The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863

"She's fagged out," said Andy, lingering behind her. "Since Tuesday night I've followed her through streets an' alleys, night an' day. Jest as prim an' sober as you see. Cryin' softly to herself at times. It's a sore heart-break, Sir. Waitin' these ten years"—

Dr. Bowdler offered his help, earnestly, as did his niece, with a certain reserve. The dog Thor had disappeared with Starke, and they hoped that would afford some clue.

"But the woman is a mere clog," said Miss Defourchet, impatiently, after they were gone. "Her eyes are as sad, unreasonable as Thor's. Nothing in them but instinct. But it is so with most women,"—with a sigh.

"But somehow, Mary, those women never mistake their errand in the world any more than Thor, and do it as unconsciously and completely as he," said the Doctor, with a quizzical smile. "If Starke had followed, his 'instincts,' he would have been a snug farmer to-day in the Jerseys."

Miss Defourchet vouchsafed no answer.

Dr. Bowdler gave his help, as he had promised, but to no purpose. A week passed in the search without success, until at last Thor brought it. The dog was discovered one night in the kitchen, waiting for his supper, as he had been used to do: his affection for his new master, I suppose, not having overcome his recollection of the flesh-pots of Egypt. They followed him (Jane, the Doctor, and Andy) out to that maze of narrow streets, near Fairmount, called, I think, Francisville. He stopped at a low house, used in front as a cake-shop, the usual young girl with high cheek-bones and oily curls waiting within.

"The dog's owner?" the trading look going out of her eyes suddenly, "Oh, are you his friends? He's low to-night: mother's up with him since supper; mother's kept him since last Tuesday,"—fussing out from behind the counter. "Take chairs, Ma'am. I'll call her. Go out, you Stevy,"—driving out two or three urchins in their bed-gowns who were jamming up the door-way.

Miserably poor the whole place was; the woman, when she came down, a hard skinflint—in Andy's phrase—in the face: just home from her day's washing, her gown pinned up, her arms flabby and red.

"Good evenin', Sir! evenin', Ma'am! See the man? Of course, Ma'am; but you'd best be keerful,"—standing between Jane and the door. "He's very poorly."

"What ails him?"

"Well, I'll say it out,—if you're his friends, as you say," stammering. "I'd not like to accuse any one rashly, but—I think he'd a notion of starvin' to death, an' got himself so low. Come to me las' week, an' pawned his coat for my back room to sleep in. He eat nothin' then: I seen that. An' he used to go out an' look at the dam for hours: but he never throwed himself in. Since he took to bed, we keep him up with broth and sech as we have,—Sally an' me. Sir? Afford it? Hum! We're not as well off as we have been," dryly; "but I'm not a beast to see a man starvin' under my roof. Oh, certingly, Ma'am; go up."

And while Jane mounted the rickety back-stairs, she turned to the door to meet two or three women with shawls pinned about their heads.

"He's very poorly, Mis' Crawford, thank ye, Mem. No, you can't do nothing'," in a sepulchral whisper, which continued in a lower tone, with a nod back to the Doctor and Andy.

Starke's affair was a godsend to the neighborhood, Dr. Bowdler saw. Untrained people enjoy a sickness with more keenness and hearty good-feeling than you do the opera. The Doctor had providently brought a flask of brandy in his pocket. He went on tiptoe up the creaking stairs and gave it to Jane. She was standing, holding the handle of the door, not turning it.

"What is it, Jane?" cheerfully. "What do you tremble for, eh?"

"Nothin'",—chewing her lips and opening the door. "It's ten years since,"—to herself, as she went in.

Not when she was a shy girl had he been to her what these ten years of desertion had made him.

It was half an hour before the Doctor and Andy went up softly into the upper room and sat quietly down out of sight in the corner. Jane was sitting on the low cot-bed, holding Starke's head on her breast. They could not see her face in the feeble light. She had some brandy and water in a glass, and gave him a spoonful of it now and then; and when she had done that, smoothed the yellow face incessantly with her hard fingers. The Doctor fancied that such dumb pain and affection as there was in even that little action ought to bring him to life, if he were dead. There was some color on his cheeks, and occasionally he opened his eyes and tried to speak, but closed them wearily. They watched by him until midnight; his pulse grew stronger by that time, and he lay wistfully looking at his wife like one who had wakened out of a long death, and tried to collect his thought. She did not speak nor stir, knowing on how slight a thread his sense hung.

"Jane!" he said, at last.

They bent forward eagerly.

