Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866», страница 15
Instantly three female throats opened upon her with questions.
She looked them contemptuously in their faces, put the letter into her pocket, and, soon after, slipped away to her own room, and locked herself in while she read it. It ran thus:—
"Good Mistress Ryder,—I am alive yet, by the blessing; though somewhat battered; being now risen from a fever, wherein I lost my wits for a time. And, on coming to myself, I found them making of my shroud; whereby you shall learn how near I was to death. And all this I owe to that false, perjured woman that was my wife, and is your mistress.
"Know that I have donned russet, and doffed gentility; for I find a heavy heart's best cure is occupation. I have taken a wayside inn, and think of renting a small farm, which two things go well together. Now you are, of all those I know, most fitted to manage the inn, and I the farm. You were always my good friend; and, if you be so still, then I charge you most solemnly that you utter no word to any living soul about this letter; but meet me privately where we can talk fully of these matters; for I will not set foot in Hernshaw Castle. Moreover, she told me once 't was hers; and so be it. On Friday I shall lie at Stapleton, and the next day, by an easy journey, to the place where I once was so happy.
"So then at seven of the clock on Saturday evening, be the same wet or dry, prithee come to the gate of the grove unbeknown, and speak to
"Your faithful friendand most unhappy master,"Griffith Gaunt.
"Be secret as the grave. Would I were in it."
This letter set Caroline Ryder in a tumult. Griffith alive and well, and set against his wife, and coming to her for assistance!
After the first agitation, she read it again, and weighed every syllable. There was one book she had studied more than most of us,—the Heart. And she soon read Griffith's in this letter. It was no love-letter; he really intended business; but, weak in health and broken in spirit, and alone in the world, he naturally turned to one who had confessed an affection for him, and would therefore be true to his interests, and study his happiness.
The proposal was every way satisfactory to Mrs. Ryder. To be mistress of an inn, and have servants under her instead of being one herself. And then, if Griffith and she began as allies in business, she felt very sure she could make herself, first necessary to him, and then dear to him.
She was so elated she could hardly contain herself; and all her fellow-servants remarked that Mrs. Ryder had heard good news.
Saturday came, and never did hours seem to creep so slowly.
But at last the sun set, and the stars come out. There was no moon. Ryder opened the window and looked out; it was an admirable night for an assignation.
She washed her face again, put on her gray silk gown, and purple petticoat,—Mrs. Gaunt had given them to her,—and, at the last moment, went and made up her mistress's fire, and put out everything she thought could be wanted, and, five minutes after seven o'clock, tied a scarlet handkerchief over her head, and stepped out at the back door.
What with her coal-black hair, so streaked with red, her black eyes, flashing in the starlight, and her glowing cheeks, she looked bewitching.
And, thus armed for conquest, wily, yet impassioned, she stole out, with noiseless foot and beating heart, to her appointment with her imprudent master.
BAD SYMPTOMS
Mons. Alphonse Karr writes as follows in his Les Femmes:—"When I wish to become invisible, I have a certain rusty and napless old hat, which I put on as Prince Lutin in the fairy tale puts on his chaplet of roses; I join to this a certain coat very much out at elbows: eh bien! I become invisible! Nobody on the street sees me, nobody recognizes me, nobody speaks to me."
And yet I do not doubt that the majority of M. Karr's friends and acquaintances, as is the case with the friends and acquaintances of nearly every one else, are well-disposed, good-hearted, average persons, who would be heartily ashamed, if it could be brought home to them, of having given him the go-by under such circumstances. What, then, was the difficulty? In what consisted this change in the man's appearance, so signal that he trusted to it as a disguise? What was there in hat and coat thus to eclipse the whole personality of the man? There is a certain mystery in the philosophy of clothes too deep for me to fathom. The matter has been descanted upon before; the "Hávámal, or High Song of Odin," the Essays of Montaigne, the "Sartor" of Thomas Carlyle, all dwell with acuteness upon this topic; but they merely give instances, they do not interpret. I am continually meeting with things in my intercourse with the world which I cannot reconcile with any theories society professes to be governed by. How shall I explain them? How, for example, shall I interpret the following cases, occurring within my own experience and under my own observation?
