Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865», страница 5
THE PEACE AUTUMN
Thank God for rest, where none molest,
And none can make afraid,—
For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest,
Beneath the homestead shade!
Bring pike and gun, the sword's red scourge,
The negro's broken chains,
And beat them at the blacksmith's forge
To ploughshares for our plains.
Alike henceforth our hills of snow,
And vales where cotton flowers;
All streams that flow, all winds that blow,
Are Freedom's motive-powers.
Henceforth to Labor's chivalry
Be knightly honors paid;
For nobler than the sword's shall be
The sickle's accolade.
Build up an altar to the Lord,
O grateful hearts of ours!
And shape it of the greenest sward
That ever drank the showers.
Lay all the bloom of gardens there,
And there the orchard fruits;
Bring golden grain from sun and air,
From earth her goodly roots.
There let our banners droop and flow,
The stars uprise and fall;
Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow,
Let sighing breezes call.
Their names let hands of horn and tan
And rough-shod feet applaud,
Who died to make the slave a man,
And link with toil reward.
There let the common heart keep time
To such an anthem sung,
As never swelled on poet's rhyme,
Or thrilled on singer's tongue.
Song of our burden and relief
Of peace and long annoy;
The passion of our mighty grief
And our exceeding joy!
A song of praise to Him who filled
The harvests sown in tears,
And gave each field a double yield
To feed our battle-years!
A song of faith that trusts the end
To match the good begun,
Nor doubts the power of Love to blend
The hearts of men as one!
DOCTOR JOHNS
XXXVII
Meantime Reuben was gaining, month by month, in a knowledge of the world,—at least of such portion of it as came within the range of his vision in New York. He imagined it, indeed, a very large portion, and took airs upon himself in consequence. He thought with due commiseration of the humble people of Ashfield. He wonders how he could have tolerated so long their simple ways. The Eagle Tavern, with its creaking sign-board, does not loom so largely as it once did upon the horizon of his thought. That he should ever have trembled as a lad at walking up to the little corner bar, in company with Phil! And as for Nat Boody, whose stories he once listened to admiringly, what a scrubby personage he has become in his eye! Fighting-dogs, indeed! "Scamp" would be nothing to what he has seen a score of times in the city!
He has put Phil through some of the "sights": for that great lout of a country lad (as Reuben could not help counting him, though he liked his big, honest heart for all that) had found him out, when he came to New York to take ship for the West Indies.
"I say, Phil," Reuben had said, as he marched his old schoolmate up Broadway, "it's rather a touch beyond Ashfield, this, isn't it? How do you think Old Boody's tavern and sign-board would look along here?"
And Phil laughed, quietly.
"I should like to see old Deacon Tourtelot," continued Reuben, "with Huldy on his arm, sloping down Broadway. Wouldn't the old people stare?"
"I guess they would," Phil said, demurely.
"I wonder if they'd knock off at sundown Saturday night," continued Reuben, mockingly.
And his tone somehow hurt Phil, who had the memories of the old home—a very dear one to him—fresh upon him.
"And I suppose Miss Almiry keeps at her singing?"
"Yes," said Phil, straining a point in favor of his townswoman; "and I think she sings pretty well."
"Pretty well! By Jove, Phil, you should have been at the Old Park night before last; you would have heard what I call singing. It would have stirred up the old folks of Ashfield."
And Phil met it all very seriously. It seemed to him, in his honesty, that Reuben was wantonly cutting asunder all the ties that once bound him to the old home. It pained him, moreover, to think—as he did, with a good deal of restiveness—that his blessed mother, and Rose perhaps, and the old Squire, his father, were among the Ashfield people at whom Reuben sneered so glibly. And when he parted with him upon the dock,—for Reuben had gone down to see him off,—it was with a secret conviction that their old friendship had come to an end, and that thenceforth they two could have no sympathies in common.
But in this Phil was by no means wholly right. The talk of Reuben was, after all, but the ebullition of a city conceit,—a conceit which is apt to belong to all young men at some period of their novitiate in city life. He was mainly anxious to impress upon Phil the great gain which he had made in knowledge of the world in the last few years, and to astound him with the great difference between his present standpoint and the old one, when they were boys together on the benches of the Ashfield meeting-house. We never make such gains, or apparent gains, at any period of life, it is to be feared, without wishing to demonstrate their magnitude to the slow coaches we have left behind.