"Jane, I wish thee'd take me home."'

"To be sure, Joseph," cheerfully. "In the morning. It is too chilly to-night. Is thee comfortable?" drawing his head closer to her breast. "O God! He'll live!" silently clutching at the bed-rail until her hand ached. "Go to sleep, dear."

Whatever sobs or tears choked her voice just then, she forced them back: they might disturb him. He closed his eyes a moment.

"I have something to say to thee, Jane."

"No. Thee must rest."

"I'd sleep better, if I tell thee first."

There was a moment's silence. The woman's face was pale, her eyes burning, but she only smiled softly, holding him steadily.

"It has been so long!"—passing his hand over his forehead vaguely.

"Yes."

She could not command a smile now.

"It was all wasted. I've been worth nothing."

How close she held him then to her breast! How tender the touches grew on his face!

"I was not strong enough to kill myself even, the other day, when I was so tired. So cowardly! Not worth much, Jane!"

She bent forward over him, to keep the others from hearing this.

"Thee's tired too, Jane?" looking up dully.

"A little, Joseph."

Another silence.

"To-morrow, did thee say, we would go home?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

He shut his eyes to sleep.

"Kiss him," said the Doctor to her. "It will make him more certain."

Her face grew crimson.

"He has not asked me yet," she said.

Sometime early in the summer, nearly four years after, Miss Defourchet came down to make her uncle another visit,—a little thinned and jaded with her winter's work, and glad of the daily ride into the fresh country-air. One morning, the Doctor, jumping into the barouche beside her, said,—

"We'll make a day of it, Mary,—spend it with some old friends of ours. They are such wholesome, natural people, it refreshes me to be with them when I am tired."

"Starke and his wife?" she asked, arranging her scarf. "I never desire to be with him, or with any man recreant to his work."

"Recreant, eh? Starke? Well, no; he works hard, digs and ditches, and is happy. I think he takes his work more humbly and healthily than any man I know."

Miss Defourchet looked absently out at the gleaming river. Her interest had always been languid in the man since he had declined either to fight fate or drown himself. The Doctor jerked his hat down into the bottom of the carriage and pulled open his cravat.

"Hah! do you catch that river-breeze? Don't that expand your lungs? And the whiff of the fresh clover-blossoms? I come out here to study my sermons, did you know? Nature is so simple and grand here, a man could not well say a mean or unbrotherly thing while he stays. It forces you to be 'a faithful witness' to the eternal truth. There is good fishing hereabouts, eh, Jim?"—calling to the driver. "Do you see that black pool under the sycamore?"

"I could not call it 'faithful witnessing' to delight in taking even a fish's life," dryly said his niece.

The Doctor winced.

"It's the old Adam in me, I suppose. You'll have to be charitable to the different making-up of people, Mary."

However, he was silent for a while after that, with rather an extinguished feeling, bursting out again when they reached the gate of a little snug place by the road-side.

"Here is where my little friend Ann lives. There's a wife for you! 'And though she rules him, never shows she rules.' They've a dairy-farm, you know, back of the hills; but they live here because it was her father's toll-house then, and they won't give up the old place. I like such notions. Andy's full of them. There he is! Hillo, Fawcett!"

Andy came out from the kitchen-garden, his freckled face redder than his hair, his eyes showing his welcome. Dr. Bowdler was an old tried friend now of his and Ann's. "He took a heap of nonsense out of me," he used to say.

"No, no, we'll not stop now," said the Doctor; "we are going on to Starke's, and Ann is not in, I see. I will stop in the evening for my glass of buttermilk, though, and a bunch of country-grown flowers."

But they waited long enough to discuss the price of poultry, etc., in market, before they drove on. Miss Defourchet looked wearied.

"Such things seem so paltry while the country is in the state it is," she said.

"Well, my dear, so it is. But it's 'the work by which Andy thrives,' you know. And I like it, somehow."

The lady had worked nobly in the hospitals last winter, and naturally she wanted to see every head and hand at work on some noble scheme or task for the world's good. The hearty, comfortable quiet of the Starkes' little farm-house tired her. It was such a sluggish life of nothings, she thought,—even when Jane had brought her chair close to the window where the sunshine came in broadest and clearest through the buttonwood-leaves. Jane saw the look, and it troubled her. She was not much of a talker, only when with her husband, so there was no use of trying that. She put a little table beside the window and a white cloth on it, and then brought a saucer of crimson strawberries and yellow cream; but the lady was no eater, she was sorry to see. She stood a moment timidly, but Miss Defourchet did not put her at her ease. It was the hungry poor she cared for, with stifled brains and souring feeling. This woman was at ease, stupidly at peace with God and herself.

