Chapter 10

"'That well unseen neath all life's myriad phases, Rousing to action, lulling to repose-- A child's first cry, a warrior's call to battle, A planet's march, the fading of a rose.

"'Give me a bed among earth's flowers and grasses, Some shadowy place from men and things apart, Where I can hear and feel the steady beating Of Nature's tireless heart,

"'Stilling the tumult of my brain, o'er-crowded With fears and fancies that have banished sleep, And losing pain and weariness forever In heaven's unfathomed deep,

"'Till I lay hold upon my dear lost birth-right, My oneness with all things that were and are, Can feel the sea's pulse mine, my breath the wind's breath, And trace my kinship to the evening star.

"'Then send me back to life's imperious calling, The love that crushes and the cares that irk, To strive, to fail, to strive again and conquer, Till the night cometh when no man can work.'"

Aunt Jane had dropped her knitting; her eyes glowed, and she leaned forward entranced, for the simple verses held the unfailing spells that rhythm and rhyme have cast over the soul ever since the Muses touched their golden harps on Parnassus, pouring "the dew of soft persuasion on the lips of man" and "dispelling sorrow and grief from the breast of every mortal."

"Why, child," she exclaimed, drawing a breath of deep delight, "that's as pretty as any hymn. But it looks like anybody that can say things that pretty oughtn't to have the troubles that common folks has."

Ah, if the power to put a sorrowful thought into beautiful words brought with it exemption from sorrow, who would not covet the gift?

"But," continued Aunt Jane, "everybody has to have some trials. I ricollect Parson Page preachin' a sermon about that very thing. He said folks in trouble always thought their troubles was more than anybody's; and they'd look around and see somebody that appeared to be happy and they'd envy that person, when maybe that person was envyin' them, for it's jest as the Bible says, 'There hath no trouble taken you but is common to all men.'"

And while Aunt Jane spoke I saw this life of ours as a sacramental feast. The table is long, and here sits a king and there a beggar. The cups are many, and mine may be of clay and yours of gold, but the wine, the bitter-sweet wine, is the same for all. One rapture throbs in the heart of the Romany youth who plights his troth under the forest tree, and the heart of the prince royal who kneels at the cathedral altar. The tramp-wife burying her baby by the roadside might clasp hands with the queen-mother who weeps at the door of the royal mausoleum, for on the heights of joy or in the depths of pain all men are brothers, all women sisters.

"And now, honey," said Aunt Jane, "I've wasted enough o' this pretty mornin' talkin' about old times. Spring time's workin' time and I must be up and doin'."

But I caught her hand and held her fast.

"Just one thing more, Aunt Jane," I pleaded. "Tell me what you meant by saying that being the man he was Dr. Pendleton couldn't marry?"

Aunt Jane hesitated a moment looking towards a certain flower-bed where tulips and hyacinths stood half-smothered in a drift of dead leaves. The morning hours were passing and the garden needed the work of her hands, but my clasp was firm and the call of the past was still sounding in her heart.

"I meant jest what I said, honey," she answered, settling herself again on the old garden seat. "There's such a thing as a man lovin' a woman too well to marry her, and that's the way it was with the doctor. You might think, maybe, Dr. Pendleton come of plain folks, bein' jest a country doctor. But, no; his people was among the best and the richest in the county, and he'd had all the chances that rich people can give their children. He'd been to college and he'd travelled around and seen the world, and no young man could 'a' had a prettier prospect before him than Arthur Pendleton,--that was the doctor's name,--when he come home from his studyin' and his travellin' and started out to practisin' medicine with his father. Young and handsome and rich, and then there was Miss Dorothy Schuyler, and he was in love with her and she was in love with him. Father used to say when a man had all that, there wasn't standin' room for a wish.

