The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864

"There is no such one," sharply. "There is no one yonder but knows his home, and is nearer to his God than you or I, James Yarrow."

The boy made no reply,—sat on her knees looking earnestly into the fire. He had more nearly guessed her secret than she knew,—near enough to know how to comfort her. After a while, when she was quiet, he turned, and put his thin arms about her neck, smiling.

"Take me into your bed, mother, I'm so cold! Let me into old Catty's place this once."

She nodded, pleased, and, putting him to bed, soon followed him. When she held him snugly in her arms, the replenished fire making hot, flickering shadows from the next room, he whispered,—

"Next Christmas, mother! Only one year more!"

Again the quick shiver of her body; but this time her breath was gentle, a soft light in her eyes.

"Well, and then, my son?"

"Why, some one else then will call me son. How long he has been gone, dear! so long that I never saw him since I was a bit of a baby."

"Five years. Yes. Well, dear?" anxiously.

Her eyes were shut, he stroked the lids softly, thinking how moist and red her lips were: never as beautiful a face as the little mother's; for so Jem, feeling quite grown up in his heart, called her there.

"Well, then, no more trouble, but somebody to take care of us all the time. Whenever I see a preacher, now, I think of father"—stopping abruptly, with that anxious, incisive look so sad to see on a child's face.

She did not reply at first; then,—

"He preached God's word as he knew it," she said, dryly.

"And whenever I hear of a good, brave man, I think, 'That's like father!'"

Her eyes opened now.

"That's true, Jemmy! God knows that's true! So proud my boy will be of his father!"

She did not say anything more, but began playing with his hair, her month unsteady, and a bashful, dreamy smile in her eyes. She looked very young and girlish in the mellow light.

"He's not coarse like me, Jem," she said at last. "Even more like a woman in some ways. He always came nearer to you children, for instance; I mind how you always used to creep away from me close to him at night. He hates noise, Stephen does,—and mean, scraping ways, such as we're used to, being poor. My boy'll mind that? We'll keep anything shabby out of his sight, when he comes back."

"I'll mind," said Jem, dryly. "But—Well, no matter. We're to try and be like him, Tom and I? I understand."

She drew down her head suddenly into the pillow. Jem had been growing sleepy, but he started wide awake now, trying to see her face: the pretty pink color his questions had brought was gone from it.

"Did you speak, mother?"

No answer.

"I said we are to be men like him, Tom and I, if we can?"

He knew he had touched her to the quick somehow: his heart beat thick with the old childish terror, as he waited for her answer.

"Yes, you are to try, my son."

Martha Yarrow's frivolous chirruping voice was altered, with meaning in it he never had heard before, as if her answer came out of some depth where God had faced her soul, and forced it to speak truth. But when, after that, the boy, curious to know more, went on with his questions, she quieted him gravely, kissed him good-night, and turned over,—to sleep, he concluded, from her regular breathing. However, when Jem, after a while, began to snore, she got up and went to the kitchen-fire, kneeling down on the stone hearth: her head was on fire, and her body cold.

"So they shall be like him!" she whispered, with a fierce, baited look, as if by her wife's trust in him she defied the whole world. "I have kept my word. I've tried to make his sons what God made him in the beginning."

That was true: she had kept her word. Five years ago, when the great scandal came on the church in –, and their minister was tried for forgery, and sentenced to six years' imprisonment in the penitentiary, the first letter his wife wrote to him there had these words: "For the boys, my husband, they never shall know of this thing. They shall know you as God and I do, Stephen. I'll make them men like you, if I can: except in your religion; for I believe, before God, the Devil taught you that."

When the man read that in his cell, a dry, quiet smile came over his face. He had not expected such a keen opinion from his shallow, easy-going wife: he did not think there was so much insight in her.

"It's a deep sounding you give, Martha, true or not," folding up the letter. "And so the boys will never know?" going back to his solitary cobbling, for they were making a shoemaker of him.

