"used to" rob his corn-fields and hen-roosts, and "they would again."
Had he ever caught them at it? No, he could not say that he ever had.
Then how did he know that the thieves were negroes? He knew it, because
"niggers would steal."
"Won't white folks steal, too, sometimes?"
"Yes," said Elijah, "some o' the poo' whites are a durned sight wuss 'n
the niggers!"
"Then why not drive them out of the country, too? You see," said I,
"your charges against the negroes are vague, and amount to nothing."
"I own," he replied, "thar's now and then one that's ekal to any white
man. Thar's one a-comin' thar."
A load of wood was approaching, drawn by two horses abreast and a mule
for leader. A white-haired old negro was riding the mule.
"He's the greatest man!" said Elijah, after we had passed. "He's been
the support of his master's family for twenty year and over. He kin
manage a heap better 'n his master kin. The' a'n't a farmer in the
country kin beat him. He keeps right on jest the same now he's free;
though I suppose he gits wages."
"You acknowledge, then, that some of the negroes are superior men?"
"Yes, thar's about ten in a hundred honest and smart as anybody."
"That," said I, "is a good many. Do you suppose you could say more of
the white race, if it had just come out of slavery?"
"I don't believe," said Elijah, "that ye could say as much!"
We passed the remains of the house "whar Harrow was shot." It had been
burned to the ground.
"You've heerd about Harrow; he was Confederate commissary; he stole mo'e
hosses f'om the people, and po'ed the money down his own throat, than
would have paid fo' fo'ty men like him, if he was black."
A mile or two farther on, we came to another house.
"Hyer's whar the man lives that killed Harrow. He was in the army, and
because he objected to some of Harrow's doin's, Harrow had him arrested,
and treated him very much amiss. That ground into his conscience and
feelin's, and he deserted fo' no other puppose than to shoot him. He's a
mighty smart fellah! He'll strike a man side the head, and soon 's his
fist leaves it, his foot's thar. He shot Harrow in that house you see
burnt to the ground, and then went spang to Washington. Oh, he was
sharp!"
On our return we met the slayer of Harrow riding home from
Fredericksburg on a mule,--a fine-looking young fellow, of blonde
complexion, a pleasant countenance, finely chiselled nose and lips, and
an eye full of sunshine. "Jest the best-hearted, nicest young fellah in
the wo'ld, till ye git him mad; then look out!" I think it is often the
most attractive persons, of fine temperaments, who are capable of the
most terrible wrath when roused.
The plank road was in such a ruined condition that nobody thought of
driving on it; although the dirt road beside it was in places scarcely
better. The back of the seat was cruel, notwithstanding the corn-stalks.
But by means of much persuasion, enforced by a good whip, Elijah kept
the old horse jogging on. Oak-trees, loaded with acorns, grew beside the
road. Black walnuts, already beginning to lose their leaves, hung their
delicate balls in the clear light over our heads. Poke-weeds dark with
ripening berries, wild grapes festooning bush and tree, sumachs
thrusting up through the foliage their sanguinary spears,
persimmon-trees, gum-trees, red cedars with their bluish-green clusters,
chestnut-oaks, and chincapins, adorned the wild wayside.
So we approached Chancellorsville, twelve miles from Fredericksburg.
Elijah was raised in that region, and knew everybody.
"Many a frolic have I had runnin' the deer through these woods! Soon as
the dogs started one, he'd put fo' the river, cross, take a turn on t'
other side, and it wouldn't be an hour 'fo'e he'd be back ag'in. Man I
lived with used to have a mare that was trained to hunt; if she was in
the field and heard the dogs, she'd whirl her tail up on her back, lope
the fences, and go spang to the United States Ford, git thar 'fo'e the
dogs would, and hunt as well without a rider as with one."
But since then a far different kind of hunting, a richer blood than the
deer's, and other sounds than the exciting yelp of the dogs, had
rendered that region famous.
