Chapter IX: Canto XXV (3)

He choked,--could not go on: he would have put half the strength and life in himself into Yarrow's lank little body that moment, if he could. There was a something else lost, different from all these, of which they both thought, but they did not speak of it. The convict looked out into the night. Beyond the square patch of window and that near dark, how full the world was of happy homes getting ready for Christmas! children and happy wives! Soulé understood.

"I don't say I can bring you back what you have lost, Stephen. I offer you the best I can. You're not an old man,--barely thirty: you must have years to acquire fresh bone and muscle. Set your brain to work, meanwhile. Give it a chance."

"It never had one," said the convict, with a queer, faint smile.

"Hillo! that looks like old times!" brightening up. "No, it never had. Do you think I forget our alley-house with its three rooms? the carpentering by day, and the arithmetic by night? the sweltering, sultry Sunday mornings in church, and the afternoons sniffling over the catechism among the rain-butts in the back-yard? Do you remember the preachers, the travelling agents, that put up with us? how they snarled at other churches, and helped themselves out of the shop, as if to be a man of God implied a mean beggar? I don't say my father was a hypocrite when he made you a colporteur, and so one of them; but"--

He paused. Even in this frothy-brained fellow, his religion or his doubt lay deeper than all. His face grew dark.

"I tell you, if there is one thing I loathe, it is the God and His day that were taught to me when I was a child: joyless, hard, cruel. Fire--humph!--and brimstone for all but a few hundred. I remember. Well, I don't know yet if there is any better," with a vague look. "A man shifts for himself in the next chance as well as now, I suppose. Did you believe what you preached, Stephen?" with an abrupt change. "God! how you used to writhe under it at first!"

"They forced me into it," said Yarrow. "I was only a boy. You remember that I was only a boy,--just out of the shop. The more uneducated a man was in our church-pulpit then, the better. _I_ knew nothing, John," appealingly. "When I preached about foreordination and hell-fire, it was in coarse slang: I knew that. I used to think there might be a different God and books and another life farther out in the world, if I could only get at it. I never was strong, and they had forced me into it; and when you came to me to help you with your plan, I wanted to get out, and"--

"You did help me,"--chafing the limp fingers. "That was my first start, that Pesson note. I owe that to you, Stephen."

"I have paid for it," looking him steadily in the eye, some unexpected manliness rising up, making his tone bitter and marrowy. "I paid for it. But no matter for that. But now you come again. I have had time to think over these things in yonder, John."

Soulé dropped his hand, drew back, and was silent a moment.

"Let it be so. But did you think what you would do, if you refused your aid to me? Have you found work? or a God to preach?"

Something in these last words took Yarrow's sudden strength away. He did not answer for a moment.

"Work?" feebly. "No,--I haven't heard of any work. As for a God"--

"Well, then, what are your purposes?" coldly.

Another silence.

"I don't know. I never was worth much," he gasped out at last, stooping, and pulling at his shoestrings.

"And now"--said Soulé.

"There's no need for you to say that!" with a sharp cry. "I don't forget that I have slipped,--that it's too late,--I don't forget."

His hands jerked at his coat-fronts in a wild, dazed way.

"Stephen!"

The woman rose, and let in the air.

"I thank you. I'm not sick."

Soulé turned away. He could not meet the look on the pinched convict-face,--the soul of the man crying out for God or his brother, something to help. There was a silence for a few moments.

"You will come with me, Stephen," quietly: then, after a pause, "It is for life. There is but little time left to decide."

Was there no help? Had the true God no messenger? The winter-wind blowing through the window filled with fine frost wet his face, lifted the smothering off his lungs. His eyes grew clear, as his full sense returned after a while: seeing only at first, it so happened, the fire in its square frame; and thinking only of that, as the mind always drowsily absorbs the nearest trifle after a spasm of pain. A bed of pale red coals now, furred over with white and pearl-colored ashes. It was a long time since he had seen any open fire,--years, he believed. Where was it that there had been a fire just like that, with the ashes like moss over the heat,--and on a night in winter, too, the wind rattling the panes? Where was it? While Soulé stood waiting for his answer, his mind was drifting back, like that of a man in his dotage, through its dull, muddy thoughts, after that one silly memory. He struck on it at last. A year or two after he was married. In the bedroom. Martha was sitting by the fire, with the old yellow dog beside her: she was trying to ride the baby on his neck,--he was the clumsiest brute! He came in and stopped to see the fun; he noticed the fire then, how cozy and warm it all was: outside it was hailing, a gust shaking the house. He had been doing a bit of carpentering,--he did like to go back to the old trade! This was a wicker chair for the baby,--he had made it in the stable for a surprise: the girl always liked surprises and such nonsense. He put it down with a flourish, and he remembered how she laughed, and Ready growled, and how he and she both got on their knees to seat the youngster in, and tie him with his bandanna handkerchief. So silly that all was! When they were on the floor there, and had Master Jem fastened in, be remembered how she suddenly turned, and put her arms about his neck, as shyly as when they were first married, and kissed him. "Only God knows how good you are to me, Stephen," she said. There were tears in her eyes.--Yarrow passed his hand over his forehead. Did ever a thought come into your mind like a fresh, clean air into a stove-heated, foul room? or like the first hearty, living call of Greatheart through the dungeons of Giant Despair?

