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

Oh, no,—Laura did not care; only she was sorry she had been so stupid.

She was very much surprised, when, in the evening, towards the end of the performance at the theatre, the musician came and joined her party, and talked most agreeably with them. Even her cousin George did not resent his intrusion, and on the way home imparted to Laura that he had no doubt the musician's talk was pleasanter than his music.

Laura did not agree with him. She met with the musician frequently now, and his talk only made her more and more desirous to hear his music. He came frequently to her aunt's room; he joined her and her aunt at the Academy of Fine Arts many times. Here he talked to her most charmingly of pictures, as a musician likes to talk about pictures, and as a painter discusses music,—as though he had the whole art at his fingers' ends. It was the opening of a new life to Laura. If he could tell her so much of painting and sculpture, what would she not learn, if he would only speak of music? But he never did, and he never offered to play to them. She was very glad her aunt never suggested it. The piano in the drawingroom must be quite too poor for him to touch. But he never offered her another concert-ticket. She did not wonder that he never did, she had been so ungracious at first. She was quite ashamed that he detected her once in going to the Horse-Opera, he must think her taste so low. She wanted to tell him it was her cousin George's plan; but then she did enjoy it.

Arnold found himself closely studying both Caroline and Laura now. "Carl would be pleased at my microscopic examinations," he thought.

Frequently as he visited Laura, as frequently he saw Caroline. He was constantly invited to her house,—to meet her at other places. Yet the nearer she came to him, the farther he seemed from her. Can we more easily read a form that flees from us than one that approaches us? He talked with her constantly of music. She asked him his interpretation of this or that sonata. She betrayed to him the impression he had made with this or that fantasie. It was astonishing how closely she appreciated the vague changes of tones and words of music.

But with Laura he never ventured to speak of music. Whenever he played now, he played as if for her; and yet he never ventured to ask her to listen.

"It seems to me sometimes," said Caroline to him once, "as though you were playing to some one person. Your music is growing to have a beseeching tone; there is something personal in it."

"It must always be so," replied Arnold, moodily; "can my music answer its own questions?"

The spring days were opening into summer, the vines were coming into full leaf, the magnolias were in blossom, the windows to the conservatories at the street-corners were thrown open, and let out to sight some of the gorgeous display of bright azaleas and gay geraniums.

Arnold sat with Caroline at an Opera Matinée. A seat had been left for him near her. In an interval, she began to speak to him again of her weariness of life; the next week was going on precisely as the last had gone, in the same round of engagements.

"You will envy me my life," said Arnold. "I am going out West. I am going to build my own house."

"You are joking; you would not think of it seriously," said Caroline.

"I planned it long ago," answered Arnold; "it was to be the next act after New York,—the final act, perhaps. Scene I: The Log Cabin."

"How can you think of it?" exclaimed Caroline. "Give up everything? your reputation, fortune, everything?"

"New York, in short," added Arnold.

"Very well, then,—New York, in short; that is the world," said Caroline. "And your music, who is to listen to it?"

"My music?" asked Arnold; "that is of a subjective quality. A composer, even, need not hear his own music."

"I don't understand you," said Caroline; "and I dare say you are insane."

"You do not understand me?" asked Arnold, "yet you could read to me all that fantasie I played to you last night. It was my own composition, and I had not comprehended it in the least."

"Now you are, satirical," said Caroline.

"Because you are inconsistent," pursued Arnold; "you wonder I do not stay here, because my fortune can buy me a handsome house, horses, style and all its elegancies; yet you yourself have found no happiness in them."

"But I never should find happiness out of them," answered Caroline. "It is a pretty amusement for us who have the gold to buy our pleasures with, to abuse it and speak ill of it. But those who have not it,—you do not hear them depreciate it so. I believe they would sell out their home-evenings, those simple enjoyments books speak of and describe so well,—they would sell them as gladly as the author sells his descriptions of them, for our equipages, our grand houses, our toilet."

