Constance Fenimore Woolson

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

  Before we reached the piazza the door opened, and our hostess appeared. “Glad to see yer, ladies,” she said. “Walk right in this way to the keeping-room.”

  The dog went away to his block-house, and we followed the woman into a room on the right of the hall; there were three rooms, beside the attic above. An Old-World German stove of brick-work occupied a large portion of the space, and over it hung a few tins, and a clock whose pendulum swung outside; a table, a settle, and some stools completed the furniture; but on the plastered walls were two rude brackets, one holding a cup and saucer of figured china, and the other surmounted by a large bunch of autumn leaves, so beautiful in themselves and so exquisitely arranged that we crossed the room to admire them.

  “Sol fixed ’em, he did,” said the sulphur-woman; “he seen me setting things to rights, and he would do it. I told him they was trash, but he made me promise to leave ’em alone in case you should call again.”

  “Madam Bangs, they would adorn a palace,” said Ermine, severely.

  “The cup is pretty too,” I observed, seeing the woman’s eyes turn that way.

  “It ’s the last of my chany,” she answered, with pathos in her voice,—“the very last piece.”

  As we took our places on the settle we noticed the brave attire of our hostess. The delaine was there; but how altered! Flounces it had, skimped, but still flounces, and at the top was a collar of crochet cotton reaching nearly to the shoulders; the hair, too, was braided in imitation of Ermine’s sunny coronet, and the Roman scarf did duty as a belt around the large flat waist.

  “You see she tries to improve,” I whispered, as Mrs. Bangs went into the hall to get some sulphur-water for us.

  “Vanity,” answered Ermine.

  We drank our dose slowly, and our hostess talked on and on. Even I, her champion, began to weary of her complainings. “How dark it is!” said Ermine at last, rising and drawing aside the curtain. “See, Dora, a storm is close upon us.”

  We hurried to the door, but one look at the black cloud was enough to convince us that we could not reach the Community hotel before it would break, and somewhat drearily we returned to the keeping-room, which grew darker and darker, until our hostess was obliged to light a candle. “Reckon you ’ll have to stay all night; I ’d like to have you, ladies,” she said. “The Community ain’t got nothing covered to send after you, except the old king’s coach, and I misdoubt they won’t let that out in such a storm, steps and all. When it begins to rain in this valley, it do rain, I can tell you; and from the way it ’s begun, ’t won’t stop ’fore morning. You just let me send the Roarer over to the mine, he ’ll tell Sol; Sol can tell the Community folks, so they ’ll know where you be.”

  I looked somewhat aghast at this proposal, but Ermine listened to the rain upon the roof a moment, and then quietly accepted; she remembered the long hills of tenacious red clay, and her kid boots were dear to her.

  “The Roarer, I presume, is some faithful kobold who bears your message to and from the mine,” she said, making herself as comfortable as the wooden settle would allow.

  The sulphur-woman stared. “Roarer ’s Sol’s old dog,” she answered, opening the door; “perhaps one of you will write a bit of a note for him to carry in his basket.—Roarer, Roarer!”

  The melancholy dog came slowly in, and stood still while she tied a small covered basket around his neck.

  Ermine took a leaf from her tablets and wrote a line or two with the gold pencil attached to her watch-chain.

  “Well now, you do have everything handy, I do declare,” said the woman, admiringly.

  I glanced at the paper.

  “MR. SOLOMON BANGS: My cousin Theodora Wentworth and myself have accepted the hospitality of your house for the night. Will you be so good as to send tidings of our safety to the Community, and oblige,

  ERMINIA STUART.”

  The Roarer started obediently out into the rain-storm with his little basket; he did not run, but walked slowly, as if the storm was nothing compared to his settled melancholy.

  “What a note to send to a coal-miner!” I said, during a momentary absence of our hostess.

  “Never fear; it will be appreciated,” replied Ermine.

  “What is this king’s carriage of which you spoke?” I asked, during the next hour’s conversation.