"Hyer we come to the Chancellorsville farm. Many a poo' soldier's
knapsack was emptied of his clothes, after the battle, along this road!"
said Elijah, remembering last winter's business with his mule.
The road runs through a large open field bounded by woods. The marks of
hard fighting were visible from afar off. A growth of saplings edging
the woods on the south had been killed by volleys of musketry: it looked
like thickets of bean-poles. The ground everywhere, in the field and in
the woods, was strewed with mementoes of the battle,--rotting knapsacks
and haversacks, battered canteens and tin cups, and fragments of
clothing which Elijah's customers had not deemed it worth the while to
pick up. On each side of the road were breastworks and rifle-pits
extending into the woods. The clearing, once a well-fenced farm of
grain-fields and clover-lots, was now a dreary and deserted common. Of
the Chancellorsville House, formerly a large brick tavern, only the
half-fallen walls and chimney-stacks remained. Here General Hooker had
his head-quarters until the wave of battle on Sunday morning rolled so
hot and so near that he was compelled to withdraw. The house was soon
after fired by a Rebel shell, when full of wounded men, and burned.
"Every place ye see these big bunches of weeds, that's whar the' was
hosses or men buried," said Elijah. "These holes are whar the bones have
been dug up for the bone-factory at Fredericksburg."
It was easy for the bone-seekers to determine where to dig. The common
was comparatively barren, except where grew those gigantic clumps of
weeds. I asked Elijah if he thought many human bones went to the
factory.
"Not unless by mistake. But people a'n't always very partic'lar about
mistakes thar's money to be made by."
Seeing a small inclosure midway between the road and the woods on the
south, we walked to it, and found it a burying-ground ridged with
unknown graves. Not a headboard, not an inscription, indicated who were
the tenants of that little lonely field. And Elijah knew nothing of its
history; it had been set apart, and the scattered dead had been gathered
together and buried there, since he passed that way.
We found breastworks thrown up all along by the plank road west of the
farm,--the old worn planks having been put to good service in their
construction. The tree-trunks pierced by balls, the boughs lopped off by
shells, the strips of timber cut to pieces by artillery and musketry
fire, showed how desperate the struggle on that side had been. The
endeavors of the Confederates to follow up with an overwhelming victory
Jackson's swift and telling blows on our right, and the equally
determined efforts of our men to retrieve that disaster, rendered this
the scene of a furious encounter.
Elijah thought, that, if Jackson had not been killed by his own men
after delivering that thunderstroke, Hooker would have been annihilated.
"Stonewall" was undoubtedly the enemy's best fighting general. His death
was to them equal to the loss of many brigades. With regard to the
manner of his death there can be no longer any doubt. I have conversed
with Confederate officers who were in the battle, all of whom agree as
to the main fact. General Jackson, after shattering our right wing,
posted his pickets at night with directions to fire upon any man or body
of men that might approach. He afterwards rode forward to reconnoitre,
returned inadvertently by the same road, and was shot by his own orders.
The Battle of Bull Run in 1861, Pope's campaign, and Burnside's defeat
at Fredericksburg in 1862, and, lastly, Hooker's unsuccessful attempt at
Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863, had shown how hard a road to
Richmond this was to travel. Repeatedly, as we tried it and failed, the
hopes of the Confederacy rose exultant; the heart of the North sank as
often, heavy with despair. McClellan's Peninsular route had resulted
still more fatally. We all remember the anguish and anxiety of those
days. But the heart of the North shook off its despair, listened to no
timid counsels; it was growing fierce and obdurate. We no longer
received the news of defeat with cries of dismay, with teeth close-set,
a smile upon the quivering lips, and a burning fire within. Had the
Rebels triumphed again? Then so much the worse for them! Had we been
once more repulsed with slaughter from their strong line of defences?
Was the precious blood poured out before them all in vain? At last it
should not be in vain! Though it should cost a new thirty years' war and
a generation of lives, the red work we had begun must be completed;
ultimate failure was impossible, ultimate triumph certain.