Arnold looked at his neighbor. Her hands, in their exquisitely fitting lilac gloves, lay carelessly across each other above the folds of the dress with which they harmonized perfectly. A little sweetbrier rose fell out from the white lace about her face, against the soft brown of her hair. Arnold pictured Laura gathering just such a rose from the porch she had described by the door of her country-home.

"Would you not have enjoyed gathering yourself that delicate rose that looks coquettish out of its simplicity?" he asked.

"Thank you, no," Caroline interrupted. "I selected it from Madame's Paris bonnets, because it suited my complexion. If I had picked the rose in the sun, don't you see my complexion would no longer have suited it?"

"I see you would enjoy life merely as a looker-on," said Arnold. "I would prefer to be an actor in it. When I have built my own house, and have digged my own potatoes, I shall know the meaning of house and potatoes. My wife, meanwhile, will be picking the roses for her hair."

"She will be learning the meaning of potatoes in cooking them," replied Caroline. "I would, indeed, rather be above life than in it. I have just enjoyed hearing Lucia sing her last song, and seeing Edgardo kill himself. I should not care to commit either folly myself. I pity people that have no money; I think they would as gladly hurry out of their restraints as Brignoli hurries into his everyday suit, after killing himself nightly as love-sick tenor."

"I would rather kill myself than think so," said Arnold.

This talk, which had been interrupted by the course of the opera, was finished as they left their seats. At the door, Mr. Gresham offered to help Caroline to her carriage. Arnold walked away.

"I would kill myself, if I could fancy that Laura thought so," he said, as he hurried home.

There was a cart at the door of the house, men carrying furniture on the stairs. The doors of Mrs. Ashton's rooms were wide-open; packing-paper and straw were scattered about.

"What is the matter?" he asked of his landlady.

"A gentleman has taken Mrs. Ashton's rooms. This is his grand piano."

"Mrs. Ashton! where is she?" asked Arnold.

"She left this morning. I should have been glad of further notice, but fortunately"—

"Where have they gone?" interrupted Arnold.

"Home. I don't know where. I can't keep the run."

"It is in New England. Is there a directory of New England?"

"A directory of New England! The names of its towns would make a large book!"

Arnold went to his room. If he could only recall the name of the town near which Laura lived! But American names had no significance. In Germany each town had a history. The small places were famous because they were near larger ones. And even in the smallest some drop of blood had been shed that had given it a name, or had made its name noted.

She had gone; and why had she gone without telling him?

If he could only have heard Mrs. Ashton's talk the evening before with her husband, he need not have asked the question.

"Do you know, dear, I think we had better leave New York directly,—tomorrow?"

Mr. Ashton looked inquiries.

"I don't like this intimacy with a foreigner. He really has been very devoted to Laura."

"And, pray, what is the harm?" asked Mr. Ashton.

"How can you ask? A foreigner, and we know nothing about him," answered Mrs. Ashton.

"But that he is the richest man in New York, quiet, inexpensive in his ways."

"If we were sure of all that! But I don't think her father would like it. I had a dream last night of Red Riding-Hood and the Wolf, and I haven't thought all day of anybody but Laura. We can get off early to-morrow. I have sent Laura to pack her things now."

"I'm afraid it is too late for her, poor girl!" said Mr. Ashton.

"She would be miserable, and her father would blame me, and I don't like it," said Mrs. Ashton. "And I am tired of New York."

"There's your dentist," suggested Mr. Ashton.

"I can come again," answered his wife.

Arnold's determination was made. He would visit every town in New England; he would cross every square mile of her territory. Of course he would find Laura. Since he should not stop till he found her, of course he would find her before he stopped.

He began his quest. He gave concerts in all the larger places; he looked anxiously through the large audiences that attended them,—hopelessly,—for how could he expect to find Laura among them? Often he left the railroads, to walk through the villages. It was the summer time, and he enjoyed the zest of climbing hills and wandering through quiet valleys.

