The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 60, October, 1862

"I understand you. I am to go back, then? It was a long road,—and cold, Douglas."

He stopped abruptly, looked at her steadily.

"Do not taunt me, child! I am a blunt man: what words say, they mean, to me. Do you love me, Theodora?"

She did not speak, drawn back from him in the opposite shadow of the door-way. He leaned forward, his breath coming hurried, low.

"Are you cold? See how shaggy this great cloak is,—is it wide enough for you and me? Will you come to me, Theodora?"

"I did come to you. Look! you put me back: 'There shall be no benefits given or received between us.'"

"How did you come?"—gravely, as a man should speak to a woman, childish trifling thrust aside. "How did you mean to take me home? As a pure, God-fearing woman should the man she loved? Into your heart, into your holiest thought? to gather strength from my strength, to make my power your power, your God my God? to be one with me? Was it so you came?"

He waited a minute. How cold and lonely the night was! How near rest and home came to him in this woman standing there! Would he lose them? One moment more would tell. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, feeble.

"There is a great gulf between you and me, Theodora. I know that. Will you cross it? Will you come to me?"

She came to him. He gathered her into his arms as he might a little child, never to be cold again; he felt her full heart throb passionately against his own; he took from her burning lips the first pure, womanly kiss: she was all his. But when she turned her head, there was a quick upward glance of her eyes, he knew not whether of appeal or thanks. There was a Something in the world more near and real to her than he; he loved her the better for it: yet until he found that Unknown God, they were not one.

It was an uncertain step broke the silence, cracking the crusted snow.

"Why, Gaunt!" said Palmer, "what are you doing in the cold? Come to the fire, boy!"

He could afford to speak cordially, heartily, out of the great warmth in big own breast. Theodora was heaping shavings on the ashes. Gaunt took them from her.

"Let me do it," he muttered. "I'd like to make your whole life warm, Dode,—your life, and—any one's you love."

Dode's face flushed with a happy smile. Even David never would think of her as alone again. Poor David! She never before had thought how guileless he was,—how pitiful and solitary his life.

"Come home with us," she said, eagerly, holding out her hand.

He drew back, wiping the sweat from his face.

"You cannot see what is on my hand. I can't touch you, Dode. Never again. Let me alone."

"She is right, Gaunt," said Palmer. "You stay here at the risk of your life. Come to the house. Theodora can hide us; and if they discover us, we can protect her together."

Gaunt smiled faintly.

"I must make my way to Springfield to-morrow. My work is there,—my new work, Palmer."

Palmer looked troubled.

"I wish you had not taken it up. This war may be needed to conquer a way for the day of peace and good-will among men; but you, who profess to be a seer and actor in that day, have only one work: to make it real to us now on earth, as your Master did, in the old time."

Gaunt did not speak,—fumbled among the chips at the fire. He raised himself at last.

"I'm trying to do what's right," he said, in a subdued voice. "I haven't had a pleasant life,—but it will come right at last, maybe."

"It will come right, David!" said the girl.

His face lighted: her cheery voice sounded like a welcome ringing through his future years. It was a good omen, coming from her whom he had wronged.

"Are you going now, Gaunt?" asked Palmer, seeing him button his thin coat. "Take my blanket,—nay, you shall. As soon as I am strong enough, I'll find you at Springfield."

He wished he could hearten the poor unnerved soul, somehow.

Gaunt stopped outside, looking at them,—some uncertain thought coming and going in his face.

"I 'll speak it out, whatever you may think. Dode, I've done you a deadly hurt. Don't ask me what it is,—God knows. I'd like, before I go, to show you I love you in a pure, honorable way, you and your husband"–

The words choked in his throat; he stopped abruptly.

"Whatever you do, it will be honorable, David," said Palmer, gently.

"I think—God might take it as expiation,"—holding his hand to his head.

He did not speak again for a little while, then he said,–

"I will never see these old Virginian hills again. I am going West; they will let me nurse in one of the hospitals;—that will be better than this that is on my hand."

Whatever intolerable pain lay in these words, he smothered it down, kept his voice steady.

