The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863

He stopped, pulling his coat across his breast in his clenched hands,—then, after a moment, went on, his arms falling powerless.

"I'm a child! It is of no use to think of it! Never!"—his hard, black eyes, that in these last few months had grown sad and questioning as a child's, looking to the north hill, as he strode along, as though he were bidding some one good-bye. And when he came to the hillock and knelt down again beside Gurney, there was no malice in them. He was faithful in every touch and draught and probe. With the wish in his heart to thrust the knife into the heart of the unconscious man lying before him, he touched him as though he had been his brother.

Gurney, opening his eyes at last, saw the yellow, haggard face, in its fringe of black beard, as rigid as if cut out of stone, very near his own. The grave, hopeless eyes subdued him.

"Take me out of this," he moaned.

"You are going—to the hospital,"—helping some men lift him into an ambulance.

"Slowly, my good fellows. I will follow you."

He did follow them. Let us give the man credit for every step of that following, the more that the evil in his blood struggled so fiercely with such a mortal pain as he went. In Fredericksburg, one of the old family-homesteads had been taken for a camp-hospital. As they laid Gurney on a heap of straw in the library, a surgeon passed through the room.

"Story," said Paul, catching his arm, "see to that man: this is your post, I believe. I have dressed his wound. I cannot do more."

Story did not know the meaning of that. He stuck his eye-glasses over his hook-nose, and stooped down, being nearsighted.

"Hardly worth while to put him under my care, or anybody's. The fellow will not live until morning."

"I don't know. I did what I could."

"Nothing more to be done.—Parr's out of lint, did you know? He's enough to provoke Job, that fellow! I warned him especially about lint and supporters.—Why, Blecker, you are worn out,"—looking at him closer. "It has been a hard fight."

"Yes, I am tired; it was a hard fight."

"I must find Parr about that lint, and"—

Paul walked to the window, breathing heavy draughts of the fresh morning air. The man would not die, he thought. Grey would never be free. No. Yet, since he was a child, before he began to grapple his way through the world, he had never known such a cheerful quiet as that which filled his eyes with tears now; for, if the fight had been hard, Paul Blecker had won the victory.

Sunday morning dawned cold and windy. Now and then, volleys of musketry, or a repulse from the Southern batteries on the heights, filled the blue morning sky with belching scarlet flame and smoke: through all, however, the long train of army-wagons passed over the pontoon-bridge, bearing the wounded. About six o'clock some men came out from the camp-hospital. Doctor Blecker stood on the outside of the door: all night he had been there, like some lean, unquiet ghost. Story, the surgeon, met the men. They carried something on a board, covered with an old patchwork quilt. Story lifted the corner of the quilt to see what lay beneath. Doctor Blecker stood in their way, but neither moved nor spoke to them.

"Take it to the trenches," said the surgeon, shortly nodding to them.—"Your Rebel friend, Blecker."

"Dead?"

"Yes."

"Story, I did what I could?"

"Of course. Past help.—When are we to be taken out of this trap, eh?"—going on.

"I did what I could."

As the Doctor's parched lips moved, he looked up. How deep the blue was! how the cold air blew his hair about, fresh and boisterous! He went down the field with a light, springing step, as he used, when a boy, long ago, to run to the hay-field. The earth was so full of health, life, beauty, he could have cried or laughed out loud. He stopped on the bridge, seeing only the bright, rushing clouds, the broad river, the sunlight,—a little way from him in the world, little Grey.

"I thank Thee," baring his head and bending it,—the words died in an awestruck whisper in his heart,—"for Thy great glory, O Lord!"

"Will you come a little farther? Let a few months slip by, and let us see what a March day is in the old Pennsylvania hills. The horrors of the war have not crept hither yet, into these hill-homesteads. Never were crops richer than those of '61 and '62, nor prices better. So the barns were full to bursting through the autumn of those years, and the fires were big enough to warm you to your very marrow in winter.

