BERTIE GWYNNE.
Book 1. ON BOARD THE SERINGA.
1. Waiting.
2. The Captain’s Story.
3. Ended and Begun.
4. Mamelita.
5. In the Mexican Inn.
6. Captain Hathaway in Command.
7. The Wreck of the Seringa.
Book 2. SOUTH-WEST AND NORTH-WEST.
1. In the Indian Country.
2. The Old Patriarch.
3. Escape.
4. Norah Burke’s Suitor.
5. The Signing of the Deed.
6. Father and Son.
7. Charley Phinney’s Departure.
Book 3. LITTLE CAPTAIN.
1. History of the Bucker Family.
2. Little Captain’s Education.
3. Eden in New England.
4. The Mail comes in.
5. The Mail goes out.
Book 4. SILVERSPURS.
1. The Phinney Corporations.
2. Conchita and Panchita.
3. An Unexpected Arrival.
4. The Ball and its Results.
5. Silverspurs to the Rescue!
6. Through the Desert.
7. The Waterspout.
8. The Story of Silverspurs.
9. News from Home.
Book 5. RISEN FROM THE DEAD.
1. The New Home.
2. In the Old Churchyard.
3. Rest.
I think that if I am ever to do any thing good, it will be in this story, which will attempt to trace the growth of a soul with only Nature to come in contact with it; which will be full of the life and adventure of sea and land, of North Atlantic and South Pacific shores; which will be exciting, yet in no way offensively sensational.
This is the story I told you of at the theatre,-a story which you declared was certainly not immoral, though it might not be moral. It has grown to artistic completion, and unfolded now something like a moral,-a relation of heroic self-sacrifice.
In just the same freedom, Mark would have his budget of sorrows to bring to Jane. Over and over again he talked with her about Rachel Holley.
“It is something I can’t stand, to think of Rachel spending the winter in a second, no, fifteenth-rate boarding-house in New York, when we might just as well have been married, and be living comfortably here in Boston.”
Now, Jane knew that Mr. Holley had nothing in particular to give his daughter if she should be married; and she, privately, did not exactly see how Rachel and Mark were going to live so very comfortably on his little salary as assistant librarian; especially as Mark, when he said these words, would look round approvingly upon all the Bardles luxury about them, as though he and Rachel had only to step into just such a home.
Mark was an unpractical being; he had lived in his books all his life. His gleam of Rachel was all that had ever waked him out of his dreamy reading. As he sat in a comfortable chair in the Bardles back parlor, he thought how delightful it would be to be living with Rachel in a home of his own, much like this, only he should turn the back parlor into a library; and-and-it was very agreeable to explain it all to the listening Jane.
Jane defended Rachel, and gradually brought Mark to acknowledge that perhaps she was right in not being in such a hurry to be married. Then, afterwards, he came to be glad that Rachel was in New York, on Horace’s account; for the poor fellow must be sadly cut up at Nettie’s treatment of him. Indeed, Mark in a short time began to be consoled, and the stir and bustle of the Bardles family interested him, and woke him up from his dreamy life. He brought them all the new books: these they could look at, if they had not time for more, and it was very convenient to have him to tell what there was in the books, when they didn’t read them.
It must not be supposed, that, for all these confessions, Jane had any private chapel or oratory set apart; there was no privacy in the Bardles family. The two drawing-rooms opened upon each other with wide folding doors. In the back room, Jane and Christine took their French lessons three mornings in the week. But aunts and uncles poured in upon the lesson all the same. The sisters liked the chance to come in and talk a little French with M. Pinaud. Aunt Maria, of course, always happened in, just as they were looking for a little quiet, and always it was necessary to explain to her what was going on.
“Oh, a French lesson! I hate the French,” was the regular answer, which it was hoped M. Pinaud would not understand, though it was given in so loud a voice he could not but hear.