"Do you understand, Douglas Palmer? I will never see you again. Nor Dode. You love this woman; so did I,—as well as you. Let me make her your wife before I go,—here, under this sky, with God looking down on us. Will you? I shall be happier to know that I have done it."

He waited while Douglas spoke eagerly to the girl, and then said,–

"Theodora, for God's sake don't refuse! I have hurt you,—the marks of it you and I will carry to the grave. Let me think you forgive me before I go. Grant me this one request."

Did she guess the hurt he had done her? Through all her fright and blushes, the woman in her spoke out nobly.

"I do not wish to know how you have wronged me. Whatever it be, it was innocently done. God will forgive you, and I do. There shall be peace between us, David."

But she did not offer to touch his hand again: stood there, white and trembling.

"It shall be as you say," said Palmer.

So they were married, Douglas and Dode, in the wide winter night. A few short words, that struck the very depths of their being, to make them one: simple words, wrung out of the man's thin lips with what suffering only he knew.

"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Thus he shut himself out from her forever. But the prayer for a blessing on them came from as pure a heart as any child's that lives. He bade them good-bye, cheerfully, when he had finished, and turned away, but came back presently, and said good-night again, looking in their faces steadily, then took his solitary way across the hills. They never saw him again.

Bone, who had secured two horses by love or money or—confiscation, had stood mutely in the background, gulping down his opinion of this extraordinary scene. He did not offer it now, only suggested it was "high time to be movin'," and when he was left alone, trudging through the snow, contented himself with smoothing his felt hat, and a breathless, "Ef dis nigger on'y knew what Mist' Perrine would say!"

A June day. These old Virginia hills have sucked in the winter's ice and snow, and throbbed it out again for the blue heaven to see in a whole summer's wealth of trees quivering with the luxury of being, in wreathed mosses, and bedded fern: the very blood that fell on them speaks in fair, grateful flowers to Him who doeth all things well. Some healthy hearts, like the hills, you know, accept pain, and utter it again in fresher-blooded peace and life and love. The evening sunshine lingers on Dode's little house to-day; the brown walls have the same cheery whim in life as the soul of their mistress, and catch the last ray of light,—will not let it go. Bone, smoking his pipe at the garden-gate, looks at the house with drowsy complacency. He calls it all "Mist' Dode's snuggery," now: he does not know that the rich, full-toned vigor of her happiness is the germ of all this life and beauty. But he does know that the sun never seemed so warm, the air so pure, as this summer,—that about the quiet farm and homestead there is a genial atmosphere of peace: the wounded soldiers who come there often to be cured grow strong and calm in it; the war seems far-off to them; they have come somehow a step nearer the inner heaven. Bone rejoices in showing off the wonders of the place to them, in matching Coly's shiny sides against the "Government beastesses," in talking of the giant red beets, or crumpled green cauliflower, breaking the rich garden-mould. "Yer've no sich cherries nor taters nor raspberries as dem in de Norf, I'll bet!" Even the crimson trumpet-flower on the wall is "a Virginny creeper, Sah!" But Bone learns something from them in exchange. He does not boast so often now of being "ole Mars' Joe's man,"—sits and thinks profoundly, till he goes to sleep. "Not of leavin' yer, Mist' Dode, I know what free darkies is, up dar; but dar's somefin' in a fellah's 'longin' ter hisself, af'er all!" Dode only smiles at his deep cogitations, as he weeds the garden-beds, or fodders the stock. She is a half-Abolitionist herself, and then she knows her State will soon be free.

So Dode, with deeper-lit eyes, and fresher rose in her cheek, stands in the door this summer evening waiting for her husband. She cannot see him often; he has yet the work to do which he calls just and holy. But he is coming now. It is very quiet; she can hear her own heart beat slow and full; the warm air holds moveless the delicate scent of the clover; the bees hum her a drowsy good-night, as they pass; the locusts in the lindens have just begun to sing themselves to sleep; but the glowless crimson in the West holds her thought the longest. She loves, understands color: it speaks to her of the Day waiting just behind this. Her eyes fill with tears, she knows not why: her life seems rounded, complete, wrapt in a great peace; the grave at Manassas, and that planted with moss on the hill yonder, are in it; they only make her joy in living more tender and holy.