Even now, if young Corporal Simpson, or Joe Hainer, or any other of the neighbors' boys come home wounded, it only spices the gossip for the apple-butter-parings or spelling-matches. Then the men, being Democrats, are reconciled to the ruin of the country, because it has been done by the Republicans; and the women can construct secret hiding-places in the meat-cellar for the dozen silver teaspoons and tea-pot, in dread of Stuart's cavalry. Altogether, the war gives quite a zest to life up here. Then, in these low-hill valleys of the Alleghanies the sun pours its hottest, most life-breeding glow, and even the wintry wind puts all its vigor into the blast, knowing that there are no lachrymose, whey-skinned city-dyspeptics to inhale it, but full-breasted, strong-muscled women and men,—with narrow brains, maybe, but big, healthy hearts, and physique to match. Very much the same type of animal and moral organization, as well as natural, you would have found before the war began, ran through the valley of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

One farm, eight or ten miles from the village where the Gurneys lived, might be taken as a specimen of these old homesteads. It lay in a sort of meadow-cove, fenced in with low, rolling hills that were wooded with oaks on the summits,—sheep-cots, barns, well-to-do plum and peach orchards creeping up the sides,—a creek binding it in with a broad, flashing band. The water was frozen on this March evening: it had plenty of time to freeze, and stay there altogether, in fact, it moved so slowly, knowing it had got into comfortable quarters. There was just enough cold crispiness in the air to-night to make the two fat cows move faster into the stable, with smoking breath, to bring out a crow of defiance from the chickens huddling together on the roost; it spread, too, a white rime over the windows, shining red in the sinking sun. When the sun was down, the nipping northeaster grew sharper, swept about the little valley, rattled the bare-limbed trees, blew boards off the corn-crib that Doctor Blecker had built only last week, tweaked his nose and made his eyes water as he came across the field clapping his hands to make the blood move faster, and, in short, acted as if the whole of that nook in the hills belonged to it in perpetuity. But the house, square, brick, solid-seated, began to glow red and warm out of every window,—not with the pale rose-glow of your anthracite, but fitful, flashing, hearty, holding out all its hands to you like a Western farmer. That's the way our fires burn. The very smoke went out of no stove-pipe valve, but rushed from great mouths of chimneys, brown, hot, glowing, full of spicy smiles of supper below. Down in the kitchen, by a great log-fire, where irons were heating, sat Oth, feebly knitting, and overseeing a red-armed Dutch girl cooking venison-steaks and buttermilk-biscuit on the coal-stove beside him.

"Put jelly on de table, you, mind! Strangers here fur tea. Anyhow it ort to go down. Nuffin but de best ob currant Miss Grey 'ud use in her father's house. Lord save us!"—in an underbreath. "But it's fur de honor ob de family,"—in a mutter.

"Miss Grey" waited within. Not patiently: sure pleasure was too new for her. She smoothed her crimson dress, pushed back the sleeves that the white dimpled arms might show, and then bustled about the room, to tidy it for the hundredth time. A bright winter's room: its owner had a Southern taste for hot, heartsome colors, you could be sure, and would bring heat and flavor into his life, too. There were soft astral lamps, and a charred red fire, a warm, unstingy glow, wasting itself even in long streams of light through the cold windows. There were bright bits of Turnerish pictures on the gray walls, a mass of gorgeous autumn-leaves in the soft wool of the carpet, a dainty white-spread table in the middle of the room, jars of flowers everywhere, flowers that had caught most passion and delight from the sun,—scarlet and purple fuchsias, heavy-breathed heliotrope. Yet Grey bent longest over her own flower, that every childlike soul loves best,—mignonette. She chose some of its brown sprigs to fasten in her hair, the fragrance was so clean and caressing. Paul Blecker, even at the other end of the field, and in the gathering twilight, caught a glimpse of his wife's face pressed against the pane. It was altered: the contour more emphatic, the skin paler, the hazel eyes darker, lighted from farther depths. No glow of color, only in the meaning lips and the fine reddish hair.

Doctor Blecker stopped to help a stout little lady out of a buggy at the stile, then sent the boy to the stable with it: it was his own, with saddle-bags under the seat. But there was a better-paced horse in the shafts than suited a heavy country-practice. The lady looked at it with one eye shut.

"A Morgan-Cottrell, eh? I know by the jaw,"—jogging up the stubble-field beside him, her fat little satchel rattling as she walked. Doctor Blecker, a trifle graver and more assured than when we saw him last, sheltered her with his overcoat from the wind, taking it off for that purpose by the stile. You could see that this woman was one of the few for whom he had respect.

"Your wife understands horses, Doctor. And dogs. I did not expect it of Grey. No. There's more outcome in her than you give her credit for,"—turning sharply on him.

He smiled quietly, taking her satchel to carry.

