Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861

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Wolfe rose at last, and turned from the church down the street. He
looked up; the night had come on foggy, damp; the golden mists had
vanished, and the sky lay dull and ash-colored. He wandered again
aimlessly down the street, idly wondering what had become of the
cloud-sea of crimson and scarlet. The trial-day of this man's life was
over, and he had lost the victory. What followed was mere drifting
circumstance,--a quicker walking over the path,--that was all. Do you
want to hear the end of it? You wish me to make a tragic story out of
it? Why, in the police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen
such tragedies: hints of ship-wrecks unlike any that ever befell on the
high seas; hints that here a power was lost to heaven,--that there a
soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow. Commonplace enough the
hints are,--jocose sometimes, done up in rhyme.

Doctor May, a month after the night I have told you of, was reading to
his wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the morning-paper: an
unusual thing,--these police-reports not being, in general, choice
reading for ladies; but it was only one item he read.

"Oh, my dear! You remember that man I told you of, that we saw at
Kirby's mill?--that was arrested for robbing Mitchell? Here he is; just
listen:--'Circuit Court. Judge Day, Hugh Wolfe, operative in Kirby &
John's Loudon Mills. Charge, grand larceny. Sentence, nineteen years
hard labor in penitentiary.'--Scoundrel! Serves him right! After all
our kindness that night! Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!"

His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of people,
and then they began to talk of something else.

Nineteen years! How easy that was to read! What a simple word for Judge
Day to utter! Nineteen years! Half a lifetime!

Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell, looking out. His ankles
were ironed. Not usual in such cases; but he had made two desperate
efforts to escape. "Well," as Haley, the jailer, said, "small blame
to him! Nineteen years' imprisonment was not a pleasant thing to look
forward to." Haley was very good-natured about it, though Wolfe had
fought him savagely.

"When he was first caught," the jailer said afterwards, in telling the
story, "before the trial, the fellow was cut down at once,--laid there
on that pallet like a dead man, with his hands over his eyes. Never saw
a man so cut down in my life. Time of the trial, too, came the queerest
dodge of any customer I ever had. Would choose no lawyer. Judge gave him
one, of course. Gibson it was. He tried to prove the fellow crazy; but
it wouldn't go. Thing was plain as daylight: money found on him. 'Twas a
hard sentence,--all the law allows; but it was for 'xample's sake. These
mill-hands are gettin' onbearable. When the sentence was read, he just
looked up, and said the money was his by rights, and that all the world
had gone wrong. That night, after the trial, a gentleman came to see him
here, name of Mitchell,--him as he stole from. Talked to him for an
hour. Thought he came for curiosity, like. After he was gone, thought
Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his cell. Found him very low;
bed all bloody. Doctor said he had been bleeding at the lungs. He was as
weak as a cat; yet, if ye'll b'lieve me, he tried to get a-past me and
get out. I just carried him like a baby, and threw him on the pallet.
Three days after, he tried it again: that time reached the wall. Lord
help you! he fought like a tiger,--giv' some terrible blows. Fightin'
for life, you see; for he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib
down yonder. Got a death-cough now. 'T took two of us to bring him down
that day; so I just put the irons on his feet. There he sits, in there.
Goin' to-morrow, with a batch more of 'em. That woman, hunchback, tried
with him,--you remember?--she's only got three years. 'Complice. But
_she's_ a woman, you know. He's been quiet ever since I put on irons:
giv' up, I suppose. Looks white, sick-lookin'. It acts different on 'em,
bein' sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish-like. Some prays
awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a breath. That
woman, now, she's desper't'. Been beggin' to see Hugh, as she calls him,
for three days. I'm a-goin' to let her in. She don't go with him. Here
she is in this next cell. I'm a-goin' now to let her in."

He let her in. Wolfe did not see her. She crept into a corner of the
cell, and stood watching him. He was scratching the iron bars of the
window with a piece of tin which he had picked up, with an idle,
uncertain, vacant stare, just as a child or idiot would do.

"Tryin' to get out, old boy?" laughed Haley. "Them irons will need a
crowbar beside your tin, before you can open 'em."

Wolfe laughed, too, in a senseless way.

"I think I'll get out," he said.

"I believe his brain's touched," said Haley, when he came out.

The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour. Still Deborah
did not speak. At last she ventured nearer, and touched his arm.

"Blood?" she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a shudder.

He looked up at her. "Why, Deb!" he said, smiling,--such a bright,
boyish smile, that it went to poor Deborah's heart directly, and she
sobbed and cried out loud.

"Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault! To think
I brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh, lad, I dud!"

The confession, even in this wretch, came with the woman's blush through
the sharp cry.

He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the bars with
the bit of tin.

Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something she saw
there made her draw suddenly back,--something which Haley had not seen,
that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it had caught since the trial,
or the curious gray shadow that rested on it. That gray shadow,--yes,
she knew what that meant. She had often seen it creeping over women's
faces for months, who died at last of slow hunger or consumption. That
meant death, distant, lingering: but this--Whatever it was the woman
saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to
make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear of him, she caught
his shoulders, and looked keenly, steadily, into his eyes.

"Hugh!" she cried, in a desperate whisper,--"oh, boy, not that! for
God's sake, not _that!_"

The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a muttered
word or two that drove her away. Yet the words were kindly enough.
Sitting there on his pallet, she cried silently a hopeless sort of
tears, but did not speak again. The man looked up furtively at her now
and then. Whatever his own trouble was, her distress vexed him with a
momentary sting.

It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down directly on
the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where they had unloaded.
He could see, too, and hear distinctly the clink of money as it changed
hands, the busy crowd of whites and blacks shoving, pushing one another,
and the chaffering and swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more
than anything else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to
him. He was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin
fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars. How
they crowded and pushed! And he,--he should never walk that pavement
again! There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at the mill, with
a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Neff was married the other week. He
whistled, hoping he would look up; but he did not. He wondered if Neff
remembered he was there,--if any of the boys thought of him up there,
and thought that he never was to go down that old cinder-road again.
Never again! He had not quite understood it before; but now he did. Not
for days or years, but never!--that was it.

How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market! and how
like a picture it was, the dark-green heaps of corn, and the crimson
beets, and golden melons! There was another with game: how the light
flickered on that pheasant's breast, with the purplish blood dripping
over the brown feathers! He could see the red shining of the drops, it
was so near. In one minute he could be down there. It was just a step.
So easy, as it seemed, so natural to go! Yet it could never be--not in
all the thousands of years to come--that he should put his foot on that
street again! He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as of some
one else. There was a dog down in the market, walking after his master
with such a stately, grave look!--only a dog, yet he could go backwards
and forwards just as he pleased: he had good luck! Why, the very vilest
cur, yelping there in the gutter, had not lived his life, had been free
to act out whatever thought God had put into his brain; while he--No, he
would not think of that! He tried to put the thought away, and to listen
to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about some meat; but it
would come back. He, what had he done to bear this?

Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now. He knew
what it was to be in the penitentiary,--how it went with men there. He
knew how in these long years he should slowly die, but not Until soul
and body had become corrupt and rotten,--how, when he came out, if he
lived to come, even the lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him,--how
his hands would be weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed
he was almost that now. He put his hand to his head, with a puzzled,
weary look. It ached, his head, with thinking. He tried to quiet
himself. It was only right, perhaps; he had done wrong. But was there
right or wrong for such as he? What was right'? And who had ever taught
him? He thrust the whole matter away. A dark, cold quiet crept through
his brain. It was all wrong; but let it be! It was nothing to him more
than the others. Let it be!

The door grated, as Haley opened it.

"Come, my woman! Must lock up for t'night. Come, stir yerself!"

She went up and took Hugh's hand.

"Good-night, Deb," he said, carelessly.

She had not hoped he would say more; but the Sired pain on her mouth
just then was bitterer than death. She took his passive hand and kissed
it.

"Hur 'll never see Deb again!" she ventured, her lips growing colder and
more bloodless.

What did she say that for? Did he not know it'! Yet he would not
impatient with poor old Deb. She had trouble of her own, as well as he.

"No, never again," he said, trying to be cheerful.

She stood just a moment, looking at him. Do you laugh at her, standing
there, with her hunchback, her rags, her bleared, withered face, and the
great despised love tugging at her heart?

"Come, you!" called Haley, impatiently.

She did not move.

"Hugh!" she whispered.

It was to be her last word. What was it?

"Hugh, boy, not THAT!"

He did not answer. She wrung her hands, trying to be silent, looking in
his face in an agony of entreaty. He smiled again, kindly.

"It is best, Deb. I cannot bear to be hurted any more."

"Hur knows," she said, humbly.

"Tell my father good-bye; and--and kiss little Janey."

She nodded, saying nothing, looked in his face again, and went out of
the door. As she went, she staggered.

"Drinkin' to-day?" broke out Haley, pushing her before him. "Where the
Devil did you get it? Here, in with ye!" and he shoved her into her
cell, next to Wolfe's, and shut the door.

Along the wall of her cell there was a crack low down by the floor,
through which she could see the light from Wolfe's. She had discovered
it days before. She hurried in now, and, kneeling down by it, listened,
hoping to hear some sound. Nothing but the rasping of the tin on the
bars. He was at his old amusement again. Something in the noise jarred
on her ear, for she shivered as she heard it. Hugh rasped away at the
bars. A dull old bit of tin, not fit to cut korl with.

