CHAPTER II. MARGARET. —MR. EVELYN. —CHRIST.
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We would come nearer to Margaret; we have kept too
much aloof. What she denied to Mr. Anonymous, she
will grant to her readers, who, as a parent, have watched
about her from her babyhood,—a more intimate approximation.
And if Isabel spoke correctly when she said
Margaret could bear the truth, she can certainly bear to be
looked at, a distinction not mortifying to most young ladies.
She denied that she had a heart; has she any? If she has
none, unlike most young ladies, in another respect also she
differs from many of her sex and age—she can make good
butter, which she did this very morning, churning it in the
cool dawn, working it out, salting it, and depositing it in a
cellar which, if it possessed no other merit, boasted this at
least, that it was cold and free of flies. It has been intimated,
and may come up again for affirmation, that Margaret
was brought up on bread and cider and bean porridge.
This, however, must not be taken too literally. The facts
in the case are these, sometimes the family kept a cow, and
sometimes they did not. But to our purpose.
This morning, after churning and breakfast, she went
out to a favorite spot, a little below the house, on the
Delectable Way, lying in the shade of the eastern forest.
If Bull followed, it was rather from habit than necessity,
since she was wont to go where she listed, unattended,
relying chiefly upon a pair of pretty strong arms, and
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whatever defence against danger is to be found in not fearing
it. It is here, precisely in this morning retreat, that we
propose to take a look at her. The place she has chosen,
characterized chiefly by forest associations and aspect,
opens to the south, where are visible the Avernian hills,
and to the zenith, where is the everlasting sky. No sound,
save the solitary crowing of a cock in some distant farmyard
or the barking of a fox in the slumbering woods. Near her
indeed is a drowsy kind of music box, in a bed of yellow
brakes, inhabited by innumerable crickets and grasshoppers,
that keep up a perpetual lulling murmur. She holds in
her hand a book, or rather her arm lying on the ground the
book lies there too, closed on her fore-finger. The book,
we shall see, is an old one, so very old, its leathern back
has changed into a polished mahogany hue; it is in Latin,
and the title anglicized reads, “The Marrow of Theology,
by William Ames,” a Dutchman. Down the hill a little
ways, in a pasture of solemn rocks and gaudy elecampane,
are very contentedly feeding two red cows. Whether she
saw these or not she looked at them, and now her eye lifts
upwards. What we looking upwards see is a group of
clouds, massive and dense, with white tops, dark cavernous
sides, and broad bases deepening into a bluish leaden
color, having their summits disposed about a common
centre, and forming a circular avenue, at the end of which
lie boundless fields of fairest ultramarine. We can hardly
tell what she does see. Let us look at her eyes and see
what she seems to see.
We shall discover if we keep a good memory that those
organs have changed since her childhood. Then, her eyes
perceived with briskness and disposed of their objects with
ease. The external world made a rapid transit through
them, enlivened and graced her spirit, and returned; and
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since material substances are by this process transmuted
into moral emotions, and the nerves of the face are sympathetic
throughout, a beautiful flower for example, borne in
on the optic nerve, would come out an irradiation of joy
generously covering the countenance. Now, a world has
been created in her eyes; outward objects no longer pass
immediately through, but are caught and detained, as it
would seem, for inquisition. Some are seen to sink with a
sullen plunge into the dark waters of her soul; some she
seizes upon and throws out among the waste things of the
earth; others again get in by stealth, creep round upon her
nerves, come out and sit on her eye-winkers and lips and
play their old pranks of beauty and joy; anon some fair
large object, that she suffers to pass, floods her spirit and
drowns out every thing else; a full proportion of these
objects, it would appear, are assigned to the region of the
Anagogical. We cannot say she is “sicklied o'er with the
pale cast of thought,” yet her expression is subdued if it be
not positively sober, with a mixed aspect of fervid aspiration
and annoying uncertainty. The clouds have shifted
their places and forms, the cows quietly feed on, and she
betakes herself to reading. The click of a horse-foot on the
stones of the Delectable Way arouses her, the cows look
up, and so does she.
Strangers in Livingston frequently visited Indian's Head
for the sake of its fine scenery; they went to and fro
taking little notice of the inhabitants, and with extreme
consideration avoided laying upon them the slightest burden
of civility or attention; and Margaret, accustomed to these
transient manners, would have suffered the present to pass
as an ordinary instance, save that, with a stranger man on
horseback, she saw little Job Luce—little he was, though
older than when she first knew him—on the pommel of
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the saddle in the arms of the rider; and when they were
over against her in the road, Job caused the man to stop.
“That's it,” said Job, “that's the Pond.” “I don't see any
water,” replied the man, “nothing but a rock and a
woman.” “That's Margery,” reiterated the boy, “and
that is where she sits, and I find her there most always.”
