Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 - Various
"Papa says that we may go. Do you think, mamma, that Miss D. can have
our dresses in time?"
Our dear mother, most faithful and indefatigable in her care for our
bodily wants, what time had she for aught else? With feeble health,
with poor servants, with a large house crowded with fine furniture,
and with the claims of a numerous calling and party-giving
acquaintance,--claims which both my father and herself imagined his
business and her social position made imperative,--what could she do
more than to see that our innumerable white skirts were properly
tucked, embroidered, washed, and starched, that our party dresses were
equal to those which Mrs. C. and Mrs. D. provided for their girls, and
that our bonnets were fashionable enough for Fourth Street? Could she
find time for anything more? Yes,--on our bodily ailments she always
found time to bestow motherly care, watchfulness, and sympathy; of our
mental ills she knew nothing.
So we cared for ourselves, Alice and I, through those merry,
thoughtless two years that followed,--merry (not happy) in our
Fourth-Street promenades, our Saturday-afternoon assignations at the
dancing-school rooms, our parties and picnics; and merry still, but
thoughtless always, in our eager search for excitement in the novels,
whose perusal was our only literary enjoyment.
Somehow we woke up,--somehow we groped our way out of our
frivolity. First came weariness, then impatience, and last a
passing-away of all things old and a putting-on of things new.
I remember well the day when Alice first spoke out her unrest. My
pretty Alice! I see her now, as she flung herself across the foot of
the bed, and, her chin on her hand, watched me combing and parting my
hair. I see again those soft, dark brown eyes, so deep in their liquid
beauty that you lost yourself gazing down into them; again I see
falling around her that wealth of auburn hair of the true Titian
color, the smooth, low forehead, and the ripe, red lips, whose
mobility lent such varying expression to her face.
At that moment the eyes drooped and the lips trembled with weariness.
"Must we go to that tiresome party, Kate? We have been to three this
week; they are all alike."
I looked at her. "Are you in earnest? will you stay at home? I know I
shall be tired to death; but what will Laura C. say? what will all
the girls think?"
Alice raised herself on her elbow. "Kate, I don't believe it is any
matter what they think. Do we really care for any of them, except to
wish them well? and we can wish them well without being with them all
the time. Do you know, Kate, I have been tired to death of all this
for these three months? It was very well at first, when we first left
school; parties were pleasant enough then, but now"--and Alice sprang
from the bed and seated herself in a low chair at my feet, as, glowing
and eager, she went on, her face lighting with her rapid
speech,--"Kate, I have thought it over and over again, this tiresome,
useless life; it wears me out, and I mean to change it. You know we
may do just as we please; neither papa nor mamma will care. I shall stay
at home."
"But what will people say?" I put in, feebly.
Alice's eyes flashed. "You know, Kate, I don't care for 'people,' as
you call them. I only know that I am utterly weary of this petty
visiting and gossiping, this round of parties, concerts, and lectures,
where we meet the same faces. There is no harm in it that I know of,
but it is simply so stupid. If we met new people, it would be
something; but the same girls, the same beaux."
"And George W. and Henry B., what will they do for partners to-night?
what will become of them?"
Alice put up her lip. "They will console themselves with Laura C. and
those Kentucky girls from Louisville. For my part, I shall put on my
walking-dress, and go over the river to spend the evening with Uncle
John, and, what is more, I shall ask mamma to let me stay two or three
days." And, suiting the action to the word, she began to dress
hurriedly.
"You will surely never go without me, Alice?"
"You will never stay behind, if I do go, Kate," said she, looking back
at me laughingly. "But make haste, I shall gain mamma over in five
minutes; and we must be quick, if we are to reach Uncle John's before
tea-time."
Uncle John,--even now that long years have passed, so long that it
seems to me as if I had gone into another state of existence, as if I
were not the same person as in those times,--even now the thought of
him makes my heart beat quick and the blood thrill more rapidly
through my veins. He was the delight of my childhood; far better, he
was the comfort and support of my after years. Even as a child, I
knew, knew by some intuitive perception, that Uncle John was not
happy. How soon I learned that he was a disappointed man I cannot
tell; but long before I grew up into womanhood I was conscious that he
had made some mistake in life, that some cloud hung over him. I never
asked, I never talked on the subject, even to Alice; there was always
an understanding between us that we should be silent about that which
each of us felt with all the certainty of knowledge.