  “O, when they first come over from Germany, they had a sort of a king; he knew more than the rest, and he lived in that big brick house with dormel-winders and a cuperler, that stands next the garden. The carriage was hisn, and it had steps to let down, and curtains and all; they don’t use it much now he ’s dead. They ’re a queer set anyhow! The women look like meal-sacks. After Sol seen me, he could n’t abide to look at ’em.”

  Soon after six we heard the great gate creak.

  “That ’s Sol,” said the woman, “and now of course Roarer ’ll come in and track all over my floor.” The hall door opened and a shadow passed into the opposite room, two shadows,—a man and a dog.

  “He ’s going to wash himself now,” continued the wife; “he ’s always washing himself, just like a horse.”

  “New fact in natural history, Dora love,” observed Ermine.

  After some moments the miner appeared,—a tall, stooping figure with high forehead, large blue eyes, and long thin yellow hair; there was a singularly lifeless expression in his face, and a far-off look in his eyes. He gazed about the room in an absent way, as though he scarcely saw us. Behind him stalked the Roarer, wagging his tail slowly from side to side.

  “Now, then, don’t yer see the ladies, Sol? Where ’s yer manners?” said his wife, sharply.

  “Ah,—yes,—good evening,” he said, vaguely. Then his wandering eyes fell upon Ermine’s beautiful face, and fixed themselves there with strange intentness.

  “You received my note, Mr. Bangs?” said my cousin in her soft voice.

  “Yes, surely. You are Erminia,” replied the man, still standing in the centre of the room with fixed eyes. The Roarer laid himself down behind his master, and his tail, still wagging, sounded upon the floor with a regular tap.

  “Now then, Sol, since you ’ve come home, perhaps you ’ll entertain the ladies while I get supper,” quoth Mrs. Bangs; and forthwith began a clatter of pans.

  The man passed his long hand abstractedly over his forehead. “Eh,” he said with long-drawn utterance,—“eh-h? Yes, my rose of Sharon, certainly, certainly.”

  “Then why don’t you do it?” said the woman, lighting the fire in the brick stove.

  “And what will the ladies please to do?” he answered, his eyes going back to Ermine.

  “We will look over your pictures, sir,” said my cousin, rising; “they are in the upper room, I believe.”

  A great flush rose in the painter’s thin cheeks. “Will you,” he said eagerly,—“will you? Come!”

  “It ’s a broken-down old hole, ladies; Sol will never let me sweep it out. Reckon you ’ll be more comfortable here,” said Mrs. Bangs, with her arms in the flour.

  “No, no, my lily of the valley. The ladies will come with me; they will not scorn the poor room.”

  “A studio is always interesting,” said Ermine, sweeping up the rough stairs behind Solomon’s candle. The dog followed us, and laid himself down on an old mat, as though well accustomed to the place. “Eh-h, boy, you came bravely through the storm with the lady’s note,” said his master, beginning to light candle after candle. “See him laugh!”

  “Can a dog laugh?” I asked.

  “Certainly; look at him now. What is that but a grin of happy contentment? Don’t the Bible say, ‘grin like a dog’?”

  “You seem much attached to the Roarer.”

  “Tuscarora, lady, Tuscarora. Yes, I love him well. He has been with me through all, and he has watched the making of all my pictures; he always lies there when I paint.”


  By this time a dozen candles were burning on shelves and brackets, and we could see all parts of the attic studio. It was but a poor place, unfloored in the corners where the roof slanted down, and having no ceiling but the dark beams and thatch; hung upon the walls were the pictures we had seen, and many others, all crude and high colored, and all representing the same face,—the sulphur-woman in her youth, the poor artist’s only ideal. He showed us these one by one, handling them tenderly, and telling us, in his quaint language, all they symbolized. “This is Ruth, and denoteth the power of hope,” he said. “Behold Judith, the queen of revenge. And this dear one is Rachel, for whom Jacob served seven years, and they seemed unto him but a day, so well he loved her.” The light shone on his pale face, and we noticed the far-off look in his eyes, and the long, tapering fingers coming out from the hard-worked, broad palm. To me it was a melancholy scene, the poor artist with his daubs and the dreary attic.