I live in the country, and am a farmer. If I lived in the city and occupied myself with the vending of merchandise, I should, in busy times at least, now and then help my clerks to sell my own goods,—if I could,—make up the packages, mark them, and attend to having them delivered. Solomon Gunnybags himself has done as much, upon occasion, and society has praised Solomon Gunnybags for such a display of devotion to his business. But I am a farmer, not a merchant; and, though not able to handle the plough, I am not above my business. One day during the past summer, while my peach-orchard was in full bearing, my foreman, who attends market for me, fell sick. The peaches would not tarry in their ripening, the pears were soft and blushing as sweet sixteen as they lay upon their shelves, the cantelopes grew mellow upon their vines, the tomato-beds called loudly to be relieved, and the very beans were beginning to rattle in their pods for ripeness. I am not a good salesman, and I was very sorry my foreman could not help me out; but something must be done, so I made up a load of fruit and vegetables, took them to the city to market, and sold them. While I was busily occupied measuring peaches by the half and quarter peck, stolidly deaf to the objurgations of my neighbor huckster on my right, to whom some one had given bad money, and equally impervious to the blandishments of an Irish customer in front of me, who could not be persuaded I meant to require the price I had set upon my goods, my friend Mrs. Entresol came along, trailing her parasol with one gloved hand, with the other daintily lifting her skirts out of the dust and dirt. Bridget, following her, toiled under the burden of a basket of good things. Mrs. Entresol is an old acquaintance of mine, and I esteem her highly. Entresol has just obtained a partnership in the retail dry-goods house for which he has been a clerk during so many years; the firm is prosperous, and, if he continues to be as industrious and prudent as he has been, I do not doubt but my friend will in the course of time be able to retire from business with money enough to buy a farm. My pears seemed to please Mrs. Entresol; she approached my stall, looked at them, took one up. "What is the price of your—" she began to inquire, when, looking up, she recognized the vender of the coveted fruit. What in the world came over the woman? I give you my word that, instead of speaking to me in her usual way, and telling me how glad she was to see me, she started as if something had stung her; she stammered, she blushed, and stood there with the pear in her fingers, staring at me in the blankest way imaginable. I must confess a little of her confusion imparted itself to me. For a moment the thought entered my mind that I had, in selling my own pears and peaches, been guilty of some really criminal action, such as sheep-stealing, lying, or slandering, and it was not pleasant to be caught in the act. But only for a moment; then I replied, "Good morning, Mrs. Entresol"; and, stating the price, proceeded to wait upon another customer.
My highly business-like tone and manner rather added to my charming friend's confusion, but she rallied surprisingly, put out her little gloved hand to me, and exclaimed in the gayest voice: "Ah, you eccentric man! What will you do next? To think of you selling in the market, just like a huckster! You! I must tell Mrs. Belle Étoile of it. It is really one of the best jokes I know of! And how well you act your part, too,—just as if it came naturally to you," etc., etc.
Thus she ran on, laughing, and interfering with my sales, protesting all the while that I was the greatest original in all her circle of acquaintance. Of course it would have been idle for me to controvert her view of the matter, so I quietly left her to the enjoyment of such an excellent joke, and was rather glad when at last she went away. I could not help wondering, however, after she was gone, why it was she should think I joked in retailing the products of my farm, any more than Mr. Entresol in retailing the goods piled upon his shelves and counters. And why should one be "original" because he handles a peck-measure, while another is comme il faut in wielding a yardstick? Why did M. Karr's thread-bare coat and shocking bad hat fling such a cloud of dust in the eyes of passing friends, that they could not see him,
"Ne wot who that he ben?"