"Miss Dorothy was one o' the Virginia Schuylers, and the first time she come to visit her Kentucky cousins, she met the young doctor, and they fell in love with each other jest like Hamilton Schuyler and Miss Amaryllis, and before she went back to her home it was all settled that they'd be married the next spring. The young doctor, he made a journey to Virginia to git her father's and mother's consent; for in that day and time, child, a young man couldn't jest pick up a gyirl and walk off with her. He had to say 'By your leave' and do a little courtin' with the old folks before he could claim the gyirl.

"Well, it all looked like plain sailin' for the young doctor. His father begun givin' up his practice--took off his own shoes, you might say, and let his son step into 'em--and the weddin' day was comin', when all at once the banks got to failin' all over the country, and the Pendletons lost pretty near everything they had except their land. Then, to make a bad matter worse, the old doctor's name was on a note, and that fell due about the time the banks failed, and he had to sell the family place and a good deal o' the land.

"They said when he got through settlin' up his affairs he says, 'Well, I've lost my money and my lands and my home, but I've saved my good name.'

"I reckon it must 'a' taken the young doctor a good while to come to an understandin' of what he'd lost. By the time you're old, losin' comes natural to you, but it's hard for young folks to take in a big loss. But as soon as Arthur Pendleton understood that all his father had was a good name, and all he had was his father's practice, he wrote to Miss Dorothy and set her free from her promise to marry him.

"The old doctor begged him not to do it. Says he, 'Son, you've lost pretty near everything, and now you're throwing away the best of what's left.' Says he, 'Don't strip your life bare of every chance for happiness. Hold on to love, even if you have lost your money.'

"But the young doctor says, says he, 'When a man's money's gone it's no time for him to be thinkin' about love.' Says he, 'Unless a man loves a woman well enough to give her up when he's too poor to take care of her, his love's not worth much. In her father's house,' says he, 'she's lived like the lilies of the field, and the man that loves her mustn't be the one to bring her down to poverty and hard work.' So he wrote to her and told her to forget him as soon as she could, and love some other man who could give her what a woman ought to have, and she told him that if she ever loved anybody else, she'd send back the ring he'd given her. But, honey, that ring stayed on Miss Dorothy's finger till her dyin' day, and I reckon it was buried with her. Folks said they never wrote to each other any more, but every year or so Miss Dorothy'd come back to visit the Schuylers and the doctor he'd go to see her, and they used to say that he'd look at her finger before he'd look at her face, and when he'd see his ring there he'd be too happy to say a word. He'd take both her hands in his, and his eyes'd fill up with tears and he'd look down at her face, and she'd look up at him and laugh and ask him if he didn't want his ring back to give to some other gyirl.

"Well, things went on this way one year after another, the doctor workin' and Miss Dorothy comin' and goin' and both of 'em hopin', I reckon, and lookin' forward to marryin' some day; for she was young and so was he, and when folks are young they always feel certain of havin' their own way with life, and it's easy for 'em to wait and hope for the things that's out o' reach. But nothin' seemed to go right with the doctor. If he saved up a little money and put it in the bank, or bought a piece o' property, bad luck was sure to come along and pull down everything he'd built up. His father's health broke down, and of course he had to ease the old man's way to the grave; his youngest brother had to be educated, and first one thing and then another kept comin' up and puttin' Miss Dorothy further off.

"But the older they got, the more they loved each other; and Miss Dorothy, she'd come and go every summer, till finally one summer she didn't come; and the next summer the doctor went to Virginia to see her, and come back lookin' like an old, old man; and not long afterwards he come into church one Sunday with a band o' black crape around his hat, and then we knew Miss Dorothy was dead."

"But wasn't Miss Dorothy willing to marry the doctor in spite of his poverty?" I asked.

"I reckon she must 'a' been," responded Aunt Jane. "When a woman waits all her life for a man, like Miss Dorothy did for the doctor, it stands to reason she's willin' to marry him any time."

"Oh! Then why in the world didn't she tell him so?" I exclaimed.