But if Uncle John was unhappy himself, who was there that he did not
make happy? No one who came near him,--from his nieces whom he petted
and spoiled, down to the little negroes who rolled, unrebuked, over
the grass before his window in summer, or woke him on a Christmas
morning with their shrill "Christmas gift, Massa John!" Not that Uncle
John was a busybody, troubling himself about many things, and seeking
out occasions for obtruding his kindnesses. He lived so secluded a
life in the old family-house on the outskirts of Newport, (we were a
Kentucky family,) as to raise the gossiping curiosity of all new
residents, and to call forth the explanatory remark from the old
settlers, that the Delanos were all queer people, but John Delano was
the queerest of them all.
So Uncle John spent his time between his library and his garden, while
Old Aunt Molly took upon herself the cares of the household, and kept
the pantry always in a condition to welcome the guests, to whom, with
Kentucky hospitality, Uncle John's house was always open. Courteous he
was as the finest gentleman of olden times, and sincerely glad to see
his friends, but I have thought sometimes that he was equally glad to
have them go away. While they were with him he gave them the truest
welcome, leaving garden and books to devote himself to their
entertainment; but I have detected a look of relief on his face as he
shut the gate upon them and sought the shelter of his own little
study, that sanctum which even we children were not allowed to enter
except on special occasions, on a quiet winter evening, or, perhaps,
on as quiet a summer morning.
Uncle John had not always lived in the old house. We knew, that, after
Grandpapa's death, it had been shut up,--for my father's business
engagements would not allow my mother to reside in it, and Uncle John
had been for years among the Indians in the far Northwest. We had
heard of him sometimes, but we had never seen him, we hardly realized
that he was a living person, till one day he suddenly appeared among
us, rough-looking and uncouth in his hunter's dress, with his heavy
beard and his long hair, bringing with him his multifarious
assortment, so charming to our eyes, of buffalo-robes and elk-horns,
wolf-skins and Indian moccasins.
He staid with us that winter, and very merry and happy he seemed to us
at first;--looking back upon it now, I should call it, not happiness,
but excitement;--but as the winter passed on, even we children saw
that all was not right with him. He gradually withdrew himself from
the constant whirl of society in our house, and, by the spring, had
settled himself in the old home at Newport, adding to his old
furniture only his books, which he had been all winter collecting, and
the primitive _in_conveniences of his own room, which his rough
Western life had rendered indispensable to him. His study presented a
singular mixture of civilization and barbarism, and its very
peculiarities made it a delight to Alice and me. There were a few rare
engravings on the walls, hung between enormous antlers which supported
rough-looking rifles and uncouth hunting-shirts,--cases of elegantly
bound and valuable books, half hidden by heavy buffalo-robes marked
all over with strange-looking hieroglyphics which told the Indian
_coups_,--study-chairs of the most elaborate manufacture, with
levers and screws to incline them to any, the idlest, inclination,
over the backs of which hung white wolf-skins, mounted, claws and all,
with brilliant red cloth,--and in the corner, on the pretty Brussels
carpet, the prettiest that mamma could find at Shellito's, lay the bag
of Indian weed (Uncle John scorned tobacco) with which he filled his
pipe every evening, and the moccasins which he always wore when at
home.
In vain did Alice and I spend our eyesight in embroidering slippers
for him; our Christmas gifts were received with a kiss or a stroke of
the head, and then put into Aunt Molly's hands to be taken care of,
while he still wore the rough moccasins, made far up among the
Blackfoot Indians, which he laughingly declared were warmer, cooler,
softer, and stronger than any slippers or boots that civilized
shoemaker ever turned off his last.
Quiet as it was at the old house, it had always been a source of
happiness to us to be allowed to make a visit to Uncle John. There,
if that were possible, we did more as we pleased than even at home;
there were not even the conventionalities of society to restrain us;
we were in the country, comparatively. And who like Uncle John knew
what real country pleasures were? who like him could provide for every
contingency? who was so full of expedients in those happy gypsying
expeditions which we would entice him into, and which sometimes lasted
for days, nay, weeks? He would mount Alice and myself on two of his
sure-footed little Indian ponies, with which his trader friends always
kept him supplied; and throwing a pair of saddle-bags, filled with
what he called our woman's traps, over his own, he would start with us
for a trip across the country for miles, stopping at the farm-houses
at night, laughing us out of our conventional notions about the
conveniences of lodging, and so forth,--and camping out during the
day, making what we called a continuous picnic. And then the stories
he would tell us of his adventures among the Blackfeet,--of his
trading expeditions,--his being taken prisoner by the Sioux,--his life
in the forts,--till Alice would creep nearer to him in her nervous
excitement, as if to be sure that he was really with her, and then beg
him to go on and tell us something more. Once I asked him how he
happened to go out among the Indians. His face darkened,--"My little
Kate, you must not ask questions,"--and as I turned to Alice, her eyes
were full of tears. She had been looking at him while I spoke, and she
told me afterwards that something about Uncle John's lips made her
cry, they quivered so, and were set afterwards so tight. We never
asked him that question again.