And on the very night after Reuben had parted from Phil, when he came late to his chamber, dazed with some new scene at the theatre, and his brain flighty with a cup too much, it may well have happened, that, in his fevered restlessness, as the clock near by chimed midnight, his thoughts ran back to that other chamber where once sweet sleep always greeted him,—to the overhanging boughs that rustled in the evening air at the window,—to the shaded street that stretched away between the silent houses,—to the song of the katydids, chattering their noisy chorus,—to the golden noons when light feet tripped along the village walks,—to the sunny smiles of Rose,—to the kindly entreaty of good Mrs. Elderkin,—and more faintly, yet more tenderly, than elsewhere, to a figure and face far remote, and so glorified by distance that they seem almost divine, a figure and a face that are somehow associated with the utterance of his first prayer,—and with the tender vision before him, he mumbles the same prayer and falls asleep with it upon his lip.
Only on his lip, however,—and the next day, when he steals a half-hour for a stroll upon Broadway with that dashing girl, Miss Sophie Bowrigg, (she is really a stylish creature,) he has very little thought of the dreamy sentiments of the night before, which seemed for the time to keep his wilder vagaries in subjection, and to kindle aspirations toward a better life. It is doubtful, even, if he did not indulge in an artful compliment or two to the dashing Miss Sophie, the point of which lay in a cleverly covered contrast of herself with the humdrum manners of the fair ones of Ashfield. Yet, to tell truth, he is not wholly untouched by certain little rallying, coquettish speeches of Miss Sophie in respect to Adèle, who, in her open, girl-like way, has very likely told the full story of Reuben's city attentions.
Reuben had, indeed, been piqued by the French girl's reception of his patronage, and he had been fairly carried off his feet in view of her easy adaptation to the ways of the city, and of her graceful carriage under all the toilet equipments which had been lavished upon her, under the advice of Mrs. Brindlock. A raw boy comes only by long aptitude into the freedom of a worldly manner; but a girl—most of all a French girl, in whom the instincts of her race are strong—leaps to such conquest in a day. Of course he had intimated to Adèle no wonder at the change; but he had thrust a stray glove of hers into his pocket, counting it only a gallant theft; and there had been days when he had drawn out that little relic of her visit from its hidden receptacle, and smoothed it upon his table, and pressed it, very likely, to his lips, in the same way in which youth of nineteen or twenty are used to treat such feminine tokens of grace.
It was a dainty glove, to be sure. It conjured up her presence in its most alluring aspect. The rustle of her silk, the glow of her cheek, the coyness of her touch, whenever she had dropped that delicate hand on his, came with the sight of it. He ventures, in a moment of gallant exuberance, to purchase a half-dozen of the same number, of very charming tints, (to his eye,) and sends them as a gift to Adèle, saying,—
"I found your stray glove we had a search for in the carriage, but did not tell of it. I hope these will fit."
"They fit nicely," said Adèle, writing back to him,—"so nicely, I may be tempted to throw another old glove of mine some time in your way."
Miss Eliza Johns was of course delighted with this attention of Reuben's, and made it the occasion of writing him a long letter, (and her letters were very rare, by reason of the elaboration she counted necessary,) in which she set forth the excellence of Adèle's character, her "propriety of speech," her "lady-like deportment," her "cheerful observance of duty," and her "eminent moral worth," in such terms as stripped all romance from Reuben's recollection of her, and made him more than half regret his gallant generosity.
The Doctor writes to him regularly once a fortnight; of which missives Reuben reads as regularly the last third, containing, as it does usually, a little home news or casual mention of Miss Rose Elderkin or of the family circle. The other two thirds, mainly expostulatory, he skips, only allowing his eye to glance over them, and catch such scattered admonitions as these:—"Be steadfast in the truth.... Let your light shine before men.... Be not tempted of the Devil; for if you resist him, he will flee from you.... The wisdom of this world is foolishness.... Trust not, my son, in any arm of flesh."
Ah, how much of such good advice had been twisted into tapers for the lighting of Reuben's cigars! Not because it was absolutely scorned; not because it was held in contempt, or its giver held in contempt; but because there was so much of it. If the old gentleman had been in any imminent bodily peril, it is certain that Reuben would have rushed far and wide to aid him. It is certain that he loved him; it is certain that he venerated him; and yet, and yet, (he said to himself,) "I do wish he would keep this solemn stuff for his sermons. Who cares to read it? Who cares to hear it, except on Sundays?"
Our good reader will exclaim,—A bad young man! And yet we think our good readers—nay, our best of readers—have shirked godly counsel over and over, with very much the same promptitude. We all grow so weary with the iteration of even the best of truths! we all love youth so much! we all love the world so much! we all trust to an arm of flesh so much!