"You do not answer me, Stephen?" said his brother. "You will go with me?"

Yarrow's head was more erect, his eyes less glazed.

"It may be. The chance for me's over in the world, I think. I may as well serve you. And yet"--

"What?"

"Give me time to think. I want out-of-doors. It's close here. I'll meet you in the morning."

Soulé caught his wife's uneasy glance.

"What is this, Stephen?"

"Nothing," looking dully out into the night.

"Then"--

"There's some you said were dead,"--as if no one were speaking, with the same dull look. "Or lost: I think they're not dead. If there might be a chance yet! If I could but see Martha and the little chaps, it would save me, John Yarrow, no matter what they'd learned to think of me. They're mine,--my little chaps. She said the boys should never know. She said that of her own free will."

"Is it likely she could keep her word?" said Soulé, sneeringly.

"Why, why, she loved me, John,"--a moist color and smile coming out on his face. "There's a little thing I minded just now that--Yes, Martha kept her word."

He tapped with his fingers thoughtfully on the mantel-shelf, the smile lingering yet on his face. The woman's woollen sewing fell from her hand, and she spoke for the first time. Her tone had a harsh, metallic twang in it: Yarrow turned curiously, as he heard it.

"What could they be to you, if you found them? They have forgotten you. In five years they have not sent you a message."

"No,--I know, Madam."

Even that did not hurt him. His face kindled slowly,--still turned to the fire, as if it were telling him some old story: looking to her at last, steadfast and manly, like a man who has healthy common-sense dominant in his head, and an unselfish love at work in his heart. Such a one is not far from the kingdom of heaven.

"It seems to me as if there might be a chance--yet. It's a long time. But Martha loved me, Madam. You don't know--I think I'll go, John. It's close here, 's I said. I'll meet you at the far bridge by dawn, and let you know."

"It is your only chance," said Soulé, roughly, as he followed him to the door.

He was a ruined man, if he were balked in this.

"You do not know how the world meets a returned felon, Stephen; you"--

"Let me go," feebly, putting his hand up to his chin in the old fashion.

"I think I know that. I--I've thought of that a good deal. But it seemed to me as if there might be a chance"; and so, without a word of farewell, went stumbling down the stairs.

He had given a wistful look at the fire, as he turned away. Perhaps that would comfort him. God surely has "many voices in the world, and none of them is without its signification."

An hour before dawn, Yarrow found the place in which he had appointed to meet his brother. The night had been dark, hailing at intervals; he had gone tramping up and down the hills and stubble-fields, through snow and half-frozen mud-gullies, hardly conscious of what he did. The night seemed long to him now, looking back. He found a burnt sycamore-stump and got up on it, shivered awhile, felt his shirt, which was wet to the skin, then took off his shoes and cleared the lumps of slush out of them. There was something horrible to him in this unbroken silence and dark and wet cold: he had been in his hot cell so long, the frost stung him differently from other men, the icy thaw was wetter. It was a narrow cut in the hills where he was, a bridle-road leading back and running zigzag for some miles until it returned to the railroad-track. A lonely, unfrequented place: Frazier would take this by-path; Soulé had chosen it well to meet him. There was a rickety bridge crossing a hill-stream a few rods beyond. Yarrow pushed the dripping cap off his forehead, and looked around. No light nor life on any side: even in the heavens yawned that breathless, uncolored silence that precedes a winter's dawn. He could see the Ohio through the gully: why, it used to be a broad, full-breasted river, glancing all over with light, loaded with steamers and rafts going down to the Mississippi. He had gone down once, rafting, with lumber, and a jolly three weeks' float they had of it. Now it was a solid, shapeless mass of blocks of ice and mud. Winter? yes, but the world was altered somehow, the very river seemed struck with death. His teeth chattered; he began to try to rub some warmth into his rheumatic legs and arms; tried to bring back the fancy of last night about Martha and the fire. But that was a long way off: there were all these years' mastering memories to fade it out, you know, and besides, a diseased habit of desponding. The world was wide to him, cowering out from a cell: where were Martha and the little chaps lost in it? John said they were dead. Where should he turn now? There was an aguish pain in his spine that blinded him: since yesterday he had eaten nothing,--he had no money to buy a meal; he was a felon,--who would give him work? "There's some things certain in the world," he muttered.

"That was silly last night,--silly. And yet,--if there could have been a chance!"

He looked up steadily into the sickly, discolored sky: nothing there but the fog from these swamps. He had not wished so much that he could hear of Martha and the children, when he looked up, as of something else that he needed more. Even the foulest and most careless soul that God ever made has some moments when it grows homesick, conscious of the awful vacuum below its life, the Eternal Arm not being there. Yarrow was neither foul nor careless. All his life, most in those years in the prison, he had been hungry for Something to rest on, to own him. Sometimes, when his evil behavior had seemed vilest to him, he had felt himself trembling on the verge of a great forgiveness. But he could see so little of the sky in the cell there,--only that three-cornered patch: he had a fancy, that, if once he were out in the world that He made,--in the free air,--that, if there were a God, he would find Him out. He had not found Him.