If there were any remorse under his quiet, or impatience at fate, or gnawing homesickness, he did not show it. That was the last letter or message that came from his wife. The friends of other prisoners were admitted to visit them, but no one ever asked to see him; the five years went by; every day the same bar of sunlight struck across his bench, and glittered on the point of his awl, gray in winter, yellow in summer; but no day brought a word or a sign from the outer world but that. The man grew thin, mere skin and bone; but then he was scrofulous. He asked no questions, ceased at last to look up, when the jailer brought his meals, to see if he carried a letter. Sometimes, when he used to stand chafing his stubbly chin in the evening at the slit cut in the stones for his window, looking at the red brick chimney-pot he could see over the penitentiary-wall, it seemed like something of outer life, and he would mutter, "She said the boys would never know." Once, too, a year or two after that, when the jailer came into "quiet Stevy's" cell, (for so he nicknamed him,) Yarrow came up, and took him by the coat-buttons, looking up and gabbling something about Martha and the little chaps in a maudlin sort of way,—then, with a silly laugh, lay down on his pallet.

"I never felt sorry for the little whiffet before," said the fat jailer, when he came out. "He's so close; but it's a cursed shame in his people to give him the go-by that way,—there!"

But when he went back an hour or two after, he found he had gained no ground with Stevy; he was dry, silent as ever: he had come to himself, meanwhile, and shivered with disgust at the fear that any madness had made him commit himself to this mass of flesh.

"'Mortised with the sacred garlic,'" he muttered, with the usual dry twinkle in his eyes.

Ben caught the last word.

"It's a good yarb, garlic," he said, confusedly. "Uses it on hot coals mostly, under broilin' steaks. Well, good night.—He's a queer chap, though," after he had gone out,—"beyond me."

Five years being gone, Martha Yarrow, sitting by her fire to-night, could only repeat the words of her letter. She had taken out a daguerreotype of her husband, and was looking at it. He was a small man; young; dressed in a suit of rusty black, with a certain subdued, credulous, incomplete air about him, like a man forced at birth into some iron mould of circumstance, and whose own proper muscles and soul had never had a chance of air to grow. A homely, saddened, uncouthly shaped face,—one that would be sure to go snubbed and unread through the world, to find at last some woman who would know its latent meaning, and worship it with the heat of passion which this country-girl had given. Withal, a cheerful, quizzical smile on the lips. Poor Martha's eyes filled, the moment she looked at that; and so she went back to her first years of married life, full of keen, relishing enjoyment, all coming from him, quiet, silent as he was,—remembering how her maddest freaks were indulged with that same odd, dry laugh. She stood alone now.

"And in these years I have grown used to being alone,"—standing up, stretching her arms suddenly above her head, and letting them fall again.

It was a lie: she knew that the tired sinking within her of body and soul was harder to bear now than the day he went away, and she weaker to bear it. If she could but lean her head on his breast for one moment, and feel him pat her hair with the old "Tut! tut! why, what ails my girl?" it would give her more strength than all her prayers. She couldn't think of herself as anything but a girl, when she remembered her husband: these years were nothing.

Her mouth grew drier and hotter, as she sat there looking into the face, polishing the glass with her hand, kissing it. "I'm so tired, Stephen!" she would whisper now and then. Only those who know the unuttered mysterious bond in the soul of a true wife and husband can comprehend what Martha Yarrow bore, when it was torn apart, and by no fault of hers. "God meant him for me," she sometimes said, savagely; "no man had a right to part us." She looked at the picture, feeling that he was purer than any baby she had nursed at her breast, nearer God. "It was his religion was to blame. That was the ruin of us all. I believe he never knew who the good God was; how could he?" thinking of his father, who used to sit in the chimney-corner,—one of those acrid doctrine-professors who sour the water of life into gall and vinegar before they dole it out to their children. She was glad she had told him her mind before they parted,—to what his teaching had brought his son. "I cut deep that day, and I thank God for it," she said, her face white.

She had brought the children here to be near the penitentiary, but she had never been allowed to see him. No letters came from him. His brother, John Yarrow, sent hers to him. There was some formula of admission, he said, which she did not understand. The time was nearly up; in one year more he would be free. Well, and then? He had been in one of the ways that butted down on hell; how would he come back to her? In all these years, silence. Who would bring him back? Who? They were keen enough to put him in,—but who would stay with him, to say, "You've slipped, boy, but stand up again"? Who would hold out a kind hand at the gate, when he came out, with "Here's a place, Yarrow. Here's home, and love, and God waiting; try another chance"? Who would do that? No wonder she looked out that night, thinking there was some work forgotten.