“Is she the Pond?” asked the other. “She had always
rather be in the woods than in the house,” continued Job,
“she pricks flowers into her bonnet instead of ribbons, and
likes to hear the birds sing Sundays better than Zenas Joy,
the new chorister.”
Meanwhile Job, lowered from the horse, stood holding by
the snaffle, and insisting that the gentleman should likewise
dismount. His manifest anxiety brought Margaret also to
the spot. “That is Margery, do stop and see her—here,
Margery, is a billet from Isabel.”
“I overtook this little fellow on the way,” said the
stranger “and as he seemed but a sorry traveller, I thought
my horse could better do that office for him.”
“If you will stop, I guess she will go with you up the
Head, you have been so good to me,” said Job, with renewed
earnestness.
“I should be very glad to see you, Sir, if Job wishes me
to,” said Margaret. The young man left his horse among
the trees, and walked with Job and Margaret to the spot
occupied by the latter.
“Since you have been so fairly introduced,” said he, addressing
Margaret, “I ought to make myself known; Charles
Evelyn—Judge Morgridge is my uncle—perhaps you are
acquainted with his daughter Susan?”
“I am not,” replied Margaret, “but I have heard my
friend Isabel Weeks speak of her. This is Job Luce, one
among the very few friends of whom I can boast in the
village.”
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“He seems very much attached to you,” rejoined Mr.
Evelyn, “so feeble, to walk so far to see you. He said
there was some one at the Pond who knew almost every
thing and loved him very much.”
“I do love Job, poor boy, he has but few to love him,
and his love for me produces a cyanosis, as Mr. Elliman,
my old Master, says, whereby we do not see things clearly,
and so he thinks very highly of me, as I know I do of
him.”
“She knows Whippoorwill,” said Job, “and that is more
than the Parson does, if she don't go to Meeting.”
“I know nothing,” replied Margaret.
“Have you no home, no father or mother?” asked Mr.
Evelyn. “Do you live in these woods?”
“There is our house behind the trees yonder,” said Margaret;
“there are my father and mother; there is my
brother Chilion; I have books, a squirrel, and a boat; the
trees, the water, the birds all are mine, only I do not understand
all.”
“The Master,” interposed Job, “said she understood
Latin as well as Hancock Welles who has gone to
College.”
“Yes indeed,” rejoined Margaret, smiling, “I can say as
he did once, when pursuing me in the woods he was overtaken
by a bear, `Veni, vidi, victa sum.' I am lost in my
gains; every acquisition I make conquers me.”
“The vici,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “is a rare attainment.
It is easier to know than to be masters of our knowledge;—
I see from your book you are exploring an abstruse subject
through what some would regard an abstruse medium.
Theology is not always rendered plainer for being put in
plain English. Do you find it cleared up in Latin?”
“My teacher,” answered Margaret, “says Latin is the
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tongue of the learned; and so, most curiously, to convict me
for a fool as it would seem, he commends me to my studies
in it. I asked him some questions, and he gave me this
book, but not so much in the way of a reply, I ween, as a
repulse. I can construe the sentences, distinguish the
supine in u; but, the ideas—gramercy! I had as lief
encounter a troop of bull-beggars, or undertake to explain
the secrets of the nostrummonger that lives above us. I
am caught by my own fish, as brother Nimrod says, and
dragged into an element where I pant and flounder as any
strange creature would in ours.”
“Mammy says,” explained Job, “it is because Margery
is proud, has a natural heart, and won't bend her will
down, and so she lost the School. But she isn't proud to
me; she used to lead me home all the way from School.
Hester Penrose, the other Ma'am, never would touch me
or speak to me out of school; and when we were in, she
only spoke hard to me, and whipped me, because I caught
the grasshoppers that flew in and stopped to hear Whippoorwill—
I could hear it in the windows. She wouldn't
give me a ticket either, for all I got my lessons well.—
Arthur Morgridge said I got them better than he, and he
had a ticket.”
“Your mother, Job,” said Margaret, “and Deacon
Ramsdill don't agree; he applauds me for having a nateral
heart, as he calls it, and says he hopes my will never'll be
broke; he says a broken will is no better than a broken
back. But, of what we were speaking, Mr. Evelyn; are
you familiar with these ideas, these things, these what-nots?
Or are you, like all the rest, only a dainty, white handkerchief
sort of a traveller among the hills?”
“I have dabbled a little in a good many matters,” replied
the young gentleman, “and if there be any points that
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trouble you, more than as likely as not it will be found our
troubles are not dissimilar, only it sometimes results that
difficulties of this sort once fairly stated are dispelled; the
attempt to give them form annihilates them—they pass
away in the breath that pronounces them.”