He sat on the stump awhile, his hands over his eyes, then got down slowly, buttoning his soggy waistcoat and coat.

"I don't see as there's a chance," he said, dully. "I was a fool to think there was any better God than the one that"--digging his toe into the frozen pools. "It's all ruled. I'm not one of the elect."

That was all. After that, he stood waiting for his brother.

"I'll help him. He's the best I know."

Even the faint sigh choked before it rose to his lips,--both manhood and hope were so dead with inanition; yet a life's failure went in it.

While he stood waiting, Martha Yarrow sat by her kitchen-fire crying to God to help him; but He knew what things were needed before she asked Him.

Soulé, with his gun and game-bag, had been coursing over the hills three miles back, since four o'clock. He had bagged a squirrel or two, enough to suffice for his morning's work, and now, his piece unloaded, came stealthily towards the place of rendezvous. He had little hope that Stephen would help him: he had made up his mind to go through the affair alone. If _he_ did it, that involved--Pah! what was in a word? Men died every day. He had quite resolved: Judith and he had talked the matter over all night. But if Frazier were a younger man, and could fight for it! Perhaps he was armed: Soulé's face flashed: he stooped and broke the trigger of his gun, and then went on with a much less heavy step. They would be more even now. He wanted to reach the bridge by dawn, and meet his brother. If he refused to help him, he would send him away, and wait for Frazier alone. About nine o'clock he might expect him.

Frazier, however, had changed his plan. He told Starr the night before, that, as M. Soulé would not breakfast with him, he had concluded to rise early, and be off by dawn. "If there's nothing to be done about the Miami shares, there is no use wasting time here," he thought. So, while Stephen Yarrow waited near the bridge, the smoke was curling out of the kitchen-chimney where the cook was making ready the cashier's beefsteak, and the old man was crawling out of bed. He could hear Starr's children in the room overhead making an uproar over their stockings. "Christmas morning, by the way! I must take some knick-knack back to Totty." (As if his trunk were not always filled with things for Totty, and his shirts crammed into the lid, when he came home!) "Something for mother, too," as he pulled on his socks. "Gloves, now, hey? A dozen pair. I wish I had asked Madame Soulé what size she wore, last night. Their hands are about the same size. Mother always had a tidy little paw. So will Totty, eh?" And so finished dressing, thinking Soulé had a neat little wife, but insipid.

So Christmas morning came to all of them, the day when, a long time ago, One who had made a good happy world came back to find and save that which was lost in it. In these few hundred years had He forgotten the way of finding?

Stephen Yarrow had fallen into an uneasy doze by the road-side. He had done with thinking, when he said, "I'll go with John." The way through life seemed to open clear, exactly the same as it had been before. There was an end of it. There might have been a chance, but there was none. He drowsed off into a brutish slumber. Something like a kiss woke him. It was only the morning air. A clear, sweet-breathed dawn, as we said, that seemed somehow to have caught a scent of far-off harvest-farms, in lands where it was not winter. Warm brown clouds yonder with a glow like wine in them, the splendor of the coming day hinting of itself through.

"I must have slept," said Yarrow, taking off his cap to shake it dry.

There were a thousand shining points on the dingy fur. He rubbed his heavy eyes and looked about him. The misty rime of the night had frozen on hills and woods and river,--frosted the whole earth in one glittering, delicate sheath. The first level bar of sunlight put into the nostrils of the dead world of the night before the breath of life. Once in a lifetime, maybe, the sight meets a man's eyes which Yarrow saw that morning. The very clear blue of the air thrilled with electric vigor; from the rounded rose-colored summits of the western hills to the tiniest ire-cased grass-spear at his feet, the land flashed back unnumbered soft and splendid dyes to heaven; the hemlock-forests near had grouped themselves into glittering temples, mosques, churches, whatever form in which men have tried to please God by worshipping Him; the smoke from the distant village floated up in a constant silver and violet vapor like an incense-breath. Neither was it a dead morning. The far-off tinkle of cowbells reached him now and then, the cheery crow from one farm-yard to another, even children's voices calling, and at last a slow, sweet chime of churchbells.

"They told me it was Christmas morning," he said, pulling off the old cap again.

Yarrow's chin had sunk on his breast, as his eager eyes drank all this morning in. He breathed short and quick, like a child before whom some incredible pleasure flashes open.

"Well," with a long breath, putting on his cap, "I didn't think of aught like this, yonder. God help us!"

He didn't know why he smiled or rubbed his hands cheerfully. His sleep had refreshed him, maybe. But it seemed as if the great beauty and tenderness of the world were for him, this morning,--as if some great Power stretched out its arms to him, and spoke through it.

"I'll not be silly again," straightening himself, and buttoning his coat; but before the words were spoken, his head had sunk again, and he stood quiet.