This inflexible spirit found it embodiment in the leader of the final
campaigns against the Rebel capital. It was the deep spirit of humanity
itself, ready to make the richest sacrifices, calm, determined,
inexorable, moving steadily towards the great object to be achieved. It
has been said that General Grant did not consider the lives of his men.
Then the people did not consider them. But the truth lies here: precious
as were those lives, something lay beyond far more precious, and they
were the needful price paid for it. We had learned the dread price, we
had duly weighed the worth of the object to be purchased: what, then,
was the use of hesitating and higgling?
We were approaching the scene of Grant's first great blow aimed at the
gates of the Rebel capital. On the field of Chancellorsville you already
tread the borders of the field of the Wilderness,--if that can be called
a field which is a mere interminable forest, slashed here and there with
roads.
Passing straight along the plank road, we came to a large farm-house,
which had been gutted by soldiers, and but recently reoccupied. It was
still in a scarcely habitable condition. However, we managed to obtain,
what we stood greatly in need of, a cup of cold water. I observed that
it tasted strongly of iron.
"The reason of that is, we took twelve camp-kettles out of the well,"
said the man of the house, "and nobody knows how many more there are
down there."
The place is known as Locust Grove. In the edge of the forest, but a
little farther on, is the Wilderness Church,--a square framed building,
which showed marks of such usage as every uninhabited house receives at
the hands of a wild soldiery. Red Mars has little respect for the
temples of the Prince of Peace.
"Many a time have I been to meet'n' in that shell, and sot on hard
benches, and heard long sermons!" said Elijah. "But I reckon it'll be a
long while befo'e them doo's are darkened by a congregation ag'in. Thar
a'n't the population through hyer thar used to be. Oncet we'd have met a
hundred wagons on this road go'n' to market; but I count we ha'n't met
mo'e 'n a dozen to-day."
Not far beyond the church we approached two tall guide-posts erected
where the road forks. The one on the right pointed the way to the
"Wilderness National Cemetery, No. 1, 4 miles," by the Orange
Court-House turnpike. The other indicated the "Wilderness National
Cemetery, No. 2," by the plank road.
"All this has been done since I was this way," said Elijah.
We kept the plank road,--or rather the clay road beside it, which
stretched before us dim in the hollows, and red as brick on the
hillsides. We passed some old fields, and entered the great
Wilderness,--a high and dry country, thickly overgrown with dwarfish
timber, chiefly scrub oaks, pines, and cedars. Poles lashed to trees for
tent-supports indicated where our regiments had encamped; and soon we
came upon abundant evidences of a great battle. Heavy breastworks thrown
up on Brock's cross-road, planks from the plank road piled up and lashed
against trees in the woods, to form a shelter for our pickets,
knapsacks, haversacks, pieces of clothing, fragments of harness, tin
plates, canteens, some pierced with balls, fragments of shells, with
here and there a round-shot, or a shell unexploded, straps, buckles,
cartridge-boxes, socks, old shoes, rotting letters, desolate tracts of
perforated and broken trees,--all these signs, and others sadder still,
remained to tell their silent story of the great fight of the
Wilderness.
A cloud passed over the sun: all the scene became sombre, and hushed
with a strange brooding stillness, broken only by the noise of twigs
crackling under my feet, and distant growls of thunder. A shadow fell
upon my heart also, as from the wing of the Death-Angel, as I wandered
through the woods, meditating upon what I saw. Where were the feet that
wore those empty shoes? Where was he whose proud waist was buckled in
that belt? Some soldier's heart was made happy by that poor, soiled,
tattered, illegible letter, which rain and mildew have not spared; some
mother's, sister's, wife's, or sweetheart's hand, doubtless, penned it;
it is the broken end of a thread which unwinds a whole life-history,
could we but follow it rightly. Where is that soldier now? Did he fall
in the fight, and does his home know him no more? Has the poor wife or
stricken mother wailed long for the answer to that letter, which never
came, and will never come? And this cap, cut in two by a shot, and stiff
with a strange incrustation,--a small cap, a mere boy's, it
seems,--where now the fair head and wavy hair that wore it? O mother and
sisters at home, do you still mourn for your drummer-boy? Has the story
reached you,--how he went into the fight to carry off his wounded
comrades, and so lost his life for their sakes?--for so I imagine the
tale which will never be told.
