Constance Fenimore Woolson

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

  “I don’t mind work, ma’am, but I do like to be free. I feel all cramped up here, with these rules and bells; and, besides, I could n’t stand those trustees; they never let a fellow alone.”

  “And Wilhelmina? If you do go, I hope you will take her with you, or come for her when you have found work.”

  “Oh no, miss. All that was long ago. It ’s all over now.”

  “But you like her, Gustav?”

  “O, so. She ’s a good little thing, but too quiet for me.”

  “But she likes you,” I said desperately, for I saw no other way to loosen this Gordian knot.

  “O no, miss. She got used to it, and has thought of it all these years; that ’s all. She ’ll forget about it and marry the baker.”

  “But she does not like the baker.”

  “Why not? He ’s a good fellow enough. She ’ll like him in time. It ’s all the same. I declare it ’s too bad to see all these girls going on in the same old way, in their ugly gowns and big shoes! Why, ma’am, I could n’t take Mina outside, even if I wanted to; she ’s too old to learn new ways, and everybody would laugh at her. She could n’t get along a day. Besides,” said the young soldier, coloring up to his eyes, “I don’t mind telling you that—that there ’s some one else. Look here, ma’am.” And he put into my hand a card photograph representing a pretty girl, over-dressed, and adorned with curls and gilt jewelry. “That ’s Miss Martin,” said Gustav with pride; “Miss Emmeline Martin, of Cincinnati. I ’m going to marry Miss Martin.”

  As I held the pretty, flashy picture in my hand, all my castles fell to the ground. My plan for taking Mina home with me, accustoming her gradually to other clothes and ways, teaching her enough of the world to enable her to hold her place without pain, my hope that my husband might find a situation for Gustav in some of the iron-mills near Cleveland, in short, all the idyl I had woven, was destroyed. If it had not been for this red-cheeked Miss Martin in her gilt beads! “Why is it that men will be such fools?” I thought. Up sprung a memory of the curls and ponderous jet necklace I sported at a certain period of my existence, when John— I was silenced, gave Gustav his picture, and walked away without a word.

  At noon the villagers, on their way back to work, paused at the Wirthshaus to say good by; Karl and Gustav were there, and the old woolly horse had already gone to the station with their boxes. Among the others came Christine, Karl’s former affianced, heart-whole and smiling, already betrothed to a new lover; but no Wilhelmina. Good wishes and farewells were exchanged, and at last the two soldiers started away, falling into the marching step, and watched with furtive satisfaction by the three trustees, who stood together in the shadow of the smithy, apparently deeply absorbed in a broken-down cask.

  It was a lovely afternoon, and I, too, strolled down the station road embowered in shade. The two soldiers were not far in advance. I had passed the flour-mill on the outskirts of the village and was approaching the old quarry, when a sound startled me; out from the rocks in front rushed a little figure, and crying, “Gustav, mein Gustav!” fell at the soldier’s feet. It was Wilhelmina.

  I ran forward and took her from the young men; she lay in my arms as if dead. The poor child was sadly changed; always slender and swaying, she now looked thin and shrunken, her skin had a strange, dark pallor, and her lips were drawn in as if from pain. I could see her eyes through the large-orbed thin lids, and the brown shadows beneath extended down into the cheeks.

  “Was ist’s?” said Gustav, looking bewildered. “Is she sick?”

  I answered “Yes,” but nothing more. I could see that he had no suspicion of the truth, believing as he did that the “good fellow” of a baker would do very well for this “good little thing” who was “too quiet” for him. The memory of Miss Martin sealed my lips. But if it had not been for that pretty, flashy picture, would I not have spoken!

  “You must go; you will miss the train,” I said, after a few minutes. “I will see to Mina.”

  But Gustav lingered. Perhaps he was really troubled to see the little sweetheart of his boyhood in such desolate plight; perhaps a touch of the old feeling came back; and perhaps, also, it was nothing of the kind, and, as usual, my romantic imagination was carrying me away. At any rate, whatever it was, he stooped over the fainting girl.