Something in all this brought Martha and the little chaps before him, he did not know why, but his heart ached with a sharper pain than ever, that made his eyes wet with tears.

"If there should be a chance!"--lifting his hands to the deep of blue in the east.

This was the free air in which he used to think he could find God.

"What if it were true that He was there,--loving, not hating, taking care of Martha, and"--

He stopped, catching the word.

"No. I've slipped. I don't forget."

He did forget. He did not remember that he was a thief, standing there. Whatever substance had been in him at his birth trustworthy rose up now to meet the voice of God that called to him aloud. His lank jaws grew red, his eyes a deeper blue, a look in them which his mother may have seen the like of years and years ago; he beat with his knuckles on his breast nervously.

"If there could be a chance!" he said, unceasingly; "if I might try again!"

There was a crackling in the snow-laden bushes upon the hill: he looked back, and saw his brother coming from the other side, his game-bag over his shoulder, stooping to avoid notice, his eyes fixed intently on some object on the road beyond. It was an old man on horseback, jogging slowly up the path, whistling as he came. Yarrow shuddered with a sudden horror.

"He means murder! That is Frazier. You could not do it to-day, John! To-day!" as if Soulé could hear him.

He was between his brother and his victim. The old man came slower, the hill being steep, looking at the frosted trees, and seeing neither Yarrow nor the burly figure crouching, tiger-like, among the bushes. One moment, and he would have passed the bend of the hill,--Soulé could reach him.

"God help me!" whispered Yarrow, and threw himself forward, pushing the horse back on his haunches. "Go back! Ten steps farther, and it's too late! Back, I say!"

The old man gasped.

"Why! what! a slip? an' water-gully?"

"No matter," leading the horse, trembling from head to foot.

Up on the hill there was a sharp break, a heavy footstep on a dead root. Would John go back or come on? he was strong enough to master both. Yarrow's throat choked, but he led the horse steadily down the path, deaf to Frazier's questions.

"Do not draw rein until you reach the station," giving him the bridle at last.

The old man looked back: he had seen the figure dimly.

"If there's danger, I'll not leave you to meet it alone, my friend," fumbling in his breast for a weapon.

Yarrow stamped impatiently.

"Put spurs to your horse!"--wiping his mouth; "it will be yet too late!"

Frazier gave a glance at his face, and obeyed him. A moment more, and he was out of sight. Yarrow watched him, and then slowly turned, and raised his head. Soulé had come down, and was standing close beside him, leaning on his gun. It was the last time the brothers ever faced each other, and their natures, as God made them, came out bare in that look: Yarrow's, under all, was the tougher-fibred of the two. John's eyes fell.

"Stephen, this will hurt me. I"--

"I thought it was well done,"--his hand going uncertainly to his mouth.

"Well, well! you have chosen,"--after a pause.

"Good bye."

"Good bye, boy."

They held each other's hands for a minute; then Soulé turned off, and strode down the hill. He loosened his cravat as he went, and took a long breath of relief.

"It was a vile job! But"--his face much troubled. But his wife heard the story without a word, nor ever alluded to it afterwards. She was human, like the rest of us.

A moment after he was gone, a curious change took place in the convict, a reaction,--the excitement being gone. The pain and exposure and hunger had room to tell now on body and soul. He stretched himself out on a drift of snow, drunken with sleep, yet every nerve quivering and conscious, trying to catch another echo of Soulé's step. He was his brother, he was all he had; it was terrible to be thus alone in the world: going back to the time when they worked in the shop together. He raised his head even, and called him,--"Jack!"--once or twice, as he used to then. It was too late. Such a generous, bull-headed fellow he was then, taking his own way, and being led at last. He was gone now, and forever. He was all he had.

The day was out broadly now,--a thorough winter's day, cold and clear, the frosty air sending a glow through your blood. It sent none into Yarrow's thinned veins: he was too far gone with all these many years. The place, as I said, was a lonely one, niched between hills, yet near enough main roads for him to hear sounds from them: people calling to each other, about Christmas often; carriages rolling by; great Conestoga wagons, with their dozens of tinkling bells, and the driver singing; dogs and children chasing each other through the snow. The big world was awake and busy and glad, but it passed him by.

"For this man that might have been it has as much use as for a bit of cold victuals thrown into the street. And the worst is," with a bitter smile, "I know it, to my heart's core."

The morning passed by, as he lay there, growing colder, his brain duller.

"I did not think this coat was so thin," he would mutter, as he tried to pull it over him.

If he got up, where should he go? What use, eh? It was warmer in the snow than walking about. Conscious at last only of a metallic taste in his mouth, a weakness creeping closer to his heart every moment, and a dull wonder if there could yet be a chance. It seemed very far away now. And Martha and the little chaps--Oh, well!

Some hours may have passed as he lay there, and sleep came; for I fancy it was a dream that brought the final sharp thought into his brain. He dragged himself up on one elbow, the old queer smile on his lips.

"I will try," he said.

It took him some time to make his way out into the main road, but he did it at last, straightening his wet hair under the old cap.

"It's so like a dog to die that way! I'll try, just once, how the world looks when I face it."