And what more appalling spectacle is this? In the cover of thick woods,
the unburied remains of two soldiers,--two skeletons side by side, two
skulls almost touching each other, like the cheeks of sleepers! I came
upon them unawares as I picked my way among the scrub oaks. I knew that
scores of such sights could be seen here a few weeks before; but the
United States Government had sent to have its unburied dead collected
together in the two national cemeteries of the Wilderness; and I had
hoped the work was faithfully done.
"They was No'th-Carolinians; that's why they didn't bury 'em," said
Elijah, after a careful examination of the buttons fallen from the
rotted clothing.
The ground where they lay had been fought over repeatedly, and the dead
of both sides had fallen there. The buttons may, therefore, have told a
true story: North-Carolinians they may have been: yet I could not
believe that the true reason why they had not been decently interred. It
must have been that these bodies, and others we found afterwards, were
overlooked by the party sent to construct the cemeteries. It was
shameful negligence, to say the least.
The cemetery was near by,--a little clearing in the woods by the
roadside, thirty yards square, surrounded by a picket-fence, and
comprising seventy trenches, each containing the remains of I know not
how many dead. Each trench was marked with a headboard, inscribed with
the invariable words,--
"Unknown United States soldiers, killed May, 1864."
Elijah, to whom I read the Inscription, said, pertinently, that the
words, _United States soldiers_ indicated plainly that it had not been
the intention to bury Rebels there. No doubt: but these might at least
have been buried in the woods where they fell.
As a grim sarcasm on this neglect, somebody had flung three human
skulls, picked up in the woods, over the paling, into the cemetery,
where they lay blanching among the graves.
Close by the southeast corner of the fence were three or four Rebel
graves, with old headboards. Elijah called my attention to them, and
wished me to read what the headboards said. The main fact indicated was,
that those buried there were North-Carolinians. Elijah considered this
somehow corroborative of his theory derived from the buttons. The graves
were shallow, and the settling of the earth over the bodies had left the
feet of one of the poor fellows sticking out.
The shadows which darkened the woods, and the ominous thunder-growls,
culminated in a shower. Elijah crawled under his wagon; I sought the
shelter of a tree: the horse champed his fodder, and we ate our
luncheon. How quietly upon the leaves, how softly upon the graves of the
cemetery, fell the perpendicular rain! The clouds parted, and a burst of
sunlight smote the Wilderness; the rain still poured, but every drop was
illumined, and I seemed standing in a shower of silver meteors.
The rain over and luncheon finished, I looked about for some solace to
my palate after the dry sandwiches, moistened only by the drippings from
the tree,--seeking a dessert in the Wilderness. Summer grapes hung their
just ripened clusters from the vine-laden saplings, and the chincapin
bushes were starred with opening burrs. I followed a woodland path,
embowered with the glistening boughs, and plucked, and ate, and mused.
The ground was level, and singularly free from the accumulations of
twigs, branches, and old leaves, with which forests usually abound. I
noticed, however, many charred sticks and half-burnt roots and logs.
Then the terrible recollection overtook me: these were the woods that
were on fire during the battle. I called Elijah.
"Yes, all this was a flame of fire while the fight was go'n' on. It was
full of dead and wounded men. Cook and Stevens, farmers over hyer, men I
know, heard the screams of the poor fellahs burnin' up, and come and
dragged many a one out of the fire, and laid 'em in the road."
The woods were full of Rebel graves, with here and there a heap of
half-covered bones, where several of the dead had been hurriedly buried
together.