Martha sat there until dawn came, moving only to replenish the fire lest the children should take cold. In all her life she never forgot that night. Some furious instinct seemed at work within her, goading her to be up and doing. What should she do? Why should she disquiet herself? Her husband was safe asleep in his cell. Yet all night long she could not keep her soul back from crying to God to save him in his deadly peril, to bring him there at once to her, to the children. When morning broke, cold and sweet-breathed, russet clouds, dyed with the latent crimson day, thronging up from behind the hills, she tried to thrust down all the pains of the night as moody fancies. They did not go. She bathed herself, woke the children, laughed and romped with them (for their year's holiday should not be damped); but the cold, unsufferable weight within dragged her physically down. Trifles without, too, beset her with vague fears. Ready was gone; for years he had not left the house at night. The children began to look with uneasy eyes at her face: she would betray all. She kept her fingers thrust in the breast of her wrapper to touch the case of the picture: she could hold herself quiet so. How cold and unmeaning the light was that day to her! and every tick of the clock seemed to beat straight on her brain. So the morning crept by. She grew so sure—without reason—that it was the last day of waiting, that, when the children went out to build their snow-man, she sat down on Jem's chest, shivering and dizzy; when the snow cracked under a step outside, afraid to turn her head,—thinking he would be standing in the door, with the old patient smile on his mouth, and his hand out. But he did not come.

About half a mile on the other side of Shag's Hill there is a hotel, off from the road, looking like an overgrown Swiss châlet. Not a country-tavern by any means. Starr, a New-York caterer, keeps it, as a sort of boarding-house for a few wealthy Pittsburg families in summer: however, if you should stop there at any time of the year, you would be sure of a delicate croquette and a fair glass of wine. Usually, Starr and his family are the only occupants in winter, but on this Christmas eve there were lights in two of the upper rooms. M. Soulé, the Mobile financier, so well known through the West, with his family, had occupied them for about a week; this evening, too, a Mr. Frazier from St. Louis was at the house: there was a collision of trains near Beaver, and he had left the other passengers and come over to Starr's, intending to go on horseback up to Pittsburg in the morning. An old acquaintance of the Soulés, apparently: he had dined with them that evening, and when Starr went up about ten o'clock to know if Mr. Soulé wished to go out gunning in the morning, he found the old man still standing with his back to the fire, talking sharply of the Little Miami Railroad shares, then beginning to go up. "A thorough old Shylock," thought Starr, waiting, scanning the acrid, wizened face with its protruding black eyes, the dried-up figure in a baggy suit of blue, a white collar turned down nearly to the shoulders, and the gray hair knotted in a queue. He looked at the landlord, scowling at the interruption: M. Soulé, on the contrary, spoke heartily, as if suddenly relieved of a bore.

"Of course, of course, Starr; I'll be off by four. I'll saddle my own horse,—no need to disturb any of your people; let them sleep on Christmas at least, poor devils. The partridges about here are really worth tasting," turning to Frazier, "and Starr tells me of a mythical deer back in the hills. You see," with a bow, "it will not be possible for me to breakfast with you. I'll see you at Pittsburg about those snares,—say, on Monday."

"Yes," buttoning his coat, with a furtive glance of contempt at Soulé's burly figure and eager face. Was this the far-famed Nimrod of the money-hunt? "I'll say to Pryor you had other game on hand to-day."

"Other game,—yes," with a sudden gravity,—pushing his hair back, and looking in the fire, while the old man made his formal adieus to his wife. They lasted some time, for Madame Soulé was a courtly little body, with all her quiet.

"I must make an early start, too," said Frazier, turning again. "Glad of the chance to take a bracing ride. Banks closed to-morrow, so no time's lost, eh? Well, good night, Soulé," perceiving that the other did not see his outstretched hand; "don't come down; good night"; and so shuffled down the stairs.

"Pah!" said Soulé, with a breath of relief. "His blood's like water. He never owed a dollar, and never gave one away."