“A fine prospect, indeed!” responded Margaret. “I
shall be able to discharge the Universe at a whiff! But
soberly, here is the source of all my perplexity, a quid and
a quis. The book, as you see, discusses without satisfying
the case. It is `Quid sit Deus,' or “Quis sit Deus,' what
is God, or, who is God. He, that is the Master, says I did
not put the question right at first, and nulla vestigia
retrorsum, I have been going wrong ever since. We have
quis'd and quid'd it together, till my brain whirls and my
mind aches. Who is God? I will ask. `Do you intend,'
he replies, `entity or form? If the first then you should
say, What is God; Who is not What, my child. Language
has its rules as well as that whereto it applies.
Informal language on formal subjects is altogether contrary
to logic.' Good Heavens! say I, I don't know which I
mean. `Then do not talk until you know what you are
talking about; let us finish this game of backgammon.'
To complete my distress he has given me this book! There
is one pretty thing in it, the little boy with a girlish face in
the frontispiece. He is holding up a big book before the
door of some temple. Would the book would remove, then
we could enter the mysterious place. Alack-a-day!
`Where there's a secret there must be something wrong,'
good Deacon Ramsdill says, and I believe it.”
“Look here,” said Mr. Evelyn, “Father Ames touches
fairly on these topics. `Quid sit Deus, nemo potest
perfecte definire,' what God is we cannot perfectly define;
but `Quis sit explicant,' who he is his attributes sufficiently
make known.”
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“Read another page,” said Margaret, `1 Tim. vi. 16,
Lucem habitans inaccessam,' &c. What is referred to there
seems very mystified indeed. The only Tim that I am
acquainted with is our neighbor's horse.”
“Don't speak so—you astonish me. That is language
addressed by the apostle Paul to a young man whose
name was Timothy. `God dwelleth in the light which no
man can approach unto.'”
“I did not intend any harm, I had no idea there was
any feeling in the matter. The Master and the Parson
are always bringing in some name, Aristotle, Moses, Scotus,
Paul, or somebody, whom they make responsible for what
they say, and commit themselves to nothing, laughing and
smoking in the mean time. They are both as `amfractuous'
as he says I am, and as `anagogical' as our little friend
Job.”
“I don't know what that is,” observed the boy, `but I
do know Whippoorwill, and that I shall die of it. But
Margery don't believe the Parson, and she won't read the
Bible.”
“My troth!” exclaimed the young man. “There are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
my philosophy, and more in Livingston than I had
imagined. Did you never read the Bible?”
“No,” replied Margaret. “The Master has endeavored
that I should never see one, and the first book he put into
my hand when I asked him about God was Tooke's Pantheon.
There was a great book marked Holy Bible on the
outside at Deacon Ramsdill's; there were some singular
pictures in it, and some singular reading, but not of a nature
to tempt me to look far into it. Only I remember
laughing outright when I came to something just like what
Pa calls his Bible, and the good Deacon took the book
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away. Pa's Bible is some leaves of a book hanging by a
string on the chimney, and consists of names beginning
with Adam and ending with Duke Magdiel, and he always
uses it, he says, when he christens his children. It is suspended,
also, you must know, directly over his rum bottle;
and he says he reads his Bible when he drinks his rum.
That is our Bible.”
“Mammy gave you a Testament once,” said Job.
“The Master took it away,” replied Margaret. “He
said I was not old enough to understand it, or something of
that sort.”
“She doesn't go to Meeting either,” added Job.
“Do you not indeed?” asked the young man.
“It is not quite true that I never go,” said Margaret.
“I have been to a Camp Meeting and at Parson Welles's
Meeting.”
“Only once,” said Job.
“I could hardly wish to go a second time. Every thing
was turned topsy-turvy; flowers became an abomination;
for walking the streets one was liable to be knocked down;
people had on gay dresses and sepulchral faces; no one
smiled; the very air of the Green grew thick and suffocating;
sin lurked in every spot, and I couldn't do any thing
but it was an abomination. I was glad to get out of it, and
escape to the Pond once more, and breathe in brightness
and love from our own skies. No, we never go here; Pa
was put in the stocks for hunting his cow one Sabbath,
and he swears we shall not go. I frighten you, Sir, and
you will have me put in Jail right off.”
“If I am frightened,” said the young man, “I can hear
all you have to say, and would much prefer you should not
interrupt yourself.”
“I was young then, and these are old impressions which
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have grown perhaps somewhat sour by keeping, and I
might not feel just so now. At the Camp Meeting—have
you ever been to one? Well, I need not recount that.