I had seen enough. We returned to the cemetery. Elijah hitched up his
horse, and we drove back along the plank road, cheered by a rainbow
which spanned the Wilderness and moved its bright arch onward over
Chancellorsville towards Fredericksburg, brightening and fading, and
brightening still again, like the hope which gladdened the nation's eye
after Grant's victory.
THE BELLS OF LYNN, HEARD AT NAHANT.
O curfew of the setting sun! O Bells of Lynn!
O requiem of the dying day! O Bells of Lynn!
From the dark belfries of yon cloud-cathedral wafted,
Your sounds aerial seem to float, O Bells of Lynn!
Borne on the evening wind across the crimson twilight,
O'er land and sea they rise and fall, O Bells of Lynn!
The fisherman in his boat, far out beyond the headland,
Listens, and leisurely rows ashore, O Bells of Lynn!
Over the shining sands the wandering cattle homeward
Follow each other at your call, O Bells of Lynn!
The distant lighthouse hears, and with his flaming signal
Answers you, passing the watchword on, O Bells of Lynn!
And down the darkening coast run the tumultuous surges,
And clap their hands, and shout to you, O Bells of Lynn!
Till from the shuddering sea, with your wild incantations,
Ye summon up the spectral moon, O Bells of Lynn!
And startled at the sight, like the weird woman of Endor,
Ye cry aloud, and then are still, O Bells of Lynn!
THE HIGH TIDE OF DECEMBER.
Breakfast was ready. Captain Lufflin, who, like most retired old salts,
had a healthy stomach, and humored it, crossed and uncrossed his stumpy
little legs, and pulled his gray moustache complacently, when he caught
the first sniff of the hot coffee and broiling beefsteak.
He had been down on the foggy beach, (for the high winter tides were
worth watching on that lonely coast,) and was now quietly drying his
feet before the crackling wood-fire in the dining-room grate; but even
Ann, (the clam-digger's daughter, promoted to cook,) as she bustled in
and out, had seen the Captain was out of temper, as he waited, frowning
portentously, and wagging his bald head now and then as if a wasp stung
it.
Lufflin, who aboard ship would have risked a thousand lives on his own
cool judgment, had been uneasy and irritable for two months back, ever
since Mrs. Jacobus had written to him about buying this house for her.
"It was to be a Christmas gift from her to her husband," she wrote.
"She wanted it, therefore, kept a secret from him. Any quiet corner
along the coast which they could make into a home." Adding something
about M. Jacobus "being fagged out with work, and needing rest," at
which Lufflin shook his head. The Captain knew, that, bookworm and
picture-maniac though he might be, Jacobus had managed to squander, in
some unaccountable way, his own and his wife's fortune. So much of their
history had got back to the fishing-town where she had lived when a
child. People even hinted that they had been almost starving latterly in
New York. However that might be, Old Lufflin knew that the sum she
remitted to him was the last they had left; and beyond this, he had a
shrewd suspicion that in the shipwreck the Jacobuses had made of life,
something of more worth than money had been lost, and that this home she
talked of was most probably a last effort to bury some shameful secret.
The Captain, in his disgust at the unknown bookworm, fretted under the
whole affair. "It's not in my line," he would growl. "It's a cursed
bore. Poor Charlotte! she used to swim like a frog in the inlet there,
when she was only eleven. She's little heart for swimming now, it's
likely!" And would begin his search with re-doubled vigor.
This house, a gray stone cottage of five or six rooms, in the most
solitary part of the lee-coast, had been vacant for some time, and was
to be sold cheap. Lufflin bought and furnished it in his own name; and
then, as she directed, asked the Professor and his wife down to spend
the Christmas holidays with him. He was anxious and awkward as a
school-boy when they arrived the night before.
"It was too tough a job for you to set me, Charlotte," he grumbled. "How
was I to choose a home for a man that lives, they say, by the sight of
his eyes and the hearing of his ears? Water's water to me, and rocks
rocks,"--trotting after her as she went through the house in silence,
ending the survey with two or three sharp, decisive nods, and a quick,
pleased little laugh.