He met with pleasant greetings in farm-houses, so far from the world that a stranger was greeted as a friend, where hospitality had not been so long worn upon but that it could offer a fresh cordiality to an unknown face. He wished he were a painter, that he might paint the pretty domestic scenes he saw: the cattle coming home at evening,—the children crowding round the school-mistress, as they walked away with her from the school-door,—the groups of girls sitting at sunset on the door-steps under the elms,—the broad meadows,—the rushing mountain-streams. But again, after the fresh delight of one of these country-walks, he would reproach himself that he had left the more beaten ways and the crowded cars, where he might have met Laura.

In passing in one of these from one of the larger towns to another, he met Caroline, on her bridal tour as Mrs. Gresham.

"You are not gone to Kansas yet?" she asked. "Then you will be able to come and visit us in Newport this summer. I assure you, you will find cottage-life there far more romantic than log-cabin life."

Of course he found success at last. It was just as summer was beginning to wane, but when in September she was putting on some of her last glories and her most fervid heats. He had reached the summit of a hill, then slowly walked down its slope, as he admired the landscape that revealed itself to him. He saw, far away among the hills in the horizon, the town towards which he was bound. The sunset was gathering brilliant colors over the sky; hills and meadows were bathed in a soft light. He stopped in front of a house that was separated from the road by a soft green of clover. By the gate there was a seat, on which he sat down to rest. It was all that was left of a great elm that some Vandal of the last generation had cut away. Nature had meanwhile been doing her best to make amends for the great damage. Soft mosses nestled over the broad, mutilated stump, the rains of years had washed out the freshness of its scar, vines wound themselves around, dandelions stretched their broad yellow shields above, and falling leaves rested there to form a carpet over it.

As Arnold, tired with his day's walk, was resting himself in the repose of the hour, the old master of the house came to talk with him. They spoke of the distance to the town, of the hilly road that led to it, of the meadows in the valley, and their rich crops. At last the old man asked Arnold into his house, and offered him the old-fashioned hospitality of a mug of cider, apologizing as he did so, telling how the times had changed, and what had become of all the cider-mills in the neighborhood. He showed the large stem of the sweetbrier under which they passed as they went into the house, such as Arnold had seen hanging over many a New-England porch, large enough for many initials to be carved upon it. They sat down in the little front-room, and talked on as the mother brought the promised mug of eider.

"Are you fond of music here?" asked Arnold, as he pointed to the old many-legged piano that stood at one side of the room.

"My girls play a little," answered the old man; "they have gone up to town this afternoon to get some tickets to that famous man's concert. They play a little, but they complain that the old piano is out of tune."

"That I could help," said Arnold, as he took his tuning-key out of his pocket.

"Oh, you are one of those tuners," said the old man, relieved; "my girls have been looking out for one."

Arnold seated himself at the piano. The old people went in and out of the room, but presently came back when he began to play. They sat in silent listening. "When Arnold came to a pause, the old man said,—

"That takes me back to the old meeting-house. Do you remember, wife, when I led in Dedham?"

"I," said the mother, "was thinking of that Ordination-ball, and of 'Money Musk' and 'Hull's Victory.'"

"That is strange enough," said the old man, "that it should sound like psalm-tunes and country-dances."

"It takes us back to our youth; that is it," she answered.

And Arnold went on. Soft home-strains came from the piano, and the two old people sank into their chairs in happy musing. The twilight was growing dimmer, the strains grew more soft and subdued, dying through gentle shades into silence. There had been a little rustling sound in the doorway. Arnold turned, when he had done, and saw a white figure standing there, in listening attitude, the head half bent, the hands clasped over a straw hat whose ribbons touched the ground. Behind her was the trellis of the porch, with its sweet-brier hanging over it. It was Laura, in the very frame in which his imagination had pictured her.

"Have the girls got home?" asked the old man, rousing himself, and going towards the door.—"Come in, girls. I half think we have got your great musician here. At any rate, he can work some magic, and has pulled out of the old piano all the music ever your mother and I have listened to all our life long.—My girls could not have hired me," he continued to Arnold, "to go to one of your new-fangled concerts; but whether it is because the little piano is so old, or because you know all that old music, you have brought it all back as though the world were beginning again.—We must not let him go from here to-night," he said to his wife and children. And when he found that Laura had met the musician in New York, his urgencies upon Arnold to stay were peremptory and unanswerable.