Just in the height of the mle, the six children would come down, on their way out for their noon walk; and the stairway opening between the rooms, it gave an admirable chance to stop them, and have a great time with them. Retty’s new suit had to be admired, and Johnny’s leggings, and Carl’s new hobby-horse, that his father brought from New York; and they each had a favorite aunt, who pounced upon her especial pet; and all the children had to learn to say “Bonjour” to Mr. Pinaud. The little infantry procession swept off, at last; some of the aunts with it. But, by this time, there was luncheon, and everybody had to go down to that; and afterwards came callers, or calls to be made till dinner, and in the evening a rush always. When there was no French lesson, there was shopping. For afternoons, again, there were the matines, afternoon concerts, or drives.
Yet in such a rush, the moments stolen for confidence are only the more sweet. If one has the whole day for conversation, it gets a little diluted and weak. But, if you must concentrate all you want to say into the favored moment, you naturally make it concise, and to the point. That is, a long cultivation teaches you to do so. Often, after all, you bring out only the most unnecessary and vapid part of what you have to say, just as so many people take up half their letters in explaining how they have not written before, a fact already painfully evident.
“Jeanie, you must sit by me to-night at the play,” Christine would whisper to Jane. “I have got such a story to tell you!” And the moment of confidence had to be fought for; it never came of itself.
One day, when noon at the Bardles house was especially uproarious, Mark came to Jane’s side to try to say something to her. The children were all on their way out for their walk. Johnny was shrieking with delight on the back of the bachelor uncle, who was trotting him up and down the length of the two rooms. Sophy was telling the price of the feather in Retty’s hat to two of her sisters-in-law, on the opposite side of the room, to whom she had to scream out the valuable information. Aunt Maria was explaining to the company in general her views upon the French war. She thought the Communists had better have been left to kill each other, and then, when there was not a Frenchman to be seen, the English could take Paris: which she wondered they didn’t do, after Waterloo.
M. Pinaud was just taking his leave, and Christine was attempting to drown her Aunt Maria’s voice in a flood of French; but she was not very ready in that language, and ended by going off in a list of the numerals, which she could say easily. It did not make much difference what she said, in the hubbub; and the French teacher was only too glad to get off, without crushing Sallie’s wax doll that lay in the stairway.
“I should like to walk with you to the opera, Jane, to-night. I have something to tell you,” was all Mark found a chance to say.
CHAPTER XV.
WHEN evening came, there was some talk of Jane’s going in the carriage with old Mrs. Bardles; but she stoutly resisted, and was allowed to set off, taking Mark’s arm. A boy, one of Ned Bardles’s younger brothers, hitched on to them for part of the way, but happily found their conversation dull, and they had a few moments to each other. The information Mark wanted to give Jane was something he had learned of Jeffrey Fleming. That constant young man had never written to Jane any thing about his long illness. Nor had Nettie written to tell her of it. Jane had heard not a word from him for many weeks. Some one had told Mark that Jeffrey had been dangerously ill, and Mark directly wrote to Hartford to inquire about it. A letter came from Jeffrey himself, to say that it was all true; but he was well again, and now “dead
in love with Nettie,” as he expressed it.
Jeffrey had always been a wild young fellow, never capable of sticking to one thing long.
There had only been one bit of steadfastness in him, and that was his affection for Jane. There had always been something in her serene atmosphere, that had brought out all his finer qualities,-so everybody thought. And it was considered one of Jane’s saintly gifts, that of loving such a harum-scarum, and bringing him into respectable society.
How could Mark impart to Jane the intelligence of Jeffrey’s shameful desertion?
It was Jane who helped him out. She, too, had a piece of intelligence for him. She had received a letter from Rachel, telling about her life in New York, and how much she was depending upon Horace Vanzandt’s tenderness and affection.
“I do believe, if he ever loved Nettie,” said Rachel, “he loves her no longer. And certainly she is not worthy the love of one so whole-souled as he is, if she could treat him as she has done!”