"When we came to Pittsburg, I said to Pratt, 'I'll follow you to New York in a day or two, but I'm going now to see Paul Blecker's little wife. She's sound, into the marrow.' And I'll tell you, too, what I said to Pratt. 'That is a true marriage, heart and soul and ways of thinking. God fitted those two into one another.' Some matches, Doctor Blecker, put me in mind of my man Kellar, making ready the axes for winter's work, little head on big heft, misjoined always: in consequence, thing breaks apart with no provocation whatever. "When God wants work done down here, He makes His axes better,—eh?"

There was a slight pause.

"Maybe, now, you'll think I take His name in vain, using it so often. But I like to get at the gist of a matter, and I generally find God has somewhat to do with everything,—down to the pleasement, to me, of my bonnet: or the Devil,—which means the same, for he acts by leave.—Where did you get that Cottrell, Doctor? From Faris? Pha! pha! Grey showed me the look in his face this morning, innocent, naïf, as all well-blooded horses' eyes are. Like her own, eh? I says to Pratt, long ago,—twenty he was then,—'When you want a wife, find one who laughs out from her heart, and see if dogs and horses kinsfolk with her: that's your woman to marry, if they do.'"

They had stopped by the front-steps for her to finish her soliloquy. Grey tapped on the window-pane.

"Yes, yes, I see. You want to go in. But first,"—lowering her voice,—"I was at the Gurney house this evening."

"You were?" laughed the Doctor, "And what did you do there?"

"Eh? What? Something is needed to be done, and I—Yes, I know my reputation,"—her face flushing.

"You strike the nails where they are needed,—what few women do, Mrs. Sheppard," said the Doctor, trying to keep his face grave. "Strike them on the head, too."

"Umph!"

No woman likes to be classed properly,—no matter where she belongs.

"I never interfere, Doctor Blecker; I may advise. But, as I was going to say, that father of Grey's seemed to me such a tadpole of a man, rooting after tracks of lizards that crept ages ago, while the country is going to mash, and his own children next door to starvation, I thought a little plain talk would try if it was blood or water in his veins. So I went over to spend the day there on purpose to give it to him."

"Yes. Well?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I see. Then you tried Joseph?"

"No, he is in able hands. That Loo is a thorough-pacer,—after my own heart.—Talking of your family, my dear," as Grey opened the door. "Loo will do better for them than you. Pardon me, but a lot of selfish men in a family need to be treated like Pen here, when his stomach is sour. Give them a little wholesome alkali: honey won't answer."

Grey only laughed. Some day, she thought, when her father had completed his survey of the coal-formation, and Joseph had induced Congress to stop the war, people would appreciate them. So she took off Mrs. Sheppard's furs and bonnet, and smoothed the two black shiny puffs of hair, passing her husband with only a smile, as a stranger was there, but his dressing-gown and slippers waited by the fire.

"Paul may be at home before you," she said, nodding to them.

Grey had dropped easily through that indefinable change between a young girl and a married woman: her step was firmer, her smile freer, her head more quietly poised. Some other change, too, in her look, showed that her affections had grown truer and wider of range than before. Meaner women's hearts contract after marriage about their husband and children, like an India-rubber ball thrown into the fire. Hers would enter into his nature as a widening and strengthening power. Whatever deficiency there might be in her brain, she would infuse energy into his care for people about him,—into his sympathy for his patients; in a year or two you might be sure he would think less of Paul Blecker per se, and hate or love fewer men for their opinions than he did before.

The supper, a solid meal always in these houses, was brought in. Grey took her place with a blush and a little conscious smile, to which Mrs. Sheppard called Doctor Blecker's attention by a pursing of her lips, and then, tucking her napkin under her chin, prepared to do justice to venison and biscuits. She sipped her coffee with an approving nod, dear to a young housekeeper's soul.

"Good! Grey begins sound, at the foundations, in cooking, Doctor. No shams, child. Don't tolerate them in housekeeping. If not white sugar, then no cake. If not silver, then not albata. So you're coming with me to New York, my dear?"

Grey's face flushed.

"Paul says we will go."

"Sister there? Teaching, did you say?"

Doctor Blecker's moustache worked nervously. Lizzy Gurney was not of his kind; now, more than ever, he would have cut every tie between her and Grey, if he could. But his wife looked up with a smile.