"Perhaps thee'd be amused to look over Joseph's case of books?" handing her the key, and then sitting down with her knitting, contented in having finished her duty. "After a while thee'll have a pleasant time,"—smiling consciously. "Richard'll be awake. Richard's our boy, thee knows? I wish he was awake, but it is his mornin' nap, an' I never disturb him in his mornin' nap."

"You lead a very quiet life, apparently," said Miss Defourchet; for she meant to see what was in all these dull trifles.

"Yes, thee might call it so. My old man farms; he has more skill that way than me. He bought land in Iowa, an' has been out seein' it, an' that freshened him up this spring. But we'll never leave the old place."

"So he farms, and you"—

"Well, I oversee the house," glancing at the word into the kitchen to see how Bessy was getting on with the state dinner in progress. "It keeps me busy, an' Bessy, (she's an orphan we've taken to raise,) an' the dairy, an' Richard most of all. I let nobody touch Richard but myself. That's my work."

"You have little time for reading?"

Jane colored.

"I'm not fond of it. A book always put me to sleep quicker than a hop pillow. But lately I read some things," hesitating,—"the first books Richard'll have to know. I want to keep him with ourselves as long as I can. I'd like,"—her eyes with a new outlook in them, as she raised them, something beyond Miss Defourchet's experience,—"I'd like to make my boy a good, healthy, honest boy before I'm done with him. I wish I could teach him his Latin an' th' others. But there's no use to try for that."

"How goes it, Mary?" said the Doctor heartily, coming in, all in a heat, and sun-burnt, with Starke.

Both men were past the prime of life, thin, and stooped, but Starke's frame was tough and weather-cured. He was good for ten years longer in the world than Dr. Bowdler.

"I've just been looking at the stock. Full and plenty, in every corner, as I say to Joseph. It warms me up to come here, Starke. I don't know a healthier, more cheerful farm on these hills than just this one."

Starke's face brightened.

"The ground's not overly rich, Sir. Tough work, tough work; but I like it. I'm saving off it, too. We put by a hundred or two last year; same next, God willing. For Richard, Dr. Bowdler. We want enough to give him a thorough education, and then let him rough it with the others. That will be the best way to bring out the stuff that's in him. It's good stuff," in an under-tone.

"How old is he?" said Miss Defourchet.

"Two years last February," said Jane, eagerly.

"Two years; yes. He's my namesake, Mary, did you know? Where is the young lion?"

"Why, yes, mother. Why isn't Richard down? Morning nap? Hoot, toot! bring the boy down!"

Miss Defourchet, while Jane went for the boy, noticed how heavy the scent of the syringas grew, how the bees droned down into a luxurious delight in the hot noon. One might dream out life very pleasantly there, she thought. The two men talked politics, but glanced constantly at the stairs. She did not wonder that Starke's worn, yellow face should grow so curiously bright at the sight of his boy; but her uncle did not care for children,—unless, indeed, there was something in them. Jane came down and put the boy on the floor.

"He has pulled all my hair down," she said, trying to look grave, to hide the proud smile in her face.

Miss Defourchet had taken Richard up with an involuntary kiss, which he resisted, looking her full in the face. There was something in this child.

"He won't kiss you, unless he likes you," said Starke, chafing his hands delightedly.

"What do you think of that fellow, Mary?" said the Doctor, coming over. "He's my young lion, Richard is. Look at this square forehead. You don't believe in Phrenology, eh? Well, I do. Feel his jaws. Look at that lady, Sir! Do you see the big, brave eyes of him?"

"His mouth is like his mother's," said Starke, jealously.

"Oh, yes, yes! So. You think that is the best part of his face, I know. It is; as tender as a woman's."

"It is a real hero-face," said the young lady, frankly; "not a mean line in it."

Starke had drawn the boy between his knees, and was playing roughly with him.

"There never shall be one, with God's help," he thought, but said nothing.

Richard was "a hobby" of Dr. Bowdler's, his niece perceived.

"His very hair is like a mane," he said; "he's as uncouth as a young giant that don't feel his strength. I say this, Mary: that the boy will never be goodish and weak: he'll be greatly good or greatly bad."

The young lady noticed how intently Starke listened; she wondered if he had forgotten entirely his own God-sent mission, and turned baby-tender altogether.