He has come now; stops to look at his wife's face, as though its fairness and meaning were new to him always. There is no look in her eyes he loves so well to see as that which tells her Master is near her. Sometimes she thinks he too–But she knows that "according to her faith it shall be unto her." They are alone to-night; even Bone is asleep. But in the midst of a crowd, they who love each other are alone together: as the first man and woman stood face to face in the great silent world, with God looking down, and only their love between them.

The same June evening lights the windows of a Western hospital. There is not a fresh meadow-scented breath it gives that does not bring to some sick brain a thought of home, in a New-England village, or a Georgia rice-field. The windows are open; the pure light creeping into poisoned rooms carries with it a Sabbath peace, they think. One man stops in his hurried work, and looking out, grows cool in its tranquil calm. So the sun used to set in old Virginia, he thinks. A tall, slab-sided man, in the dress of a hospital-nurse: a worn face, but quick, sensitive; the patients like it better than any other: it looks as if the man had buried great pain in his life, and come now into its Indian-summer days. The eyes are childish, eager, ready to laugh as cry,—the voice warm, chordant,—the touch of the hand unutterably tender.

A busy life, not one moment idle; but the man grows strong in it,—a healthy servant, doing a healthy work. The patients are glad when he comes to their ward in turn. How the windows open, and the fresh air comes in! how the lazy nurses find a masterful will over them! how full of innermost life he is! how real his God seems to him!

He looks from the window now, his thought having time to close upon himself. He holds up his busy, solitary life to God, with a happy smile. He goes back to that bitter past, shrinking; but he knows its meaning now. As the warm evening wanes into coolness and gray, the one unspoken pain of his life comes back, and whitens his cheerful face. There is blood on his hands. He sees the old man's gray hairs blown again by the wind, sees him stagger and fall. Gaunt covers his bony face with his hands, but he cannot shut it out. Yet he is learning to look back on even that with healthy, hopeful eyes. He reads over again each day the misspelled words in the Bible,—thinking that the old man's haggard face looks down on him with the old kindly, forgiving smile. What if his blood be on his hands? He looks up now through the gathering night, into the land where spirits wait for us, as one who meets a friend's face, saying,—

"Let it be true what you have writ,—'The Lord be between me and thee,' forever!"

EUPHORION

"I will not longerEarth-bound linger:Loosen your hold onHand and on ringlet.Girdle and garment;Leave them: they're mine!""Bethink thee, bethink theeTo whom thou belongest!Say, wouldst thou wound us,Rudely destroyingThreefold the beauty,—Mine, his, and thine?"FAUST,—SECOND PART.Nay, fold your arms, beloved Friends,Above the hearts that vainly beat!Or catch the rainbow where it bends,And find your darling at its feet;Or fix the fountain's varying shape,The sunset-cloud's elusive dye,The speech of winds that round the capeMake music to the sea and sky:So may you summon from the airThe loveliness that vanished hence,And Twilight give his beauteous hair,And Morning give his countenance,And Life about his being claspHer rosy girdle once again:—But no! let go your stubborn graspOn some wild hope, and take your pain!For, through the crystal of your tears,His love and beauty fairer shine;The shadows of advancing yearsDraw back, and leave him all divine.And Death, that took him, cannot claimThe smallest vesture of his birth,—The little life, a dancing flameThat hovered o'er the hills of earth,—The finer soul, that unto oursA subtle perfume seemed to be,Like incense blown from April flowersBeside the scarred and stormy tree,—The wondering eyes, that ever sawSome fleeting mystery in the air,And felt the stars of evening drawHis heart to silence, childhood's prayer!Our suns were all too fierce for him;Our rude winds pierced him through and through;But Heaven has valleys cool and dim,And boscage sweet with starry dew.There knowledge breathes in balmy air,Not wrung, as here, with panting breast:The wisdom born of toil you share;But he, the wisdom born of rest.For every picture here that slept,A living canvas is unrolled;The silent harp he might have sweptLeans to his touch its strings of gold.Believe, dear Friends, they murmur stillSome sweet accord to those you play,That happier winds of Eden thrillWith echoes of the earthly lay;That he, for every triumph won,Whereto your poet-souls aspire,Sees opening, in that perfect sun,Another blossom's bud of fire!Each song, of Love and Sorrow born,Another flower to crown your boy,—Each shadow here his ray of morn,Till Grief shall clasp the hand of Joy!