The Preacher I could never forgive, only he was so kind
to me when I was lost in the woods. That was the pink
of what the Master calls puppetry, a hornet's nest of harlequins,
saints bacchanatizing. When I told the Master
of some of my accidents on these holy occasions, for in one
instance I liked to have been sent to jail, and in another,
to have been crushed to death, `Ne sutor ultra crepidam,'
said he, `you are a shoemaker's daughter; mind your own
business, and stay at home next time;' so I did. Nimrod
once took me to an ordination at Dunwich, where the
Leech, who contrives to be every where, accompanied us.
It was more like training-day than any thing else. The
town was full of people and soaking in rum. At the Church
I was wedged in an impassable drift, but managed somehow
to crawl out like a stream of water through their legs
and feet. The Widow found means to introduce herself
and me with her to the dining-hall. Such things were
enacted there as would not disgrace the bar-room at No. 4.
Pa, when he is drunk, has far better manners than those
sanctiloquent wigs exhibited. It was altogether the richest
specimen of `deific temulency' you ever beheld. The
side-boards were emptied half a dozen times, tobacco smoke
choked the air, and to finish the play one gray old Punch
with inimitable gravity said grace at the close. The exercises
of the day were rounded off by a ball in the evening,
and that was the best of the whole, save that the ministers
were not there to give the occasion the zest of their jokes
and laughter—I supposed at the time they were in a state
of aquacœlestification, and could not dance. But O! O!
O! Job, dear Job, I love you, Job! Why do I, a poorer
wretch, speak of these poor things?”
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This exclamation was followed by tears that fell drenchingly
and hot on the face of the boy whom she clasped in
her arms. Job turned up his mild blue eye to her and said,
“Margaret, Whippoorwill sings, and Job don't cry; I
swing over the brook when the boys tease me, and the
bubbles take away the pain; I hear a pewee in the woods,
Margaret, that sings when the Whippoorwill is gone. I
love you too, Margaret, and Job's love is good, the little
Mabel says. If there were no innocent hearts, there
would be no white roses, Isabel says.”
“There were two birds sat upon a stone,
Fa, la, la, la, lal, de,”—
Margaret began, saying, “Come, Job, sing too,” and they
both sung,—
“One flew away, and then there was one,
Fa, la, la, la, lal, de;
The other flew after, and then there was none,
Fa, la, la, la, lal, de;
And so the poor stone was left all alone,
Fa, la, la, la, lal, de.”
“Now, Job,” she said, “we will go and get comfrey root
for Chilion's drink, and burdock leaves for drafts to draw
out all pains. We shall detain the gentleman.”
“The detention is rather on my part,” said Mr. Evelyn.
“Yet I am truly unwilling to have you go.”
“I shall only offend you if I stay,” said she.
“I have learned,” he replied, “never to be offended with
any human being.”
“Then you are the strangest of all human beings,
though I agree with you, and find myself small place for
offence. Androides furentes create a sensation of the
ridiculous more than any thing else.”
“You seem,” continued he, “to be sincere, however mistaken;
and I am not a little interested in what you say.”
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“Are you sincere?” she asked. Are you not simulacrizing?
Yet I wrong you, Sir, I wrong myself. It confesses
itself within me, that you are in earnest.”
“That is Whippoorwill,” said Job.
“It is the voice of nature,” said the young man.
“I am not,” added Margaret, “so brook-like as I used
to be, when neither rock nor night, inundation or ultimate
disemboguement disturbed my little joyous babble. The
beauties and sweetnesses, the freedom and health that
surround me do not so perfectly satisfy me. I have not
much of the `acquiescentia cordis' of which Father Ames
speaks. My squirrel, Dick, has been rolling about in his
cage these many years, and is contented with it as ever.
I, forsooth, must explore the cupboard whence my food
comes, dig into the well-head whence my water flows,
anatomatize the hand that caresses me. There seems to be
something above the people in the village, something over
their heads, what they talk to, and seem to be visited by
occasionally, particularly Sundays, making them solemn
and stiff like a cold wind. Is it God! What is God?
Who is God? Heigh ho hum—let me not ask the question.
Is it Jupiter or Ammon? Is it a star? Or is it something
in the state of the weather? Going to Meeting
Sundays the Master calls a septenary ague, universal in
these countries. Yet the matter is deep and penetrating as
it is anagogical.”
Why do you not speak with the people,” said Mr. Evelyn,
“and discover the nature of their emotions and
thoughts?”
