The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864

When Mrs. Edgar saw these two coming up the aisle together, she understood, and, turning full towards them, sang a song such as was never heard before within those old gray walls.

VIII

Mr. Muir was but a man. Powerful indeed in his way, but it was behind his pulpit-desk, with a sermon in his hands, his congregation before him,—or in carrying out any charitable project, or in managing the business specially devolving on him. He was nobody when he emerged from his own distinct path,—at least, such was his opinion; and being so, he would not be likely to attempt the enforcement of another view of his power on other men. He was afraid of himself now,—afraid that his own preferences had made him obtuse where loyalty would have given him a clearer vision.

Pity him, therefore, when Mr. Deane learned that the son of bondage in whose deliverance he took such proud delight, as surely became a good man who greatly valued freedom, aye, valued it as the pearl beyond all price,—when he learned that the slave had been seen going to the organist's room, and returning from it, and had not since been seen in H–.

Mr. Muir reflected on these tidings with perplexity, constrained, in spite of him, to believe that the slave had actually come on a secret errand, which he had fulfilled, and that not without enlightenment he had returned to his master.

The indignation a man feels, a man of the Deane order especially, when he finds that he has been imposed upon, though the deception has been in this instance of his own furtherance and establishment,—this kind and degree of indignation brought Mr. Deane like a firebrand into the next vestry-meeting. An end must be made of this matter at once. It was no longer a question whether anything had best be done. Something must be done; the public demanded, and he, as a good citizen, demanded, that the church should free herself of suspicion.

Mr. Muir felt, from the moment his eyes fell on Deane, that he played a losing game. Vain to help a woman who had fallen under that man's suspicion, useless to defend her! What should he do, then? Let her go? let her fall? Allow that she was a spy? Permit her disgrace, dismissal, arrest possibly? When War takes hold of women, the touch is not tender. Mr. Muir, it was obvious, was not a man of war. And he had to acknowledge to the Musical Committee, that, as to the result of his conversation with Mrs. Edgar, he had learned merely what was sufficient, indeed, to satisfy him of her loyalty, and that she would scorn to do a spy's work; but he had no proof to offer that might satisfy minds less "prejudiced" in her favor.

It was impossible not to perceive the dissatisfaction with which this testimony was received.

The Committee, however favorably disposed toward the organist, had their own suspicions to quiet, and a growing rumor among the people to quell. Positive proof must be adduced that the organist was not the wife of a Rebel general, or she must be removed from her place.

At a time when riot was rife, and street-tumult so common that the citizens, loyal or disloyal, had no real security, it was venturesome, dangerous, foolhardy, to allow a suspicion to fix, even by implication, on the church. If the organist, already sufficiently noted and popular in the town to attract within the church-walls scores of people who came merely for the music,—if she were suspected of collision with Southern traitors, she must pay the price. It was the proper tax on loyalty. The church must be free of blame.

So Mr. Muir, a second time on such business, went to Mrs. Edgar.

Various intimations as to what brave men might do in precisely his situation distracted him as he went. The fascinations of her power were strongly upon him. If he was a hero, here, surely, was a heroine. And in distress! Had Christian chivalry no demand to make, no claim on him?

All the way, as he went, he was counting the cost of his opposition to the vestry's will. If he only stood alone! If neither wife nor child had rights to be considered in advance of other mortals, and which, for the necessities of others, must surely not be waived! If Nature had not planted in him prudence, if he had only not that vexatious habit of surveying duties in their wholeness, and balancing consequences, he might, at the moment, enter into Don Quixote's joy. But,—and here he was at the head of the flight of stairs that led to her chamber, face to face with her.

Advance now, Christian minister! He comes slowly, weighed down by his burden of consequences, and, as at one glance, the organist perceives the "situation." He has come with her dismissal from the church. She sees it in the dejected face, the troubled eyes, the weariness with which he throws himself into the nearest chair. The duty he has in hand he feels in all its irksomeness, and makes no concealment thereof,—indeed, some display perhaps.

From a little desultory talk about church-music, through which words ran at random, Mrs. Edgar broke at last, somewhat impatiently.