He looked out of the window again. People were leaving the market now.
A tall mulatto girl, following her mistress, her basket on her head,
crossed the street just below, and looked up. She was laughing; but,
when she caught sight of the haggard face peering out through the bars,
suddenly grew grave, and hurried by. A free, firm step, a clear-cut
olive face, with a scarlet turban tied on one side, dark, shining eyes,
and on the head the basket poised, filled with fruit and flowers, under
which the scarlet turban and bright eyes looked out half-shadowed. The
picture caught his eye. It was good to see a face like that. He would
try to-morrow, and cut one like it. _To-morrow_! He threw down the tin,
trembling, and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up again,
the daylight was gone.

Deborah, crouching near by on the other side of the wall, heard no
noise. He sat on the side of the low pallet, thinking. Whatever was the
mystery which the woman had seen on his face, it came out now slowly, in
the dark there, and became fixed,--a something never seen on his face
before. The evening was darkening fast. The market had been over for an
hour; the rumbling of the carts over the pavement grew more infrequent:
he listened to each, as it passed, because he thought it was to be for
the last time. For the same reason, it was, I suppose, that he strained
his eyes to catch a glimpse of each passer-by, wondering who they were,
what kind of homes they were going to, if they had children,--listening
eagerly to every chance word in the street, as if--(God be merciful to
the man! what strange fancy was this?)--as if he never should hear human
voices again.

It was quite dark at last. The street was a lonely one. The last
passenger, he thought, was gone. No,--there was a quick step: Joe Hill,
lighting the I Joe was a good old chap; never passed a fellow without
some joke or other. He remembered once seeing the place where he lived
with his wife. "Granny Hill" the boys called her. Bedridden she was; but
so kind as Joe was to her! kept the room so clean!--and the old woman,
when he was there, was laughing at "some of t' lad's foolishness." The
step was far down the street; but he could see him place the ladder, run
up, and light the gas. A longing seized him to be spoken to once more.

"Joe!" he called, out of the grating. "Good-bye, Joe!"

The old man stopped a moment, listening uncertainly; then hurried on.
The prisoner thrust his hand out of the window, and called again,
louder; but Joe was too far down the street. It was a little thing; but
it hurt him,--this disappointment.

"Good-bye, Joe!" he called, sorrowfully enough.

"Be quiet!" said one of the jailers, passing the door, striking on it
with his club.

Oh, that was the last, was it?

There was an inexpressible bitterness on his face, as he lay down on the
bed, taking the bit of tin, which he had rasped to a tolerable degree
of sharpness, in his hand,--to play with, it may be. He bared his arms,
looking intently at their corded veins and sinews. Deborah, listening in
the next cell, heard a slight clicking sound, often repeated. She shut
her lips tightly, that she might not scream; the cold drops of sweat
broke over her, in her dumb agony.

"Hur knows best," she muttered at last, fiercely clutching the boards
where she lay.

If she could have seen Wolfe, there was nothing about him to frighten
her. He lay quite still, his arms outstretched, looking at the pearly
stream of moonlight coming into the window. I think in that one hour
that came then he lived back over all the years that had gone before.
I think that all the low, vile life, all his wrongs, all his starved
hopes, came then, and stung him with a farewell poison that made him
sick unto death. He made neither moan nor cry, only turned his worn face
now and then to the pure light, that seemed so far off, as one that
said, "How long, O Lord? how long?"

The hour was over at last. The moon, passing over her nightly path,
slowly came nearer, and threw the light across his bed on his feet. He
watched it steadily, as it crept up, inch by inch, slowly. It seemed to
him to carry with it a great silence. He had been so hot and tired there
always in the mills! The years had been so fierce and cruel! There was
coming now quiet and coolness and sleep. His tense limbs relaxed, and
settled in a calm languor. The blood ran fainter and slow from his
heart. He did not think now with a savage anger of what might be and was
not; he was conscious only of deep stillness creeping over him. At first
he saw a sea of faces: the mill-men,--women he had known, drunken and
bloated,--Janeys timid and pitiful,--poor old Debs: then they floated
together like a mist, and faded away, leaving only the clear, pearly
moonlight.

Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretched-out figure, it brought
with it calm and peace, who shall say? His dumb soul was alone with
God in judgment. A Voice may have spoken for it from far-off Calvary,
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Who dare say?
Fainter and fainter the heart rose and fell, slower and slower the moon
floated from behind a cloud, until, when at last its full tide of white
splendor swept over the cell, it seemed to wrap and fold into a deeper
stillness the dead figure that never should move again. Silence deeper
than the Night! Nothing that moved, save the black, nauseous stream of
blood dripping slowly from the pallet to the floor!

