Part 5

Shaler did not wish to burn down the old house, nor even to pull it down. He wished to renew and remodel it so slowly and so cautiously that those who were in it should hardly be aware of change until they learned it by increase of comfort. He was not a self-centred, but a very public-spirited man. He had a great ambition for his State. He wished it to be a model of prosperity, material and moral. He saw that its natural advantages entitled it to take this position. The most practical of reformers, he began with himself. He found fault with nobody; he preached to nobody; he meant to let his plantation speak for him. His plan was simply to substitute inducement for coercion,--to give his men a healthy interest in their labor by letting them share the profits,--in short, to bring them under the ordinary motives to exertion. This does not appear to you a very original scheme, nor, probably, a very dangerous one. He entered upon it, however, with great precautions, having due regard to law, and, as he thought, to opinion. He did not pay his people wages, nor even make them presents in money. He gave them better food, better clothes, better houses, letting their comforts and luxuries increase in exact proportion to their industry. The result was what he had hoped,--or rather, it was beyond his hopes. The pecuniary advantage was greater and more speedy than he had expected. He did not boast himself. He waited for his abundant crops, his fine gardens and orchards, and his hard-working people to bring him enviers and imitators. The report, in fact, soon spread, that Shaler was trying a new system, and that it was succeeding. Neighbors came to inspect and inquire,--first the near, then the more distant. Shaler forgot his caution. He was an enthusiast, after all. He saw proselytes in his guests. He laid bare his schemes and hopes. These aimed at nothing less than the conversion of the whole State, through his success, to more enlightened views; thence, a revisal of the laws, a withdrawal of the checks on benevolent effort; and finally, the merging of slavery in a new system, which should have nothing of the past but the tradition of grateful dependence on the part of the employed and of responsibility on that of the employer, rendering their relation more kindly and more permanent.

Among his visitors and hearers were generous men to be moved by his ideas, and wise men to appreciate their practical fruit; but the sensitiveness of delicate minds, and the caution of judicious ones, withholding from prompt speech and action, too often leave the sway in society to men of small heart, narrow mind, and strong, selfish instincts. Such never hesitate. Their sight is not far enough or strong enough to show them distant advantages or dangers. Their nearest interest is all they inquire after. These men combine easily; they know each other, and are sure of each other. The sensitive shrink aside and let them pass on; the prudent deliberate until the moment for arresting them has gone by. Men who are both good and brave come singly, and, for the most part, stand and fall alone.

"Great Tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, For Goodness _dares_ not check thee!"

Shaler had not miscalculated so much as the result would seem to show: the opinion of the majority was perhaps with him; but the only voices raised were against him. The storm had already gathered thick about him before he was aware of its approach. The first intimations were not violent. He was admonished that his course was disapproved,--was advised to let things slip back quietly into the old track, and that so his eccentricities would be forgotten. This mildness failing, he was told that he was endangering the welfare of the community,--and, lastly, that he would incur peril himself, if he persisted. He was not a man to be driven from his ground by threats, nor by loss or suffering which he was to bear alone. His cattle died; his horses fell lame; his barns and store-houses took fire. He ignored the cause of these disasters and kept quietly on, still hoping to overcome evil with good. His great strength and courage, with his known skill in the use of arms, deterred from personal violence. But there were surer means: his people were subjected to annoyance and injury,--and, moreover, were accused of every offence committed within a circuit of twenty miles. His duty as their protector obliged him to give way: he took the only course by which he could provide for their welfare.

"I have no quarrel with Shaler," said the Doctor, after he had heard the story, which I gave him much less at length than I have told it to you. "I have no quarrel with Shaler. He had a right to do what he would with his own. I only ask the same liberty for my friend Harvey, and for those who, like him, accept their lot as it is given to them."

"Mr. Harvey is not happy," said Harry, seriously. "There are lines of pain on his face. I do not think he accepts his lot."

"Well, submits to it, then,--the next best thing."

"Hardly even submits. I think he begins to doubt himself."

"He is of the age for doubting himself. It is at twenty that we are infallible. To be sure, some happy men are so all their lives. Shaler, I dare say, wouldn't have a doubt of his own wisdom, if the whole hundred and seventy-three were starved or hanged. If there are marks of care on Harvey's face, reasons might be found for it without inventing for him an uneasy conscience."

"I think he envies Shaler, and would follow his example, if he had the resolution. It is strange to see a brave man under such a thraldom."

"If Frank Harvey wants courage, it is something new."

"There are men who have courage to face a foe, but not to stand up against a friend."

"Certainly, in such a project, he would have his wife's family to count with, to say nothing of his own children. I fancy he would hardly find a co-adjutor in Fred. You know Fred Harvey, Harry; he was at school with you in Paris. What sort of a fellow was he then?"

