Kitabı oku: «Rose Clark», sayfa 17
CHAPTER LVII
Old Mrs. Bond had taken her station on the sunny side of her piazza. Mrs. Bond was no sentimentalist, as I have said before. She had never read a line of poetry in her life; but she had read her Bible, and she loved to watch the glorious sun go down, and think of the golden streets of the New Jerusalem, with its gates of pearl, and walls of jasper. Many a blessed vision from that sunset-seat had she seen with her spiritual eyes; and many a sealed passage in the Holy Book which lay upon her lap, had then, and there, and thus, been solved; and many a prayer had gone from thence swift-winged to heaven.
The Bible contains great and mighty truths which none of us may safely reject; but apart from this, no mind, how uncultivated soever, can be familiar with its glowing beauty and sublimity, without being unconsciously refined.
Oh! how many times, even to the God-forgetting, has the beauty of its imagery come home with a force and aptness which no uninspired pen, how gifted soever, could rival!
How vital and immovably lodged, though buried for years under the dust of worldliness, its wise and indisputable precepts!
How like a sun-flash they sometimes illume what else were forever mystery-shrouded!
And now the last tint of gold and crimson had faded out, and one bright star sparkled like a gem on the brow of the gray old mountain, behind which the sun had sank – bright as the Star of Bethlehem to Judea's gazing shepherds, and like them, Mrs. Bond knelt and worshiped.
Broad as the world was her Bible-creed: it embraced all nations, all colors, all sects. Whosoever did the will of God the same was her father, sister, and mother; and like the face of Moses when he came down from the mount, hers shone that evening with the reflected glory of heaven.
The traveler could not have told, as he stopped before that little brown house, and stepped on its homely piazza, why he raised his hat with such an involuntary deference to the unpretending form before him; why his simple "Good evening, madam," should have been so reverently spoken; but so it was; and the kind old lady's welcome to a seat by her frugal board was just as unaccountably to himself accepted.
The traveler was a tall, dark-browed man, with a face and form which must have been once pre-eminently attractive; but now, his fine dark eyes were sunken, as if grief, or sickness, perhaps both, had weighed heavily there; and his tall form seemed bent with weakness. All this his kind hostess noted, and her nicest cup of tea was prepared, and the wholesome loaf set before him, and a blessing craved over it, from lips which knew no fear of man, with Heaven in sight. Perhaps this touched a chord to which the stranger's heart vibrated, for his eyes grew moist with unshed tears, and his voice was tremulous when he addressed his hostess.
"Can you tell me, madam, how far it is to the nearest inn?"
"A weary way, sir – a matter of fifteen miles, and you so feeble. You are quite welcome to stay here, sir, till morning; and your horse will be well content in yonder pasture."
"You are very kind, madam," said the stranger, hesitatingly; then adding with a smile, "travelers who have preceded me on this road must have borne a good name."
"There is nothing here to tempt a thieving hand," said Mrs. Bond. "I seldom think at night of barring yonder door. Where one's trust is in an Almighty arm, there is little room for fear.
"I can remember when yonder broad oak was but a sapling. I was born and married here, sir; through that door my husband and child passed to their long home. My time can not be long; but while I stay, every stone and twig in this place is dear to me."
"With pleasant memories for company, one can not be lonesome," replied the stranger.
"No – and sad ones may be made pleasant, if one only knows how," and she laid her withered hand on the Bible.
As she did so a paper fluttered out from between its leaves. "Sometimes, though," said she, as she took it up, "one's faith is sorely tried.
"This now – this letter – it was from my child. I called her my child, and yet no blood of mine ever flowed in her veins; and she called me 'mother,' because my heart warmed to her; God knows she had sore need of it, poor lamb.
"An old woman like myself may speak plain words, sir. He who was her child's father left her to weep over it alone. It was heart-breaking to see the poor young thing try to bear up, try to believe that he whom her innocent heart trusted, would turn out worthy of its love; but sometimes she would quite break down with the grief; and when she grew fretful with it, I did not chide her, because I knew her heart was chafed and sore.
"Her's was such a lovely babe; so bright, and handsome, and winsome. She was good and loving too. She had not sinned. She had been deceived and wronged. So she could not bear the taunting word, sir; and when it came, unexpectedly to us, she fled away like a hunted deer, through yonder door, till her poor strength gave out, and then we found her and the babe just like dead.
"I brought her home, and nursed her along, and thought to keep her, and make it all easy for her; but her young heart pined for him– she fancied, poor child, she could find him, and the world so wide – and that he would lift her pure brow in the taunting world's face, and call her 'wife;' and so she fled away in the night, no one knew whither, and left me this letter, sir. My eyes are dim – but I have no need to read it, for the words come up to me by day and by night; read it yourself, sir – mayhap in your travels, you may hear of the poor young thing – I should so like to know of her, before I die.