Not for a moment did the Doctor believe that his recreant son pondered wisely and deeply these successive epistles of his. He knew him too well for that. But for him duty was always duty. "Here a little, and there a little." It would have pained the old gentleman grievously to know the full extent of the wickedness of his boy,—to have looked for a moment into the haunts to which he was beguiled by his companions of the city,—to have seen his flushed and swollen face after some of those revels to which Reuben was a party. But the good Doctor was too ignorant of the world to conceive, even, of larger latitude than an occasional cigar or a stolen sight at the orgies of the theatre. And when Mr. Brindlock wrote, as he took occasion to do about this period, regretting the extravagance of Reuben and the bad associations into which he had fallen, and urging the Doctor to impress upon him the advantages of regularity and of promptitude, and to warn him that a very advantageous business career which was opening upon him would be blighted by his present habits, the poor gentleman was fairly taken aback.
That even this worldly gentleman, Mr. Brindlock, should take exception to the courses of his son was a most startling fact. What admonition could the Doctor add to those which he had addressed to his poor son fortnightly for years past? Had he not warned him over and over that he was standing upon slippery places? Had he not unfolded the terrors of God's wrath upon sinners? Had he not set before him in "line upon line" the awful truth that his immortal career was at stake? And should he descend from this ground to plead with him upon the score of his short-lived worldly career? What were all business prospects, however they might wane, compared with that dreadful prospect which lies before him who refuseth godly counsel and hardeneth his heart? Was it not a fearful confirmation of Satan's reign upon earth, that peril to a temporal career should serve for warning against criminal excesses, when the soul's everlasting peril was urged vainly? The Doctor wrote to Reuben with even more than his usual unction. But he could not bring himself to warn his boy of the mere blight to his worldly career,—that was so small a matter! Yet he laid before him in graver terms than he had ever done before the weight of the judgment of an offended God, and the fearful retribution that would certainly overtake the ungodly. Reuben lighted his cigar with the letter, not unfeelingly, but indifferently, and ventured even upon a blasphemous joke with his companions.
"It ought to burn," he says, "There's plenty of brimstone in it!"
It would have crazed the minister of Ashfield to have heard the speech. In his agony of mind he went to consult Squire Elderkin, and laid before him the dire accounts he had heard.
"Ah, young men will be young men, Doctor. There's time for him to come out right yet. It's the blood of the old Major; it must have vent."
As the Doctor recalled what he counted his father's godless death, he shuddered. Presently he talked of summoning his boy home immediately.
"Well, Doctor," said the Squire, meditatively, "there are two sides to that matter. There are great temptations in the city, to be sure; but if God puts a man in the way of great temptations, I suppose He gives him strength to resist them. Isn't that good theology?"
The parson nodded assent.
"We can always resist, if we will, Squire," said he.
"Very good, Doctor. Suppose, now, you bring your boy home; he'll fret desperately under your long lectures, and with Miss Eliza, and perhaps run off into deviltries that will make him worse than those of the city. You must humor him a little, Doctor; touch his pride; there's a fine, frank spirit at the bottom; give him a good word now and then."
"I know no word so good as prayer," said the Doctor, gravely.
"That's very well, Doctor, very well. Mrs. Elderkin gives him help that way; and between you and me, Doctor, if any woman's prayers can call down blessings, I think that little woman's can,"—and the Squire's eyes fairly flashed with the dew that came into them.
"An estimable lady,—most estimable!" said the Doctor.
"Pray, if you will, Doctor; it's all right; and for my part, I'll drop him a line, telling him the town feels an ownership in him, and hopes he'll do us all credit. I think we can bring him out all right."
"Thank you,—thank you, Squire," said the Doctor, with an unusual warmth.
And he wrought fervently in prayer that night; may-be, too, the hearty invocation of that good woman, Mrs. Elderkin, joined with his in the Celestial Presence; and if the kindly letter of the Squire did not rank with the prayers, we may believe, without hardihood, that the recording angel took note of it, and gave credit on the account current of human charities.
XXXVIII
Mr. Brindlock had, may-be, exaggerated somewhat the story of Reuben's extravagances, but he was anxious that a word of caution should be dropped in his ear from some other lips than his own. The allowance from the Doctor, notwithstanding all the economies of Miss Eliza's frugal administration, would have been, indeed, somewhat narrow, and could by no means have kept Reuben upon his feet in the ambitious city-career upon which he had entered. But Mr. Brindlock had taken a great fancy to the lad, and, besides the stipend granted for his duties about the counting-room, had given him certain shares in a few private ventures which had resulted very prosperously,—so prosperously, indeed, that the prudent merchant had determined to hold the full knowledge of the success in reserve. The prospects of Reuben, however, he being the favorite nephew of a well-established merchant, were regarded by the most indifferent observers as extremely flattering; and Mr. Bowrigg was not disposed to look unfavorably upon the young man's occasional attentions to the dashing Sophie.