Now for another case. There is Tom Pinch's wife. Tom is an excellent person, in every respect, and so is his wife. I don't know any woman with a light purse and four children who manages better, or is possessed of more sterling qualities, than Mrs. Tom Pinch. She is industrious, amiable, intelligent; pious as father Æneas; in fact, the most devoted creature to preachers and sermons that ever worked for a fair. She would be very angry with you if you were to charge her with entertaining the doctrine of "justification by works," but I seriously incline to believe she imagines that seat of hers in that cushioned pew one of the mainstays to her hope of heaven. And yet, at this crisis, Mrs. Tom Pinch can't go to church! There is an insurmountable obstacle which keeps the poor little thing at home every Sunday, and renders her (comparatively) miserable the rest of the week. She takes a course of Jay's Sermons, to be sure, but she takes it disconsolately, and has serious fears of becoming a backslider. What is it closes the church door to her? Not her health, for that is excellent. It is not the baby, for her nurse, small as she is, is quite trustworthy. It is not any trouble about dinner, for nobody has a better cook than Mrs. Tom Pinch,—a paragon cook, in fact, who seems to have strayed down into her kitchen from that remote antiquity when servants were servants. No, none of these things keeps the pious wife at home. None of these things restrains her from taking that quiet walk up the aisle and occupying that seat in the corner of the pew, there to dismiss all thought of worldly care, and fit her good little soul for the pleasures of real worship, and that prayerful meditation and sweet communion with holy things that only such good little women know the blessings of;—none of these things at all. It is Mrs. Tom Pinch's bonnet that keeps her at home,—her last season's bonnet! Strike, but hear me, ladies, for the thing is simply so. Tom's practice is not larger than he can manage; Tom's family need quite all he can make to keep them; and he has not yet been able this season to let Mrs. Tom have the money required to provide a new fall bonnet. She will get it before long, of course, for Tom is a good provider, and he knows his wife to be economical. Still he cannot see—poor innocent that he is!—why his dear little woman cannot just as well go to church in her last fall's bonnet, which, to his purblind vision, is quite as good as new. What, Tom! don't you know the dear little woman has too much love for you, too much pride in you, to make a fright of herself, upon any consideration? Don't you know that, were your wife to venture to church in that hideous condition of which a last year's bonnet is the efficient and unmistakable symbol, Mrs. A., Mrs. B., Mrs. C., all the ladies of the church, in fact, would remark it at once,—would sit in judgment upon it like a quilt committee at an industrial fair, and would unanimously decide, either that you were a close-fisted brute to deny such a sweet little helpmeet the very necessaries of life, or that your legal practice was falling off so materially you could no longer support your family? O no, Tom, your wife must not venture out to church in her last season's bonnet! She is not without a certain sort of courage, to be sure; she has stood by death-beds without trembling; she has endured poverty and its privations, illness, the pains and perils of childbirth, and many another hardship, with a brave cheerfulness such as you can wonder at, and never dream of imitating; but there is a limit even to the boldest woman's daring; and, when it comes to the exposure and ridicule consequent upon defying the world in a last season's bonnet, that limit is reached.
I have one other case to recount, and, in my opinion, the most lamentable one of all. Were I to tell you the real name of my friend, Mrs. Belle Étoile, you would recognize one of the most favored daughters of America, as the newspapers phrase it. Rich, intelligent, highly cultivated, at the tip-top of the social ladder, esteemed by a wide circle of such friends as it is an honor to know, loving and beloved by her noble husband,—every one knows Mrs. Étoile by reputation at least. Happy in her pretty, well-behaved children, she is the polished reflection of all that is best and most refined in American society. She is, indeed, a noble woman, as pure and unsullied in the instincts of her heart, as she is bright and glowing in the display of her intellect. Her wit is brilliant; her mots are things to be remembered; her opinions upon art and life have at once a wide currency and a substantial value; and, more than all, her modest charities, of which none knows save herself, are as deep and as beneficent as those subterranean fountains which well up in a thousand places to refresh and gladden the earth. Nevertheless, and in spite of her genuine practical wisdom, her lofty idealism of thought, her profound contempt for all the weak shams and petty frivolities of life, Mrs. Belle Étoile is a slave! "They who submit to drink as another pleases, make