The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858

Alice's eyes flashed. "You know, Kate, I don't care for 'people,' as you call them. I only know that I am utterly weary of this petty visiting and gossiping, this round of parties, concerts, and lectures, where we meet the same faces. There is no harm in it that I know of, but it is simply so stupid. If we met new people, it would be something; but the same girls, the same beaux."

"And George W. and Henry B., what will they do for partners to-night? what will become of them?"

Alice put up her lip. "They will console themselves with Laura C. and those Kentucky girls from Louisville. For my part, I shall put on my walking-dress, and go over the river to spend the evening with Uncle John, and, what is more, I shall ask mamma to let me stay two or three days." And, suiting the action to the word, she began to dress hurriedly.

"You will surely never go without me, Alice?"

"You will never stay behind, if I do go, Kate," said she, looking back at me laughingly. "But make haste, I shall gain mamma over in five minutes; and we must be quick, if we are to reach Uncle John's before tea-time."

Uncle John,–even now that long years have passed, so long that it seems to me as if I had gone into another state of existence, as if I were not the same person as in those times,–even now the thought of him makes my heart beat quick and the blood thrill more rapidly through my veins. He was the delight of my childhood; far better, he was the comfort and support of my after years. Even as a child, I knew, knew by some intuitive perception, that Uncle John was not happy. How soon I learned that he was a disappointed man I cannot tell; but long before I grew up into womanhood I was conscious that he had made some mistake in life, that some cloud hung over him. I never asked, I never talked on the subject, even to Alice; there was always an understanding between us that we should be silent about that which each of us felt with all the certainty of knowledge.

But if Uncle John was unhappy himself, who was there that he did not make happy? No one who came near him,–from his nieces whom he petted and spoiled, down to the little negroes who rolled, unrebuked, over the grass before his window in summer, or woke him on a Christmas morning with their shrill "Christmas gift, Massa John!" Not that Uncle John was a busybody, troubling himself about many things, and seeking out occasions for obtruding his kindnesses. He lived so secluded a life in the old family-house on the outskirts of Newport, (we were a Kentucky family,) as to raise the gossiping curiosity of all new residents, and to call forth the explanatory remark from the old settlers, that the Delanos were all queer people, but John Delano was the queerest of them all.

So Uncle John spent his time between his library and his garden, while Old Aunt Molly took upon herself the cares of the household, and kept the pantry always in a condition to welcome the guests, to whom, with Kentucky hospitality, Uncle John's house was always open. Courteous he was as the finest gentleman of olden times, and sincerely glad to see his friends, but I have thought sometimes that he was equally glad to have them go away. While they were with him he gave them the truest welcome, leaving garden and books to devote himself to their entertainment; but I have detected a look of relief on his face as he shut the gate upon them and sought the shelter of his own little study, that sanctum which even we children were not allowed to enter except on special occasions, on a quiet winter evening, or, perhaps, on as quiet a summer morning.

Uncle John had not always lived in the old house. We knew, that, after Grandpapa's death, it had been shut up,–for my father's business engagements would not allow my mother to reside in it, and Uncle John had been for years among the Indians in the far Northwest. We had heard of him sometimes, but we had never seen him, we hardly realized that he was a living person, till one day he suddenly appeared among us, rough-looking and uncouth in his hunter's dress, with his heavy beard and his long hair, bringing with him his multifarious assortment, so charming to our eyes, of buffalo-robes and elk-horns, wolf-skins and Indian moccasins.

He staid with us that winter, and very merry and happy he seemed to us at first;–looking back upon it now, I should call it, not happiness, but excitement;–but as the winter passed on, even we children saw that all was not right with him. He gradually withdrew himself from the constant whirl of society in our house, and, by the spring, had settled himself in the old home at Newport, adding to his old furniture only his books, which he had been all winter collecting, and the primitive inconveniences of his own room, which his rough Western life had rendered indispensable to him. His study presented a singular mixture of civilization and barbarism, and its very peculiarities made it a delight to Alice and me. There were a few rare engravings on the walls, hung between enormous antlers which supported rough-looking rifles and uncouth hunting-shirts,–cases of elegantly bound and valuable books, half hidden by heavy buffalo-robes marked all over with strange-looking hieroglyphics which told the Indian coups,–study-chairs of the most elaborate manufacture, with levers and screws to incline them to any, the idlest, inclination, over the backs of which hung white wolf-skins, mounted, claws and all, with brilliant red cloth,–and in the corner, on the pretty Brussels carpet, the prettiest that mamma could find at Shellito's, lay the bag of Indian weed (Uncle John scorned tobacco) with which he filled his pipe every evening, and the moccasins which he always wore when at home.