"What is it, Mr. Muir? Must your organist take the oath?"

The question caught him by surprise; it was uppermost in his thoughts, this hateful theme; but then how should she know it? He lost the self-possession he had been trying to maintain, the dignity of his judicial character broke down completely; he was now merely a kind-hearted man, a husband and father it is true, but for the moment those domestic ties were not like a fetter on him.

"I require no such evidence of your loyalty, Mrs. Edgar," he said,—"no evidence whatever."

"But—does not the church?"

This question was asked with a little faltering, asked for his sake; for evidently some knowledge he had, and had to communicate, that embarrassed him almost to the making of speech impossible.

"The church! No,—it is too late for that!"

And now he had thrown down the hateful truth. There it lay at the feet of the woman who at this moment assumed to the preacher's imagination a more than saint's virtue, a more than angel's beauty.

"What then?" she said. "What next, Mr. Muir? Do they want my resignation?"

"Yes."

Mr. Muir said this with a humbled, deprecating gesture of the hand. At the same time bowed his head.

"I commission you to carry it," she said.

"I will not," he answered, almost ferociously.

"Mr. Muir!"

"I consider it an outrage."

"No,—a misunderstanding."

That mild magnanimity of speech completed the overthrow of his prudence.

"A misunderstanding, then, that shall be rectified to your honor," he exclaimed, "in the very place where it has gained ground to your dishonor. If you resign, Mrs. Edgar, it must be to come at once to my house as a guest. If the people are infatuated, the minister need not be of necessity. My wife will welcome you there; if the law of the gospel cannot protect you from suspicion, it can at least from harm."

So all in a moment the man got the better of Mr. Muir. What a deliverance was there! This was the man who had preached and prayed for the Government till more than once he had been invited to march out with the soldiers as their chaplain to battle, opening his doors to one whom the loyal church rejected,—opening them merely because she was a woman on whom suspicion he believed to be unjust had fallen.

Her face lighted, her eyes flashed, she smiled. These were precious words to hear from any good man's lips. They broke on the air like balm on a wound.

"Not for all the world would I allow it," she answered. "This is no time to complicate affairs. I thank you, and I confess you have surprised me. I did not expect this even of you. It is needless for me to say that I feel this disgrace as you would feel it; but I understand the position of the church, and cannot complain. If I were guilty, this treatment would be only too lenient. And it is almost guilt to have incurred suspicion."

"I will never be the bearer of your resignation, then,—never, Mrs. Edgar! I wash my hands of this business!"

She smiled again. The man in his wrath seemed to have seized on a child's weapon. He interpreted her smile, and said,—

"My position will be well understood, if another is the bearer. And I wish it to be. I wish men to know that I have no hand in this business. The church is a persecutor. I, her son, am ashamed of her."

"It has given me my opportunity to make a defence. And I can make none, Mr. Muir. My great mistake was in remaining here. Ruin, however, is not so rare a thing in these days that I should be surprised by it, even if it overtake me."

"Ruin! Aye. What curses thicken for their heads who have brought this upon us! Unborn millions will repeat them, and God Almighty sanction and enforce them."

Mr. Muir paused. What arrested him? Merely the countenance of the woman before him. If all those curses had gathered into legions of devils, crowding, swarming, furious, armed with lash and brand, about the form of one who represented love, joy, beauty, all preciousness to her, the terror and the anguish looking from her face could not have been intensified. But she said no word.

How should she speak?

As if in spite of him, and of all he had been wont to hold most sacred and potential, in spite of church and congregation, Constitution and country, the minister had spoken simply for humanity under oppression; had he not earned her confidence? Did he not deserve to know at least what real ground there was for the suspicions roused against her?

Nay, nay! When did ever Love seek deliverance at the cost of the beloved? What woman ever betrayed to secret friend the sin of him she loves? Let all creation read the patent facts, behind them still remains the inviolate, sacred arcanum, and before it stands sentinel Silence, and around it are walls of fire.

Not from this woman's lips should mortal ever learn she was a Rebel's wife!