But the ferry-boat, "The Belle of Newport," has neared the landing
while I have been introducing Uncle John, and the soft summer twilight
saw us wending our way through the town towards the Kentucky hills,
whose rounded outlines were still bright with the evening red. Just
on the rise of the nearest was the Old House,--for it went with us by
no other name,--and at the garden-gate stood Uncle John, his face
brightening as he saw us, while behind him a row of eager faces showed
their wide-stretched mouths and white teeth.
"Come to spend two or three days, Alice?" said Uncle John, that
evening, as we sat with shaded lamp in the study, his moccasined feet
resting on the window-seat, while he sank into the depths of his
leather-covered Spanish chair. "Why, what has become of the parties
that Aunt Molly heard about in your kitchen on her way to market
yesterday? Where are all our handsome young students that were coming
home for the holidays? Remember, I'll have none of them following you
over here, and disarranging my books by way of showing off their
knowledge."
Alice laughed. "Not a soul knows where we are, Uncle John, except
mamma, and she promised not to tell. Laura C. has a party to-night,
and she will be provoked enough at our running away; but the truth
is,----well, Uncle John, I am tired of parties; indeed, I am tired of
our way of living, and--and Kate and I thought we would come and ask
you what we ought to do about it."
Uncle John puckered up his face with a comical expression, and then,
looking out of the window, whistled the Indian buffalo-call.
Alice sprung up. "Don't whistle that provoking thing, Uncle John!
Indeed, I am thoroughly in earnest,--parties are so tiresome,--all
exactly alike; we always see the same people, or the same sort of
people. There is nothing about them worth having, except the dancing;
and even that is not as good as a scamper over the hills with you and
the ponies. You know we have been going to parties for these two
years; we have seen so much of society, no wonder we are tired of it."
"Sit down, Alice," said Uncle John; "you do look really in earnest, so
I suppose you must not be whistled at. And you have come all the way
over here this evening to get me to solve Life's problem for you? My
dear, I cannot work it out for myself. You are 'tired of society'?
Why, little one, you have not seen society yet. Suppose I could put
you down to-night in the midst of some European court,--could show you
men whose courage, wit, or learning had made them world-famous,--women
whose beauty, grace, and cultivation brought those world-famous men to
their side, and who held them there by the fascination that
high-breeding knows how to use. Should you talk of sameness then?"
Alice's eyes sparkled for a moment, then she said,--
"Yes, I should tire even of that, after a while, glorious as it would
be at first."
"Have you reached such sublime heights of philosophy already? Then,
perhaps, I shall not seem to be talking nonsense, when I tell you that
there is nothing in the world of which you would not tire after the
first joy of possession was over, no position which would not seem
monotonous. You do not believe me? Of course not. We all buy our own
experience in life; on one of two rocks we split: either we do not
want a thing after we have got it, or we do not get it till we no
longer want it. Some of us suffer shipwreck both ways. But, Alice, you
must find that out for yourself."
"Can we not profit by each other's mistakes, Uncle?"
"No, child. To what purpose should I show you the breakers where my
vessel struck? Do you suppose you will steer exactly in my path? But
what soberness is this? you are not among breakers yet; you are simply
'tired of living';" and Uncle John's smile was too genial to be called
satirical.
"Tired of not living, I think," replied Alice,--"tired of doing
nothing, of having nothing to do. The girls, Laura and the rest of
them, find so much excitement in what seems to me so stupid!"
"You are not exactly like 'Laura and the rest of them,' I fancy, my
dear, and what suits them is rather too tame for you. But what do you
propose to do with yourself now that you are beginning to live?"
"Now you are laughing at me, Uncle, and you will laugh more when I
tell you that I mean to study and to make Kate study with me."
