Rose Clark

"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!"

CHAPTER LX

"Is that you, John? because if it is, you can not come in," said Gertrude, opening the door just wide enough for her head to be seen.

"I am so miserable, Gertrude."

"Poor John! Well, just wait a bit, and I will open the door;" and darting back into the room, Gertrude shuffled away a picture on which she had been painting, and then threw open the door of her studio.

"Poor John, what is it?" and Gertrude seated herself on the lounge beside him, and laid her cheek against his, "what is it, John?"

"I am so dissatisfied and vexed with myself," said her brother, "I thought I was disinterested and unselfish, and I am not. I have caught myself hoping that Rose's dream might not prove true – that Vincent might never appear, so that I might win her – and she so bound up in him, too! I am a disgrace to my manhood, Gertrude, a poor, miserable, vacillating, unhappy wretch."

"No, you are not," said Gertrude, kissing his moist eyelids; "only a great soul would have made the generous confession which has just passed your lips; a more ignoble nature would have excused and palliated it, perhaps denied its existence; you are generous, and noble, and good, and I only wish you were not my brother, that I might marry you myself;" and she tried to force a smile upon John's face, by peeping archly into it.

"Do not jest with me, Gertrude; comfort me if you can. I too have had my dream; I am about to lose Rose. I can not tell you about it now, it is too painfully vivid. How can I live without love? without Rose's love? Tell me how you learned, Gertrude, to tame down that fiery heart of yours."

Gertrude only replied by her caresses; for, in truth, her heart was too full.

There is an outward life visible to all; there is an inward life known only to our own souls, and Him who formed them.

Was Gertrude's heart "tamed?"

Ah, there were moments when she threw aside book, pallet, and pencil, when she could listen only to its troubled, mournful wailings, because there was nothing in all the wide earth, that could satisfy its cravings. Only in the Infinite can such a spirit find rest; and leaning her head upon John's shoulder, Gertrude sang:

"Oh, ask thou, hope thou not too muchFrom sympathy below;Few are the hearts whence one same touchBids the sweet fountains flow:Few, and by still conflicting powers,Forbidden here to meet,Such ties would make this world of oursToo fair for aught so fleet;"But for those bonds all perfect made,Wherein bright spirits blend;Like sister flowers of one sweet shade,With the same breeze that bends.For that full bliss of soul alliedNever to mortals given;Oh, lay thy lovely dreams aside,Or lift them up to Heaven!"

"You are a good girl, Gertrude," said her brother. "I am no Puritan, but your song has soothed me. There must be something more satisfying in another state of existence than there is in this, else were our very being a mockery."

"Poor John; he will arrive at the truth by and by," said Gertrude, as he left the room. "I think it is easier for woman to lean upon an Almighty arm; it is only through disappointment and suffering that man's proud spirit is bowed childlike before the cross. And how, when it gets there, the soul looks wondering back that it should ever have opposed its own poor pride of self to Calvary's meek sufferer!"

CHAPTER LXI

How the wind roared! how the sails creaked and flapped! and the tall masts groaned! How the great vessel rolled from side to side, and tossed hither and thither, like a plaything for the winds and waves. The poor invalid groaned in his berth with pain and ennui. It mattered little to him whether the vessel ever made port or not. Sea-sickness is a great leveler, making the proud and haughty spirit quail before it, and disposing it to receive a sympathizing word from even the humblest.

"A rough sea, sir," said the captain, stripping off his shaggy deck-coat, and seating himself by the side of the invalid; "rough even for us old sea-dogs; but for a landsman, ah! I see it has taken you all aback," and the captain smiled as a man may smile who is quits with old Neptune in his fiercest moods.

"I can't say, though," continued the captain, "that you looked any too robust when you came on board. I suppose we must take that into the account. I hope you find yourself comfortable here – stewardess attentive, and so on. She is an uncouth creature, but seems to understand her business. Ah! had you been aboard my ship some years ago, you would have seen a stewardess! Such a noiseless step; such a gentle voice; such a soft touch; it was quite worth while to be sick to be so gently cared for."

The invalid made no reply, save to turn his head languidly on the pillow; he was too weak, and sick, and dispirited to take any interest in the old captain's story.

"I wonder what ever became of her," continued the captain, tapping on the lid of his snuff-box; "I made all sorts of inquiries when I returned from my last voyage. Such a boy as she had with her! You should have seen that boy (bless me, I hope you'll excuse my sneezing). Such a pair of eyes; black – like what, I fancy, yours might have been when you were young, and handsomer; he was a splendid child. We thought one spell the little fellow was going to slip his cable; but he managed to weather the storm, and came out from his sickness brighter than ever. Poor Rose! how she did love him!"