themselves his slaves," says that Great Mogul of sentences, Dr. Johnson; and in this sense Mrs. Belle Étoile is a slave indeed. The fetters gall her, but she has not courage to shake them off. Her mistress is her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Colisle, a coarse, vulgar, half-bred woman, whose husband acquired a sudden wealth from contracts and petroleum speculations, and who has in consequence set herself up for a leader of ton. A certain downright persistence and energy of character, acquired, it may be, in bullying the kitchen-maids at the country tavern where she began life, a certain lavish expenditure of her husband's profits, the vulgar display and profusion at her numerous balls, and her free-handed patronage of modistes and shop-keepers, have secured to Mrs. Colisle a sort of Drummond-light position among the stars of fashion. She imports patterns, and they become the mode; her caterer invents dishes, and they are copied throughout the obeisant world. There are confections à la Colisle; the confectioners utter new editions of them. There is a Colisle head-dress, a Colisle pomade, a Colisle hat,—the world wears and uses them. Thus, Mrs. Colisle has set herself up as Mrs. Belle Étoile's rival; and that unfortunate lady, compelled by those noblesse-oblige principles which control the chivalry of fashion, takes up the unequal gage, and enters the lists against her. The result is, that Mrs. Belle Étoile has become the veriest slave in Christendom. Whatever the other woman's whims and extravagances, Mrs. Belle Étoile is their victim. Her taste revolts, but her pride of place compels obedience. She cannot yield, she will not follow; and so Mrs. Colisle, with diabolical ingenuity, constrains her to run a course that gives her no honor and pays her no compensation. She scorns Mrs. Colisle's ways, she loathes her fashions and her company, and—outbids her for them! It is a very unequal contest, of course. Defeat only inspires Mrs. Colisle with a more stubborn persistence. Victory cannot lessen the sad regrets of Mrs. Belle Étoile's soul for outraged instincts and insulted taste. It is an ill match,—a strife between greyhound and mastiff, a contest at heavy draught between a thoroughbred and a Flanders mare. Mrs. Étoile knows this as well as you and I can possibly know it. She is perfectly aware of her serfdom. She is poignantly conscious of the degrading character of her servitude, and that it is not possible to gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles; and yet she will continue to wage the unequal strife, to wear the unhandsome fetters, simply because she has not the courage to extricate herself from the false position into which the strategic arts of Fashion have inveigled her.
Now I do not intend to moralize. I have no purpose to frighten the reader prematurely off to the next page by unmasking a formidable battery of reflections and admonitions. I have merely instanced the above cases, three or four among a thousand of such as must have presented themselves to the attention of each one of us; and I adduce them simply as examples of what I call "bad symptoms" in any diagnosis of the state of the social frame. They indicate, in fact, a total absence of social courage in persons otherwise endowed with and illustrious for all the useful and ornamental virtues, and consequently they make it plain and palpable that society is in a condition of dangerous disease. Whether a remedy is practicable or not I will not venture to decide; but I can confidently assure our reformers, both men and women, that, if they can accomplish anything toward restoring its normal and healthy courage to society, they will benefit the human race much more signally than they could by making Arcadias out of a dozen or two Borrioboola-Ghas.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES
1. Croquet. By Captain Mayne Reid. Boston: James Redpath.
2. Handbook of Croquet. By Edmund Routledge. London: George Routledge and Sons.
3. The Game of Croquet; its Appointments and Laws. By R. Fellow. New York: Hurd and Houghton.
4. Croquet, as played by the Newport Croquet Club. By one of the Members. New York: Sheldon & Co.
The original tower of Babel having been for some time discontinued, and most of our local legislatures having adjourned, the nearest approach to a confusion of tongues is perhaps now to be found in an ordinary game of croquet. Out of eight youths and maidens caught for that performance at a picnic, four have usually learned the rules from four different manuals, and can agree on nothing; while the rest have never learned any rules at all, and cannot even distinctly agree to disagree. With tolerably firm wills and moderately shrill voices, it is possible for such a party to exhibit a very pretty war of words before even a single blow is struck. For supposing that there is an hour of daylight for the game, they can easily spend fifteen minutes in debating whether the starting-point should be taken a mallet's length from the stake, according to Reid, or only twelve inches, according to Routledge.