"Satisfied? Yes, I am. Yes, I am. We've had a good many houses, Jerome
and I; but this is home."
The Captain understood her.
In the morning, however, he felt all his doubts return. Mrs. Jacobus's
quick, firm step sounded above, below him; presently she came in with a
jug of yellow cream, and set it on the table, adjusting the dishes,
putting a glass of holly in the middle, opening the window-curtains to
let the cold, gray, wintry light fall on the white cloth and pretty blue
china service.
"Those oysters now?" said the Captain, anxiously. "Ann's a poor cook."
"She's clean as a Shaker, though. But I broiled them myself,"--laughing
to herself to see his relieved face.
"They're all right, then, Charlotte?"
"Yes."
She would give her mind to the oysters, he knew. It had been her way to
put a little of her brains and blood into all her jobs in life,
finishing each with a self-satisfied little nod. No wonder that she was
worn, now that she was a middle-aged woman.
"She's lost something, Lotty has since I knew her," he thought, watching
the light figure in its dark blue dress moving about; "but she's the
right stuff for home use,"--with some vague idea in his old salt-water
brain of delicate, incomplete faces suiting best with moonlight and
country strolls, and of the sparkle of dinner-lights and brilliant eyes
agreeing together, but that a face like Charlotte's was the one for the
breakfast-table. The shrewd, kindly eyes, the color on her face, and the
laugh came on you as fresh as a child's,--if her hair was a bit gray.
She had gone to the bay-window that overlooked the stretch of coast on
which the heavy winter tide was coming in, and grown silent watching it.
The Captain called to her; he wanted nothing to put the breakfast back
this morning. And he fancied that to a woman who had been a leader in
the world of culture and refinement yonder this sky and loud foreboding
surf might have some meaning of which he knew nothing.
"Nature's voices, eh?" coming to her side.
Some expression that had held her face suddenly escaped it.
"I am watching for Jerome. Yonder he comes with your fisherman, by the
inlet,"--pointing to two dark figures in the mist crossing the sands
below.
The house stood on a ledge, facing the sea: ramparts of rock, gray and
threatening in this light, running down on either side, and shutting out
all outlook but that of the dull, obstinate stretch of sand on which the
sea had beaten and fallen back for centuries, with the same baffled,
melancholy cry. Behind the house were clumps of pines and cedars. Nature
had done all she could in wringing out whatever green and lusty life was
left in rocks and sand to make the place home-like and cheerful. Beside
the trees, there was a patch of kitchen-garden back of the house, a
grape-vine or two on the walls, trailing moss hanging to its eaves,--the
delicate web-like moss that grows along this coast out of dead wood;
even the beach rocks glowed into colors,--dark browns, purples, and
reds.
But for all these it needed summer and sunshine. On this, the day before
Christmas, the house and the land about it were smothered in a cold
mist: only the shivering sea beyond had voice or motion.
"It's a dull, uncanny place, Mrs. Jacobus," said Lufflin, anxiously. "It
looks like a prison to me to-day. What if we've made a mistake?"
"We have made no mistake," calmly.
"Indoors," he persisted, "the house is cheerful enough. But it's a rough
coast, and the oyster-dredgers and wrackers hint that the house be n't
above highest water-mark. They're a wild pack, them wrackers. I doubt
it's a gloomy home I've picked for M. Jacobus, after all his"--
Something in her face silenced him.
"You did right, Uncle George," she answered, cheerfully.
But the pleasant eyes he had liked so much last night he noticed were
turned to the sea now with a hard look, new to him, begotten both of
great pain and obstinate endurance.
"Of course you know, Charlotte,--of course. God knows I want to do
what's for the best."
He hesitated, then went on briskly, taking courage.