But the Brindlocks, though winking at a great deal which the Doctor would have counted grievous sin, still were uneasy at the lad's growing dissoluteness of habit. Would the prayers of the good people of Ashfield help him?
It was some time in the month of September, of the same autumn in which poor Adèle lay sick at the parsonage, that Reuben came in one night, at twelve or thereabout, to his home at the Brindlocks', (living at this time in the neighborhood of Washington Square,) with his head cruelly battered, and altogether in a very piteous plight. Mrs. Brindlock, terribly frightened,—in her woman's way,—was for summoning the Doctor at once; but Reuben pleaded against it; he had been in a row, that was all, and had caught a big knock or two. The truth was, he had been upon one of his frolics with his old boon companions; and it so happened that one had spoken sneeringly of the parson's son, in a way which to the fiery young fellow seemed to cast ridicule upon the old gentleman. And thereupon Reuben, though somewhat maudlin with wine, yet with the generous spirit not wholly quenched in him, had entered upon a glowing little speech in praise of the old gentleman and of his profession,—a speech which, if it were garnished with here and there an objectionable expletive, was very earnest and did him credit.
"Good for Reuben!" the party had cried out. "Get him a pulpit!"
"Hang me, if he wouldn't preach better now than the old man!" said one.
"And a deused sight livelier," said another.
"Hold your tongue, you blackguard!" burst out Reuben.
And from this the matter came very shortly to blows, in the course of which poor Reuben was severely punished, though he must have hit some hard blows, for he was wondrously active, and not a few boxing-lessons had gone to make up the tale of his city accomplishments.
Howbeit, he was housed now, in view of his black eye, for many days, and had ample time for reflection. In aid of this came a full sheet of serious expostulations from the Doctor, and that letter of advice which Squire Elderkin had promised, with a little warm-hearted postscript from good Mrs. Elderkin,—so unlike to the carefully modulated letters of Aunt Eliza! The Doctor's missive, very likely, did not impress him more than the scores that had gone before it; but there was a practical tact, and good-natured, common-sense homeliness, in the urgence of the Squire, which engaged all Reuben's attention; and the words of the good woman, his wife, were worth more than a sermon to him. "We all want," she writes, "to think well of you, Reuben; we do think well of you. Don't disappoint us. I can't think of the cheery, bright face, that for so many an evening shone amid our household, as anything but bright and cheery now. We all pray for your well-being and happiness, Reuben; and I do hope you have not forgotten to pray for it yourself."
And with the memory of the kindly woman which this letter called up came a pleasant vision of the winsome face of Rose, as she used to sit, with downcast eyes, beside her mother in the old house of Ashfield,—of Rose, as she used to lower upon him in their frolic, with those great hazel eyes sparkling with indignation. And if the vision did not quicken any lingering sentiment, it at the least gave a mellow tint to his thought,—a mellowness which even the hardness of Aunt Eliza could not wholly do away.
"I feel it my duty to write you, Reuben," she says, "and to inform you how very much we have all been shocked and astonished by the accounts which reach us of your continued indifference to religious duties, and your reckless extravagance. Let me implore you to be frugal and virtuous. If you learn to save now, the habit will be of very great service when you come to take your stand on the arena of life. I am aware that the temptations of a great city are almost innumerable; but I need hardly inform you that you will greatly consult your own interests and mitigate our harassment of feeling by practising a strict economy with your funds, and by attending regularly at church. You will excuse all errors in my writing, since I indite this by the sick-bed of Adèle."
Adèle, then, is sick; and upon that point alone in the Aunt's letter the thought of Reuben fastens. Adèle is sick! He knows where she must be lying,—in that little room at the parsonage looking out upon the orchard; there are white hangings to the bed; careful steps go up and down the stairway. There had never been much illness in the parson's home, indeed, but certain early awful days Reuben just remembers; there were white bed-curtains, (he recalls those,) and a face as white lying beneath; the nurse, too, lifting a warning finger at him with a low "hist!" the knocker tied over thickly with a great muffler of cloth, lest the sound might come into the chamber; and then, awful stillness. On a morning later, all the windows are suddenly thrown open, and strange men bring a red coffin into the house, which, after a day or two, goes out borne by different people, who tread uneasily and awkwardly under the weight, but very softly; and after this a weary, weary loneliness. All which drifting over the mind of Reuben, and stirring his sensibilities with a quick rush of vague, boyish griefs, induces a train of melancholy religious musings, which, if they do no good, can hardly, it would seem, work harm. Under their influence, indeed, (which lasted for several days,) he astonished his Aunt Mabel, on the next Sunday, by declaring his intention to attend church.