In vain did Alice and I spend our eyesight in embroidering slippers for him; our Christmas gifts were received with a kiss or a stroke of the head, and then put into Aunt Molly's hands to be taken care of, while he still wore the rough moccasins, made far up among the Blackfoot Indians, which he laughingly declared were warmer, cooler, softer, and stronger than any slippers or boots that civilized shoemaker ever turned off his last.

Quiet as it was at the old house, it had always been a source of happiness to us to be allowed to make a visit to Uncle John. There, if that were possible, we did more as we pleased than even at home; there were not even the conventionalities of society to restrain us; we were in the country, comparatively. And who like Uncle John knew what real country pleasures were? who like him could provide for every contingency? who was so full of expedients in those happy gypsying expeditions which we would entice him into, and which sometimes lasted for days, nay, weeks? He would mount Alice and myself on two of his sure-footed little Indian ponies, with which his trader friends always kept him supplied; and throwing a pair of saddle-bags, filled with what he called our woman's traps, over his own, he would start with us for a trip across the country for miles, stopping at the farm-houses at night, laughing us out of our conventional notions about the conveniences of lodging, and so forth,–and camping out during the day, making what we called a continuous picnic. And then the stories he would tell us of his adventures among the Blackfeet,–of his trading expeditions,–his being taken prisoner by the Sioux,–his life in the forts,–till Alice would creep nearer to him in her nervous excitement, as if to be sure that he was really with her, and then beg him to go on and tell us something more. Once I asked him how he happened to go out among the Indians. His face darkened,–"My little Kate, you must not ask questions,"–and as I turned to Alice, her eyes were full of tears. She had been looking at him while I spoke, and she told me afterwards that something about Uncle John's lips made her cry, they quivered so, and were set afterwards so tight. We never asked him that question again.

But the ferry-boat, "The Belle of Newport," has neared the landing while I have been introducing Uncle John, and the soft summer twilight saw us wending our way through the town towards the Kentucky hills, whose rounded outlines were still bright with the evening red. Just on the rise of the nearest was the Old House,–for it went with us by no other name,–and at the garden-gate stood Uncle John, his face brightening as he saw us, while behind him a row of eager faces showed their wide-stretched mouths and white teeth.

"Come to spend two or three days, Alice?" said Uncle John, that evening, as we sat with shaded lamp in the study, his moccasined feet resting on the window-seat, while he sank into the depths of his leather-covered Spanish chair. "Why, what has become of the parties that Aunt Molly heard about in your kitchen on her way to market yesterday? Where are all our handsome young students that were coming home for the holidays? Remember, I'll have none of them following you over here, and disarranging my books by way of showing off their knowledge."

Alice laughed. "Not a soul knows where we are, Uncle John, except mamma, and she promised not to tell. Laura C. has a party to-night, and she will be provoked enough at our running away; but the truth is,–well, Uncle John, I am tired of parties; indeed, I am tired of our way of living, and–and Kate and I thought we would come and ask you what we ought to do about it."

Uncle John puckered up his face with a comical expression, and then, looking out of the window, whistled the Indian buffalo-call.

Alice sprung up. "Don't whistle that provoking thing, Uncle John! Indeed, I am thoroughly in earnest,–parties are so tiresome,–all exactly alike; we always see the same people, or the same sort of people. There is nothing about them worth having, except the dancing; and even that is not as good as a scamper over the hills with you and the ponies. You know we have been going to parties for these two years; we have seen so much of society, no wonder we are tired of it."