  “She looks bad,” he said, “very bad. I wish— But she ’ll get well and marry the baker. Good by, Mina.” And bending his tall form, he kissed her colorless cheek, and then hastened away to join the impatient Karl; a curve in the road soon hid them from view.

  Wilhelmina had stirred at his touch; after a moment her large eyes opened slowly; she looked around as if dazed, but all at once memory came back, and she started up with the same cry, “Gustav, mein Gustav!” I drew her head down on my shoulder to stifle the sound; it was better the soldier should not hear it, and its anguish thrilled my own heart also. She had not the strength to resist me, and in a few minutes I knew that the young men were out of hearing as they strode on towards the station and out into the wide world.

  The forest was solitary, we were beyond the village; all the afternoon I sat under the trees with the stricken girl. Again, as in her joy, her words were few; again, as in her joy, her whole being was involved. Her little rough hands were cold, a film had gathered over her eyes; she did not weep, but moaned to herself, and all her senses seemed blunted. At nightfall I took her home, and the leathery mother received her with a frown; but the child was beyond caring, and crept away, dumbly, to her room.

  The next morning she was off to the hills again, nor could I find her for several days. Evidently, in spite of my sympathy, I was no more to her than I should have been to a wounded fawn. She was a mixture of the wild, shy creature of the woods and the deep-loving woman of the tropics; in either case I could be but small comfort. When at last I did see her, she was apathetic and dull; her feelings, her senses, and her intelligence seemed to have gone within, as if preying upon her heart. She scarcely listened to my proposal to take her with me; for, in my pity, I had suggested it, in spite of its difficulties.

  “No,” she said, mechanically, “I ’s better here”; and fell into silence again.

  A month later a friend went down to spend a few days in the valley, and upon her return described to us the weddings of the whilom soldiers. “It was really a pretty sight,” she said, “the quaint peasant dresses and the flowers. Afterwards, the band went round the village playing their odd tunes, and all had a holiday. There were two civilians married also; I mean two young men who had not been to the war. It seems that two of the soldiers turned their backs upon the Community and their allotted brides, and marched away; but the Zoar maidens are not romantic, I fancy, for these two deserted ones were betrothed again and married, all in the short space of four weeks.”

  “Was not one Wilhelmina, the gardener’s daughter, a short, dark girl?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And she married Jacob the baker?”

  “Yes.”

  The next year, weary of the cold lake-winds, we left the icy shore and went down to the valley to meet the coming spring, finding her already there, decked with vines and flowers. A new waitress brought us our coffee.

  “How is Wilhelmina?” I asked.

  “Eh,—Wilhelmina? O, she not here now; she gone to the Next Country,” answered the girl in a matter-of-fact way. “She die last October, and Jacob he haf anoder wife now.”

  In the late afternoon I asked a little girl to show me Wilhelmina’s grave in the quiet God’s Acre on the hill. Innovation was creeping in, even here; the later graves had mounds raised over them, and one had a little head-board with an inscription in ink.

  Wilhelmina lay apart, and some one, probably the old gardener, who had loved the little maiden in his silent way, had planted a rose-bush at the head of the mound. I dismissed my guide and sat there alone in the sunset, thinking of many things, but chiefly of
this: “Why should this great wealth of love have been allowed to waste itself? Why is it that the greatest of power, unquestionably, of this mortal life should so often seem a useless gift?”

  No answer came from the sunset clouds, and as twilight sank down on the earth I rose to go. “I fully believe,” I said, as though repeating a creed, “that this poor, loving heart, whose earthly body lies under this mound, is happy now in its own loving way. It has not been changed, but the happiness it longed for has come. How, we know not; but the God who made Wilhelmina understands her. He has given unto her not rest, not peace, but an active, living joy.”