The bodies of my lovers were dust and their souls with the saints these many years, but Aunt Jane had called from the dead "each frustrate ghost"; the pathos of her tale thrilled me sharply and I could not stay my cry of regret over "The counter these lovers staked"--and lost.

Aunt Jane turned toward me and looked over her glasses with frank astonishment in her clear old eyes. More than once had I shocked her with sentiments discordant with her own ideals of life and conduct, but never so severely as now. She delayed her reply as if to give me a gracious opportunity to recall my unseemly words. Then--

"Child," she said, in a low voice, "you know such a thing wouldn't be fittin' for a young gyirl to do. Why that'd be pretty near as bad as Miss Dorothy askin' the doctor to marry her. No matter how much a woman loves a man, she's got to sit still and wait till he asks her to marry him, and if he never asks her, why, all she can do is to marry somebody else or stay an old maid. With the raisin' you've had, I oughtn't to have to tell you that."

"Oh! Of course!" I hastily assented. "A woman can't ask a man to marry her. But isn't it sad to see people losing their happiness in this way?"

"Now, that's the curious part of it, child," said Aunt Jane. "It's mighty mournful while I'm tellin' it, but if you'd known the doctor and Miss Dorothy, you never would 'a' thought they were losin' anything. At first, you must ricollect, they had hopes to keep their spirits up, and as long as you've got hope, child, you've got everything. Of course there must 'a' come a time when they stopped hopin', and I reckon that was when their hair begun to turn gray and their eyesight failed. It's a time that comes to all of us, honey, and when it does come, we generally find that we've got grace to give up the things we've been wantin' so long; and that's the way it was with Miss Dorothy and the doctor. To see them two, after they'd passed their youth, walkin' together and ridin' together and comin' into church and settin' side by side in the same pew, singin' out o' the same hymn book,--why it was the prettiest sight in the world. Mighty few old married couples ever looked as happy as Miss Dorothy and the doctor, old maid and old bachelor as they were.

"Plenty of folks, though, thought jest as you do, and Mother was one of 'em. She never had any patience with the way Dr. Pendleton and Miss Dorothy behaved about marryin'. Says she, 'You put an old married woman and an old maid together, and you can't tell which is which. A woman's got to lose her good looks and her health whether she marries or not, and while she's about it, she might as well lose 'em for her husband and her children instead o' stayin' single and dryin' up all for nothin'.' They said Judge Elrod undertook to reason with the doctor once about the folly of two people stayin' single when they loved each other. He p'inted out to him that Miss Dorothy was gittin' on in years, and that a woman ought to be willin' to put up with a few hardships if she loved a man. And the doctor, he listened, and shook his head and says he, 'Yes, she's fading, fading, but--God be thanked!--it's no fault of mine. The hand of time has touched her; her pretty curls are turning gray and the pretty color's leaving her cheek; but her hands are as soft and white as they were when I put my ring on her finger. She's never known a hardship or carried a burden. She'll go to her grave like a rose that's touched by the frost, and I can bear to be parted from her that way. But if I'd put a hardship or a burden on her and she'd died under it, I'd never be able to look my own soul in the face.'

"That's the way he looked at it, and nothin' could ever make him change his mind. I reckon the doctor's way o' lovin' was somethin' like Hamilton Schuyler's."

* * * * *

With these words Aunt Jane closed the treasure-chest of memory and walked briskly away to look after the welfare of the tulips and hyacinths.

A little story of a great love! And as I pondered it, the country doctor became a knight of a finer chivalry than that which once stirred the blood under a coat of mail, or guided a lance-thrust to an enemy's heart. In every man's soul there is a field of valor, lonely, perhaps unknown; and he is the true knight who enters the lists against himself and strikes down every impulse of man's nature that would harm the woman he loves. And how rich the guerdon of such a victory, and the recompense of the beloved one for whose sake he strives and conquers!