He sat down outside of a blacksmith's forge, the only building in sight, on the pump-trough, and looked wearily about. His head fell now and then on his breast from weakness.

"It won't be a very long trial. I'll not beg for food, and I'm not equal to much work just now,"--with the same grim half-smile.

No one was in sight but the blacksmith and some crony, looking over a newspaper. Inside. They nodded, when they saw him, and said,--

"Hillo!"

"Hillo!" said Yarrow.

Then they went on with their paper. That was the only sound for a long time. Some farmers passed after a while, giving him good-morning, in country-fashion. A trifle, but it was warm, heartsome: he had put the world on trial, you know, and he was not very far from death. Men more soured than Yarrow have been surprised to find it was God's world, with God's own heart, warm and kindly, speaking through every human heart in it, if they touched them right. About noon, the blacksmith's children brought him his dinner in a tin bucket, leaving it inside. When they came out, one freckled baby-girl came up to Yarrow.

"Tie my shoe," she said, putting up one foot, peremptorily. "Are you hungry?" looking at him curiously, after he had done it, at the same time holding up a warm seed-cake she was eating to his mouth. He was ashamed that the spicy smile tempted him to take it. He put it away, and seated her on his foot.

"Let me ride you plough-boy fashion," he said, trotting her gently for a minute.

Her father passed them.

"You must pardon me," said Yarrow, with a bow. "I used to ride my boy so, and"--

"Eh? Yes. Sudy's a good girl. You've lost your little boy, now?" looking in Yarrow's face.

"Yes, I've lost him."

The blacksmith stood silent a moment, then went in. Soon after a tall man rode up on a gray horse; it had cast a shoe, and while the smith went to work within, the rider sat down by Yarrow on the trough, and began to talk of the weather, politics, etc., in a quiet, pleasant way, making a joke now and then. He had a thin face, with a scraggy fringe of yellow hair and whisker about it, and a gray, penetrating eye. The shoe was on presently, and mounting, with a touch of his hat to Yarrow, he rode off. The convict hesitated a moment, then called to him.

"I have a word to say to you," coming up, and putting his hand on the horse's mane.

The man glanced at him, then jumped down.

"Well, my friend?"

"You're a clergyman?"

"Yes."

"So was I once. If you had known, just now, that I was a felon two days ago released from the penitentiary, what would you have said to me? Guilty, when I went in, remember. A thief."

The man was silent, looking in Yarrow's face. Then he put his hand on his arm.

"Shall I tell you?"

"Go on."

"I would have said, that, if ever you preach God's truth again, you will have learned a deeper lesson than I."

If he meant to startle the man's soul into life, he had done it. He a teacher, who hardly knew if that good God lived!

"Let me go," he cried, breaking loose from the other's hand.

"No. I can help you. For God's sake tell me who you are."

But Yarrow left him, and went down the road, hiding, when he tried to pursue him,--sitting close behind a pile of lumber. He was there when found: so tired that the last hour and the last years began to seem like dreams. Something cold roused him, nozzling at his throat. An old yellow dog, its eyes burning.

"Why, Ready," he said, faintly, "have you come?"

"Come home," said the dog's eyes, speaking out what the whole day had tried to say: "they're waiting for you; they've been waiting always; home's there, and love's there, and the good God's there, and it's Christmas day. Come home!"

Yarrow struggled up, and put his arms about the dog's neck: kissed him with all the hunger for love smothered in these many years.

"He don't know I'm a thief," he thought.

Ready bit angrily at coat and trousers.

"Be a man, and come home."

Yarrow understood. He caught his breath, as he went along, holding by the fence now and then.

"It's the chance!" he said. "And Martha! It's Martha and the little chaps!"

But he was not sure. He was yet so near to the place where it would have been forever too late. If Ready saw that with his wary eye, turned now and then, as he trotted before,--if he had any terror in his dumb soul, (or whatever you choose to call it,) or any mad joy, or desire to go clean daft with rollicking in the snow at what he had done, he put it off to another season, and kept a stern face on his captive. But Yarrow watched it; it was the first home-face of them all.

"Be a man," it said. "Let the thief go. Home's before you, and love, and years of hard work for the God you did not know."

So they went on together. They came at last to the house,--home. He grew blind then, and stopped at the gate; but the dog went slower, and waited for him to follow, pushed the door open softly, and, when he went in, laid down in his old place, and put his paws over his face.

When Martha Yarrow heard the step at last, she got up. But seeing how it was with him, she only put her arms quietly about his neck, and said,--

"I've waited so long, my husband!"

That was all.

He lay in his old bed that evening; he made her open the door, feeling strong enough to look at them now, Jem and Tom and Catty, in the warm, well-lighted room, with all its little Christmas gayeties. They had known many happy holidays, but none like this: coming in on tiptoe to look at the white, sad face on the pillow, and to say, under their breath, "It's father." They had waited so long for him. When he heard them, the closed eyes always opened anxiously, and looked at them: kind eyes, full of a more tender, wishful love than even mother's. They came in only now and then, but Martha he would not let go from him, held her hand all day. Ready had made his way up on the bed and lay over his feet.