HOUSE-BUILDING

Because our architecture is bad, and because the architecture of our forefathers in the Middle Ages was good, Mr. Ruskin and others seem to think there is no salvation for us until we build in the same spirit as they did. But that we should do so no more follows than that we should envy those geological ages when the club-mosses were of the size of forest-trees, and the frogs as big as oxen. There are many advantages to be had in the forests of the Amazon and the interior of Borneo,—inexhaustible fertility, endless water-power,—but no one thinks of going there to live.

No age is without its attractions. There would be much to envy in the Greek or the Roman life, if we could have them clear of drawbacks. Many persons would be glad always to find Emerson in State Street, or sauntering in the Mall, ready to talk with all comers,—or to hear the latest words of Bancroft or Lowell from their own lips at the cattle-show or the militia-muster. The Roman villas had some excellent features,—the peristyle of statues, the cryptoporticus with its midnight coolness and shade of a July noon, the mosaic floor, and the glimmering frescoes of the ceiling. But we are content to get our poets and historians in their books, and to take the pine-grove for our noonday walk, or to wait till night has transformed the street into a cryptoporticus nobler than Titus's. It is as history that these things charm us; but the charm vanishes, when, even in fancy, we bring them into contact with our actual lives. So it is with the medieval architecture. It is true, in studying these wonderful fossils, a regret for our present poverty, and a desire to appropriate something from the ancient riches, will at times come over us. But this feeling, if it be more than slight and transient, if it seriously influence our conduct, is somewhat factitious or somewhat morbid. Let us be a little disinterested in our admiration, and not, like children, cry for all we see. We have our share: let us leave the dead theirs.

The fallacy lies in the supposition, that, besides all their advantages, they had all ours too. It is with our mental as with our bodily vision,—we see only what is remote; and the image to the mind depends, not only upon seeing, but upon not seeing. In the distant star, all foulness and gloom are lost, and only the pure splendor reaches us. Inspired by Mr. Ruskin's eloquence, the neophyte sets forth with contrition to put his precepts into practice. But the counterstatement which he had overlooked does not, therefore, cease to exist. At the outset, he finds unexpected sacrifices are demanded. And, as money is the common measure of the forces disposable, the hindrances take the form of increase of cost. Before the first step can be taken towards doing anything as Mr. Ruskin would have it done, he discovers that at least it will cost enormously more to do it in that way. The lamps of truth and sacrifice demand such expensive nourishment, that he is forced to ask himself whether they are of themselves really sufficient to live by.