"The light is but dim, sir," said the old lady, as the traveler took it in his hand, and held the letter between his face and Mrs. Bond's.
Yes – the light was dim, so were the traveler's eyes; he must have been sadly feeble too, for his hands trembled so that he could scarcely hold the letter.
"And you never heard from her, after this?" he asked, his eyes still riveted on the letter.
"Not a word, sir; it makes me so sad when I think of it; perhaps she may be dead."
"Perhaps so," answered the traveler, shuddering.
"May be you could make some inquiries, sir, if it would not trouble you, as you go along; her name was Rose, though she looked more like a lily when she left us, poor thing! Rose – and her lover's name was Vincent; perhaps you may have heard of him."
"The name sounds familiar," said the stranger; "perhaps I shall be able to get some clew to it."
"Thank you," said Mrs. Bond, gratefully; "and now, sir, as I get up early I go to rest early; so, if you please, I will show you your room; it is very plain – but it is all the spare one I have. It was poor Rose's room;" and Mrs. Bond taking her candle, led the way to it.
"There," said she, setting the light down upon the table, "many a time when she stood at that little window, sir, she and the babe, people stopped here to ask who they were, they were both so handsome, and so different from our country folks.
"On that very little table she left her letter; it was a long time before I could come here and feel that it was all right she should suffer so, although I know that God's ways are just; but I shall know all about it when I get to heaven; perhaps it was only 'the narrow way' to take her there – who knows? I would rather be Rose than they who brought her here; and yet," said the mild old lady, hesitatingly, "perhaps they thought they did right, but riches make us take strange views of things; it takes grace to be a rich Christian. And when I feel displeased with Mrs. Howe's heartlessness, I say, money might have turned me aside too – who knows? Good-night, sir; heaven send you sweet sleep;" and Mrs. Bond went down into her small kitchen.
And it was here – in this very room, that Rose had wept, and suffered, and wrestled with her great sorrow! On that very pillow her aching head vainly sought rest; at that window she had sat thinking – thinking – till brain and heart grew sick, and God himself seemed to have forsaken her; and down that road she had fled, like a hunted deer, with slander's cruel arrow rankling in her quivering heart!
Not on that pillow could sleep woo our weary traveler.
At the little window he sat and saw the night-shadows deepen, and only the shivering trees, as the night-wind crept through them, made answer to his low moan,
"Rose! Rose!"
CHAPTER LVIII
"Dear Tom, —
"I am glad you are going abroad. You see I can be unselfish. How I wish I were going! Of course you mean to take notes on the way. For Heaven's sake, if you do, don't bore us with re-vamping the travelers' guide-book, like all your predecessors; don't prate stereotyped stupidities about Madonnas, and Venuses, and Gladiators, or go mad over a bit of Vesuvius lava, or wear Mont Blanc or the Rhine threadbare. Spare us also all egotistical descriptions of your dinners and breakfasts with foreign literary lions, and great lords and ladies. Strike out a new path, 'an thou lovest me, Hal, or I will write your book down with one dash of my puissant goose-quill.
"Mrs. John has gone to the dogs. Well, listen, and I will tell you. As John's allowance to her grew fitful, so did my attentions; a man can not live on air you know, or waste his time where it will not pay. Mrs. John pouted, and I whistled. Mrs. John coaxed, and I sulked. Mrs. John took to drinking, and I took French leave, making love to little Kate, who, I hear, has lately had a fortune left her. Well, I had quite lost sight of old Mrs. John for some months; I only knew that her husband was a hanger-on at Gripp's gambling-house, and, like all steady fellows when they break loose, was out-heroding Herod in every sort of dissipation, leaving Mrs. John to take care of herself.
"Well, the other night Harry and I – you remember Harry? that clever dog who always beat us at billiards – Harry and I were coming home about midnight, when we came across a policeman dragging off a woman, who was swearing at him like a privateersman. That was nothing to us, you know, or would not have been, had I not heard my name mentioned. I turned my head; the light from the gas-lamp fell full upon her bloated face, and, by Jove! if it was not old Mrs. John! her clothes half torn off her in the drunken scuffle, looking like the very witch of Endor. Wasn't it a joke? She died that night, at the station-house, of delirium tremens, shrieking for 'John,' and 'Rose,' and 'Finels,' and the deuce knows who. So we go. Have you seen the new danseuse, Felissitimi? If not, do so by all means when she comes to Baltimore. She will dance straight into your heart with her first pas. I'm off, like all the world, to see her.