Jane thought she ought to prepare Mark for the fact that Rachel was finding some consolation in Horace in his absence; and, knowing that her time was short, she plunged directly into it. This made it amazingly easy for Mark to tell his part; and he was so eager in abusing Jeffrey Fleming, that he forgot to be as sorry as he ought about Rachel.
It was with Mark’s intelligence ringing in her ears that Jane sat through the opera.
The action of an opera is often supposed to be unnatural and absurd; but the writer of the libretto knows well the power of the music that is to lift the whole story into a reality. And, if one listens to the opera with any great emotion on one’s mind, it is astonishing how its music allies itself to one’s feelings and makes the stage carry out the drama that is going on in the heart.
We almost believe that music is a necessary accompaniment to all the tragedy or action of our own lives; and when the orchestra stops, and the curtain falls, we come out into the silence, or into the hubbub that follows the harmony, with the feeling that our little play is ended too, and that there is nothing more.
Even when a grinding organ is playing at the corner of the streets, look round and you will see how unconsciously everybody’s pace is set in time with the melody,-old men, and little girls, and busy shopping-women,-and some of them go moving on with an earnest, heroic look, as though the music of the spheres were suddenly sounding up through the discordant noise of the street.
The drama of Jane’s life was coursing through her mind, all the time she was listening to the three acts of the opera. Between the parts, Christine on one side would bring in a little chippering about somebody’s bonnet; but on the other side Mark was sitting silent, having fallen back into one of his moods.
The opera was “Il Trovatore.” Jane was going over some of her old times with Jeffrey, one evening, when she had saved him from a terrible temptation, when he had staid by her, and gave her all the history of his life, telling her scenes that had been then a black contrast to her own peaceful life, that had made her shudder, and were recalled again in the clangor of the chorus on the stage, by the great tumult of the orchestra.
Again the scene changed, and she thought of him on his sick-bed, and perhaps wanting her again. She had discouraged Jeffrey’s writing to her, partly because he wrote such poor letters, and partly because, as she told him, he ought to be devoting himself to his business; and, if he were writing every day to her, it would take out a great piece of his time. And she did not think much of now-and-then letters, when one has every thing to tell, and tells nothing. Besides, Jane had a difficulty in trusting her own thoughts even to paper. It frightened her, the very idea of seeing her own heart laid down in black and white before her eyes. For this reason Jane had always written very cold, unsatisfactory letters.
And now on the stage there was the scene of a high tower at one side. Behind it was the tenor, singing with all his might off the stage, supposed to be in the uppermost story of the tower.
What a voice he had! How rich, how tender, how moving! He was reproaching the lady of his love for leaving him, for deserting him to marry another. But there she was below, singing with all her voice, out of her heart, too, trying to reach way up to him from the foot of the tower, telling him how she loved him, and how she wanted to come to him, and to save his life. And all the time from the distance came the Miserere,, the chanting of some quiet nuns singing in this heavenly way out of the peace of their cells, and sending their harmony into the discords of the world. It was a chorus with many monotones, however: what sympathy did it have with two hearts storming and breaking outside?
Well, all this, to Jane, became her own drama.
And have we not all of us acted and lived it through in all our lives? We call the plot of the opera absurd and unnatural and ridiculous. Oh, yes! so it all is,-the bridegroom with his white satin breeches, loose at the knee, lace-trimmed; the stout basso, brawling his woes. But have we not seen the being we loved the most, imprisoned in some tower, and we at the foot of it, outside, grasping the cold stones, trying to reach to him? It is sickness, sin, of ours or his, some impenetrability bility, that shuts him from us. We hear his appealing voice, but we cannot come to him; and not far away there is going on the sound of the voices of the peaceful, of those who are feeling no longer the passions of the world, and they chant of death and heaven and pity. But it cannot quiet us; for it is not only our own sorrow, but the agony of another, that is calling to us; and we try to make the voice of our heart reach him with our sympathy, though it must be in discord with the chant. Jane seemed to see Jeffrey on his sick-bed, stretching out his arms to her, appealing to her.