The pitying world looks on and measures the unwed lovers' loss, but who can measure their gain? Theirs is the bliss which Psyche had before she lit the fatal lamp. They hold forever in their hearts "the consecration and the poet's dream"; and, undimmed by disillusionment, the mirage of youthful love hovers over each solitary path, lighting the twilight of age, the night of death and melting at last into the dawn of heaven's unending day.

VII

THE REFORMATION OF SAM AMOS

VII

THE REFORMATION OF SAM AMOS

All day the land had lain dreamily under an enchantment soon to be broken by the rude counter-spells of the coming winter.

A frost so light that it was hardly more than a cold dew had rested that morning on the early chrysanthemums and late roses; but the wind that shook the leaves from the crimson maples was a south wind; the midday sun held the tropic warmth of August, and over the brightening hills lay a tender, purple haze. Summer was dead, but its gentle ghost had come back to the earth, and it was Indian summer, the season that has no name or place in any calendar but the poet's. The sun had set, and the mist that veiled the horizon had caught its last rays, holding the light lingeringly, fondly, in its folds and spreading it far to the north and south in a soft splendor of color that no other season can show. Not pink, not crimson, but such a color as an artist might make if he crushed together on his palette the rose of summer and the leaf of autumn. The chill of the coming night was in the air, but still we lingered at the gate, Aunt Jane and I, with our faces toward the west.

"I wonder how many folks are watchin' this sunset," she remarked at last. "Old Job Matthews, after he got converted at the big revival back yonder in the thirties, used to look for the second comin' of the Lord, and every sunset and sunrise he'd stand and look at the sky and say, 'Maybe the King of Glory is at hand.' Once the old man declared he saw a chariot in the clouds, and it does look like, child, that somethin' ought to happen after a sight like this, or else it ain't worth while to git it up jest for a few people like you and me to look at."

As she spoke there was a quick, sharp clang of hoofs on the macadamized road, and a horse and rider passed in the twilight. The clean, even gait of the horse and the outlines of its head showed it to be of noble blood; and as it trotted past with an air of proud alertness, we could see that the dumb animal realized the double share of responsibility laid upon it. For the hand that held the bridle was limp and nerveless, the rider's head was sunk on his breast, and the brain of the man that should have guided the brain of the horse was locked in a poison-stupor.

Long and wistfully Aunt Jane gazed after the horse and its rider, and the gathering darkness could not hide the divine sorrow and pity that looked out from her aged eyes. Sighing heavily she turned from the gate, and we went back to the shadowy room where the "unlit lamp" and the unkindled fire lay ready for the evening hours.

The fireplace was filled with brush cleared that day from the flower-beds, dry stems that had borne the verdure and bloom of a spring and now lay on their funeral pyre, ready to be translated, as by a chariot of fire, into the elemental air and earth from whence they had sprung.

Aunt Jane struck a match under the old mantel and, stooping, touched the dead mass with the finger of flame.

Ah! the first fires of autumn! There is more than light and more than heat in their radiance. But as I watched the flames leap with exultant roar into the gloom of the old chimney, my heart was with the lonely man homeward bound, his sorrowful, helpless figure a silhouette against the sunset sky, and Aunt Jane, too, looked with absent eyes at the fire she had just kindled.

"Yes, child," she said, answering my thought, "it's a sad, sad sight; I've watched it for a lifetime and I'm clean tired of it,--seein' 'em go out in the mornin' straight and strong and handsome as a Kentucky man ought to be, and comin' home at night with hardly strength enough to handle their reins, and less sense than the horse that's carryin' 'em. I trust that man'll reach home safe, for somewhere up the road there's a woman waitin' for him. She's cooked a hot supper for him and the biscuits are in the pan, and she's put the coffee on the back o' the stove to keep it from boilin' too long, and the meat's in the dish in front o' the stove, and she's lookin' out o' the window and goin' to the gate every few minutes, strainin' her eyes and her ears lookin' down the road and listenin' for the sound of a horse's feet. And maybe there's a baby asleep in the cradle, and another child waitin' for Father; and when he comes, the child'll run from him, and his wife'll cry her eyes out, and nobody in that house'll feel like eatin' any supper to-night. Well, may the Lord give that woman grace to be as patient with her husband as Milly Amos was with Sam, and maybe she'll reap the same reward."