  I walked away through the wild meadow, under whose turf, unmarked by stone or mound, lay the first pioneers of the Community, and out into the forest road, untravelled save when the dead passed over it to their last earthly home. The evening was still and breathless, and the shadows lay thick on the grass as I looked back. But I could still distinguish the little mound with the rose-bush at its head, and, not without tears, I said, “Farewell, poor Wilhelmina; farewell.”

  St. Clair Flats

  * * *

  IN September, 1855, I first saw the St. Clair Flats. Owing to Raymond’s determination, we stopped there.

  “Why go on?” he asked. “Why cross another long, rough lake, when here is all we want?”

  “But no one ever stops here,” I said.

  “So much the better; we shall have it all to ourselves.”

  “But we must at least have a roof over our heads.”

  “I presume we can find one.”

  The captain of the steamer, however, knew of no roof save that covering a little lighthouse set on spiles, which the boat would pass within the half-hour; we decided to get off there, and throw ourselves upon the charity of the lighthouse-man. In the mean time, we sat on the bow with Captain Kidd, our four-legged companion, who had often accompanied us on hunting expeditions, but never before so far westward. It had been rough on Lake Erie,—very rough. We, who had sailed the ocean with composure, found ourselves most inhumanly tossed on the short, chopping waves of this fresh-water sea; we, who alone of all the cabin-list had eaten our four courses and dessert every day on the ocean-steamer, found ourselves here reduced to the depressing diet of a herring and pilot-bread. Captain Kidd, too, had suffered dumbly; even now he could not find comfort, but tried every plank in the deck, one after the other, circling round and round after his tail, dog-fashion, before lying down, and no sooner down than up again for another melancholy wandering about the deck, another choice of planks, another circling, and another failure. We were sailing across a small lake whose smooth waters were like clear green oil; as we drew near the outlet, the low, green shores curved inward and came together, and the steamer entered a narrow, green river.

  “Here we are,” said Raymond. “Now we can soon land.”

  “But there is n’t any land,” I answered.

  “What is that, then?” asked my near-sighted companion, pointing toward what seemed a shore.

  “Reeds.”

  “And what do they run back to?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But there must be solid ground beyond?”

  “Nothing but reeds, flags, lily-pads, grass, and water, as far as I can see.”

  “A marsh?”

  “Yes, a marsh.”

  The word “marsh” does not bring up a beautiful picture to the mind, and yet the reality was as beautiful as anything I have ever seen,—an enchanted land, whose memory haunts me as an idea unwritten, a melody unsung, a picture unpainted, haunts the artist, and will not away. On each side and in front, as far as the eye could reach, stretched the low green land which was yet no land, intersected by hundreds of channels, narrow and broad, whose waters were green as their shores. In and out, now running into each other for a moment, now setting off each for himself again, these many channels flowed along with a rippling current; zigzag as they were, they never seemed to loiter, but, as if knowing just where they were going and what they had to do, they found time to take their own pleasant roundabout way, visiting the secluded households of their friends the flags, who, poor souls, must always stay at home. These currents were as clear as crystal, and green as the water-grasses that fringed their miniature shores. The bristling reeds, like companies of free-lances, rode boldly out here and there into the deeps, trying to conquer more territory for the grasses, but the currents were hard to conquer; they dismounted the free-lances, and flowed over their submerged heads; they beat them down with assaulting ripples; they broke their backs so effectually that the bravest had no spirit left, but trailed along, limp and bedraggled. And, if by chance the lances succeeded in stretching their forces across from one little shore to another, then the unconquered currents forced their way between the closely serried ranks of the enemy, and flowed on as gayly as ever, leaving the grasses sitting hopeless on the bank; for they needed solid ground for their delicate feet, these graceful ladies in green.

  You might call it a marsh; but there was no mud, no dark slimy water, no stagnant scum; there were no rank yellow lilies, no gormandizing frogs, no swinish mud-turtles. The clear waters of the channels ran over golden sands, and hurtled among the stiff reeds so swiftly that only in a bay, or where protected by a crescent point, could the fair white lilies float in the quiet their serene beauty requires. The flags, who brandished their swords proudly, were martinets down to their very heels, keeping themselves as clean under the water as above, and harboring not a speck of mud on their bright green uniforms. For inhabitants, there were small fish roving about here and there in the clear tide, keeping an eye out for the herons, who, watery as to legs, but venerable and wise of aspect, stood on promontories musing, apparently, on the secrets of the ages.