The usual genial laugh came back to his face, as he turned to Madame Soulé and began to romp with the baby lying in her lap. He was a tall man, about six feet high, with a handsome face, red hair, a frank blue eye, and a natural, genuine laugh. Whatever else history may record of him, a man of generous blood and sensitive instincts. His subdued dress, quiet voice, suited him, were indigenous to his nature, not assumed: even Starr could see that. Starr used afterwards, when they became the country's gossip, to talk of little traits in these people, showing the purity of their refinement. To this day he believes in them. How unostentatious their kindness was: the delicate, scentless air that hung about them: the fresh flowers always near. "Eating with iron forks, an' not a word,—my silver being packed; their under-clothes like gossamer, outside plainer than mine. Bah! I know the real stuff, when I see it, I hope. No sham there!"

When the baby was tired of its romp, Madame Soulé hushed it to sleep. She was the quietest nurse ever lived,—the quietest woman,—one whom you scarce noted when with her, and forgot as soon as you left the room. Nature had made her up with its most faint, few lines, and palest coloring. Soulé, however, had found out the delicate beauty, and all else that lay beneath. There was a passionate fierceness sometimes in his look at her, and a something else stranger,—such an expression as a dog gives his master. She never talked but to him.

"I thought you would have breakfasted with him, perhaps," she said, now.

"No. I'm too much of an Arab, Judith. I can't eat a man's salt and empty his pocket at the same time."

"I'm glad you did not," smiling as the baby caught at his father's seals, then glancing at the watch when Soulé held it out for him. "Nearly eleven. It is time your brother was here. See, John, how pink its feet are, and dimpled,"—putting one to her mouth with a burst of childish laughter.

Soulé played with a solitary white calla that stood near in a crystal vase, gulped down a glass of wine hastily, held the delicate glass up to see how like a golden bubble it was, then threw it down.

"Are you sure we are right in this, child?"

She stopped playing with the baby, but did not look up.

"About your brother?"

"I thought"—with the doubtful look of one who is about to essay his strength against flint. "It has been a hard life,—Stephen's,—and through us. What if we let him go?" anxiously. "What would be better? He has children,"—taking the baby's hand in his.

"Yes, children,—clods, like his wife,"—the pink lip curling. "You should know your brother, John Yarrow. You do know the stuff that is in him. Will his brain ever muddle down to find comfort in that inn-keeper's daughter? Is it likely? Besides, they are dead to him now. You have succeeded in keeping them apart."

If she saw the dark flush in his face at this, she did not notice it, but went on hastily.

"Stephen never had a chance, and you know it, John. He was too weak to break the trammels at home, as you did,—let himself be forced to preach what his soul knew was a lie. When you tried to open the door for him to a broader life"—

"I shut him in a penitentiary-cell," with a bitter laugh. "They taught him to make shoes."

"Was it your fault? Now that he is free, then," going on steadily, still patting the child's cheek, "you mean to shake him off,—having used him. Push him back into the old slough. He can make a decent living there, cobbling, I know. Be generous, John," with a keen glance of the pale brown eyes. "If you succeed in this thing to-morrow, take him with us out of the United States. There is trouble coming here. Give him a chance for education,—to know something of the world he lives in,—to catch one or two free breaths before he dies. He has been the man in the iron cage, since his birth, it seems to me."

She got up as she spoke, rang the bell, and gave the baby to its nurse, wrapping it up in a blanket or two. When she turned, her husband was standing on the hearth-rug, a half-laugh in his eyes.

"Judith!"

"What is it?"

"The plain meaning of all this is, that there is no one who can do this foul job to-morrow but Stephen Yarrow, and for my sake it must be done; ergo—Well, well! You do love me, child!"

Her eyes filled with sudden tears; she caught hold of his arm, and clung to it.

"I do love you, God knows! What is Stephen Yarrow to me, soul or body? Don't be harsh with me, John!"

"Harsh? No, Judith," stroking the colorless curls gently; looking back; thinking that she had done much for him; he would humor her whim, not behave like a beast to her. But his brother—It would be better for Stephen in the end. Certainly. Yet he sighed: a womanish, unable sigh.