"Poor Kate!--if you should fancy swimming, shooting, or any other
unheard-of pursuit, Kate would be obliged to swim and shoot with
you. But I will not laugh any more. Study, if you will, Alice; you
will learn fast enough, and, in this age of fast-advancing
civilization, when the chances of eligible matrimony for young ladies
in your station are yearly becoming less and less,--oh, you need not
put up your lip and peep into my bachelor's shaving-glass!--let me
tell you that a literary taste is a recourse not to be despised. Of
course you will study now to astonish me, or to surprise your young
friends, or for some other equally wise reason; but the time may come
when literature will be its own exceeding great reward."
"Uncle, answer me one thing,--are you as happy here in your quiet
study as you were in your exciting life among the Indians? Do you not
tire of this everyday sameness?"
"Close questioning, Alice, but I will answer you truly. Other things
being equal, I confess to you that the Indian life was the more
monotonous of the two. I look back now on my twenty years of savage
life and see nothing to vary its dreary sameness; the dangers were
always alike, the excitements always the same, and the rest was a dead
blank. The whole twenty years might be comprised in four words,--we
fought, we hunted, we eat, we slept. No, there is no monotony like
that,--no life so stupid as that of the savage, with his low wants and
his narrow hopes and fears. My life here among my books, which seems
to you so tame, is excitement itself compared with that. Your
stupidest party is full of life, intelligence, wit, when put beside an
Indian powwow. There is but one charm in that wandering life,
Alice,--the free intercourse with Nature; _that_ never tires; but
then you must remember that to enjoy it you must be cultivated up to
it. There needs all the teaching of civilization, nay, the education
of life, to enjoy Nature truly. These quiet hills, these beech
forests, are more to me now than Niagara was at eighteen; and Niagara
itself, which raises the poet above the earth, falls tame on the mind
of the savage. Believe one who knows,--the man of civilization who
goes back to the savage state throws away his life; his very mind
becomes, like the dyer's hand, 'subdued to what it works in.'
"But I am going out of your depth again, girls," continued he, looking
at our wondering, half-puzzled faces. "Let it go, Alice; Life is a
problem too hard for you to solve as yet; perhaps it will solve
itself. Meantime, we will brighten ourselves up to-morrow by a good
scamper over the hills, and, the next day, if your fancy for study
still holds, we will plan out some hard work, and I will show you what
real study is. Now go to bed; but see first that Aunt Molly has her
sandwiches and gingerbread ready for the morning."
TALK NUMBER TWO.
Uncle John was well qualified to show us what real study was, for in
his early youth he had read hard and long to fit himself for a
literary life. What had changed his course and driven him to the far
West we did not know, but since his return he had brought the
perseverance and judgment of middle life to the studies of his youth,
and in his last ten years of leisure had made himself that rarest of
things among Americans, a scholar, one worthy of the name.
Under his guidance our studies took life, and Alice threw herself into
them with all the energy of her nature. In vain papa pished and
pshawed, and mamma grieved, and begged John not to spoil the girls by
making bookworms of them; in vain "Laura C. and the rest of them"
entreated us to join this picnic or show ourselves at that party; in
vain the young men professed themselves afraid of us, and the girls
tossed their heads and called us blue-stockings. Alice's answer to all
was, "I like studying; it is a great deal more entertaining than going
to parties; Uncle John's study is pleasanter than Mrs. C.'s parlor,
and a ride on his little Winnebago better fun than dancing." And so
the years went on. We were not out of society,--that could not be in
our house,--but our associates changed; young men of a higher standing
frequented the house; we knew intimately the cultivated women, to
whom, before, we had simply bowed at parties; and mamma and papa grew
quite satisfied.
Not so Alice; the spirit of unrest was on her again, but this time it
was not because of the weariness of life, but that she was oppressed
by the fulness of her own happiness. She had waked up to life in
waking up to love, and had poured out on Herbert B. the whole wealth
of her heart. There was everything in her engagement to satisfy her
friends, everything to gratify papa and mamma; and if I sometimes
thought Herbert's too feeble a nature to guide hers, or if Uncle John
sometimes talked with or listened to him as if he were measuring his
depth and then went away with an anxious expression of face, who shall
say how much of selfishness influenced us both? for was he not to take
from us the pet and pride of our lives?
They were to be married in a few weeks, on Alice's twentieth birthday,
and then leave for New York, where Herbert was connected in business
with his father.
It was on a gloomy December afternoon that Alice came running up to
our room, where I was reading my Italian lesson, and exclaimed,--
"Quick, Kate! put away those stupid books, and let us go over to Uncle
John's for the night."
"Where is Herbert?"