As Laura's younger sister, Clara, closed her eyes that night, she said,—

"Mamma and papa think his music sounded of home and old times. How did it sound to you, Laura?"

Laura put her hands over her closed eyes in the dark, and said, dreamily,—"It sounded to me like love-songs, sung by such a tender voice, out in the woods, somewhere, where there were pine-trees and a brook."

"It seemed to me like butterflies," said Clara. She did not explain what she meant.

The next morning, as it had been arranged in sisterly council, Laura was to entertain the stranger while Clara made the preparations for breakfast. Laura found him in the porch, already rejoicing in the morning view. But, after the first greeting, she found talking with him difficult. They fell into a silence; and to escape from it Laura finally ran into the kitchen, blue muslin and all. She pushed Clara away from the fireplace.

"You must let me help," she said, and moved pots, pans, and kettles.

"Another stick of wood would make this water boil," she went on.

"Where shall I find it?" said a voice behind her; and Arnold directly answered his own question with his ready help.

There followed great bustling, laughter, help, and interruption to work. When Mrs. Ashton came down, she found the breakfast-table in its wonted place in the broad kitchen, instead of being laid in the back-parlor, as was the custom when there were guests in the house. It was a very happy breakfast; the door opened wide upon the green behind the house, and the September morning air brought in an appetite for the generously laden table.

After breakfast, Arnold asked the way to the knoll behind the house, covered with pines. Laura went to show him, though it was but a little walk. In the woods, by the pine-trees, near the sound of the brook, Arnold asked Laura, "What had his music said to her?" Whether she answered him in the words she had given her sister the night before I will not say; but late to dinner, out from the woods, two happy lovers walked home in the bright September noon.

The log-cabin was built. If in its walls there were any broad chinks through which a wind might make its way, there were other draughts to send it back again,—strains of music, that helped to kindle the household hearth,—such strains as made sacred the seed that was laid in the earth, that refined coarse labor, that softened the tone of the new colony rising up around, so that life, even the rudest, was made noble, and the work was not merely for the body, but for the spirit, and a new land was planted under these strains of the musician.

ENGLISH NAVAL POWER AND ENGLISH COLONIES

What are the considerations which properly enter into any just estimate of a people's naval power?

In the first place, this certainly is a vital question: Are the people themselves in any true sense naval in their tastes, habits, and training? Do they love the sea? Is it a home to them? Have they that fertility of resources and expedients which the emergencies of sea-life make so essential, and which can come only from a long and fearless familiarity with old Ocean in all his aspects of beauty and all his aspects of terror? Or are they essentially landsmen,—landsmen just as much on the deck of a frigate as when marshalled on a battle-field? This is a test question. For if a nation has not sailors, men who smack of the salt sea, then vain are proud fleets and strong armaments.

I am satisfied that the ordinary explanation of that naval superiority which England has generally maintained over France is the true explanation. Certainly never were there stouter ships than those which France sent forth to fight her battles at the Nile and Trafalgar. Never braver men trod the deck than there laid down their lives rather than abase their country's flag. Yet they were beaten. The very nation which, on land, fighting against banded Europe, kept the balance for more than a generation at equipoise, on the water was beaten by the ships of one little isle of the sea. In the statement itself you have the explanation. The ships were from an isle of the sea. The men who manned them were born within sight of the ocean. In their childhood they sported with its waves. At twelve they were cabin-boys. At twenty, thorough seamen. Against the skill born of such an experience, of what avail was mere courage, however fiery?