More than twenty manuals of croquet have been published in England, it is said, and some five or six in America. Of the four authorities named above, each has some representative value for American players. Mayne Reid was the pioneer, Routledge is the most compact and seductive, Fellow the most popular and the poorest, and "Newport" the newest and by far the best. And among them all it is possible to find authority for and against almost every possible procedure.
The first point of grave divergence is one that occurs at the very outset of the game. "Do you play with or without the roquet-croquet?" has now come to be the first point of mutual solicitude in a mixed party. It may not seem a momentous affair whether the privilege of striking one's own ball and the adversary's without holding the former beneath the foot, should be extended to all players or limited to the "rover"; but it makes an immense difference in both the duration and the difficulty of the game. By skilfully using this right, every player may change the position of every ball, during each tour of play. It is a formidable privilege, and accordingly Reid and "Newport" both forbid it to all but the "rover," and Routledge denies it even to him; while Fellow alone pleads for universal indulgence. It seems a pity to side with one poor authority against three good ones, but there is no doubt that the present tendency of the best players is to cultivate the roquet-croquet more and more; and after employing it, one is as unwilling to give it up, as a good billiard-player would be to revert from the cue to the mace. The very fact, however, that this privilege multiplies so enormously the advantages of skill is perhaps a good reason for avoiding it in a mixed party of novices and experts, where the object is rather to equalize abilities. It should also be avoided where the croquet-ground is small, as is apt to be the case in our community,—because in such narrow quarters a good player can often hit every other ball during each tour of play, even without this added advantage. If we played habitually on large, smooth lawns like those of England, the reasons for the general use of the roquet-croquet would be far stronger.
Another inconvenient discrepancy of the books relates to the different penalties imposed on "flinching," or allowing one's ball to slip from under one's foot, during the process of croquet. Here Routledge gives no general rule; Reid and "Newport" decree that, if a ball "flinches," its tour terminates, but its effects remain; while, according to Fellow, the ball which has suffered croquet is restored, but the tour continues,—the penalties being thus reversed. Here the sober judgment must side with the majority of authorities; for this reason, if for no other, that the first-named punishment is more readily enforced, and avoids the confusion and altercation which are often produced by taking up and replacing a ball.
Again, if a ball be accidentally stopped in its motion by a careless player or spectator, what shall be done? Fellow permits the striker either to leave the ball where the interruption left it, or to place it where he thinks it would have stopped, if unmolested. This again is a rule far less simple, and liable to produce far more wrangling, than the principle of the other authorities, which is that the ball should either be left where it lies, or be carried to the end of the arena.
These points are all among the commonest that can be raised, and it is very unfortunate that there should be no uniformity of rule, to meet contingencies so inevitable. When more difficult points come up for adjudication, the difficulty has thus far been less in the conflict of authorities than in their absence. Until the new American commentator appeared, there was no really scientific treatise on croquet to be had in our bookstores.
The so-called manual of the "Newport Croquet Club" is understood to proceed from a young gentleman whose mathematical attainments have won him honor both at Cambridge and at New Haven, and who now beguiles his banishment as Assistant Professor in the Naval Academy by writing on croquet in the spirit of Peirce. What President Hill has done for elementary geometry, "Newport" aims to do for croquet, making it severely simple, and, perhaps we might add, simply severe. And yet, admirable to relate, this is the smallest of all the manuals, and the cheapest, and the only one in which there is not so much as an allusion to ladies' ankles. All the others have a few pages of rules and a very immoderate quantity of slang; they are all liable to the charge of being silly; whereas the only possible charge to be brought against "Newport" is that he is too sensible. But for those who hold, with ourselves, that whatever is worth doing is worth doing sensibly, there is really no other manual. That is, this is the only one which really grapples with a difficult case, and deals with it as if heaven and earth depended on the adjudication.