It is not that we are poorer or more penurious than our ancestors, but that we have more wants than they, and that the new wants overshadow the old. What is spent in one direction must be spared in another. The matter-of-course necessaries of our life were luxuries or were unknown to them. First of all, the luxury of freedom,—political, social, and domestic,—with the habits it creates, is the source of great and ever-increasing expense. We are still much behindhand in this matter, and shall by-and-by spend more largely upon it. But, compared with our ancestors, individual culture, to which freedom is the means, absorbs a large share of our expenditure. The noble architecture of the thirteenth century was the work of corporations, of a society that knew only corporations, and where individual culture was a crime. Dante had made the discovery that it is the man that creates his own position, not the accident of birth. But his life shows how this belief isolated him. Nor was the coincidence between the artistic spirit of the age and its limitations accidental. Just in proportion as the spirit of individualism penetrated society, and began to show itself as the Renaissance, architecture declined. The Egyptian pyramids are marvels to us, because we are accustomed to look upon the laborer as a man. But once allow that he is only so much brute force,—cheap, readily available, and to be had in endless supply, but as a moral entity less to be respected than a cat or a heron, and the marvel ceases. Should not the building be great to which man himself is sacrificed? Later, the builders are no longer slaves; but man is still subordinate to his own work, adores the work of his hands. This stands for him, undertakes to represent him, though, from its partial nature, it can only typify certain aspects or functions of him. A Gothic cathedral is an attempt at a universal expression of humanity, a stone image of society, in which each particle, insignificant by itself, has its meaning in the connection. It was the fresh interest in the attempt that gave birth to that wonderful architecture. This is the interest it still has, but now only historical, since the discovery was made that the particle is greater than the mass,—that it is for the sake of the individual that society and its institutions exist. Ever since, a process of disintegration has been going on, resulting in a progressive reversal of the previous relation. Not the private virtues of the structure, but its uses, are now uppermost, and ever more and more developed. Even in our own short annals something of this process may be traced. Old gentlemen complain of the cost of our houses. The houses of their boyhood, they say, were handsomer and better built, yet cost less. There is some truth in this, for the race of architect-builders hardly reaches into this century. But if the comparison be pushed into details, we soon come to the conviction that the owners of these houses were persons whose habits were, in many respects, uncouth and barbarous. It is easy to provide in the lump; but with decency, privacy, independence,—in short, with a high degree of respect on the part of the members of the household for each other's individuality,—expense begins. Letarouilly says it is difficult to discover in the Roman palaces of the Renaissance any reference to special uses of the different apartments. It was to the outside, the vestibule, courtyard, and staircase, that care and study were given: the inside was intended only as a measure of the riches and importance of the owner, not as his habitation. The part really inhabited by him was the mezzanino,—a low, intermediate story, where he and his family were kennelled out of the way. Has any admiring traveller ever asked himself how he could establish himself, with wife and children, in the Foscari or the Vendramin palace? To live in them, it would be necessary to build a house inside.

Nor is there any ground for saying that the fault is in the builders,—that the old builders met the demands of their time, and would equally satisfy the demands of our time, without sacrifice of their art. The first demand in the days of good architecture was, that the building should have an independent artistic value beyond its use. This is what architecture requires; for architecture is building, pure,—building for its own sake, not as means. What Mr. Garbett says is, no doubt, quite true,—that nothing was ever made, for taste's sake, less efficient than it might have been. But many things were made more efficient than they might have been; or, rather, this is always the character of good architecture. It is in this surplus of perfection, above bare necessity, that its claim to rank among the fine arts consists. This character the builders of the good times, accordingly, never left out of sight; so that, if their means were limited, they lavished all upon one point,—made that overflow with riches, and left the rest plain and bare; never did they spread their pittance thin to cover the whole, as we do. It is for this reason that so few of the great cathedrals were finished, and that in buildings of all kinds we so often find the decoration in patches, sharply marked off from the rest of the structure. This noble profuseness is not, indeed, necessarily decoration; the essence of it is an independent value and interest in the building, aside from the temporary and accidental employment. The spires and the flying-buttresses of the Northern cathedrals cannot be defended on the ground of thrifty construction. The Italian churches accomplished that as well without either. How remote the reference to use in the mighty portals of Rheims, or the soaring vaultings of Amiens and Beauvais! Does anybody suppose that Michel Angelo, when he undertook to raise the dome of the Pantheon into the air, was thinking of the most economical way of roofing a given space? These fine works have their whole value as expression; it is with their visible contempt of thrift that our admiration begins. They pared away the stone to the minimum that safety demanded, and beyond it,—yet not from thrift, but to make the design more preëminent and necessary, and to owe as little as possible to the inert strength of the material.

But though we admire the result, we have grown out of sympathy with the cause, the state of mind that produced it, and so the root wherefrom the like should be produced is cut off. There is no reason to suppose that the old builders were men of a different kind from ours, more earnest, more poetical. The stories about the science of the medieval masons are rubbish. All men are in earnest about something; our men are as good as they, and would have built as well, had they been born at the right time for it. But now they are thinking of other things. The Dilettanti Society sent Mr. Penrose to Athens to study in the ancient remains there the optical corrections which it was alleged the Greeks made in the horizontal lines of their buildings. Mr. Penrose made careful measurements, establishing the fact, and a folio volume of plates was published to illustrate the discovery, and evince the unequalled nicety of the Greek eye. But the main point, namely, that a horizontal line above the level of the eye, in order to appear horizontal, must bend slightly upwards, was pointed out to me years ago by a common plasterer.