It is not the ponderous Dr. Mowry, fortunately or unfortunately, that he is called upon to listen to; but a younger man, of ripe age, indeed, but full of fervor and earnestness, and with a piercing magnetic quality of voice that electrifies from the beginning. And Reuben listens to his reading of the hymn,
"Return, O wanderer! now return!"
with parted lips, and with an exaltation of feeling that is wholly strange to him. With the prayer it seems to him that all the religious influences to which he has ever been subject are slowly and surely converging their forces upon his mind; and, rapt as he is in the preacher's utterance, there come to him shadowy recollections of some tender admonition addressed to him by dear womanly lips in boyhood, which now, on a sudden, flames into the semblance of a Divine summons. Then comes the sermon, from the text, "My son, give me thine heart." There is no repulsive formality, no array of logical presentment to arouse antagonism of thought, but only inglowing enthusiasm, that transfuses the Scriptural appeal, and illuminates it with winning illustration. Reuben sees that the evangelist feels in his inmost soul what he utters; the thrill of his voice and the touching earnestness of his manner declare it. It is as if our eager listener were, by every successive appeal, placed in full rapport with a great battery of religious emotions, and at every touch were growing into fuller and fuller entertainment of the truths which so fired and sublimed the speaker's utterance.
Do we use too gross a figure to represent what many people would call the influences of the Spirit? Heaven forgive us, if we do; but nothing can more definitely describe the seemingly electrical influences which were working upon the mind of Reuben, as he caught, ever and again, breaking through the torrent of the speaker's language, the tender, appealing refrain, "My son, give me thine heart!"
All thought of God the Avenger and of God the Judge, which had been so linked with most of his boyish instructions, seemed now to melt away in an aureole of golden light, through which he saw only God the Father! And the first prayer he ever learned comes to his mind with a grace and a meaning and a power that he never felt before.
"Whether we obey Him," (it is the preacher we quote,) "or distrust Him, or revile Him, or forget Him, or struggle to ignore Him, always, always He is our Father. And whatever we may do, however we may sin, however recreant we may be to early faith or early teaching, however unmoved by the voice of conscience,—which is smiting on your hearts, as it is on mine to-day,—whatever we are, or whatever we may be, yet, ever while life is in us, that great, serene voice of the All-Merciful is sounding in our ears, 'My son, give me thine heart!' Ay, the flowers repeat it in their bloom, the birds in their summer carol, the rejoicing brooks, and the seasons in their courses, all, all repeat it, 'My son, give me thine heart!'
"Oh, my hearers, this is real, this is true! It is our Father who says it; and we, unworthy ministers of His word and messengers to declare His beneficence, repeat it for Him, 'My son, give me thine heart!' Not to crush, not to spurn, not for a toy. The great God asks your hearts because He wishes your gratitude and your love. Do you believe He asks it? Yes, you do. Do you believe He asks it idly? No, you do not. What, then, does this appeal mean? It means, that God is love,—that you are His children,—straying, outcast, wretched, may-be, but still His children,—and by the abounding love which is in Him, He asks your love in return. Will you give it?"
And Reuben says to himself, yet almost audibly, "I will."
The sermon was altogether such a one as to act with prodigious force upon so emotional a nature as that of Reuben. Yet we dare say there were gray-haired men in the church, and sallow-faced young men, who nodded their heads wisely and coolly, as they went out, and said, "An eloquent sermon, quite; but not much argument in it." As if all men were to plod to heaven on the vertebræ of an inexorable logic, and not—God willing—to be rapt away thitherward by the clinging force of a glowing and confiding heart! Alas, how the intellect droops in its attempt to measure or comprehend the infinite! How the heart leaps and grows large in its reach toward the altitude of Boundless Love, if only it be buoyed with faith!
"Is this religion?" Reuben asked himself, as he went out of the church, with his pride all subdued. And the very atmosphere seemed to wear a new glory, and a new lien of brotherhood to tie him to every creature he met upon the thronged streets. All the time, too, was sounding in his ears (as if he had yielded full assent) the mellow and grateful cadence of the hymn,
"Return, O wanderer! now return!"