It is possible that this scientific method sometimes makes its author too bold a lawgiver. The error of most of the books is in attempting too little and in doing that little ill. They are all written for beginners only. The error of "Newport" lies in too absolute an adherence to principles. His "theory of double points" is excellent, but his theory of "the right of declining" is an innovation all the more daring because it is so methodically put. The principle has long been familiar, though never perhaps quite settled, that where two distinct points were made by any stroke,—as, for instance, a bridge and a roquet,—the one or the other could be waived. The croquet, too, could always be waived. But to assert boldly that "a player may decline any point made by himself, and play precisely as if the point had not been made," is a thought radical enough to send a shudder along Pennsylvania Avenue. Under this ruling, a single player in a game of eight might spend a half-hour in running and rerunning a single bridge, with dog-in-the-mangerish pertinacity, waiting his opportunity to claim the most mischievous run as the valid one. It would produce endless misunderstandings and errors of memory. The only vexed case which it would help to decide is that in which a ball, in running the very last bridge, strikes another ball, and is yet forbidden to croquet, because it must continue its play from the starting-point. But even this would be better settled in almost any other way; and indeed this whole rule as to a return to the "spot" seems a rather arbitrary and meaningless thing.
The same adherence to theory takes the author quite beyond our depth, if not beyond his own, in another place. He says that a ball may hit another ball twice or more, during the same tour, between two steps on the round, and move it each time by concussion,—"but only one (not necessarily the first) contact is a valid roquet." (p. 34.) But how can a player obtain the right to make a second contact, under such circumstances, unless indeed the first was part of a ricochet, and was waived as such? And if the case intended was merely that of ricochet, it should have been more distinctly stated, for the right to waive ricochet was long since recognized by Reid (p. 40), though Routledge prohibits, and Fellow limits it.
Thus even the errors of "Newport" are of grave and weighty nature, such as statesmen and mathematicians may, without loss of dignity, commit. Is it that it is possible to go too deep into all sciences, even croquet? But how delightful to have at last a treatise which errs on that side, when its predecessors, like popular commentators on the Bible, have carefully avoided all the hard points, and only cleared up the easy ones!
Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Satirical, of the Civil War. Selected and Edited by Richard Grant White. New York: The American News Company.
We confess that our heart had at times misgiven us concerning the written and printed poetry of our recent war; but until Mr. White gave us the present volume, we did not know how strong a case could be made against it. The effect is perhaps not altogether intended, but it shows how bad his material was, and how little inspiration of any sort attended him in his work, when a literary gentleman of habits of research and of generally supposed critical taste makes a book so careless and slovenly as this.
We can well afford the space which the editor devotes to Mr. Lowell's noble poem, but we must admit that we can regard "The Present Crisis" as part of the poetry of the war only in the large sense in which we should also accept the Prophecies of Ezekiel and the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Many pious men beheld the war (after it came) foreshadowed in the poetry of the awful and exalted prophecies, and we wonder that Mr. White did not give us a few passages from those books. It is scarcely possible that he did not know "The Present Crisis" to have been written nearly a score of years ago; though he seems to have been altogether ignorant of "The Washers of the Shroud," a poem by the same author actually written after the war began, and uttering all that dread, suspense, and deep determination which the threatened Republic felt after the defeats in the autumn of 1861. As Mr. White advances with his poetical chronology of the war, he is likewise unconscious of "The Commemoration Ode," which indeed is so far above all other elegiac poems of the war, as perhaps to be out of his somewhat earth-bound range. Yet we cannot help blaming him a little for not looking higher: his book must for some time represent the feeling of the nation in war time, and we would fain have had his readers know how deep and exalted this sentiment really was, and how it could reach, if only once and in only one, an expression which we may challenge any literature to surpass. Of "The Biglow Papers," in which there is so much of the national hard-headed shrewdness, humor, and earnestness, we have but one, and that not the best.
As some compensation, however, Mr. White presents us with two humorous lyrics of his own, and makes us feel like men who, in the first moments of our financial disorder, parted with a good dollar, and received change in car-tickets and envelopes covering an ideal value in postage-stamps. It seems hard to complain of an editor who puts only two of his poems in a collection when he was master to put in twenty if he chose, and when in both cases he does his best to explain and relieve their intolerable brilliancy by foot-notes; yet, seeing that one of these productions is in literature what the "Yankee Notions" and the "Nick-Nax" caricatures of John Bull are in art, and seeing that the other is not in the least a parody of the Emersonian poetry it is supposed to burlesque, and is otherwise nothing at all, we cannot help crying out against them.