"See now, Lotty, I'm an old fellow. I've walked you to sleep many's the
night, being your father's chum, and living in his house till the day of
his death. I'd like you to know I'm a true friend. If so be as you're in
trouble, you must tell me. If this house is a sort of hiding, as I've
thought once or twice, speak the word, and there's nobody shall get
below Barnegat, to disturb it, or"--
Mrs. Jacobus faced him suddenly,--the nerves in her body seeming to
stiffen, her half-shut eyes fixed on his. The Captain's quailed.
"You mean Jerome?" in a low voice.
He did not answer. She waited a moment, and then turned again to the
window,--holding forcibly down whatever resistance his touch had roused
in her.
"You mean well," she said, quietly, after a pause. "But you do not know
my husband. I was a fool to expect that; yet I did expect
it,"--remembering bitterly how, when she brought her husband here, she
had counted surely on a real justice for him from the single-minded old
Captain, which shrewd, sensible men had not given.
"How could I know him? You talk like a woman, Lotty," stammered the
Captain. "I never saw M. Jacobus till last night. It was a vague
whisper, or rather an old man's whim, that there might be something gone
which both you and he wished forgotten."
She had her face pressed against the pane, but Lufflin fancied that it
lost color, and that the delicate jaws closed with the firmness of a
steel spring.
"There was no crime," she said, in a moment or two.
The old man came close to her after a while, and put his hand gently on
her hair; streaked with gray as it was, she seemed nothing but a child
to him still.
"You're growing like your mother, Lotty," he said.
After a long while she spoke again, but under her breath, as if half
talking to herself.
"We had a child once, Jerome and I," she said.
"I know," the Captain rejoined, quickly turning his eyes from her face,
and, after waiting for her to go on, added, "Never but the one,--I
know."
"It was a boy,--little Tom."
There was a sudden choking gulp in the mother's throat; she had
overrated her strength a little. The old man looked steadily out to sea,
and took no notice.
"They never were apart, Jerome and the boy," she went on at last,
firmly; "and when I would see them at work with their play-tools, or
romping together, I used to wonder which of the two had the most simple,
affectionate nature, or knew less of the ways of the world."
Lufflin said nothing to this defence. He was annoyed at himself for
having vexed her,--conscious and remorseful for any wrong he had done M.
Jacobus, but with a stronger suspicion than before that he had galled
some old wound in her memory. Whatever the secret might be, it had made
her feeling for her husband, he saw, as tender and keen with pain as
that for the little child she had lost, and whose place none had ever
come to fill.
"I've often thought, too, that when the time comes"--
She stopped abruptly.
"Yes, Charlotte,"--to hide her effort to control herself.
"He's gone, Tom is, you know,--eleven years ago, now. But when the time
comes for Jerome to see his boy again, I've often thought _he_ would
have no reason to dread the child's eyes. It's different with me. But
they may say of my husband what they will, my baby need not be afraid to
lay his head upon his father's breast. He needn't be afraid."
The Captain took up the cold hand that was nervously thrumming on the
window-sill, and held it quiet, averting his eyes from her face,
distorted with dry, silent weeping.
"It's different with me," she cried, "Sometimes I think, Uncle George,
it would be better if I'd never see my boy again. I'm sharper and
coarser than other women. I've had to rub with the world."
Lufflin was a queer old fellow. He did not tell her these were but the
morbid fancies of an hysterical woman, or blame himself for rousing
them. He muttered something about low tide and George Cathcart, and
bustled off down the stairs. She had a stronger mind than he, he
suspected; silence and her own will would bring her to herself quicker
than any comfort of his could do.
He proved to be right. She did not notice his going; stood at first
looking into the dark bank of sea-horizon, as if she would have forced
out of that vague Beyond where her child had gone the truth of all that
had hurt her in her life. The dull thud of the retreating tide kept time
to her thoughts,--finally came into them: it was so natural for her mind
to swing back into whatever was real and at hand.