"I liked him."

"I was not ill-pleased with him, when I saw him in Paris four years ago. A fine-looking fellow; formed manners; modest enough, too. I thought he would fill his place in the world creditably. Did you see much of him, Harry, after you left school?"

"For a year I saw him constantly. We went to the same lectures at the Jardin des Plantes."

While this conversation was going on, a reminiscence had been waking in my mind.

"Did you ever take a journey with Frederic Harvey?" I asked Harry.

"Yes, into Brittany."

"Were you at a Trappist monastery with him?"

"At La Meilleraie. We passed a night there."

It was clear. I had been present once at a conversation between Frederic and his sister, in which he spoke of his companion on this journey into Brittany more warmly than I had ever heard him speak of any other man, and yet with a discrimination that individualized the praise, and made it seem not only sincere, but accurate. This conversation interested me very much at the time; but, as I had no expectation of seeing the person who was the subject of it, his name passed from me.

I was glad to hear Harry say he liked Frederic Harvey. It would have been hard, if he had not. And yet I am not sure that I like him very much myself. I am grateful for the preference he shows for my society; but I cannot meet as I would his evident desire for intimacy. How true is what South says:--"That heart shall surrender itself and its friendship to one man, at first view, which another has long been laying siege to in vain"!

MONDAY, April 8, 1844.

Those full days must still furnish these.--My walk with Harry was the first of last Monday's pleasures. Roaming over our fields with him, I found myself now in one, now in another European scene; and everywhere, hardly speaking of himself, he set his individual stamp on every object he called up before me. He had seen and felt with his own eyes and heart; and everywhere had been disclosed for him those special sympathies which Nature and the works of genius hold for each separate human soul.

Florence will always be dear to me among Italian cities because it was so dear to Harry. He has taught me to love, beside those greatest names in Art familiar to us all from infancy, and which we have chiefly in mind when we long for _Europe_, others less universally cherished, and for which I had before only a vague respect which I should have found it hard to justify.

Rome is no longer for me merely the Rome I have read of. With the distant historic interest is now mingled one near and familiar. Harry's favorite spots are already mine. I would walk on the green turf where the altar to Hercules stood, in that oldest time when monuments were raised to benefactors, and not yet to oppressors. I would bring away an ivy-leaf from the ruined heap, the ever "recent" tomb of the young Marcellus. I would gather white daisies on the path along which Saint Agnes was borne to the grave, which was to become a shrine. I cannot, but you will for me. And you will find the little chapel on the Appian Way which marks the place consecrated in popular tradition as that where Peter, escaping, met Christ "going up to Rome to be crucified again," and turned back to meet his martyrdom. You will look up from the Ponte Molle to the beautiful blue Italian sky, where the symbol of suffering appeared as the sign of victory.

When you are in Europe, old Europe, do not carry about with you among the monuments of its past all the superiorities of the nineteenth century. Respect the legend. Our age does not produce it, but it is the part of our inheritance we could least do without. Be reverent before the monuments of the early Christian martyrs: they are true shrines. With the people they have not yet lost their sacredness, and have not yet lost their use. Faith in something stronger than violence and nobler than rank is kept alive by the homage paid to the courageous defiers of older usurpations and oppressions.

When we came in, we found the Doctor in excellent spirits and in excellent humor. He had not been idle that morning. He had been at work over his pressed flowers, and, owing to the dry weather of the last two days, had had no trouble with them. I proposed to take him, after breakfast, to a piece of marsh land where I thought he might find something to interest him.

Harry again left the table first. He had made an engagement with Karl and Fritz. We were to find him at the place where they were at work, which was almost on our way. The Doctor wanted an hour or two more for his flowers. While he was busy with them, I occupied myself with the books which Harry had brought me.

We set off for the marshes. We walked the first part of the way in silence, or nearly so, only exchanging now and then an observation on the weather or scenery, not very earnest. "How we miss Harry Dudley!" I was just saying within myself, when the Doctor made the same exclamation aloud. I wanted nothing better than to hear him talk of Harry again. I saw he was ready, and turned to him with a look of expectation which he understood.