"Sit down, Alice," said Uncle John; "you do look really in earnest, so I suppose you must not be whistled at. And you have come all the way over here this evening to get me to solve Life's problem for you? My dear, I cannot work it out for myself. You are 'tired of society'? Why, little one, you have not seen society yet. Suppose I could put you down to-night in the midst of some European court,–could show you men whose courage, wit, or learning had made them world-famous,–women whose beauty, grace, and cultivation brought those world-famous men to their side, and who held them there by the fascination that high-breeding knows how to use. Should you talk of sameness then?"

Alice's eyes sparkled for a moment, then she said,–

"Yes, I should tire even of that, after a while, glorious as it would be at first."

"Have you reached such sublime heights of philosophy already? Then, perhaps, I shall not seem to be talking nonsense, when I tell you that there is nothing in the world of which you would not tire after the first joy of possession was over, no position which would not seem monotonous. You do not believe me? Of course not. We all buy our own experience in life; on one of two rocks we split: either we do not want a thing after we have got it, or we do not get it till we no longer want it. Some of us suffer shipwreck both ways. But, Alice, you must find that out for yourself."

"Can we not profit by each other's mistakes, Uncle?"

"No, child. To what purpose should I show you the breakers where my vessel struck? Do you suppose you will steer exactly in my path? But what soberness is this? you are not among breakers yet; you are simply 'tired of living';" and Uncle John's smile was too genial to be called satirical.

"Tired of not living, I think," replied Alice,–"tired of doing nothing, of having nothing to do. The girls, Laura and the rest of them, find so much excitement in what seems to me so stupid!"

"You are not exactly like 'Laura and the rest of them,' I fancy, my dear, and what suits them is rather too tame for you. But what do you propose to do with yourself now that you are beginning to live?"

"Now you are laughing at me, Uncle, and you will laugh more when I tell you that I mean to study and to make Kate study with me."

"Poor Kate!–if you should fancy swimming, shooting, or any other unheard-of pursuit, Kate would be obliged to swim and shoot with you. But I will not laugh any more. Study, if you will, Alice; you will learn fast enough, and, in this age of fast-advancing civilization, when the chances of eligible matrimony for young ladies in your station are yearly becoming less and less,–oh, you need not put up your lip and peep into my bachelor's shaving-glass!–let me tell you that a literary taste is a recourse not to be despised. Of course you will study now to astonish me, or to surprise your young friends, or for some other equally wise reason; but the time may come when literature will be its own exceeding great reward."

"Uncle, answer me one thing,–are you as happy here in your quiet study as you were in your exciting life among the Indians? Do you not tire of this everyday sameness?"

"Close questioning, Alice, but I will answer you truly. Other things being equal, I confess to you that the Indian life was the more monotonous of the two. I look back now on my twenty years of savage life and see nothing to vary its dreary sameness; the dangers were always alike, the excitements always the same, and the rest was a dead blank. The whole twenty years might be comprised in four words,–we fought, we hunted, we eat, we slept. No, there is no monotony like that,–no life so stupid as that of the savage, with his low wants and his narrow hopes and fears. My life here among my books, which seems to you so tame, is excitement itself compared with that. Your stupidest party is full of life, intelligence, wit, when put beside an Indian powwow. There is but one charm in that wandering life, Alice,–the free intercourse with Nature; that never tires; but then you must remember that to enjoy it you must be cultivated up to it. There needs all the teaching of civilization, nay, the education of life, to enjoy Nature truly. These quiet hills, these beech forests, are more to me now than Niagara was at eighteen; and Niagara itself, which raises the poet above the earth, falls tame on the mind of the savage. Believe one who knows,–the man of civilization who goes back to the savage state throws away his life; his very mind becomes, like the dyer's hand, 'subdued to what it works in.'

"But I am going out of your depth again, girls," continued he, looking at our wondering, half-puzzled faces. "Let it go, Alice; Life is a problem too hard for you to solve as yet; perhaps it will solve itself. Meantime, we will brighten ourselves up to-morrow by a good scamper over the hills, and, the next day, if your fancy for study still holds, we will plan out some hard work, and I will show you what real study is. Now go to bed; but see first that Aunt Molly has her sandwiches and gingerbread ready for the morning."