For Mr. Muir, in his present mood, it was only torture to prolong this interview. He felt himself unfit for counsel or argument,—unfit even for confidence, had it been vouchsafed. But he held, with a tenacity that could not but have its influence on his future acts and life, to the purpose that had broken from him so suddenly, and not less to his own surprise than to the organist's. From this day she was at liberty to seek protection under his roof from threatened mobs and hot-headed church-wardens. Mr. Deane was one man, he himself was another; and if a day was ever coming to the world when Christian magnanimity must rise in its majesty and its strength, that day had surely dawned; if the Christian ministry was ever to know a period when the greatness of its prerogatives was to be made manifest, that period had certainly begun.

IX

From this interview Mrs. Edgar went to make her preparations for the flitting she had already determined upon. She resolved to lose no time, and consoled Mr. Muir by making known her resolution, and seeking his assistance, when he was in a condition adapted to the bestowal.

But scarcely were her rooms bared, her trunks packed, and the day and mode of her departure determined upon, when an order came to H– from a high official source, so authoritative as to allow no hesitation or demur.

"Arrest the organist of St. Peter's Church, Mrs. Julia Edgar."

And, behold, she was a prisoner in the house where she had lodged!

Opposition was out of the question, protest hardly thought of. One glance was broad enough to cover this business from end to end, and of resistance there was no demonstration. Her work now was to restore the room, denuded and desolate, to its late aspect of refinement and cheer.

Well, but is it the same thing to urge others on to sacrifice, and yourself to bring an offering? to gird another for warfare, and yourself endure hardness? to incite another to active service, and yourself serve by passive obedience? to place a sword in the right hand of the valiant, and bare your heart to the smiting of a sword in the same cause of glory?

To have urged out of beautiful and studious retirement the painter of precious pictures, that he may lift the soldier's burden and gird himself for fasting through long, toilsome marches over mountains, through wilderness, swamp, and desert, and for encountering Death at every pass in one of his manifold disguises,—that he may lie on a field of blood, perchance, at last, the fragment of himself, for what? that he may say, finally, if speech be left him, he has fought under the flag, that at Memphis its buried glory may have resurrection, that at Sumter it may float again from the battlements, that at Richmond it may be unfurled above Rebellion's grave,—is it the same thing to have accomplished this by way of atonement, and in your own body to atone, by your humiliation, by suspicion endured? She deemed it a small thing that she was called to suffer,—that, when honor was won, she must bear disgrace instead. What, indeed, was a year's or a lifetime's imprisonment, looked on in the light of privation or sacrifice? Yet so to atone, since thus it was written, for the sin of one who was in arms against the nation's government! Oh, if anywhere, of any loyal citizen, it might be looked upon, accepted, as atonement!

In one thing she was happy, and of right. Music never failed her. Art keeps her great rewards for such as serve her for her sacred self. Therefore let her arise day after day to the same prospect of sky, and sea, and busy street, and silent, shadowy church-yard. I bless the birds that built their nests in the elm and willow branches for her sake. The little creatures flitting here and there, in all their home-ways and domestic management, were dear as their song to her.

But in this life, though there might be growth, it was the growth that comes through pain endured with patience, through self-control maintained in the suspense and the anguish of death.

For what, then, did she long in his behalf whose fate was shrouded in thick darkness from her? For victory? or for defeat? A prison? mutilation? disablement? burial on the battle-field? or a disgraceful safety? Constantly this question urged itself upon her, and the heroic love, that in its great disclosures could not fail, shrank shuddering back in silence.

Thanks to God, she need not choose. The Omniscient is alone the Almighty!

X

Three months after this order of arrest came another of release,—as brief and as peremptory.

Deane's patriotism, that really had endangered the church with a mob and the organ with demolishment, was the cause of the first despatch. Colonel Von Gelhorn, who had routed General Edgar and driven him and his forces at the point of the bayonet from an "impregnable position," was in the secret of the second.

Close following this order of release, so closely that one must believe he but waited for it before he again presented himself to his mistress, came Julius, the bearer of a message in whose persuasive power he himself had little hope. Defeated, wounded, dying, her husband called this second time to her.

The slave, this day a freeman by all writs and rights, ascended again to her apartment when the order of release had been received.