"I told you I had known Harry all his life; and so I have. But our friendship began when he was about five years old. The time before that has left me only a general remembrance of his singular beauty and a certain charming gayety that seemed to lighten the air all about him. But I went one day to his father's house in the country with some friends I wanted to introduce there,--strangers. There was no one at home, the man who answered our knock said, except---- He stepped back, and there came forward this lovely child, who received us in due form, regretted his father's absence, conducted us in, ordered refreshments for us, and, in short, did the honors of the house with the ease and courtesy of a man of society, and, at the same time, with a sweet, infantile grace not to be described. I was content with Young America that day. Harry and I have been intimates ever since then. We had our little differences from the first, just as we have now. I thought my twenty years' advantage in experience gave me a right to have my judgments accepted without being examined; but he took a different view of my claims. When I went out to his father's, I always used to look the little fellow up,--in the garden, or in the barn, or wherever he might be. As soon as I appeared, his eyes took a merry sparkle, as if he knew there was good sport ahead: and so there was, for both of us. He maintained his side with an originality and quaint humor that made a debate with him a very entertaining exercise. Some of his childish sayings have stayed in my mind, though many wiser things have passed out of it."

The Doctor enjoyed his thoughts a little while; and then, with a graver, and something of a confidential tone,--

"If Harry should talk to you about his future, do not encourage that little vein of Quixotism that runs in his blood."

"The enterprise of the Pilgrim Fathers was somewhat Quixotic,--was it not?"

"Certainly it was; you would not have found me among them."

Again a silence, which I left the Doctor to break.

"At any rate, I need not begin to disturb myself already. He will not enter upon active life before he has prepared himself well. That I know. And preparation, as he understands it, involves long work and hard. But I sometimes almost think in good earnest that he has come into the world in the wrong age. He is made for great times, and he has fallen on very little ones. These are the days of the supple and the winding, not of the strong and the straightforward."

"Since he has been sent to these times," I answered, "without doubt his part in them has been marked out for him."

Dr. Borrow's brow lowered. It seemed he had a misgiving that the part allotted to Harry might not be that which he himself would have assigned to him.

Here some flowers at a little distance caught the Doctor's eye, and he ran off to examine them. They were not to his purpose, and were left to nod and wave away their life unconscious that a great danger and a great honor had been near them. When he came back, the cloud had passed. He began talking pleasantly, and still on the subject on which I most wished to hear him talk.

Harry has not always been an only son. He had once a brother, to whom he was fondly, even passionately, attached. After his brother's death, a deeper thoughtfulness was seen in him. He was not changed, but matured and strengthened.

"You still see the fun look out of his eyes at times," said the Doctor, "and his laugh has a quality that refreshes and refines for us again the meaning of the good old word 'hearty'; but mirthfulness is no longer so marked a characteristic in him as it once was."

When we came in sight of the little plantation prophetically known as "The Grove," I could not help calling the Doctor's attention to it. He took a much more flattering interest in it than you did, I must tell you. He turned his steps towards it immediately, commended the spaces which made full allowance for growth, and, seating himself on one of the benches,--according to you, such premature constructions,--gave me a dissertation on soils, very entertaining and very profitable. When he had finished, I would gladly have carried him back to the subject from which the sight of my trees had diverted us, but I felt that this required a little skill: I had known him repelled by a question of too incautious directness from a topic on which he would have been eloquent, if he had led the way to it himself. However, as soon as we were once walking forward on our former path again, his thoughts, too, returned to the old track. Our intimacy had ripened fast on the common ground of sympathy we had found in the grove. He was more expansive than before, and revealed a latent gentleness I had begun to suspect in him. He went on to tell of Harry's infancy and childhood, and to relate instances of his early daring, self-reliance, and generosity of heart,--smiling, indeed, a little at himself as he did so, and casting now and then towards me a glance of inquiry, almost of apology, like one who is conscious of being indiscreet, but who cannot resolve to refrain. I could not but observe that the anecdotes related with most pleasure illustrated that very side of Harry's character which gave the Doctor uneasiness.

Karl and Fritz were employed that day in clearing a piece of ground overgrown with brushwood. We had found them at their work in our morning walk, and Harry had promised to come back and take a hand in it. It was an animated scene that the Doctor and I came upon. Before we reached it, we heard a pleasant clamor of voices and laughter. My German boys are faithful workers, and generally cheerful ones; but now they carried on their task with an ardor and an hilarity which doubled their strength, and gave them an alertness which I had thought was not of their race.

"Will you let me finish my stint?" Harry cried, as soon as we were near enough to answer him. The merry light in his eye and the gleeful earnestness of his manner brought up to me the little boy of whom the Doctor had been talking to me. He was taking the lead. He could not have been practised in the work; but the strong sweep of his arm, his sure strokes, did not speak the novice. He directed and encouraged his assistants in familiar and idiomatic German, which made me feel that my carefully composed sentences must be somewhat stilted to their native ears.

Old Hans found himself there, too, drawn by I don't know what attraction,--for a share in this work did not belong to his day's plan. He was not taking a principal part in it; he had a hatchet in his hand and chopped a little now and then in a careless and fitful way, but he was chiefly occupied in observing the amateur, whose movements he followed with an admiration a little shaded by incredulity. He stood like the rustic spectator of an exhibition of legerdemain, his applause restrained by the displeasure of feeling himself the subject of an illusion.