“My sooth! I had rather lie here on the grass and read
the Medulla, dig roots, card and spin, clean dye-tubs, pick
geese, or even go for rum—any thing, any thing. Vox
populi vox Dei, he says, but it must have a very strange
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voice. The hygeian gibberish of the Leech is not half so
bad; nor that stupendous word, honorificability, he used to
make me spell, half so unintelligible. It all runs of sins
and sinners, the fall and recovery, justification and election,
trinity and depravity, hell and damnation—they have an
idiosyncrasy of phrases, just as the Free Masons have, and
Tony, the Barber, and Joyce Dooly the Fortune-teller
have; then there are experiences and exercises, ah's and
oh's, sighs and laments, as if we were about to be burned
up—and indeed they say we are, at least our family; and
Pa laughs so about it all, and the Master while he seems
to join in with it, only turns it to ridicule. Isabel says she
is growing tired of it, though she is not apt to complain of
any thing, and has already been admonished against keeping
company with the wicked Indian, as they call me. She
says that those they call sinners are some of the best people
in the world, that theological distinctions do not conform to
any thing that exists in nature. The Master says that piety
is the art of concealing one's original character, and that
churchmen are those who have attained the greatest
proficiency in that art. But let me hear what you would
say. I have `polylogized' quite long enough. Are you a
student for the `sacred ministry,' a class of young men in
whose behalf the Dutchman says he has prepared his
Marrow!”
“I am not. But the subjects to which you refer possess
a value that engages all professions and all minds. I have
a Bible in my pocket, or a part of one.”
“What! Are you bibbleous too?”
“Bibliopalous, you mean.”
“No, bibbleous. When one comes to our house with a
flask of Old Holland, or a bottle of rum, we say he is
bibbleous, and has a Bible in his pocket. Pardon me. I
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am unbridled as the winds. You seem to be drawing upon
me, and I give way here within, till every, the most transient,
feeling escapes.”
“I know what it is to become the sport of impulses, and
will not condemn you for that.”
“Speak, Sir, and I will listen quietly. I can trim
myself to patience when it is necessary.”
“You have heard of the Savior of the world, Jesus
Christ?”
“Till I am sick of the name. It sounds mawkish in my
ears.”
“You do shock me now,” said Mr. Evelyn with some
feeling. “You cause me grief and astonishment.”
“I pray your mercy, Sir! What have I done? Your
look frightens me.”
“That you should speak so of Him who to my soul is
most precious.”
“I am sorry to have distressed you.”
“You have distressed one who is dearer to me than my
own life.”
“Speak that name again.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What, my own Beautiful One? Christ—yes—that is
his name. I had almost forgotten it. I have thought only
of him. The name is associated with whatever is distasteful
in the world. It is Christ, Jesus Christ. Is he not
beautiful?”
“He is described as fairer than the sons of men.”
“And you, Sir, know him and love him, and your innermost
sense is alive to him? You are the first one who
ever showed a deep natural sensibility to that One. I have
distressed you and him through you, and myself in him!
Therein lies my closet garnered being.” Saying this
Margaret turned her face away.
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“It is Whippoorwill,” said Job to Mr. Evelyn. “Don't
speak now.”
That gentleman waiting a while in silence, was obliged,
by direct enforcement, to renew the conversation.
“Tell me,” said he, “what is the meaning of this? Here
is a greater mystery to me than all this strange world can
offer to you. By what secret affinities are you bound to
him who is my life? How have you come to know him
in this heart-felt manner? Like Nathaniel has he seen
you under the fig-tree?”
“No,” said Margaret, turning herself, and speaking with
composure, “it was under those trees yonder in what we
call Diana's Walk.”
“What, that you literally saw him?”
“It was a dream. He, the Beautiful One, called Christ,
filled one of the dreams of my childhood. He spoke to
me, he took my hand, he kissed me, he blessed me.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It was some years ago. Its remembrance fades, then
brightens again. Sometimes it bubbles up within me like
a spring, sometimes it spreads away into a deep calm
surface like the Pond. It haunts me like a summer cloud.
In my sensibilities it lies and stirs me up to weeping.
Forgive me a thousand times that I should have been so
wanton. When you spoke of him in such a way, I was
suddenly flooded with emotion such as I cannot describe.
Isabel and Job know of it, but they do not precisely answer
to my feelings. Indeed at the moment you come up I was
endeavoring to form out of the clouds some likeness to
what I had seen, the One himself, the Cross, the Dove; I
gazed into the heights of the blue sky for some apparition.
I beguile the uncertainties of my thought by the creations
of my fancy. But that comes not, and the clouds veil
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over those infinite distances. He said if I loved, I should
know. I do love, how little I know!”
“But do, if it pleases you, give me the particulars of
your dream.”
Margaret repeated what is already in the possession of
the reader, and recounted parts of other dreams. “But,”
said she, as the conversation went on, “I thought this was
for myself alone. It has been kept in my own life. Is he,
Christ, great, is he general? You, Sir, seem to know and
to feel him, though you say you have had no dreams. He
has been a strange beautiful flower in my garden, and so he
exists in yours. What do these things mean?”
“Your question raises,” said he, “a long train of reflection.
Let us be seated, and we will go over the matter with
that care which it deserves.”