"Rose?" asked the invalid, for the first time betraying any sign of interest.

"Yes; pretty name, wasn't it? and just sweet enough for her too. But, poor girl, she was a blighted Rose!" and the old captain set his teeth together, and bringing his horny palm down on his knee, exclaimed, "Great Cæsar! I should like to see the rascal who broke that woman's heart run up to the yard-arm yonder. I don't care how fine a broad-cloth such a fellow wears; the better his station the greater his sin, and the more weight his damning example carries with it. If a man wants to do a mean action, let him not select a woman to victimize. Yes, sir, as I said before, I should like to have that fellow dangling from yonder yard-arm! I am an old man, and have seen a great deal of this sort of thing in my travels round the world. The laws need righting on this subject, and if men were not so much interested in letting them remain as they are, women would be better protected. Imprisonment for life is none too heavy a penalty for such an offense. It is odd," said the old captain, reflectively, "how a woman will forgive every thing to a man she loves. Now that poor little Rose – she clung to the belief that her lover had neither betrayed nor deserted her – isn't it odd now? and isn't it a cursed shame," said the old captain, striking his hand down again on his knee, "that the most angelic trait in woman's nature should be the very noose by which man drags her down to perdition? Hang it, I could almost foreswear my own sex when I think of it.

"But you don't agree with me, I suppose," said the captain, unbuttoning his vest, as if it impeded the play of his feelings. "You young fellows are not apt to look on it in this light. You will, sir, if you ever have daughters. Every such victim is somebody's daughter, somebody's sister. No man can indulge in illicit gratification – not even with a consenting party – and say he does no wrong. In the first place, as I look at it, he blunts his own moral sense; secondly, that of his companion; for it is well known that even the most depraved have moments when their better natures are in the ascendant; who can tell that on him does not rest the responsibility of balancing the scales at such a critical moment? Thirdly, the weight of his example on society; for none, not even the humblest, is without his influence; the smallest pebble thrown into a lake will widen out its circle; but I am talking too much to you," said the old captain; "I think of these things oftener since I saw poor Rose. You must forgive me if I said aught to displease you."

The invalid stretched out his hand, and said, with a languid smile, "I have not strength to talk to you about it now, captain; but God will surely bless you for befriending poor Rose, as you call her."

"Oh, that's a trifle!" said the captain; "it was a blessing to look on her sweet face and the boy's; you should see that boy, sir; any father might have been proud of him. Good-day; bear up, now. Nobody dies of sea-sickness. We shall make port before long. Let me know if you want any thing. Good-day, sir."

CHAPTER LXII

"Weeping! dear Gertrude," exclaimed John, as he entered his sister's studio, and seated himself by her side.

Gertrude laid her head upon his shoulder without replying.

"You do not often see me thus," she said, after a pause. "To-day is the anniversary of my husband's death, and as I sat at the window and saw the autumn wind showering down the bright leaves, I thought of that mournful October day, when, turning despairingly away from his dying moans, I walked to the window of his sick room, and saw the leaves eddying past as they do now. I could almost see again before me that pallid face, almost hear those fleeting, spasmodic breaths, and all the old agony woke up again within me. And yet," said Gertrude, smiling through her tears, "such blissful memories of his love came with it! Oh! surely, John, love like this perishes not with its object – dies not in this world?

"And my little Arthur, too, John – you have never seen my treasures. You have never looked upon the faces which made earth such a paradise for me;" and touching a spring in a rosewood box near her, Gertrude drew from it the pictures of her husband and child, and as John scanned their features in silence, she leaned upon his shoulder, and the bright teardrops fell like rain upon them.

"It is seldom that I allow myself to look at them," she said. "I were unfitted else for life's duties."

"It is a fine face,", said John, gazing at that of Gertrude's husband. "It is a faithful index of the noble soul you worship. Your boy's face is yours in miniature, Gertrude."

"Yes; and I so deplored it after my husband's death; I used to watch so eagerly for one flitting expression of his father's."

John replaced the pictures in the box with a sigh, and sat a few moments thinking.

"Gertrude, do you know that your nature would never have fully developed itself in prosperity? The rain was as needful as the sunshine to ripen and perfect it."

"Yes, I feel that," said his sister. "And when I look around and see divided households; husbands and wives wedded to misery; parents, whose clutching love for gold swallows up every parental feeling; children, whose memories of home are hate, and discord, and all uncharitableness, I hug my brief day of unalloyed happiness to my bosom, and cheerfully accept my lot at His hand who hath disposed it."

CHAPTER LXIII

"Dear Tom —

"Received your last letter by the Baltic. It was a gem, as usual. If your book is half as good, you will make your reputation and a fortune out of it. I knew you would like Paris; it is the only place in the world to live in. I hope yet to end my days there.