  The steamer’s route was a constant curve; through the larger channels of the archipelago she wound, as if following the clew of a labyrinth. By turns she headed toward all the points of the compass, finding a channel where, to our uninitiated eyes, there was no channel, doubling upon her own track, going broadside foremost, floundering and backing, like a whale caught in a shallow. Here, landlocked, she would choose what seemed the narrowest channel of all, and dash recklessly through, with the reeds almost brushing her sides; there she crept gingerly along a broad expanse of water, her paddle-wheels scarcely revolving, in the excess of her caution. Saplings, with their heads of foliage on, and branches adorned with fluttering rags, served as finger-posts to show the way through the watery defiles, and there were many other hieroglyphics legible only to the pilot. “This time, surely, we shall run ashore,” we thought again and again, as the steamer glided, head-on, toward an islet; but at the last there was always a quick turn into some unseen strait opening like a secret passage in a castle-wall, and we found ourselves in a new lakelet, heading in the opposite direction. Once we met another steamer, and the two great hulls floated slowly past each other, with engines motionless, so near that the passengers could have shaken hands with each other had they been so disposed. Not that they were so disposed, however; far from it. They gathered on their respective decks and gazed at each other gravely; not a smile was seen, not a word spoken, not the shadow of a salutation given. It was not pride, it was not suspicion; it was the universal listlessness of the travelling American bereft of his business, Othello with his occupation gone. What can such a man do on a steamer? Generally, nothing. Certainly he would never think of any such light-hearted nonsense as a smile or passing bow.

  But the ships were, par excellence, the bewitched craft, the Flying Dutchmen of the Flats. A brig, with lofty, sky-scraping sails, bound south, came into view of our steamer, bound north, and passed, we hugging the shore to give her room; five minutes afterward the sky-scraping sails we had left behind veered around in front of us again; another five minutes, and there they were far distant on the right; another, and there they were again close by us on the left. For half an hour those sails circled around us,
and yet all the time we were pushing steadily forward; this seemed witching work indeed. Again, the numerous schooners thought nothing of sailing overland; we saw them on all sides gliding before the wind, or beating up against it over the meadows as easily as over the water; sailing on grass was a mere trifle to these spirit-barks. All this we saw, as I said before, apparently. But in that adverb is hidden the magic of the St. Clair Flats.

  “It is beautiful,—beautiful,” I said, looking off over the vivid green expanse.

  “Beautiful?” echoed the captain, who had himself taken charge of the steering when the steamer entered the labyrinth,—“I don’t see anything beautiful in it!—Port your helm up there; port!”

  “Port it is, sir,” came back from the pilot-house above.

  “These Flats give us more trouble than any other spot on the lakes; vessels are all the time getting aground and blocking up the way, which is narrow enough at best. There ’s some talk of Uncle Sam’s cutting a canal right through,—a straight canal; but he ’s so slow, Uncle Sam is, and I ’m afraid I ’ll be off the waters before the job is done.”

  “A straight canal!” I repeated, thinking with dismay of an ugly utilitarian ditch invading this beautiful winding waste of green.

  “Yes, you can see for yourself what a saving it would be,” replied the captain. “We could run right through in no time, day or night; whereas, now, we have to turn and twist and watch every inch of the whole everlasting marsh.” Such was the captain’s opinion. But we, albeit neither romantic nor artistic, were captivated with his “everlasting marsh,” and eager to penetrate far within its green fastnesses.

  “I suppose there are other families living about here, besides the family at the lighthouse?” I said.

  “Never heard of any. They ’d have to live on a raft if they did.”

  “But there must be some solid ground.”