But over the boys Harry's ascendancy was already complete: not only did their bush-scythes keep time with his, but their voices, when they answered him, and even when they spoke to each other, were more gently modulated,--their very laugh had caught something of the refinement of his. When afterwards in my talks with him he unfolded, among his plans for the future, a favorite one of leading a colony to some yet unsettled region, I felt, remembering this scene, that he was the man for it.

Hans was won over before we left him. When we arrived, he had searched my face with a look which, at the same time that it asked my opinion of the stranger, gave me to understand that he himself was not one to be dazzled by outward show. As we were going, his eye caught mine again: he gave me a nod of satisfaction, which said that he had at last made up his mind, and that it was one with my own. Perhaps he had been aided in coming to a decision by the care with which Harry delivered up to him the tools he had been using, and by the frank pleasure with which the volunteer woodman received the words of approbation which the veteran could not withhold.

I cannot write you the whole of last Monday's journal to-night. I came in late. The weather is fine again, and I took a long day in the field to make up for lost time.

TUESDAY, April 9, 1844.

We were on our way from the thicket to the marshes.

The Doctor had a successful morning. The tin case was always opening and closing for some new treasure. Noon found him in high good-humor. I did not propose to go home for dinner. It had been arranged with Tabitha that we should take it on the little knoll known in our level region as Prospect Hill. We found two baskets in the shade of its two trees. Harry and I unpacked them, the Doctor superintending and signifying coöperation by now and then putting his thumb and finger to the edge of a dish or plate on its way to the turfy table. Harry filled our bottle from the cool spring that bubbles up at the foot of the mound. There was a log under one of the trees, affording seats for three, but we left it to the Doctor, and took our places on the ground, fronting him, on either side of the outspread banquet.

We talked of plans for the coming week. I told over our few objects of modest interest, and the names of such of our neighbors as could lay claim to the honor of a visit from Dr. Borrow, or could in any degree appreciate his society. The nearest of these was Westlake.

"We have been at Westlake's," said the Doctor; "we passed a day and night with him. He pressed us to stay longer, and I was very well amused there; but Harry looked so plainly his eagerness to be on, and his fear lest I should allow myself to be persuaded, that I put your hospitable neighbor off with a promise to give him another day, if we had time, after we had been here. Harry has all along wanted to secure the visit here as soon as possible, for fear something or other should interfere with it. I believe, if I had proposed it, he would even have put off going to the Harveys, old friends as they are. You must know that you have been his load-star from the first."

Very much pleased, yet surprised, I looked at Harry. His color deepened a little as he answered, "I have heard Selden speak of you; but it was after we met Mr. Shaler that I had so great a desire to know you."

Here the Doctor took up the word again:--

"We met Shaler in a great forlorn tavern at Mantonville, quite by chance. We hadn't been in the house half an hour before Harry and he found each other out. I had just had time to give some orders up-stairs for making my room a little habitable,--for we were going to pass a day or two there,--and came down to look about me below. There I find Harry walking up and down the breezy entry with a stately stranger, engaged in earnest and intimate conversation. Presently he comes to ask me if it would be agreeable to me to have our seats at the table taken near Mr. Charles Shaler's, who, it seemed, was by two days more at home than we were. Of course it was agreeable to me in that populous No Man's Land to sit near any one who had a name to be called by. And the name was not a new one. I had never seen Charles Shaler,--Colonel Shaler, as he is called,--of Metapora; but I had heard a great deal of him, for he is own cousin to the Harveys. I felt sure that this was the man. His appearance agreed perfectly with the description given me, and then Harry's foregathering with him so instinctively was a proof in itself. I found him very agreeable that day at dinner, though, and continued to find him so, except when he mounted his hobby; then he was insupportable. There's no arguing with enthusiasts. They are lifted up into a sphere entirely above that of reason. And when they have persuaded themselves that the matter they have run wild upon is a religious one, they're wrapped in such a panoply of self-righteousness that there's no hitting them anywhere. You may _demonstrate_ to such a man as Shaler the absurdity, the impracticability, of his schemes: he seems to think he's done his part in laying them before you; he doesn't even show you the attention to be ruffled by your refutation, but listens with a complacent politeness that is half-way to an affront. However, I had my little occupations, and he and Harry used to found Utopias together to their own complete satisfaction, whatever good the world may derive from their visions.--Does Shaler ever come here now?"

"From time to time he appears, unlocks the old house, and walks through the empty rooms."

"I hear that his plantation is going to ruin."

"Yes; it is a melancholy sight."