"She is on the stage,—Lizzy. The opera,—singing;—in choruses only, now,—but it will be better soon."

Mrs. Sheppard let her bit of bread fall, then ate it with a gulp. Why, every drop of the Shelby blood was clean and respectable; it was not easy to have an emissary of hell, a tawdry actress, brought on the carpet before her, with even this mild flourish of trumpets.

The silence grew painful. Grey glanced around quickly, then her Welsh blood made her eyelids shake a little, and her lips shut. But she said gently,—

"My sister is not albata ware,—that you hate, Mrs. Sheppard. She is no sham. When God said to her, 'Do this thing,' she did not ask the neighbors to measure it by their rule of right and wrong."

"Well, well, little Grey,"—with a forbearing smile,—"she is your sister,—you're a clannish body. Your heart's all right, my dear,"—patting the hard nervous hand that lay on the table,—"but you never studied theology, that's clear."

"I don't know."

Mrs. Blecker's face grew hot; but that might have been the steam of the coffee-urn.

"We'll be just to Lizzy," said her husband, gravely. "She had a hurt lately. I don't think she values her life for much now. It is a hungry family, the Gurneys,"—with a quizzical smile. "My wife, here, kept the wolf from the door almost single-handed, though she don't understand theology. You are quite right about that. When I came home here two months ago, she would not be my wife; there was no one to take her place, she said. So, one day, when I was in my office alone, Lizzy came to me, looking like a dead body out of which the soul had been crushed. She had been hurt, I told you:—she came to me with an open letter in her hand. It was from the manager of one of the second-rate opera-troupes. The girl can sing, and has a curious dramatic talent, her only one.

"'It is all I am capable of doing,' she said. 'If I go, Grey can marry. The family will have a sure support.'

"Then she folded the letter into odd shapes, with an idiotic look.

"'Do you want me to answer it?' I asked.

"'Yes, I do. Tell him I'll go. Grey can be happy then, and the others will have enough to eat. I never was of any use before.'

"I knew that well enough. I sat down to write the letter.

"'You will be turned out of church for this,' I said.

"She stood by the window, her finger tracing the rain-drops on the pane, for it was a rainy night. She said,—

"'They won't understand. God knows.'

"So I wrote on a bit, and then I said,—for I felt sorry for the girl, though she was doing it for Grey,—I said,—

'"Lizzy, I'll be plain with you. There never was but one human being loved you, perhaps. When he was dying, he said, "Tell my wife to be true and pure." There is a bare possibility that you can be both as an opera-singer, but he never would believe it. If you met him in heaven, he would turn his back on you, if you should do this thing.'

"I could not see her face,—her back was towards me,—but the hand on the window-pane lay there for a long while motionless, the blood settling blue about the nails. I did not speak to her. There are some women with whom a physician, if he knows his business, will never meddle when they grow nervous; they come terribly close to God and the Devil then, I think. I tell you, Mrs. Sheppard, now and then one of your sex has the vitality and pain and affection of a thousand souls in one. I hate such women," vehemently.

"Men like you always do," quietly. "But I am not one of them."

"No, nor Grey, thank God! Whoever contrived that allegory of Eve and the apple, though, did it well. If the Devil came to Lizzy Gurney, he would offer no meaner temptation than 'Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.'"

"'Allegory'—eh? You forget your story, I think, Doctor Blecker,"—with a frown.

The Doctor stopped to help her to jelly, with a serious face, and then went on. "She turned round at last. I did not look up at her, only said,—

"'I will not write the letter.'

"'Go on,' she said.

"I wrote it, then; but when I went to give it to her, my heart failed me.

"'Lizzy,' I said, 'you shall not do this thing.'

"She looked so childish and pitiful, standing there!

"'You think you are cutting yourself off from your chance of love through all time by it,—just for Grey and the others.'

"Her eyes filled at that; she could not bear the kind word, you see.

"'Yes, I do, Doctor Blecker,' she said. 'Nobody ever loved me but Uncle Dan. Since he went away, I have gone every day to his house, coming nearer to him that way, growing purer, more like other women. There's a picture of his mother there, and his sister. They are dead now, but I think their souls looked at me out of those pictures and loved me.'

"She came up, her head hardly reaching to the top of the chair I sat on, half smiling, those strange gray eyes of hers.