"That's right, old Truepenny!" he said.

They laughed at that: he had not forgotten the old name. When Martha looked at the old yellow dog, she felt her eyes fill with tears.

"God did not want a messenger," she thought: as if He ever did!

That evening, while he lay with her head on his breast, as she sat by the bed, he watched the boys a long time.

"Martha," he said, at last, "you said that they should never know. Did you keep your word?"

"I kept it, Stephen."

He was quiet a long while after that, and then he said,--

"Some day I will tell them. It's all clearer to me now. If ever I find the good God, I'll teach Him to my boys out of my own life. They'll not love me less."

He did not talk much that day; even to her he could not say that which was in his heart; but it seemed to him there was One who heard and understood,--looking out, after all was quiet that night, into the far depth of the silent sky, and going over his whole wretched life down to that bitterest word of all, as if he had found a hearer more patient, more tender than either wife or child.

"Is there any use to try?" he cried. "I was a thief."

Then, in the silence, came to him the memory of the old question,--

"Hath no man condemned thee?"

He put his hands over his face:--

"No man, Lord!"

And the answer came for all time:--

"Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more."

* * * * *

MEMORIÆ POSITUM

R.G.S.

1863.

I.

Beneath the trees,
My life-long friends in this dear spot,
Sad now for eyes that see them not,
I hear the autumnal breeze
Wake the sear leaves to sigh for gladness gone,
Whispering hoarse presage of oblivion,--
Hear, restless as the seas,
Time's grim feet rustling through the withered grace
Of many a spreading realm and strong-stemmed race,
Even as my own through these.

Why make we moan
For loss that doth enrich us yet
With upward yearnings of regret?
Bleaker than unmossed stone
Our lives were but for this immortal gain
Of unstilled longing and inspiring pain!
As thrills of long-hushed tone
Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine
With keen vibrations from the touch divine
Of noble natures gone.

'T were indiscreet
To vex the shy and sacred grief
With harsh obtrusions of relief;
Yet, Verse, with noiseless feet,
Go whisper, "_This_ death hath far choicer ends
Than slowly to impearl in hearts of friends;
These obsequies 'tis meet
Not to seclude in closets of the heart,
But, church-like, with wide door-ways, to impart
Even to the heedless street."

II.

Brave, good, and true,
I see him stand before me now,
And read again on that clear brow,
Where victory's signal flew,
_How sweet were life!_ Yet, by the mouth firm-set,
And look made up for Duty's utmost debt,
I could divine he knew
That death within the sulphurous hostile lines,
In the mere wreck of nobly pitched designs,
Plucks heart's-ease, and not rue.

Happy their end
Who vanish down life's evening stream
Placid as swans that drift in dream
Round the next river-bend!
Happy long life, with honor at the close,
Friends' painless tears, the softened thought of foes!
And yet, like him, to spend
All at a gush, keeping our first faith sure
From mid-life's doubt and eld's contentment poor,
What more could Fortune send?

Right in the van,
On the red rampart's slippery swell,
With heart that beat a charge, he fell
Forward, as fits a man:
But the high soul burns on to light men's feet
Where death for noble ends makes dying sweet;
His life her crescent's span
Orbs full with share in their undarkening days
Who ever climbed the battailous steeps of praise
Since valor's praise began.

III.

His life's expense
Hath won for him coeval youth
With the immaculate prime of Truth;
While we, who make pretence
At living on, and wake and eat and sleep,
And life's stale trick by repetition keep,
Our fickle permanence
(A poor leaf-shadow on a brook, whose play
Of busy idlesse ceases with our day)
Is the mere cheat of sense.

We bide our chance,
Unhappy, and make terms with Fate
A little more to let us wait:
He leads for aye the advance,
Hope's forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good
For nobler Earths and days of manlier mood;
Our wall of circumstance
Cleared at a bound, he flashes o'er the fight,
A saintly shape of fame, to cheer the right
And steel each wavering glance.

I write of one,
While with dim eyes I think of three:
Who weeps not others fair and brave as he?
Ah, when the fight is won,
Dear Land, whom triflers now make bold to scorn,
(Thee! from whose forehead Earth awaits her morn!)
How nobler shall the sun
Flame in thy sky, how braver breathe thy air,
That thou bred'st children who for thee could dare
And die as thine have done!

* * * * *

MY BOOK.

The trouble about biographies is that by the time they are written the person is dead. You have heard of him remotely. You know that he sang a world's songs, founded great empires, won brilliant victories, did heroes' work; but you do not know the little tender touches of his life, the things that bring him into near kinship with humanity, and set him by the household hearth without unclasping the diadem from his brow, until he is dead, and it is too late forevermore. Then with vague restlessness you visit the brook in which his trout-line drooped, you pluck a leaf from the elm that shaded his regal head, you walk in the graveyard that holds in its bosom his silent dust, only to feel with unavailing regret that no sunshine of his presence can gleam upon you. The life that stirred in his voice, shone in his eye, and fortressed itself in his unconscious bearing, can make to you no revelation. It is departed, none knows whither. He is as much a part of the past as if he had tended docks for Abraham on the plains of Mamre.