Surprise awaited him. Alas, what it says for us! our heroes, who have surely the right of unlimited expectations, are as likely to be surprised by heroic demonstrations as the dullest soul that never strove for aught except its paltry starving self. But the hero surprised is not surprised into uncomprehending wonder, but rather into smiles, or tears, or heartrending, out of which comes thankfulness.

Yet a bitter word escaped him; he could deem even Liberty guilty of an injustice, when she was involved in the judgment that awaits the guilty. As if never before under the government of God it was known that the overthrow of evil involved sorrow, aye, and temporal ruin, aye, and sometimes death, to God's very angels! But to that word she answered,—

"Hush! I have been among friends,—even though some believed I was their enemy in disguise. I have nothing to complain of. Duties must be done. But, Julius, you have come to tell me of your master. Tell me, then."

"Such news, Madam, as you will not like to hear, though I have travelled with it night and day. Colonel Von Gelhorn sent me. He said I would be in time. I didn't wait to hear him say that twice."

"He sent you? Where, then, is my husband?"

"He is a prisoner, Madam."

"A prisoner! Whose?"

"Colonel Von Gelhorn's."

Was it satisfaction that filled the silence following this question?

"But safe? but well, Julius?"

"No, Madam, not safe nor well."

"Wounded? Julius, speak! Why must I ask these dreadful questions? Tell what you came to tell."

"He is wounded, Madam. He has never been taken away from the church where I carried him first after he fell. He had three horses shot under him. Oh, Madam, if it hadn't been for him, his whole army would have been lost! He wants you now."

"Let us go, then. Guide me. The shortest way. You're a free man, Julius. Act like one, freely. Wounded,—Von Gelhorn's prisoner. Then at last he's mine again!"

Hers again! In the church she found him. In her arms he died.

And he said,—nor let us think it was with coward weakness blenching before the presence of Death, shaming the day he died by a late repentance,—

"I have been deceived. But I deceived others. Who will forgive that? It is so hard for me to forgive! You have fought your fight like a hero, loyal to the core, but I"–

Nevertheless, her kiss was on his dying lips. She forgave him. Must he, then, go out from her presence into everlasting darkness?

WET-WEATHER WORK

BY A FARMER

V

It is a pelting November rain. No leaves are left upon the branches but a few yellow flutterers on the tips of the willows and poplars, and the bleached company that will be clinging to the beeches and the white oaks for a month to come. All others are whipped away by the night-winds into the angles of old walls, or are packed under low-limbed shrubberies, there to swelter and keep warm the rootlets of the newly planted weigelias and spruces, until the snows and February suns and April mists and May heats shall have transmuted them into fat and unctuous mould. A close, pelting, unceasing rain, trying all the leaks of the mossy roof, testing all the newly laid drains, pressing the fountain at my door to an exuberant gush,—a rain that makes outside work an impossibility; and as I sit turning over the leaves of an old book of engravings, wondering what drift my rainy-day's task shall take, I come upon a pleasant view of Dovedale in Derbyshire, a little exaggerated, perhaps, in the luxuriance of its trees and the depth of its shadows, but recalling vividly the cloudy April morning on which, fifteen years agone, I left the inn of the "Green Man and Black Head," in the pretty town of Ashbourne, and strolled away by the same road on which Mr. Charles Cotton opens his discourse of fishing with Master "Viator," and plunged down the steep valley-side near to Thorpe, and wandered for three miles and more, under towering crags, and on soft, spongy bits of meadow, beside the blithe river where Walton had cast, in other days, a gray palmer-fly, past the hospitable hall of the worshipful Mr. Cotton, and the wreck of the old fishing-house, over whose lintel was graven in the stone the interlaced initials of "Piscator, Junior," and his great master of the rod. As the rain began to patter on the sedges and the pools, I climbed out of the valley, on the northward or Derbyshire side, and striding away through the heather, which belongs to the rolling heights of this region, I presently found myself upon the great London and Manchester highway. A broad and stately thoroughfare it had been in the old days of coaching, but now a close, fine turf invested it all, save one narrow strip of Macadam in the middle. The mile-stones, which had been showy, painted affairs of iron, were now deeply bitten and blotched with rust. Two of them I had passed, without sight of house, or of other traveller, save one belated drover, who was hurrying to the fair at Ashbourne; as I neared the third, a great hulk of building appeared upon my left, with a crowd of aspiring chimneys, from which only one timid little pennant of smoke coiled into the harsh sky.