"Herbert? Nonsense! I have sent him off with orders not to look for me
again till to-morrow, and to-night I mean to pretend that there is no
Herbert in the world. Perhaps this will be my last talk with Uncle
John."
We walked quickly through the streets, shrouded in the dark
winter-afternoon atmosphere heavy with coal-smoke, the houses on each
side dripping with the fog-drops and looking dirty and cheerless with
the black streaks running from the corners of each window, like tears
down the face of some chimney-sweep or coal-boy, till, reaching the
foot of Ludlow Street, we stood ankle-deep in mud, waiting for the
little steamer, which still ploughed its way through the dark,
sullen-looking water thick with the red mud which the late rise had
brought down, and with here and there heavy pieces of ice floating by.
"Uncle John will never expect us to-night, Alice."
"I cannot help it,--I must go; for I shall never be satisfied without
one good talk with him before I leave, and Herbert will never spare me
another evening. Besides, Uncle John will be only too glad to see us
in this suicidal weather, as he will call it." And she sprang upon the
boat, laughing at my woebegone face.
"You are glad to see us here, Uncle John,--glad we came in spite of
the fog, and sleet, and ice, and Kate's long face. How anybody can
have a long face because of the weather, I cannot understand,--or,
indeed, why there should be long faces at all in the world, when
everything is so gloriously full of life."
"How many years is it, Alice,--three, I think,--since you were tired
of living, found life so wearisome?"
"Yes, just about three years since Kate and I ran away from Laura C.'s
party and came over here to ask you to help us out of our stupidity. I
remember it all,--how you puzzled me by telling me that every position
in life had its sameness. Ah, Uncle John, you forgot one thing when
you told me that nothing satisfied us in this world." And Alice looked
up from her little stool, where she sat before the fire at Uncle
John's feet, with the flush of deep feeling coloring her cheeks and
the dewy light of happiness in her eyes.
"And that one thing, Alice?"
"You are lying in wait for my answer, to give it that smile that I
hate,--it is so unbelieving and so sad; I will not have you wear it on
your face to-night, Uncle John. You cannot, if I speak my whole heart
out. And why should I not, before you and Kate,--Kate, who is like my
other self, and you, dear Uncle John, who, ever since the time we were
talking about, have been so much to me? Do you know, I never told
anybody before? but all you said that night never left me. I thought
of it so much! Was it true that life was so dissatisfying? You who had
tried so thoroughly, who had gone through such a life of adventure,
had seemed to me really to live, was all as flat and unprofitable to
you as one of our tiresome parties or morning calls? And something in
my own heart told me it was true, something that haunted me all
through my greatest enjoyments, through my studies that I took up
then, and which have been to me, oh, Uncle John, so much more than
ever I expected they would be! Yes, through all that I believed you,
believed you till now, believed you till I knew Herbert."
"And has Herbert told you better?"
"Uncle John, you do not know how the whole of life is glorified for
me,--glorified by his love. I do not deserve it; all I can do is to
return it ten-fold; but this I know, that, while I keep it, there can
be nothing tame or dull,--life, everything, is gilded by my own
happiness."
"And if you lose it?"
The flush on her face fell. "I should be miserable!--I should not--no,
I could not live any longer!"
"Alice," said Uncle John, his face losing its half-mocking smile with
which he had been watching her eager countenance, "Alice, did you know
that I had been married?"
We started. "Married? No. How was it, and when?"
"It is no matter now, my girls. Some time I may tell you about it. I
should not have spoken of it now, but that I know my little Alice
would not believe a word I am going to tell her, if she thought she
was listening to an old bachelor's croakings. Now I can speak with
authority. You think you could not live without Herbert's love? My
dear, we can live without a great many things that we fancy
indispensable. Nor is it so very easy to die. There comes many a time
in life when it would seem quite according to the fitness of things,
just the proper ending to the romance, to lie down and die; but,
unfortunately, or rather fortunately, dying is a thing that we cannot
do so just in the nick of time; and indeed"--and Uncle John's face
assumed its strange smile, which seemed to take you, as it were,
suddenly behind the scenes, to show you the wrong side of the
tapestry,--"and indeed," he continued, "when I look back on the times
in my life that I should have died, when it was fitting and proper to
die, when I felt that dying would be such a trump card to play, if
only I could manage it, I must say that I am glad now that it was
beyond my power to arrange things according to the melodramatic
rules. As it is, I am alive now. I shake my fist at all the ghosts of
my departed tragedies and say, 'I am worth two of you. I am alive. I
have all the chances of the future in my favor.'"