“Non ti scordr di me,” sang out the opera-singer.
“What, I, separate my heart from yours!” said Jane’s thoughts.
“Could not I go to you?”
And then came another pause between the parts of the opera, and everybody fell to saying a few things. Sophy had tears in her eyes, but she only took out her handkerchief to show its embroidery to her neighbor.
Now, in all this, Jane had been thinking not merely of Jeffrey’s severe illness, and that she had not been there to care for him; but the sting had been, that another woman had filled what was her province. Jane loved Nettie, as all these three girls loved each other. But Jane had been Jeffrey’s frey’s strong friend and supporter. There had been periods in his life when she had saved him from himself. She felt, then, a certain right to be every thing to him,-a jealousy of the influence of another.
And Nettie she could not believe was the right woman for Jeffrey; they were too much alike, both fascinating from their very waywardness. Mark had somehow let out in his story that Nettie had changed, had improved.
But who wanted Nettie to improve, or change? Was not she very well as she was? What prosaic, Yankee-calculating kind of books are those that are so stern on the butterflies! Would we indeed prefer them all to stay as caterpillars, and be grubbing round all the time over the foliage? And if the butterfly finds his food in every flower-cup, why need he build little larders, like ants and bees?
Jane did not say all this. The Gypsy was singing her sleepy song, and Jane only felt that it was all wrong, and that it was her fault. If she had not been so stiff about Jeffrey’s writing, it would have been different. She would have known of his illness, from his not writing; she would have gone to him.
Christine arranged that Mr. Archer should walk home with Jane, and Mark with herself; so Jane had no more talk with him that night.
CHAPTER XVI.
AFTERWARDS there came fresh opportunities of Jane’s having conversation with Mark alone.
Her charitable feelings had been much exercised since she had been in Boston. She could not resist giving an answer to the appeals of “only one cent” from the forlorn boys and girls on Beacon Street. In the first days of her visit, Ned had caught her listening to the story of a ragged woman on the door-steps. He had then lectured her on the subject of the utter uselessness, nay, wickedness, of giving money i
n such cases; and he presented Jane with a packet of tickets of the Provident Association, and its little directory of names to whom to apply. Jane made liberal use of these.
But sometimes she could not resist answering such an appeal herself; and she had accumulated a little set of poor places to be visited, that she attended to as carefully as to any of her list of callers. But these places were far away in the narrow, perplexing, winding streets, and she needed Mark as guide. Two or three times a week, then, they set off together on these journeys of discovery.
Such an expedition was not particularly favorable to talking. All the first part of the way they were interrupted by meeting acquaintances; then they reached the streets, where the sidewalks were very narrow,-there was building going on, here and there, and Mark had to shoot off in one direction, and Jane in another. But Mark had a happy faculty of not being disturbed by these outside interruptions, and would hold on to his sentence and his idea, all through the intricacies of street-crossings, crowds and jostlings.
In one of their wanderings, one day, far down at the “North End,” they stumbled upon what looked like a bee-hive, or what Mark called a human ant-heap. For little ants of children were running in and out of a little shop from which each came with a ginger-cake in its mouth.
“Suppose we try our chance,” said Mark to Jane; “for our long walk makes me feel as if I should like a ginger-cake.”
Jane agreed; and they went into a little low shop, the lower story of a house that formed one of a most uninteresting looking block of houses.
But when they were inside, they found it was the establishment of Luclarion Grapp, of which Jane had heard. This remarkable woman had set up a little shop in the most hopeless and poorest part of the town, for the very purpose of doing something for the forlorn children that seemed to swarm about there. She had succeeded, from washing the face of one child, in purifying the families of many; and she gladly showed Jane and Mark up and down through the rooms of her little home.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 425