"'I thought they said,—"This is Lizzy: this is the little girl Daniel loves." Every day I'd kneel down by that dead lady's chair, and pray to God to make me fit to be her son's wife. But he's dead now,' drawing suddenly back, 'and I am going to be—an opera-singer.'

"'Not unless by your own free will,' I said.

"She did not hear me, I think, pulling at the fastening about her throat.

"'Daniel would say it was the Devil's calling. Daniel was all I had. But he don't know. I know. God means it. I might have lived on here, keeping myself true to his notions of right: then, when I went yonder, he would have been kind to me, he would have loved me,'—looking out through the rain, in a dazed way.

"'The truth is, Lizzy,' I said, 'you have a power within you, and you want to give it vent; it's like a hungry devil tearing you. So you give up your love-dream, and are going to be an opera-singer. That's the common-sense of the matter.'

"I sealed the letter, and gave it to her.

"'You think that?'

"That was all she answered. But I'm sorry I said it; I don't know whether it was true or not. There,—that is the whole story. I never told it to Grey before. You can judge for yourselves."

"My dear," said Mrs. Sheppard, "let me go with you to see your sister in New York. Some more coffee, please. My cup is cold."

A clear, healthy April night: one of those bright, mountain-winded nights of early spring, when the air is full of electric vigor,—starlight, when the whole earth seems wakening slowly and grandly into a new life.

Grey, going with her husband and Mrs. Sheppard down Broadway, from their hotel, had a fancy that the world was so cheerfully, heartily at work, that the night was no longer needed. Overhead, the wind from the yet frozen hills swept in such strong currents, the great city throbbed with such infinite kinds of motion, and down in the harbor yonder the rush of couriers came and went incessantly from the busy world without. Grey was a country-girl: in this throbbing centre of human life she felt suddenly lost, atom-like,—drew her breath quickly, as she clung to Paul's arm. The world was so vast, was hurrying on so fast. She must get to work in earnest: why, one must justify her right to live, here.

Mrs. Sheppard, as she plodded solidly along, took in the whole blue air and outgoing ocean, and the city, with its white palaces and gleaming lights.

"People look happy here," she said. "Even Grey laughs more, going down the streets. Nothing talks of the war here."

Paul looked down into the brown depths of the eyes that were turned towards him.

"It is a good, cheery world, ours, after all. More laughing than crying in it,—when people find out their right place, and get into it."

Mrs. Sheppard said, "Umph?" Kentuckians don't like abstract propositions.

They stopped before a wide-open door, in a by-street. Not an opera-house; one of the haunts of the "legitimate drama," Yet the posters assured the public in every color, that La petite Élise, the beautiful débutante, etc., etc., would sing, etc., etc. Grey's hand tightened on her husband's arm.

"This is the place,"—her face burning scarlet.

A pretty little theatre: softly lighted, well and quietly filled. Quietly toned, too, the dresses of the women in the boxes,—of that neutral, subdued caste that showed they belonged to the grade above fashion. People of rank tastes did not often go there. The little Kentuckian, with her emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the world made her last year's bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant trifles, did not misbecome the place. Others might go there to fever out ennui, or with fouler fancies. Grey did not know. The play was a simple little thing; its meaning was pure as a child's song; there was a good deal of fun in it. Grey laughed with everybody else; she would ask God to bless her to-night none the worse for that. It had some touches of pathos in it, and she cried, and saw some men about her with the smug New-York-city face doing the very same,—not just as she did, but glowering at the footlights, and softly blowing their noses. Then the music came, and La petite Élise. Grey drew back where she could not see her. Blecker peered through his glass at every line and motion, as she came out from the eternal castle in the back scene. Any gnawing power or gift she had had found vent, certainly, now. Every poise and inflection said, "Here I am what I am,—fully what God made me, at last: no more, no less." God had made her an actress. Why, He knows. The Great Spirit of Love says to the toad in your gutter,—"Thou, too, art my servant, in whom, fulfilling the work I give, I am well pleased."

La petite Élise had only a narrow and peculiar scope of power, suited to vaudevilles: she could not represent her own character,—an actress's talent and heart being as widely separated, in general, as yours are. She could bring upon the stage in her body the presentment of a naïve, innocent, pathetic nature, and use the influence such nature might have on the people outside the orchestra-chairs there. It was not her own nature, we know. She dressed and looked it. A timid little thing, in her fluttering white slip, her light hair cut close to her head, in short curls. So much for the actress and her power.