“No, indeed,” replied Margaret, “I would not trouble
you to that extent now. Job promised that I would go on
the Head with you, it is time to start—I must be at home,
and help about the dinner.”
“Where is the cake for Egeria?” said Job.
“I guess she will have to be content with the grasshopper
music, or she may lie down in the shade as the cows
do,” answered Margaret. “I did not tell you, Sir,” she
added, “that this spot is consecrated to the nymph whom
the old Roman was wont to visit, and when we go away we
sometimes leave a cake or piece of bread both as an oblation
and for her dinner, and will you believe it, Sir, when
I return, it is all gone.”
They proceeded towards the eminence called the Head.
Seeing Chilion moving leisurely in the direction of the
water, Job importuned to go and sail with him, and Margaret
with Mr. Evelyn went up the hill.
“How very beautiful this is!” said the young gentleman,
“there, here, and every where.”
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“Look down into this water,” said Margaret, standing
on the rock that overhung the Pond, “if your brain is
steady enough. This the Master calls Exclamation Point.
I have wished to drop into that splendid cloud-flowing
nadir, and if I am missing one of these days you will know
where to find me. You are sober—well, look off into the
mountains yonder. That is Umkiddin. You will not
blame a passion I cherish for climbing that sunny height,
and laying hand and heart in the downy blue.”
“No, I could not. But see that point of rock around
which the water bends, with a great tree overshadowing
the distance. So I admire a river, not so much in its expanse
and full tide as in the turns and angles, where it
loses itself within green shores and sinks away under the
shade of cliff and forest.”
“`Loses itself'!” replied Margaret, repeating the word
with some emphasis. “There you have it again. Lost, gone,
vanishing, unreachable, inappropriable, anagogical!—I used
to sit here in my merry childhood and think all was mine,
the earth and the sky. I ate my bread and cider, and fed
the ants and flies. Through me innumerable things went
forth; the loons whooped me in the water, in my breath
the midges sported, the sun went down at my bidding, and
my jocund heart kindled the twilight. It now flies away
like a bird, and I cannot get near enough to put any salt
on its tail. Then I owned so much my losses were of no
account, and though I could not reach the bottom of the
Pond, I saw the heavens in it, and myself sailing above
them. In the darkest night, with our red tartarean links,
Chilion and I have rowed across the Pond, and sniggled
for eels, and so we conquered the secrets of those depths.
I have cried too in my day, I have an unkind brother and
a profligate father, and what with the wretchedness of those
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I love and their wickedness, my own heart has been duly
tortured, and these swollen veins have been bled with weeping;
but I seem also to have lost the power of tears.
Those, like the days of good Queen Bess, are gone, and
how shall they be recovered?”
“Have you no faith?” asked Mr. Evelyn.
“`Faith'! That sanctiloquent word! That is what the
Widow Luce dins me with.”
“Faith, trust, confidence, repose, seeing the invisible,
relying upon the spiritual, having an inner impersonal inhabitancy.
In that alone I am happy and sustained.
Would you were thus happy.”
“I wish I were.—But faint heart never won fair lady.
I do not quite give over—I am happy, none more. So in
the same moment that I am worried I am at rest. How is
this? What many-colored streams flow through us, blood-red,
and woolly-white! Are we divided off like sheep? has
each feeling its fold? Through our skies sail two sets of
clouds, one to the North, one to the South? Even now
while I speak all I feel, there is more in me than I can
ever speak. What harmony circumscribes the whole? In
what are pain and pleasure one? I will not ask you;
I am happy; greater simpleton that I am if I were not.
Much I have lost, much remains, more comes. My dreams
have a place within me; and all the books I have read.
My home is every year more beautiful, the trees more
suggestive, the birds more musical, the bees more knowing.
Roots grow in new ways every summer, and snow falls in
new forms every winter. There is more in churning than
most people think of. Time is regenerative, and new
births occur every hour. The gritty Earth, alumen and
silex, spring up in what is beautiful as thought. I have
also many and improving visitations, and much select
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company. I told you of Egeria; then there is Diana's
Walk in the woods, and close upon the edge of the water
you see some graceful white birches; those are the Nine
Muses. Brother Chilion is our Apollo. In the house we
have St. Crispin for the shoemaker. Brother Hash, the
Master calls Priapus; the Leech we call Dea Salus, and
the road to her house has received from the Master the
name of Via Salutaris. Religion he says is an anagogical
parenthesis, because it must be spoken in a lower tone of
voice. No. 4 I called Avernus, and the road to it Descensus
Averni, but coming up, he would have it that it was
the Delectable Way. The Head is called Mons Bacchi,
but our cistern I call Temperance. The Hours dance
round me in snowflakes, Naiads and Dryads inhabit our
woods and water; in one of my haunts I can show you the
Three Graces. That island with a large elm in the centre
is Feronia's, where I often go. The Head I told you the
Master called Bacchus's Hill, and sometimes our whole
region goes by that name, and the Pond he says he has no
doubt is the reappearance of the river Helicon into which
some fabled Orpheus was changed, and whose waters were
a long time hidden under ground: so we sometimes call
our place the Lake of Orpheus. To which divinity we
are on the whole consecrated, I hardly know; but for my
part, I prefer the musical, to the tippling god. Then the
fair lady of my dreams sometimes comes to me with her
pale beautiful face. I have also one at the Widow's, but
whether she be a phantom or a reality I know not, a girl
like myself, also pale, sad and beautiful, whose smile is an
enchantment, even if I know not her hidden self. Am I
not happy?”