  But Ermine seemed eagerly interested; she looked at the staring pictures, listened to the explanations, and at last she said gently, “Let me show you something of perspective, and the part that shadows play in a pictured face. Have you any crayons?”

  No; the man had only his coarse paints and lumps of charcoal; taking a piece of the coal in her delicate hand, my cousin began to work upon a sheet of drawing-paper attached to the rough easel. Solomon watched her intently, as she explained and demonstrated some of the rules of drawing, the lights and shades, and the manner of representing the different features and curves. All his pictures were full faces, flat and unshaded; Ermine showed him the power of the profile and the three-quarter view. I grew weary of watching them, and pressing my face against the little window gazed out into the night; steadily the rain came down and the hills shut us in like a well. I thought of our home in C——, and its bright lights, warmth, company, and life. Why should we come masquerading out among the Ohio hills at this late season? And then I remembered that it was because Ermine would come; she liked such expeditions, and from childhood I had always followed her lead. “Dux nascitur, etc., etc.” Turning away from the gloomy night, I looked towards the easel again; Solomon’s cheeks were deeply flushed, and his eyes shone like stars. The lesson went on, the merely mechanical hand explaining its art to the ignorant fingers of genius. Ermine had taken lessons all her life, but she had never produced an original picture, only copies.

  At last the lesson was interrupted by a voice from below, “Sol, Sol, supper ’s ready!” No one stirred until, feeling some sympathy for the amount of work which my ears told me had been going on below, I woke up the two enthusiasts and took them away from the easel down stairs into the keeping-room, where a loaded table and a scarlet hostess bore witness to the truth of my surmise. Strange things we ate that night, dishes unheard of in towns, but not unpalatable. Ermine had the one china cup for her corn-coffee; her grand air always secured her such favors. Tuscarora was there and ate of the best, now and then laying his shaggy head on the table, and, as his master said, “smiling at us”; evidently the evening was his gala time. It was nearly nine when the feast was ended, and I immediately proposed retiring to bed, for, having but little art enthusiasm, I dreaded a vigil in that dreary attic. Solomon looked disappointed, but I ruthlessly carried off Ermine to the opposite room, which we afterwards suspected was the apartment of our hosts, freshened and set in order in our honor. The sound of the rain on the piazza roof lulled us soon to sleep, in spite of the strange surroundings; but more than once I woke and wondered where I was, suddenly remembering the lonely house in its lonely valley with a shiver of discomfort. The next morning we woke at our usual hour, but some time after the miner’s departure; breakfast was awaiting us in the keeping-room, and our hostess said that an ox-team from the Community would come for us before nine. She seemed sorry to part with us, and refused any remuneration for our stay; but none the less did we promise ourselves to send some dresses and even ornaments from C——, to feed that poor, starving love of finery. As we rode away in the ox-cart, the Roarer looked wistfully after us through the bars; but his melancholy mood was upon him again, and he had not the heart even to wag his tail.

  As we were sitting in the hotel parlor, in front of our soft-coal fire in the evening of the following day, and discussing whether or no we should return to the city within the week, the old landlord entered without his broad-brimmed hat,—an unusual attention, since he was a trustee and a man of note in the Community, and removed his hat for no one or nothing; we even suspected that he slept in it.

  “You know Zolomon Barngs,” he said, slowly.

  “Yes,” we answered.

  “Well, he ’s dead. Kilt in de mine.” And putting on the hat, removed, we now saw, in respect for death, he left the room as suddenly as he had entered it. As it happened, we had been discussing the couple, I, as usual, contending for the wife, and Ermine, as usual, advocating the cause of the husband.

  “Let us go out there immediately to see her, poor woman!” I said, rising.

  “Yes, poor man, we will go to him!” said Ermine.

  “But the man is dead, cousin.”

  “Then he shall at least have one kind, friendly glance before he is carried to his grave,” answered Ermine, quietly.