This, when biographies are at their best. Generally, they are at their worst. Generally, they don't know the things you wish to learn, and when they do, they don't tell them. They give you statistics, facts, reflections, eulogies, dissertations; but what you hunger and thirst after is the man's inner life. Of what use is it to know what a man does, unless you know what made him do it? This you can seldom learn from memoirs. Look at the numerous brood that followed in the wake of Shelley's fame. Every one gives you, not Shelley, but himself, served up in Shelley sauce. Think of your own experience: do you not know that the vital facts of your life are hermetically sealed? Do you not know that you are a world within a world, whose history and geography may be summed up in that phrase which used to make the interior of Africa the most delightful spot in the whole atlas,--"Unexplored Region"? One person may have started an expedition here, and another there. Here one may have struck a river-course, and there one may have looked down into a valley-depth, and all may have brought away their golden grain; but the one has not followed the river to its source, nor the other wandered bewilderingly through the valley-lands, and none have traversed the Field of the Cloth of Gold. So the geographies are all alike: boundaries, capital, chief towns, rivers, mountains, and lakes. And what is true of you is doubtless true of all. Faith is not to be put in biographies. They can tell what your name is, and what was your grandfather's coat of arms, when you were born, where you lived, and how you died,--though, if they are no more accurate after you are dead than they are before, their statements will hardly come under the head of "reliable intelligence." But even if they are accurate, what then? Suppose you were born in Pikesville: a thousand people drew their first breath there, and not one of them was like you in character or fate. You were born in some year of our Lord. Thousands upon thousands date from the same year, and each went his own way,--

"One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the peaceful sea!"

All this is nothing and accounts for nothing, yet this is all. Whether you were susceptible of calmness or deeply turbulent,--whether you were amiable, or only amiably disposed,--whether you were inwardly blest and only superficially unrestful, safely moored even while tossing on an unquiet sea,--what you thought, what you hoped, how you felt, yes, and how you lived and loved and hated, they do not know and cannot tell. A biographer may be ever so conscientious, but he stands on the outside of the circle of his subject, and his view will lack symmetry. There is but one who, from his position in the centre, is competent to give a fair and full picture, and that is your own self. A few may possess imagination, and so partially atone for the disadvantages of position; but, ten hundred thousand to one, they will not have a chance at your life. You must die knowing that you are at the mercy of whoever can hold a pen.

Unless you take time by the forelock and write your biography yourself! Then you will be sure to do no harm, inasmuch as no one is obliged to read your narrative; and you may do much good, because, if any one does read it and become interested in you, he will have the pleasant consciousness of living in the same world with you. When he drives through your street, he can put his head out of the carriage-window and stand a chance of seeing you just coming in at the front gate. Also, if you write your biography yourself, you can have your choice as to what shall go in and what shall stay out. You can make a discreet selection of your letters, giving the go-by to that especial one in which you rather--is there such a word as spooneyly?--offered yourself to your wife. Every word was as good as the Bank of England to her, for to her you were a lover, a knight, a great brown-bearded angel, and all metaphors, however violent, fell upon good ground. But to the people who read your life you will be a trader, a lawyer, a shoemaker, who pays his butcher's bills and looks after the main chance, and the metaphors, emptied of their fire, but retaining their form, will seem incongruous, not to say ridiculous. I do not say that your wife's lover and knight and angel are not a higher and a better, yes, and a truer you, than the world's trader and lawyer; still your love-letters will probably do better in the bosom of the love-lettered than on a bookseller's shelves. Besides these advantages, there is another in præ-humous publication. If you wait for your biography till you are dead, it is extremely probable you will lose it altogether. The world has so much to see to ahead that it can hardly spare a glance over its shoulder to take note of what is behind. Take the note yourself and make sure of it You will then know where you are, and be master of the situation.

I purpose, therefore, to write the history of my life, from my entrance upon it down to a period which is within the memory of men still living. In so doing, I shall not be careful to trace out that common ground which may be supposed to underlie all lives, but only indicate those features which serve to distinguish one from another. Everybody is christened, cuts his teeth, and eats bread and molasses. Silently will we, therefore, infer the bread and molasses, and swiftly stride in seven-league boots from mountain-peak to mountain-peak.

I was born of parents who, though not poor, were respectable, and I had also the additional distinction of being a precocious child. I differed from most precocious children, however, in not dying young, and that opportunity, once let slip, is now forever gone. I believe the precocious children who do not die young develop into idiots. My family have never been without well-grounded fears in that line.

Nothing of any importance happened to me after I was born till I grew up and wrote a book. Indeed, I believe I may say even that never happened, for I did not write a book. Rather a book came to pass,--somewhat like the goldsmithery of Aaron, who threw the ear-rings into the fire, and "there came out this calf"! I went out one day alone, as was my wont, in an open boat, and drifted beyond sight of land. I had heard that shipwrecked mariners sometimes throw out a bottle of papers to give posterity a clue to their fate. I threw out a bottle of papers, less out of regard to posterity than to myself. They floated into a printing-press, stiffened themselves, and came forth a book, whereon I sailed safely ashore, grateful. Alas, in another confusion will there be another resource?