"And speaking of ending days, I have the most extraordinary thing to tell you:

"Jack – our glorious dare-devil Jack – has turned parson! Actual parson – black coat, white neck-tie, and long-tailed surtout – it is incredible! The little opera-dancer, Felissitimi, laughed till she was black in the face when I told her. It is no laughing matter to me, though, for he was always my shadow. I miss him at the club, the billiard-table, at King street, and every where else. It is confoundedly provoking. I feel like half a pair of scissors, and wander round in a most unriveted state.

"Such crowds as Jack draws to hear him! There is no church in town that will hold all his admiring listeners. I have not been, from principle, because I think all that sort of thing is a deuced humbug, and I won't countenance it. But the other night, Menia did not perform, as was announced on the play-bills, and I looked about quite at a loss where to spend my evening. The first thing I knew, I found myself borne along with the current toward John's church. Then I said to myself 'Now if that crowd choose to relieve me of the responsibility of countenancing John's nonsense, by pushing me into that church, well and good;' so I just resigned myself to the elbowing tide. And, by Jove! the first thing I knew, there I was, in a broad aisle-pew, sitting down as demure as if I were Aminidab Sleek.

"Well, pretty soon John came in. How well he had got himself up in that black suit! It was miraculous. I looked round on the women —he had them! With that musical voice of his, even that old hymn he read, sounded as well as any thing of Byron's. His prayer was miraculous! – I can't think how he did it; one would have supposed he felt every syllable; but you and I know Jack.

"Well, then came the sermon. 'Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days.' He said it was in the Bible, and I suppose it was; I never heard of it before, but that may be for want of reading. By that time I was all eyes and ears. I knew he had impudence enough, so I was not afraid of his breaking down; and if he did, so much the better; there'd be something to laugh at him about.

"Now, Tom, you can't credit what I am going to tell you; that fellow began to relate his own experience; beginning with the prayers and hymns his mother taught him, and which he gradually lost the recollection of after she died, and as he grew older; then he described – and, by Jove, he did it well – his past downward steps, as he called them (I think that expression is open to discussion, Tom), the temptations of his youth, the gradual searing of conscience, and Satan's final triumph, when he cast off all restraint, and acknowledged no law but the domination of his own mad passions. Then he described his life at that point, our life – (I wonder if he saw me there?) he spoke of the occasional twinges of conscience, growing fainter, fainter, and at last dying out altogether.

"Then came his waking up from that long trance of sin, our meeting with that old lady in the street – (you remember, Tom), and the tearful look which she bent on him, when in reply to some remark of mine, he exclaimed,

"'Jesus Christ!'

"Then, how that look had haunted him, tortured him, by day and night; how it had wakened to new life all the buried memories of childhood – his mother's prayers and tears, and dying words; and how, after wrestling with it, through deeper depths of sin than any into which he had yet plunged, he had yielded to the holy spell, and that 'Jesus Christ' had now become to him, with penitential utterance, 'My Lord and my God.'

"Tom – there was not a dry eye in that church when Jack got through, no – not even mine, for I caught the infection (I might as well own it); I felt as wicked as old King Herod; and all day to-day – it is a rainy day, though, and I suppose, when the sun shines out, I shall feel better, I have not been able to get that sermon out of my mind. I don't believe in it, of course not; hang me if I know what does ail me; I am inclined to think it is a bad fit of indigestion. I must have a game at billiards. Write me.

"Yours,"Finels."

CHAPTER LXIV

"How you grow, Charley," said John, tossing him up on his shoulder, and walking up to the looking-glass. "It seems but yesterday that you lay wrapped up in your blanket a-board Captain Lucas' ship with your thumb in your mouth (that unfailing sign of a good-natured baby), thinking of nothing at all; and now here you are six years' old to-day – think of that man? and I dare say you expect a birth-day present."

"Yes, if you please," said Charley.

"There, now; that is to the point. I like an honest boy. What will you have, Charley?"

"Something pretty for my mamma," said the loving little heart.

"Better still," said John; "but mamma won't take presents. I have tried her a great many times. There is one I want very much to make her, but she always says 'No.'" And John glanced at Gertrude.

"Mind what you say," whispered his sister. "He might chance to repeat it to his mother."

"So much the better, Gertrude. Then she will be sure to think of me at least one minute.

"But, Charley, tell me what you want. I would like to get you something for yourself."

"I want my papa," said Charley, resolutely. "Tommy Fritz keeps saying that I 'haven't got any papa.' Haven't I got a papa, cousin John?"

"You have a Father in heaven," said John, kissing Charley as he evaded the earnest question.

"When did he die? I want you to tell me all about him, cousin John, because Tommy Fritz sits next me at school and teases me so about not having any papa."