A similar train of remarks may with truth be made about our Northern and Southern States. No doubt, the Rebel Government may send to England and purchase swift steamers like the Alabama, and man them with the reckless outcasts of every nationality, and send them forth to prey like pirates upon defenceless commerce. No doubt, in their hate, the Rebels may build sea-monsters like the Merrimack, or the Arkansas, or those cotton-mailed steamers at Galveston, and make all stand aghast at some temporary disaster. These things are unpleasant, but they are unavoidable. Desperation has its own peculiar resources. But these things do not alter the law. The North is thoroughly maritime, and in the end must possess a solid and permanent supremacy on the sea. The men of Cape Cod, the fishermen of Cape Ann, and the hardy sailors who swarm from the hundred islands and bays of Maine, are not to be driven from their own element by the proud planters of the South. Naval habits and naval strength go hand in hand. And in estimating the resources of any power, the first question is, Has she sailors,—not men of the land, but men of the sea?

There is a second question, equally important. What is a nation's capacity for naval production? What ship-yards has it? What docks? What machine-shops? What stores of timber, iron, and hemp? And what skilled workmen to make these resources available? A nation is not strong simply because it has a hundred ships complete and armed floating on its waters. "Iron and steel will bend and break," runs the old nursery-tale. And practice shows that iron and steel wrought into ships have no better fortune, and that the stoutest barks will strand and founder, or else decay, and, amid the sharp exigencies of war, with wonderful rapidity. Not what a nation has, then, but how soon it can fill up these gaps of war, how great is its capacity to produce and reproduce, tells the story of its naval power.

When Louis Napoleon completed that triumph of skill and labor, the port of Cherbourg, England trembled more than if he had launched fifty frigates. And well she might. For what is Cherbourg? Nothing less than an immense permanent addition to the French power of naval production. Here, protected from the sea by a breakwater miles in extent, and which might have been the work of the Titans, and girdled by almost impregnable fortifications, is more than a safe harbor for all the fleets of the world. For here are docks for the repairs I dare not say of how many vessels, and ship-houses for the construction of one knows not how many more, and work-shops and arsenals and stores of timber and iron well-nigh inexhaustible. This is to have more than a hundred ships. This is to create productive capacity out of which may come many hundred ships, when they are wanted. The faith men have in the maritime greatness of England rests not simply on the fact that she has afloat a few hundred frail ships, but rather on this more pregnant fact, that England, from Pentland Frith to Land's End, is one gigantic work-shop,—and that, whether she turn her attention to the clothing of the world or the building of navies, there is no outmeasuring her mechanical activity. The world has called us a weak naval power. But the world has been mistaken. We are strong almost as the strongest, if not in fleets, then in the capacity to produce fleets. Three hundred armed vessels, extemporized in eighteen months, and maintaining what, considering the extent of coast to be watched, must be called a most efficient blockade, will stand as an impressive evidence that capacity to produce is one of the best of nautical gifts.

But passing from these questions, which relate to what may be called a nation's innate character and capacity, we come to a third consideration, of perhaps even more immediate interest. One of the elements which help to make a nation's power is certainly its available strength. An important question, then, is, not only, How many ships can a nation produce? but, How many has it complete and ready for use? In an emergency, what force could it send at a moment's notice to the point of danger? If we apply this consideration to European powers, we shall appreciate better how young we are, and how little of our latent strength has been organized into actual efficiency. In 1857 England had 300 steam ships-of-war, carrying some 7,000 guns, nearly as many more sailing ships, carrying 9,000 guns, an equal number of gun-boats and smaller craft, besides a respectable navy connected with her East Indian colonies: a grand sum-total of more than 900 vessels and not less than 20,000 guns. Here, then, is a fleet, built and ready for service, which is many times stronger than that which we have been able to gather after eighteen months of constant and strenuous effort. And behind this array there is a community essentially mercantile, unsurpassed in mechanic skill and productiveness, and full of sailors of the best stamp. What tremendous elements of naval power are these! One does not wonder that the remark often made is so nearly true,—that, if there is any trouble in the farthest port on the globe, in a few hours you will see a British bull-dog quietly steaming up the harbor, to ask what it is all about, and whether England can make anything out of the transaction.