Not that she forgot the little fellow whose restless feet and hands were
quiet at last in the graveyard at Salem: she never forgot him; since
they laid him there, the thought of him had sounded in every day of her
busy life like a faint hymn sung by lips far away, holy and calm,--a
story of God in it.
But she held it down; watched the tide go out, measuring each sullen
sweep with calculating eyes: the old swimming and fishing education in
the inlet had not worn out its effect on her.
"The wreckers talk folly," she said; "no tide could touch the
house,"--leaning farther out to see the two approaching figures go into
the doorway beneath.
One man looked up, waving his hat as he passed, and she drew in her
head with a sudden blush and a dewy light in her eyes, catching her
breath.
"I have made no mistake," she thought, vehemently. "Look in his face! It
is the right home for Jerome."
As she listened to the footsteps coming up the stairway, she moved
uneasily about the room, touching almost every article in it with the
eager fondness of a child: she knew what it had cost her; for the house
had been paid for by money she had earned; it seemed as if she could
remember now every seam she had stitched, every page she had
copied,--the days of heat and sickness and weariness, when she had
almost given up in despair.
That was all over now; she could put her hand on the result in actual
stone and mortar; and as she thanked God for it, she went about,
woman-like, touching and looking for the hundredth time to enjoy it more
utterly. Nothing was too trivial to give her pleasure: she measured the
depth of the window-frames with her arm, tested the grain of the doors,
felt the texture of the curtains; how warm and clear a crimson they
were!--remembering how becoming they would be, and touching her worn
cheeks with a quick smile.
She peered through into the open door from the dining-room into the room
beyond: she meant that for the library; planning rapidly where on the
gray walls their one or two pictures could hang,--how Jerome's old desk
would fit into one corner, and her work-table in the other: the
book-shelves were below, and the books and what other home treasures she
had been able to smuggle with her; she would arrange them all to-night,
after he was in bed.
In New York they lived in a crowded tenement-house, out of which Old
Jacobus, as the boys called him, went to give his daily lessons. How he
had argued and prosed for weeks as to whether they could afford these
few days! although it was vacation, and Lufflin had sent free passes for
the road. To-morrow he would know that the holiday would last always,
and that the book could be finished which was to bring them bread.
Madame Jacobus knitted her brows, counting for the twentieth time how
many months the money she had would last: long enough for the book to be
done, provisions were so cheap here.
So would they start afresh, thank God! There would be nothing here to
tempt him to----The old look of defiance flashed over her face.
"It was no crime," she said, half aloud; and just then the door-knob
turned.
Captain Lufflin, who had left her with conscience and grief both at work
with her a few minutes before, opened the door with a half-scared look,
pushing Jacobus before him, whose sleeve she caught eagerly, bidding him
good-morning with a laugh.
"God bless us all!" said Lufflin. "The ways of women!"
M. Jacobus had a fisherman's corduroy trousers and red shirt hung on
him, as one might say. He made a formal apology to Madame for sitting
down to breakfast in them.
"But I like to clothe myself according to my occupation," he said to
Lufflin, gravely. "I have begun at dawn to make my holiday, the time is
so short; I feel myself quite of the sea already."
The clothes being too small for him, his gaunt legs and bony neck
protruded above and below, capped by a brown, honest, homely face, over
which thin, iron-gray hairs straggled.
"A younger man than I expected to see," thought the Captain; "but that's
one of the faces that never grows old."
M. Jacobus munched his breakfast in silence, and then, clearing a space
on the table, dragged out of his pocket one or two crabs, a sea-horse
finger-length, and a general mess of slimy legs and tails.
"_Cancer pagurus! Cirripedes!_" triumphantly spreading them on the
table-cloth. "The fruits of my morning's labor, except _Hippcampus
brevirostris_, vulgarly called Sea-Horse, which stood to me in the sum
of forty cents: it shall be saved in other modes of expenditure,--say
shoes,"--with a deprecating glance at his wife.
"Yes, Jerome," her eyes fixed, hungrily, on the childish delight in his
face.
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