“It may be so,” answered he, “but in a manner different
from the `world.'”
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“Another word that I do not understand! What mean
you by the `world'?”
“People about you, men and women in general.”
“If you mean the villagers, the No. 4's, Breaknecks and
Snakehills, I know I differ some from them. They drink
rum, and I do not; they are unkind one with another,
which for the life of me I never could be. Their Anagogics
indeed I wholly fail to comprehend, their Meetings,
Catechizing, Freemasonry, Trainings, Politics, Courts, Jails,
and all that.”
“Your religion is so different from theirs.”
“Bless me, I have no religion; and Bull defend me
from theirs! Albeit, as Deacon Ramsdill says, we must
eat a peck of dirt before we die, and perhaps I must make
mine out in their religion!—I have offended you; it is just
as I told you I should do, if you talked with me.”
“I repeat, that you cannot offend me, only you must
allow what vou say to make me somewhat thoughtful. You
said you wanted to clamber up the blue mountain yonder,
and are ready even to leave your pretty Pantheon for
that acquisition. That is religion, even if you had not
thought it.”
“No, never would I leave my `pretty Pantheon,' as you
call it. But I should like to thrust my fingers between
those two blues, that of the hill and of the sky. There
Christ has come to me; in celestial skyey softness has that
vision appeared. No one like the Beautiful One has ever
visited my dreams, my thoughts, my aspirations; and I
have nothing about me I dare call Christ. There is sometimes
a cloud that stretches from Umkiddin to the moon
when it rises, like a turkey's tail-feather—whence comes it?
to what serene eternal bird does it belong? is it part of the
wing of Christ under whose shadow I may lie? is it the
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trail of the beautiful goddess, Venus?—I know not. No,
I cannot leave my Pantheon, and I long for what I have
not; and that is religion, you say. Your definition differs
somewhat from my tutor's, and by it, I am quite religious!
ha, ha! Prithee, tell me, Sir, who are you? Are not you
`the world'?”
“A sorry part of it, I fear; yet removed enough from it
neither to drink rum nor disturb the peace of others. I do
keep the Sabbath and go to Church; I do not say the
Creed, or belong to any train-band. Most people, I confess,
are degraded by their piety; I do believe there is a worship
that purifies and ennobles.”
“You confound and delight me both. I know not what
to say. The horn is blowing for dinner, and I am glad
something befalls to put an end to the perplexity, Won't
you stay and have your dinner with us? I will introduce
you to my home and spinning-wheel.”
“I am engaged at the Village.—May I have the pleasure
of seeing you again, Miss Hart?”
“Miss Hart!”
“That is your name, I believe.”
“Yes—only I was never called so before, and it sounds
strange. If I do not give you more pain than pleasure,
you are welcome to see me when I am to be seen. I have
a good deal to do. Can you break flax?”
“I fear I should bungle at it.”
“Then I fear Ma would not like you. If you could help
me get thistle-down, or rake hay, I should be glad to see
you. I would not pain a toad, I hope I shall not you.—
Where is the Bible you spoke of, if it does not make me
laugh to ask you?”
“You shall have it if you will promise me not to laugh
when you read it.”
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“I never made a promise in my life; only I will try.”
“It is not the whole Bible; it is the New Testament, so
called. I hope it will please you.”
“I don't know. `A clouted shoe hath oft-times craft in
it,' Deacon Ramsdill says, and there may be some good in
the Bible.”
“We have had fine luck,” said Job, meeting them from
the boat, as they descended the hill. “Six white perch,
eel-pouts, and shiners a plenty.”
“Carry them all to your mother,” replied Margaret, “and
mind you give Whippoorwill a taste. There is my Apollo,
not so fair, perchance, as his namesake, but he is as good.
He is lame, you see, withal, and in that resembles his prototype;
and this stone of my heart becomes melodious
when he plays. Mr. Evelyn, Chilion.”
“How do you do, Sir?”
“Quite well, at your services, Sir,” replied Chilion.