It is this book which is to form the first, and quite possibly the last chapter of my life and sufferings, for I don't suppose anything will ever happen to me again. To be sure, in the book I have just been reading a girl marries her groom, leaves him, rejects two lovers, kills her husband, accepts one lover, loses him, marries the second, first husband comes to light again and is shot, marries second husband over again, and goes a-journeying with second husband and first lover, first cousin and two children, in the South of France, before she is twenty-two years old. But in my country girls think themselves extremely well off for adventures with one marriage and no murder. But then the girls in my country do not have the murderous black eyes which shine so in romances.

My book being fairly wound up and set a-going, of course you wish to know what came of it. Don't pretend you don't care, for you know you do. Only don't look at me too closely, or you will disconcert me. Veil now and then your intent eyes, or my story will surely droop under their steadfastness. Look sometimes into yonder sunset sky and the beautiful reticulations drawn darkly against its glowing sheets of color. You will none the less listen, and I shall all the more enjoy.

You have read much about the anxieties, the forebodings, the anticipatory tremors of new authors. So have I, but I never felt them,--not a single foreboding. I was delighted to write a book, and it never occurred to me that everybody would not be just as delighted to read it. The first time my book weighed on me was one morning when a thin, meagre little letter came to me, which turned out to be only a card bearing the laconic inscription,--

"Twelve copies 'New Sun' sent by express, with the compliments of the Publishers."

The "New Sun" was my book. I put on my hat and walked straightway up to the hole in the rock, about a mile round the corner, where the expressman always leaves my parcels, and took up the package to bring home. It was very heavy. I balanced it first on one arm and then on the other, until, as the poet has it,--

"Both were nigh to breaking."

Then I lifted it by the cords, but they cut my fingers. Then I remembered the natural law, that internal atmospheric pressure prevents any consciousness of the enormous external pressure exerted by an atmosphere forty-five miles thick, and applied the law, saying, "These books have all been upon the inside of my head, of course I shall not feel them on the outside." So I put the package on my head, and walked on, making believe I was in a gymnasium, keeping a sharp watch fore and aft, and considering the distant rumbling of wheels a signal for lowering my colors. In my country people do not carry their burdens on their heads, nor would they be likely to account for me on the principles of Natural Philosophy. I might have been apprehended as a lunatic, but for my timely caution. Thus the "New Suns" came home and were speedily divested of their dun wrappings. I lingered over them, admiring their clear type, their fragrance, their crispness. I opened them wide, because they would open so frankly. I delighted myself with their fair, fine smoothness. And then I began to read. I am ashamed to say I never read a more interesting book!

How very true it is that suffering is about equally distributed, after all! If you don't have your troubles spread out, you have them in a lump. The furies may seem to be held in abeyance, but they will only lay on their lashes all the harder when they do come. My unnatural calmness was succeeded by a storm of consternation. I pass over the few days that followed. If you ever put yourself into a pillory in the night just to see how it seemed, and then found yourself fastened there in good earnest, and day dawning, and all the marketmen and shopkeepers up and stirring, and everybody coming by in a few minutes, you will not need to ask how I felt. When you write a book, you are quite alone and your pen is entirely private; but when it comes to you so unquestionably printed, and inexorable, and out-of-doors--Ah, me! It did not seem like a book at all,--not at all the abstraction and impersonality that were intended, but my proper self bevelled and (with another syllable inserted) walking out into the world with malice aforethought.

But though a writer is before critics, did it never occur to you that the critics are just as much before the writers? A critic's talk about a book is just as truly a revelation of the critic as the writer's talk in the book is a revelation of the writer. One man gives you an opinion that implies attention. He does not go into the depths of the matter, but he tells you honestly what he likes and what he does not like. This is good. This is precisely what you wish to know, and will indirectly help you. Another, from the steps of a throne, in a few sentences, it may be, or a few columns, classifies you, interprets you not only to the world, but to yourself; and for this you are immeasurably glad and grateful. It is neither praise nor censure that you value, but recognition. Let a writer but feel that a critic reaches into the _arcana_ of his thought, and no assent is too hearty, nor any dissent too severe. Another glances up from his eager political strife, and with the sincerest kindness pens you a nice little sugar-plum, chiefly flour and water, but flavored with sugar. Thank you! Another flounders in a wash of words, holding in solution the faintest salt of sense. Heaven help him! Another dips his spear-point in poison and lets fly. Do you not see that these people are an open book? Do you not read here the tranquillity of a self-poised life, the Inner sight of clairvoyance, the bitterness of disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans, the amiability that is not founded upon strength, the pettiness that puts pique above principle, the frankness that scorns affectation, the comprehensiveness that embraces all things in its vision, and commands not only acquiescence, but allegiance, the great-heartedness that by virtue of its own magnetism attracts all that is good and annihilates all that is bad?