"Was Sam Amos a drunkard?" I asked in surprise.

"Well, no," said Aunt Jane, judicially, "Sam wasn't, to say, a drunkard. A drunkard, according to my notion, is a man that's born with whiskey in his veins. He's elected and predestined to drink, you might say, and he ain't to be blamed when he does drink. Sam wasn't that sort of a man; but once in his life it looked mightily like he was goin' to be a drunkard. Sam come of a sober family, and there wasn't any manner of reason for him to take to drink, but Dr. Pendleton used to say there was a wild streak in nearly every person, and sooner or later it was bound to break out in one way or another. It was the wild streak in Brother Wilson, I reckon, that sent him into the army before he went to preachin', and the same wild streak put it into Sam's mind to drink whiskey, when his father and grandfather never touched it. How it started I don't know, but I reckon the coffee house must 'a' been the beginnin' of it. I can ricollect well the time when that was opened in town. They had a sort of a debatin' society in that day,--Lyceum, they called it, but Sam Amos called it the Jawin' Club. Dr. Brigham and Judge Grace and Judge Elrod and Colonel Walker and all the big men o' the town belonged to it, and they used to meet in the doctor's office and argue about everything that was done in the town or the State. One question they had up was whether the Whigs or the Democrats had the best party, and they argued till pretty near one o'clock in the mornin', and the meetin' come mighty near breakin' up in a fight. Well, when the coffee-house got its license they had a debate about that, and Dr. Brigham, he was in favor of the license, he got up to make a speech, and, says he, 'What would this State be without whiskey?' And Judge Grace, he was against it,--he jumped up and shook his fist at the doctor and says he, 'A heap more peaceable place than it is with it.' And that made the doctor mad, but he went on like he hadn't heard it. Says he, 'You jest shut your eyes and say the word "Kentucky," and what'll you see? Why, you'll see a glass o' toddy or a mint julep, and a pretty woman smilin' over 'em,'--and Judge Grace he hollers out, 'No, you won't! No, you won't! You may see the toddy and the julep and the woman, but the woman won't be smilin'; she'll be cryin' her eyes out over the stuff that makes a brute of her husband and her son.' This made the doctor madder still, but he kept right on, and says he, 'Think of the poetry that's been written about wine and whiskey--

"'"Fill up, fill up The brimmin' cup"--

and all the rest o' the songs about drinkin'! And no wonder,' says he, 'for where'll you find a prettier sight than a clear glass tumbler with a sprig o' mint and a silver spoon in it and two or three lumps o' sugar dissolvin' in the julep?' And the Judge says, 'All right! All right! Keep your toddy and your julep in a glass tumbler and look at 'em and write poetry about 'em, and I won't say a word against 'em. But,' says he, 'when they get inside of a man, where's your poetry then?' Says he, 'It'll take some mighty plain prose to fit that situation,' says he.

"Well, they had it up and down and back and forth, and finally their friends had to hold 'em to keep 'em from comin' to blows. But as I was sayin', that coffee house was the beginnin' of Sam Amos's troubles and Milly's. The coffee house was a sociable sort of a place, and Sam was a sociable sort of a man, and it was natural for him to go there and see his friends and talk with 'em, and the first thing we knew he was drinkin' with 'em; not much, but enough to unsettle his brain and make him talk wild and act foolish. And he went on followin' the same old beaten track that men 'a' been walkin' since the days of Noah. And at last he got to neglectin' his farm, and he'd go to town every week and come home in such a condition that it wasn't safe for Milly and the children to be in the same house with him. Folks used to say that the first drink made Sam a fool, and the second drink made him a devil, and the third drink put the fool and the devil to sleep.