"What has become of your model, Mr. Starke?" she asked.

Dr. Bowdler looked up uneasily; it was a subject he never had dared to touch.

"Andrew keeps it," said Starke, with a smile, "for the sake of old times, side by side with his lantern, I believe."

"You never work with it?"

"No; why should I? The principle has since been made practical, as you know, better than I could have done it. My idea was too crude, I can see now. So I just grazed success, as one may say."

"Have you given up all hope of serving your fellows?" persisted the lady. "You seemed to me to be the very man to lead a forlorn hope against ignorance: are you quite content to settle down here and do nothing?"

His color changed, but he said quietly,—

"I've learned to be humbler, maybe. It was hard learning. But," trying to speak lightly, "when I found I was not fit to be an officer, I tried to be as good a private as I could. Your uncle will tell you the cause is the same."

There was a painful silence.

"I think sometimes, though," said Starke, "that God meant Jane and I should not be useless in the world."

He put his hand almost reverently on the boy's head.

"Richard is ours, you know, to make what we will of. He will do a different work in life from any engine. I try to think we have strength enough saved out of our life to make him what we ought."

"You're right, Starke," said the Doctor, emphatically. "Some day, when you and I have done with this long fight, we shall find that as many privates as captains will have earned the cross of the Legion of Honor."

Miss Defourchet said nothing; the day did not please her. Jane, she noticed, when evening came on, slipped up-stairs to brush her hair, and put on a soft white shawl.

"Joseph likes to see me dress a little for the evenings," she said, with quite a flush in her cheek.

And the young lady noticed that Starke smiled tenderly as his wife passed him. It was so weak! in ugly, large-boned people, too.

"It does one good to go there," said the Doctor, drawing a long breath as they drove off in the cool evening, the shadowed red of the sun lighting up the little porch where the machinist stood with his wife and child. "The unity among them is so healthy and beautiful."

"I did not feel it as you do," said Miss Defourchet, drawing her shawl closer, and shivering.

Starke came down on the grass to play with the boy, throwing him down on the heaps of hay there to see him jump and rush back undaunted. Yet in all his rude romps the solemn quiet of the hour was creeping over him. He sat down by Jane on the wooden steps at last, while, the boy, after an impetuous kiss or two, curled up at their feet and went to sleep The question about the model had stirred an old doubt in Jane's heart. She watched her husband keenly. Was he thinking of that old dream? Would he go back to it? the long dull pain of those dead years creeping through her brain. He looked up from the boy, stroking his gray beard,—his eyes, she saw, full of tears.

"I was thinking, Jane, how much of our lives was lost before we found our true work."

"Yes, Joseph."

He gathered up the boy, holding him close to his bony chest.

"I'd like to think," he said. "I could atone for that waste, Jane. It was my fault. I'd like to think I'd earn up yonder that cross of the Legion of Honor—through him."

"God knows," she said.

After that they were silent a long while, They were thinking of Him who had brought the little child to them.

A LOYAL WOMAN'S NO

No! is my answer from this cold, bleak ridge        Down to your valley: you may rest you there:The gulf is wide, and none can build a bridge        That your gross weight would safely hither bear.Pity me, if you will. I look at you        With something that is kinder far than scorn,And think, "Ah, well! I might have grovelled, too;        I might have walked there, fettered and forsworn."I am of nature weak as others are;        I might have chosen comfortable ways;Once from these heights I shrank, beheld afar,        In the soft lap of quiet, easy days.I might—(I will not hide it)—once I might        Have lost, in the warm whirlpools of your voice,The sense of Evil, the stern cry of Right;        But Truth has steered me free, and I rejoice:Not with the triumph that looks back to jeer        At the poor herd that call their misery bliss;But as a mortal speaks when God is near,        I drop you down my answer; it is this:—I am not yours, because you seek in me        What is the lowest in my own esteem:Only my flowery levels can you see,        Nor of my heaven-smit summits do you dream.I am not yours, because you love yourself:        Your heart has scarcely room for me beside.I could not be shut in with name and pelf;        I spurn the shelter of your narrow pride!Not yours,—because you are not man enough        To grasp your country's measure of a man!If such as you, when Freedom's ways are rough,        Cannot walk in them, learn that women can!Not yours, because, in this the nation's need,You stoop to bend her losses to your gain,And do not feel the meanness of your deed:I touch no palm defiled with such a stain!Whether man's thought can find too lofty steeps        For woman's scaling, care not I to know;But when he falters by her side, or creeps,        She must not clog her soul with him to go.Who weds me must at least with equal pace        Sometimes move with me at my being's height:To follow him to his more glorious place,        His purer atmosphere, were keen delight.You lure me to the valley: men should call        Up to the mountains, where the air is clear.Win me and help me climbing, if at all!        Beyond these peaks rich harmonies I hear,—The morning chant of Liberty and Law!        The dawn pours in, to wash out Slavery's blot:Fairer than aught the bright sun ever saw        Rises a nation without stain or spot.The men and women mated for that time        Tread not the soothing mosses of the plain;Their hands are joined in sacrifice sublime;        Their feet firm set in upward paths of pain.Sleep your thick sleep, and go your drowsy way!        You cannot hear the voices in the air!Ignoble souls will shrivel in that day:        The brightness of its coming can you bear?For me, I do not walk these hills alone:        Heroes who poured their blood out for the Truth,Women whose hearts bled, martyrs all unknown,        Here catch the sunrise of immortal youthOn their pale cheeks and consecrated brows!        It charms me not,—your call to rest below:I press their hands, my lips pronounce their vows        Take my life's silence for your answer: No!