  In a short time we set out in the darkness, and dearly did we have to pay for the night-ride; no one could understand the motive of our going, but money was money, and we could pay for all peculiarities. It was a dark night, and the ride seemed endless as the oxen moved slowly on through the red-clay mire. At last we reached the turn and saw the little lonely house with its upper room brightly lighted.

  “He is in the studio,” said Ermine; and so it proved. He was not dead, but dying; not maimed, but poisoned by the gas of the mine, and rescued too late for recovery. They had placed him upon the floor on a couch of blankets, and the dull-eyed Community doctor stood at his side. “No good, no good,” he said; “he must die.” And then, hearing of the returning cart, he left us, and we could hear the tramp of the oxen over the little bridge, on their way back to the village.

  The dying man’s head lay upon his wife’s breast, and her arms supported him; she did not speak, but gazed at us with a dumb agony in her large eyes. Ermine knelt down and took the lifeless hand streaked with coal-dust in both her own. “Solomon,” she said, in her soft, clear voice, “do you know me?”

  The closed eyes opened slowly, and fixed themselves upon her face a moment: then they turned towards the window, as if seeking something.

  “It ’s the picter he means,” said the wife. “He sat up most all last night a doing it.”

  I lighted all the candles, and Ermine brought forward the easel; upon it stood a sketch in charcoal wonderful to behold,—the same face, the face of the faded wife, but so noble in its idealized beauty that it might have been a portrait of her glorified face in Paradise. It was a profile, with the eyes upturned,—a mere outline, but grand in conception and expression. I gazed in silent astonishment.

  Ermine said, “Yes, I knew you could do it, Solomon. It is perfect of its kind.” The shadow of a smile stole over the pallid face, and then the husband’s fading gaze turned upward to meet the wild, dark eyes of the wife.

  “It ’s you, Dorcas,” he murmured; “that ’s how you looked to me, but I never could get it right before.” She bent over him, and silently we watched the coming of the shadow of death; he spoke only once, “My rose of Sharon—” And then in a moment he was gone, the poor artist was dead.

  Wild, wild was the grief of the ungoverned heart left behind; she was like a mad-woman, and our united strength was needed to keep her from injuring herself in her frenzy. I was frightened, but Ermine’s strong little hands and lithe arms kept her down until, exhausted, she lay motionless near her dead husband. Then we carried her down stairs and I watched by the bedside, while my cousin went back to the studio. She was absent some time, and then she came back to keep the vigil with me through the long
, still night. At dawn the woman woke, and her face looked aged in the gray light. She was quiet, and took without a word the food we had prepared, awkwardly enough, in the keeping-room.

  “I must go to him, I must go to him,” she murmured, as we led her back.

  “Yes,” said Ermine, “but first let me make you tidy. He loved to see you neat.” And with deft, gentle touch she dressed the poor creature, arranging the heavy hair so artistically that, for the first time, I saw what she might have been, and understood the husband’s dream.

  “What is that?” I said, as a peculiar sound startled us.

  “It ’s Roarer. He was tied up last night, but I suppose he ’s gnawed the rope,” said the woman. I opened the hall door, and in stalked the great dog, smelling his way directly up the stairs.

  “O, he must not go!” I exclaimed.

  “Yes, let him go, he loved his master,” said Ermine; “we will go too.” So silently we all went up into the chamber of death.

  The pictures had been taken down from the walls, but the wonderful sketch remained on the easel, which had been moved to the head of the couch where Solomon lay. His long, light hair was smooth, his face peacefully quiet, and on his breast lay the beautiful bunch of autumn leaves which he had arranged in our honor. It was a striking picture,—the noble face of the sketch above, and the dead face of the artist below. It brought to my mind a design I had once seen, where Fame with her laurels came at last to the door of the poor artist and gently knocked; but he had died the night before!

  The dog lay at his master’s feet, nor stirred until Solomon was carried out to his grave.

  The Community buried the miner in one corner of the lonely little meadow. No service had they and no mound was raised to mark the spot, for such was their custom; but in the early spring we went down again into the valley, and placed a block of granite over the grave. It bore the inscription:—

  SOLOMON.

  He will finish his work in Heaven.