"As ever, yours,"Finels."
CHAPTER LIX
"And here we are in Boston!" said Gertrude. "Find me any thing lovelier than this Common," she exclaimed, as she seated herself under the trees one sweet summer morning.
"See! Beyond Charles River the hills stretch away in the distance, while the fragrant breath of their woods and hay-fields come wafted on every passing breeze.
"And the Common! one might look till the eye grows weary through those long shady vistas, on whose smoothly-trodden paths the shifting sunlight scarce finds place, through the leafy roofs, to play.
"Look, Rose, at those lovely children gamboling on the velvet grass, fresher and sweeter than the clover-blossoms they hide in their bosoms.
"See! Up springs the fountain! like the out-gushing of Nature's full heart at its own sweet loveliness; leaping upward, then falling to earth again, only to rise with fresher beauty. No aristocratic 'park' key keeps out the poor man's child, for Bunker Hill lifts its granite finger of warning there in the distance, and the little plebeian's soiled fingers are as welcome to pluck the butter-cups as his more dainty little neighbor's.
"God be thanked for that!" said Gertrude. "I well remember one balmy summer morning in New York, when my gipsy feet carried me out over the pavements in search of a stray blade of grass or a fresh blossom. My new dress was an 'open sesame' to one of the 'locked parks' under the charge of an old gardener. Lovely flowers were there, odorous shrubs, and graceful trees. The children of the privileged few, daintily clad, played in its nicely-graveled, shady walks.
"It was beautiful; but outside, the poor man's child, hollow-eyed and sad, crouched that balmy morning on the heated pavement, pressing his pale face close against the iron rails, looking and longing, as only the children of poverty can look and long, into that forbidden Eden!
"It made my heart ache. I could not walk there. That little pale, sad face haunted me at every step. The very flowers were less sweet, the drooping trees less graceful, and the lovely green hedge seemed some tyrant jailor, within whose precincts my very breath grew thick; and so," said Gertrude, "I thank God for this 'Common' – free to all – yes, Common. I like the homely, democratic word.
"Not that there is no aristocracy in Boston," said she, laughing; "on the contrary, the Beacon-street millionaire, whose father might have made his débût three years ago as a tin peddler, looks down contemptuously on those who live outside this charmed locality. The Boston Unitarian never dreams of sharing the same heaven as the Boston Presbyterian, and this is the only platform on which he and the Boston Presbyterian meet! And 'High Church' and 'Low Church' are fenced off and labeled, with a touch-me-not precision, for which the 'Great Shepherd of the sheep' furnished no precedent.
"Still, Boston is a nice little place. One does not, as in New York, need to drive all the afternoon to get out into the country. Start for an afternoon drive in New York, you have your choice between the unmitigated gutter of its back streets, or a half hour's blockading of your wheels every fifteen minutes, in the more crowded thoroughfares. Add to this your detention at the ferry, blocked in by teams and carts, and forced to listen to their wrangling drivers, and you can compute, if you have an arithmetical turn, how much to subtract from the present, or prospective, enjoyment of the afternoon; which, by the way, the first evening star announces to be at an end, just as you arrive where a little light on a fine prospect would be highly desirable. This, to one whose preoccupied morning hours admit of no choice as to the time for riding, may, perhaps, without wresting the king's English, be called – tantalizing! But what drives are Boston drives! What green, winding lanes, what silver lakes, what lovely country-seats, what tasteful pleasure-grounds! And the carriages, so handsome, so comfortable; and the drivers so decent, respectable, and intelligent; so well-versed in the history of the city environs. Send for a chance carriage in New York, one hesitates to sit on its soiled cushions, dreads its dirty steps and wheels, and turns away disgusted from its loaferish driver, whiffing tobacco-smoke through the window in your face, and exchanging oaths with his comrade whom he is treating to a ride on the box. A handsome, cleanly public carriage, in New York, is as rare there, as a tastefully-dressed woman or a healthy-looking child.
"Then, Boston has its Sabbaths – its quiet, calm, blessed Sabbaths. No yelling milk-men or newsboys disturb its sacred stillness. Engines are not Sabbatically washed, and engine companies do not take that day to practice on tin horns; military companies do not play funereal Yankee Doodles; fruit-stalls do not offend your eye at street-corners, or open toy-shops in the back streets; but instead, long processions of families thread their way over the clean pavements to their respective churches, where the clergymen can preach three times a day without fainting away; where no poor servant-girl, whose morning hours are unavoidably occupied, finds, after a long walk there, her church closed in the afternoon, while her minister is at home taking his nap; where churches are not shut up in the summer months, while the minister luxuriates in the country at his ease."