The gray, inhospitable-looking pile proved to be one of the old coach-inns, which, with its score of vacant chambers and huge stable-court, was left stranded upon the deserted highway of travel. It stood a little space back from the road, so that a coach and four, or, indeed, a half-dozen together, might have come up to the door-way in dashing style. But it must have been many years since such a demand had been made upon the resources of bustling landlord and of attendant grooms and waiters. The doors were tightly closed; even the sign-board creaked uneasily in the wind, and a rampant growth of ivy that clambered over the porch so covered it with leaves and berries that I could not at all make out its burden. I gave a sharp ring to the bell, and heard the echo repeated from the deserted stable-court; there was the yelp of a hound somewhere within, and presently a slatternly-dressed woman received me, and, conducting me down a bare hall, showed me into a great dingy parlor, where a murky fire was struggling in the grate. A score of roistering travellers might have made the stately parlor gay; and I dare say they did, in years gone; but now I had only for company their heavy old arm-chairs, a few prints of "fast coaches" upon the wall, and a superannuated greyhound, who seemed to scent the little meal I had ordered, and presently stalked in and laid his thin nose, with an appealing look, in my hands. His days of coursing—if he ever had them—were fairly over; and I took a charitable pride in bestowing upon him certain tough morsels of the rump-steak, garnished with horse-radish, with which I was favored for dinner.

I had intended to push on to Buxton the same afternoon; but the deliberate sprinkling of the morning by two o'clock had quickened into a swift, pelting rain, the very counterpart of that which is beating on my windows to-day. There was nothing to be done but to make my home of the old coach-inn for the night; and for my amusement—besides the slumberous hound, who, after dinner, had taken up position upon the faded rug lying before the grate—there was a "Bell's Messenger" of the month past, and, as good luck would have it, a much-bethumbed copy of a work on horticulture and kindred subjects, first printed somewhere about the beginning of the eighteenth century, and entitled "The Clergyman's Recreation, showing the Pleasure and Profit of the Art of Gardening," by the Reverend John Laurence.

It was a queer book to be found in this pretentious old coach-inn, with its silken bell-pulls and stately parlors; and I thought how the roisterers who came thundering over the road years ago, and chucked the bar-maids under the chin, must have turned up their noses, after their pint of crusted Port, at the "Clergyman's Recreation." Yet, for all that, the book had a rare interest for me, detailing, as it did, the methods of fruit-culture in England a hundred and forty years ago, and showing with nice particularity how the espaliers could be best trained, and how a strong infusion of walnut-leaf tea will destroy all noxious worms.

And now, when, upon this other wet day, and in the quietude of my own library, I come to measure the claims of this ancient horticulturist to consideration, I find that he was the author of some six or seven distinct works on kindred subjects, showing good knowledge of the best current practice; and although he incurred the sneers of Mr. Tull, who hoped "he preached better than he ploughed," there is abundant evidence that his books were held in esteem.

Contemporary with the Rev. Mr. Laurence were London and Wise, the famous horticulturists of Brompton, (whose nursery, says Evelyn, "was the greatest work of the kind ever seen or heard of, either in books or travels,") also Switzer, a pupil of the latter, and Professor Richard Bradley.

Mr. London was the director of the royal gardens under William and Mary, and at one time had in his charge some three or four hundred of the most considerable landed estates in England. He was in the habit of riding some fifty miles a day to confer with his subordinate gardeners, and at least two or three times in a season traversed the whole length and breadth of England,—and this at a period, it must be remembered, when travelling was no holiday-affair, as is evident from the mishaps which befell those well-known contemporaneous travellers of Fielding, Joseph Andrews and Parson Adams. Traces of the work of Mr. London are to be seen even now in the older parts of the grounds of Blenheim and of Castle Howard in Yorkshire.