TALK NUMBER TWO

Uncle John was well qualified to show us what real study was, for in his early youth he had read hard and long to fit himself for a literary life. What had changed his course and driven him to the far West we did not know, but since his return he had brought the perseverance and judgment of middle life to the studies of his youth, and in his last ten years of leisure had made himself that rarest of things among Americans, a scholar, one worthy of the name.

Under his guidance our studies took life, and Alice threw herself into them with all the energy of her nature. In vain papa pished and pshawed, and mamma grieved, and begged John not to spoil the girls by making bookworms of them; in vain "Laura C. and the rest of them" entreated us to join this picnic or show ourselves at that party; in vain the young men professed themselves afraid of us, and the girls tossed their heads and called us blue-stockings. Alice's answer to all was, "I like studying; it is a great deal more entertaining than going to parties; Uncle John's study is pleasanter than Mrs. C.'s parlor, and a ride on his little Winnebago better fun than dancing." And so the years went on. We were not out of society,–that could not be in our house,–but our associates changed; young men of a higher standing frequented the house; we knew intimately the cultivated women, to whom, before, we had simply bowed at parties; and mamma and papa grew quite satisfied.

Not so Alice; the spirit of unrest was on her again, but this time it was not because of the weariness of life, but that she was oppressed by the fulness of her own happiness. She had waked up to life in waking up to love, and had poured out on Herbert B. the whole wealth of her heart. There was everything in her engagement to satisfy her friends, everything to gratify papa and mamma; and if I sometimes thought Herbert's too feeble a nature to guide hers, or if Uncle John sometimes talked with or listened to him as if he were measuring his depth and then went away with an anxious expression of face, who shall say how much of selfishness influenced us both? for was he not to take from us the pet and pride of our lives?

They were to be married in a few weeks, on Alice's twentieth birthday, and then leave for New York, where Herbert was connected in business with his father.

It was on a gloomy December afternoon that Alice came running up to our room, where I was reading my Italian lesson, and exclaimed,–

"Quick, Kate! put away those stupid books, and let us go over to Uncle John's for the night."

"Where is Herbert?"

"Herbert? Nonsense! I have sent him off with orders not to look for me again till to-morrow, and to-night I mean to pretend that there is no Herbert in the world. Perhaps this will be my last talk with Uncle John."

We walked quickly through the streets, shrouded in the dark winter-afternoon atmosphere heavy with coal-smoke, the houses on each side dripping with the fog-drops and looking dirty and cheerless with the black streaks running from the corners of each window, like tears down the face of some chimney-sweep or coal-boy, till, reaching the foot of Ludlow Street, we stood ankle-deep in mud, waiting for the little steamer, which still ploughed its way through the dark, sullen-looking water thick with the red mud which the late rise had brought down, and with here and there heavy pieces of ice floating by.

"Uncle John will never expect us to-night, Alice."

"I cannot help it,–I must go; for I shall never be satisfied without one good talk with him before I leave, and Herbert will never spare me another evening. Besides, Uncle John will be only too glad to see us in this suicidal weather, as he will call it." And she sprang upon the boat, laughing at my woebegone face.

"You are glad to see us here, Uncle John,–glad we came in spite of the fog, and sleet, and ice, and Kate's long face. How anybody can have a long face because of the weather, I cannot understand,–or, indeed, why there should be long faces at all in the world, when everything is so gloriously full of life."

"How many years is it, Alice,–three, I think,–since you were tired of living, found life so wearisome?"

"Yes, just about three years since Kate and I ran away from Laura C.'s party and came over here to ask you to help us out of our stupidity. I remember it all,–how you puzzled me by telling me that every position in life had its sameness. Ah, Uncle John, you forgot one thing when you told me that nothing satisfied us in this world." And Alice looked up from her little stool, where she sat before the fire at Uncle John's feet, with the flush of deep feeling coloring her cheeks and the dewy light of happiness in her eyes.

"And that one thing, Alice?"