“What springal is that has kept you from helping me?”
said Brown Moll, coming to the window with a tray full of
hot potatoes, as Mr. Evelyn and Job turned down the road.
“A fox after the goslin, hey?” said Hash, who, with his
father, arrived at the same moment. “I saw you on the
Head.”
“I guess he has lain out over night,” said Pluck. “He
looks soft and glossy as your Mammy's flax of a frosty
morning. Now don't take pet, Molly dear.”
“She swells like a soaked pea,” added the old woman
“What's the matter, hussy? I should think he had been
rubbing your face with elm leaves.”
“Never mind, Molly,” interposed her father. “Better
play at small game than stand out. You are the spider
of the woods. Spin a strong web; you are sure to catch
something.”
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“She looks as if she had been spun, colored and hung
out to dry,” said her mother.
“By time!” exclaimed Hash, “I smell potatoes. Give
us some dinner.”
“Speaking of spinning,” said Pluck, when the others
were gone in, “you know how to use the wheelpin—keep
the thread taught and easy in your fingers, mind the spindle,
then buzz away like Duke Jehu;—only if he is a dum
spot of a lawyer or a priest, weave him into a breeches-piece,
and I'll wear him, I be blown if I don't; and when he is
past mending, I'll hang him up for a scarecrow, blast
him!”
After dinner, Margaret took her boat and went to the
Island called Feronia's, remarkable for its great elm. She
threw herself on a bed of mosses under the shade of the
tree. “Patience, Silence, Feronia, Venus, O Mother
God! help thy child!” she said, or ejaculated with herself.
“I, Icarus, with waxen wings, am melted by the light into
which I fly! I, Euridice, am in hell! my Orpheus bore
me out a little ways, left me, and I am caught back again!
How cold I grow! Let me lie in the sun. Dear clouds,
sweet clouds! let me shine and be dissolved with you!
O Christ!—Relent, thou iron soul of the skies, and speak
to me!—My little boat, where is the glad bird-child you
used to carry? Still the same, the oar, the seat; the water
the same, rocks, woods; waves sing their eternal lullaby,
boxberries keep their unchanging red, shadows embrace
me as if my heart were free.—How I twattled, skurried!
`Miss Hart!' Miss Pan, Miss Bacchus, rather. Now I
grow hot again. Who, what am I? Quis, Quid! God
and I alike anagogical. Who or what is he? Let me get
it right this time. Who is Mr. Evelyn? His What is
what? What is his Who? The What! Lucem inaccessam,
light inapproachable. Rose, too, the same.—How
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kind his words, how gentle his voice, how mild his looks
how benign and forbearing in all things! And yet sanctiloquent,
and yet so different from others? What is `the
world'? Is he it? Is he like me? Why am I not it?
I will see how this matter looks in the water, let me quench
my hot limbs.”
Drifting along in her boat, she bent over the water,—
“Molly, dear,” said she, “is that you? Your face is red
and feverish. Go to the Widow's and get some balm tea.—
Can't you keep cool down there? The sun shines there
as well as here. Your hair wants combing, your dress is
disordered, Neptune's sea-dog's would be ashamed of you.”
She left her boat and clothes on the shore, and immersed
herself in the grateful water. She returned to the island;
she said, “I will lie down under the tree; sleep is better
than knowledge, a bed kinder than God, the shadows more
beautiful than Truth! Or, Mr. Evelyn, is rest given us
wherein we find ourselves and all things? Pardon me,
Sir.” She slept a long time, and awoke refreshed and
regulated, resolute but subdued; with an even hand and
quiet temperature she rowed homewards, and went about
such duties as domestic necessity or customary requisition
imposed.
In the evening she went to see Rose, and while she made
no mention of Mr. Anonymous, she found she had much to
say of Mr. Evelyn. Rose embraced her with a silent, nightlike
tranquility, and kissed her lips fervently, which was
nearly all the response she made. The sad girl shone out
if at all, like the moon through dark clouds, that are only
the darker for the brightness behind them. “death,” said
she, diverging into a train of thought seemingly suggested
by what Margaret related, “Death will soon end all. In
the grave we shall lie. and the beauty and strength of exstence
shall perish with us. I only ask, Margaret, that I
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may be buried side by side with you. The worm devours
alike the fairest visions and the most dismal forebodings;
decay shall feed sweetly upon your ruddiness and vigor,
your nobleness and benignity. A princely offering are we
to annihilation. I murmur not, I dread not; with the
serenity of angelic love I submit to the all-o'ersweeping
fate. In your arms to lie, with you to die, I smile as I
sink into the eternal rest. Yet live on, Margaret, while
you may; fill your golden cup, it will never be too late to
drink it, even if death seizes you in the act.”
END OF VOL. I.