"You are severe," said John; "ministers are but men; their health requires respites."
"I am not speaking of cases where a clergyman is really unable to labor," said Gertrude; "but that habit of closing churches whole months in the summer, strikes me most painfully. Death has all seasons for his own – sorrow casts her shadow regardless of summer's heat or winter's cold. I can not think it right that families should be left without some kind shepherd. Even then, with a substitute, every one knows there are sorrows, as well as joys, with which the most well-meaning stranger can not intermeddle.
"O, it is from the lips of one's own pastor the parting soul would fain hear the soul-cheering promise. His confiding ear that one would entreat for the tearful bed-side weepers! Verily those ministers have their reward, who, like their blessed Master, are 'not weary of well-doing.' It were worth some sacrifice of luxurious pleasure to ease one dying pang, to plume one broken wing for its eternal flight! It were sad to think the smallest and weakest lamb of the fold perished uncheered by the voice of its earthly shepherd. Ah! it was a life of self-denial that the 'Man of Sorrows' led."
"Quite a homily, Gertrude; you are evidently behind the progressive spirit of the times; when clergymen yacht and boat, and hunt and fish, and electioneer in the most layman-wise manner."
"I confess to conservatism on these points," said Gertrude; "I dislike a starched minister, as much as I dislike an undignified one. I dislike a stupid sermon, as much as I dislike a facetious or a ranting one; I dislike a pompous, solemn clergyman, as much as I dislike a jolly, story-telling, jovial one. A dignified, gentlemanly, courteous, consistent, genial clergyman, it were rare to find; though there are such, to whom, when I meet them, my very heart warms; to whom I would triumphantly point the carping unbeliever, who, because of the spots which defile too many a clerical cassock, sneers indiscriminately at the pulpit."
"Well – to change the subject, what have you to show Rose and me, here in Boston?" asked John.
"Use your eyes," said Gertrude; "do you not see that the gutters are inodorous; that the sidewalks are as clean as a parlor-floor; that the children are healthy, and sensibly dressed; that the gentlemen here do not smoke in public; that the intellectual, icicle women glide through the streets, all dressed after one pattern, with their mouths puckered up as if they were going to whistle; and that there is a general air of substantiality and well-to-do-ativeness pervading the place; a sort of touch-me-not, pharisaical atmosphere of 'stand-aside' propriety?
"Do you not see that slops are not thrown at your ankles from unexpected back doors, basements, or windows; that tenement-houses and palatial residences do not stand cheek by jowl; that Boston men are handsome, but provincial, and do you not know that the munificence of her rich men is proverbial.
"Yes, John, Boston is a nice little place; that its inhabitants go to church three times on Sunday, is a fixed fact, and that many of them discuss fashions going, and slander their neighbors coming back, is quite as fixed a fact. If I should advise her, it would be after this wise.
"Hop out of thy peck measure, oh Boston! and take at least a half bushel view of things, so shalt thou be weighed in the balance, and not be found wanting!
"And yet thou hast thy sweet Mount Auburn! and for that I will love thee. What place of sepulture can compare with it? Planted by Nature's own prodigal and tasteful hand, with giant oaks and cedars nesting myriad birds, now flitting through the sun-flecked branches, now pluming their wings from some moss-grown grave-stone, and soaring upward like the freed spirit, over whose mortal dust their sweetest requiem is sung.
"Beautiful Mount Auburn! beautiful when summer's warm breath distills spicy odors from thousand flowers, trembling with countless dewy diamonds; beautiful when the hushed whisper passes through its tall treetops, as weeping trains of mourners wind slowly with their dead beneath them.
"Beautiful at daybreak! when the sun gilds thy sacred temple; when the first wakeful bird trills out his matin song.
"Beautiful when evening's star creeps softly out, to light the homeless widow's footstep to the grave of him, whose strong arm lies stricken at her trembling feet.
"Beautiful when the radiant moon silvers lovingly some humble grave, monumentless but for the living statue – Grief!
"Beautiful, even when winter's pall softly descends over its sacred dust; when the tall pines, in their unchanging armor of green, stand firm, like some brave body-guard, while all around is fading, falling, dying; pointing silently upward, where there is no shadow of change.
"Beautiful Mount Auburn! beautiful even to the laughing eye which sorrow never dimmed; beautiful even to the bounding foot, which despair never paralyzed at the tomb's dark portal – but sacred to the rifled heart whose dearest treasures lay folded to thy fragrant bosom!"