EUGENE DELACROIX

The death of Eugene Delacroix cuts the last bond between the great artistic epoch which commenced with the Bellini and that which had its beginning with the nineteenth century, epochs as diverse in character as the Venice of 1400 and the Paris of 1800. In him died the last great painter whose art was moulded by the instincts and traditions that made Titian and Veronese, and the greatest artist whose eyes have opened on the, to him, uncongenial and freezing life of the nineteenth century. In our time we have a new ideal, a new and maybe a higher development of intellectual art, and as great a soul as Titian's might to-day reach farther towards the reconciled perfections of graphic art: but what he did no one can now do; the glory of that time has passed away,—its unreasoning faith, its wanton instinct, revelling in Art like children in the sunshine, and rejoicing in childlike perception of the pomp and glory which overlay creation, unconscious of effort, indifferent to science,—all gone with the fairies, the saints, the ecstatic visions which framed their poor lives in gold. Only, still reflecting the glory, as eastern mountains the sunken sun, came a few sympathetic souls kindling into like glow, with faint perception of what had passed from the whole world beside. Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, and Delacroix, kept the line of color, now at last utterly extinguished. Now we reason, now we see facts; sentiment is out of joint, and appearances are known to be liars; we have found the greater substance; we kindle with the utilities, and worship with the aspiring spirit of a common humanity; we banish the saints from our souls and the gewgaws from our garments, and walk clothed and in our right minds in what we believe to be the noonday light of reason and science. We are humanitarian, enlightened. We begin to comprehend the great problems of human existence and development; our science touches the infinitely removed, and apprehends the mysteries of macrocosmic organism: but we have lost the art of painting; for, when Eugene Delacroix died, the last painter (visible above the man) who understood Art as Titian understood it, and painted with such eyes as Veronese's, passed away, leaving no pupil or successor. It is as when the last scion of a kingly race dies in some alien land. Greater artists than he we may have in scores; but he was of the Venetians, and, with his nearly rival, Turner, lived to testify that it was not from a degeneracy of the kind that we have no more Tintorets and Veroneses; for both these, if they had lived in the days of those, had been their peers.

Painting, as the Venetians understood it, is a lost art, because the mental conditions which made it possible exist no longer. The race is getting to that mannish stature in which every childlike quality is a shame to it; and the Venetian feeling for and cultivation of color are essentially childlike traits. No shadows of optics, no spectra of the prism clouded their passionate enjoyment of color as it was or as it might be, no uplifted finger of cold decorum frightened them into gray or sable gloom; they garbed themselves in rainbows, and painted with the sunset. Color was to them a rapture and one of the great pursuits of their lives; it was music visible, and they cultivated it as such,—not by rule and measure, by scales and opposites, through theories and canons, with petrific chill of intellect or entangling subtilty of analysis. Their lives developed their instincts, and their instincts their art. They loved color more than everything else; and therefore color made herself known to them in her rarest and noblest beauty. They went to Nature as children, and Nature met them as a loving mother meets her child, with her happiest smile and the richest of her gifts. I do not believe that to any Venetian painter the thought of whether a given tint was true ever came; if only his fine instinct told him it was lovely, he asked no question further,—and if he took a tint from Nature, it was because it was lovely, and not because he found it in Nature. Our painter must see,—their painter could feel; and in this antithesis is told the whole difference between the times, so far as color is concerned.