"You are lying in wait for my answer, to give it that smile that I hate,–it is so unbelieving and so sad; I will not have you wear it on your face to-night, Uncle John. You cannot, if I speak my whole heart out. And why should I not, before you and Kate,–Kate, who is like my other self, and you, dear Uncle John, who, ever since the time we were talking about, have been so much to me? Do you know, I never told anybody before? but all you said that night never left me. I thought of it so much! Was it true that life was so dissatisfying? You who had tried so thoroughly, who had gone through such a life of adventure, had seemed to me really to live, was all as flat and unprofitable to you as one of our tiresome parties or morning calls? And something in my own heart told me it was true, something that haunted me all through my greatest enjoyments, through my studies that I took up then, and which have been to me, oh, Uncle John, so much more than ever I expected they would be! Yes, through all that I believed you, believed you till now, believed you till I knew Herbert."

"And has Herbert told you better?"

"Uncle John, you do not know how the whole of life is glorified for me,–glorified by his love. I do not deserve it; all I can do is to return it ten-fold; but this I know, that, while I keep it, there can be nothing tame or dull,–life, everything, is gilded by my own happiness."

"And if you lose it?"

The flush on her face fell. "I should be miserable!–I should not–no, I could not live any longer!"

"Alice," said Uncle John, his face losing its half-mocking smile with which he had been watching her eager countenance, "Alice, did you know that I had been married?"

We started. "Married? No. How was it, and when?"

"It is no matter now, my girls. Some time I may tell you about it. I should not have spoken of it now, but that I know my little Alice would not believe a word I am going to tell her, if she thought she was listening to an old bachelor's croakings. Now I can speak with authority. You think you could not live without Herbert's love? My dear, we can live without a great many things that we fancy indispensable. Nor is it so very easy to die. There comes many a time in life when it would seem quite according to the fitness of things, just the proper ending to the romance, to lie down and die; but, unfortunately, or rather fortunately, dying is a thing that we cannot do so just in the nick of time; and indeed"–and Uncle John's face assumed its strange smile, which seemed to take you, as it were, suddenly behind the scenes, to show you the wrong side of the tapestry,–"and indeed," he continued, "when I look back on the times in my life that I should have died, when it was fitting and proper to die, when I felt that dying would be such a trump card to play, if only I could manage it, I must say that I am glad now that it was beyond my power to arrange things according to the melodramatic rules. As it is, I am alive now. I shake my fist at all the ghosts of my departed tragedies and say, 'I am worth two of you. I am alive. I have all the chances of the future in my favor.'"

Here he caught sight of Alice's wide-opened eyes, and his smile changed into his own genial laugh, as he kissed her forehead and went on.

"That was a little aside, Alice, made to my other self, my metaphysical man,–not meant at all for my audience. I was meditating a lecture on the causes of conjugal happiness, but I seem to have stumbled upon a knot in the very first unwinding of the thread of my discourse."

"I'll listen to the lecture, Uncle, though I see but one simple and all-sufficient cause for my happiness."

"That Herbert loves you, ha? Know, my pretty neophyte, that happiness, married happiness especially, does not come from being loved, but from loving. What says our Coleridge?

"'For still the source, not fountain, givesThe daily food on which Love lives.'

"And he is right, although you shake your curls. In most marriages, in all that are not matters of convenience, one party has a stronger heart, will, character, than the other. And that one loves the most from the very necessity of his nature, and, loving most, is the happier. The other falls, after a while, into a passive state, becomes the mere recipient of love, and finds his or her happiness in something else, or perhaps does not find it at all."

"Neither side would satisfy me, Uncle John; I hardly know which fate would be the more terrible. Do you think I would accept such a compromise in exchange for all I am living and feeling now? I would rather be miserable at once than so half-happy."

"But, my darling, Colin and Chloe cannot spend their whole lives singing madrigals and stringing daisies. It is not in human nature to support, for any length of time, such superhuman bliss. The time will come when Colin will find no more rhymes to 'dove,' and when Chloe will tire of hearing the same one. It is possible that Herbert will some time tire of reading Shelley to you,–nay, it is even possible that the time may come when you will tire of hearing him; it is of that time I would talk. The present is as perfectly satisfactory to me as to you and Herbert, though not exactly in the same degree."