A year or two afterwards, (for I am not writing of a fictitious character,) this man's frauds were discovered. They were larger and more uniformly successful than any that had ever been perpetrated in the States, but there was about them a subtle, dogged daring that did not belong to Yarrow's character, and shrewd people who had known them began to talk of this shadow of a woman who went about with him,—a quadroon, they said,—and hinted strongly that it was she who had been the vital power of the partnership, and Yarrow but the well-chosen tool. There are no means of knowing the truth of the conjecture, for Yarrow escaped: she followed him, but is dead, so their secret is safe. Fraud, however, was but one half of his story. Soulé gave like a prince,—secretly, with a woman-like, anxious helpfulness, a passionate eagerness, as if the pain or want of a human being were insufferable to him. In this he was alone: the woman had no share in it. She was as cold, impervious to the suffering of others as nothing but a snake or a selfish woman can be: whatever muddy human feeling did ooze from her brain was for this man only. And yet, when we think of it, she was, as they guessed, a quadroon: maybe, under the low, waxy-skinned forehead that Yarrow's fingers were patting that night there might have been a revengeful consciousness of the wrongs of her race that justified to her the harm she did. It is likely: the coarsest negroes argue in that way. God help them! At any rate, we shall come closest to Christ's rule of justice in trying to find a sore heart behind the vicious fingers of the woman.

While the two stood in the pleasant light of the warm room waiting for him, Stephen Yarrow came towards the house across the fields. It was his shadow that his wife and Jem saw crossing Shag's Hill. He was a free man now,—by virtue of his nickname, "quiet Stevy," in part. It startled him as much as the jailer, when his release was sent in a year before the time, "in consideration of his uniform good conduct." The truth was, that M. Soulé took an interest in the poor wretch, and had said a few words in his favor to the Governor at a dinner-party the other evening, so the release was signed the next day. Soulé had called to see the man when he came to Pittsburg, and spent an hour or two in his cell. The next morning he was free to go, but he had stayed a week longer, making a pair of red morocco shoes for the jailer's little girl,—idling over them: when they were done, tying them on, himself, with a wonderful bow-knot, and looking anxiously in her clean Dutch face to see if she were pleased.

"Kiss the gentleman, Meg," growled Ben. "Where's yer manners?"

Stephen drew back sharply. The innocent baby! who lived out-of-doors! Ben must have forgotten who he was: a thief, belonging to this cell. They were going to let him out; but what difference did that make? His thin face grew wet with perspiration, as he walked away. Why, his very fingers had felt too impure to him, as he tied on her shoes. He went away an hour after, only nodding goodbye to Ben, looking down with an odd grin at the clothes he had asked the jailer to buy for him. Ben had chosen a greenish coat and trousers and yellow waistcoat. He did not shake hands with him. Ben had been mixing hog-food, and the marks were on his fingers. This was yesterday: he was going now to meet his brother, as he requested. Well, what else was there for him to do?

He did not look up often, as he plodded over the fields: when he did, it hurt him somehow, this terrible wastefulness, this boundless unused air, and stretch of room. It even pained hiss weakened eyes: so long the oblong slip of clay running from the cell to the wall had been his share, and the yellow patch of sky and brick chimney-top beyond. For so many thousands, too, no more. But they were thieves, foul, like him. Pure men this was for. Stephen looked like an old man now, in spite of Ben's party-colored rigging: stooped and lean, his step slouched: his head almost bald under the old fur cap. Something in the sharpened face, too, looked as if more than eyesight had been palsied in these years of utter solitude: the brain was dulled with sluggishly gnawing over and over the few animal ideas they leave for prisoners' souls,—or, as probably, thoroughly imbruted by them. Soulé thought the latter.

When the convict had finished his dull walk, he sat down on the wooden staircase that led to his brother's rooms for half an hour, slowly rubbing his legs, conscious of nothing but some flesh-pain, apparently,—and when he did enter the chamber, bowed as indifferently to Soulé and his wife as though they had parted carelessly yesterday. His brother glanced at the woman: one look would certainly be enough for her. Poor Stephen's power? If it ever had been, its essence was long since exhaled: there was nothing in his whole nature now but the stalest dregs, surely? Perhaps she thought differently: she looked at the man keenly, and then gave a quick, warning glance to her husband, as she sat down to her sewing. Soulé did not heed it as he usually did: he was choked and sick to see what a wreck his brother really was. God help us! to think of the time when Stephen and he were boys together, and this was the end of it!