There was outcry and crowd enough in the cell the next day. The coroner
and his jury, the local editors, Kirby himself, and boys with their
hands thrust knowingly into their pockets and heads on one side, jammed
into the corners. Coming and going all day. Only one woman. She came
late, and outstayed them all. A Quaker, or Friend, as they call
themselves. I think this woman was known by that name in heaven. A
homely body, coarsely dressed in gray and white. Deborah (for Haley had
let her in) took notice of her. She watched them all--sitting on the
end of the pallet, holding his head in her arms--with the ferocity of
a watch-dog, if any of them touched the body. There was no meekness,
sorrow, in her face; the stuff out of which murderers are made, instead.
All the time Haley and the woman were laying straight the limbs and
cleaning the cell, Deborah sat still, keenly watching the Quaker's face.
Of all the crowd there that day, this woman alone had not spoken to
her,--only once or twice had put some cordial to her lips. After they
all were gone, the woman, in the same still, gentle way, brought a vase
of wood-leaves and berries, and placed it by the pallet, then opened the
narrow window. The fresh air blew in, and swept the woody fragrance over
the dead face. Deborah looked up with a quick wonder.

"Did hur know my boy wud like it? Did hur know Hugh?"

"I know Hugh now."

The white fingers passed in a slow, pitiful way over the dead, worn
face. There was a heavy shadow in the quiet eyes.

"Did hur know where they'll bury Hugh?" said Deborah in a shrill tone,
catching her arm.

This had been the question hanging on her lips all day.

"In t' town-yard? Under t'mud and ash? T'lad 'll smother, woman! He wur
born on t'lane moor, where t'air is frick and strong. Take hur out, for
God's sake, take hur out where t'air blows!"

The Quaker hesitated, but only for a moment. She put her strong arm
around Deborah and led her to the window.

"Thee sees the hills, friend, over the river? Thee sees how the
light lies warm there, and the winds of God blow all the day? I live
there,--where the blue smoke is, by the trees. Look at me." She turned
Deborah's face to her own, clear and earnest. "Thee will believe me? I
will take Hugh and bury him there to-morrow."

Deborah did not doubt her. As the evening wore on, she leaned against
the iron bars, looking at the hills that rose far off, through the thick
sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked, a shadow
of their solemn repose fell on her face: its fierce discontent faded
into a pitiful, humble quiet. Slow, solemn tears gathered in her eyes:
the poor weak eyes turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to
rest, the grave heights looking higher and brighter and more solemn than
ever before. The Quaker watched her keenly. She came to her at last, and
touched her arm.

"When thee comes back," she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like one
who speaks from a strong heart deeply moved with remorse or pity, "thee
shall begin thy life again,--there on the hills. I came too late; but
not for thee,--by God's help, it may be."

Not too late. Three years after, the Quaker began her work. I end my
story here. At evening-time it was light. There is no need to tire
you with the long years of sunshine, and fresh air, and slow, patient
Christ-love, needed to make healthy and hopeful this impure body and
soul. There is a homely pine house, on one of these hills, whose windows
overlook broad, wooded slopes and clover-crimsoned meadows,--niched into
the very place where the light is warmest, the air freest. It is the
Friends' meeting-house. Once a week they sit there, in their grave,
earnest way, waiting for the Spirit of Love to speak, opening their
simple hearts to receive His words. There is a woman, old, deformed, who
takes a humble place among them: waiting like them: in her gray dress,
her worn face, pure and meek, turned now and then to the sky. A woman
much loved by these silent, restful people; more silent than they, more
humble, more loving. Waiting: with her eyes turned to hills higher and
purer than these on which she lives,--dim and far off now, but to be
reached some day. There may be in her heart some latent hope to meet
there the love denied her here,--that she shall find him whom she lost,
and that then she will not be all-unworthy. Who blames her? Something
is lost in the passage of every soul from one eternity to the
other,--something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not:
a hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived
of his birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost
hope to make the hills of heaven more fair?

Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this
figure of the mill-woman cut in korl. I have it here in a corner of my
library. I keep it hid behind a curtain,--it is such a rough, ungainly
thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that
show a master's hand. Sometimes,--to-night, for instance,--the curtain is
accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly
in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a wan, woful
face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks out, with
its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its pale,
vague lips seem to tremble with a terrible question, "Is this the End?"
they say,--"nothing beyond?--no more?"

Why, you tell me you have seen that look in the eyes of dumb
brutes,--horses dying under the lash. I know.

The deep of the night is passing while I write. The gas-light wakens
from the shadows here and there the objects which lie scattered through
the room: only faintly, though; for they belong to the open sunlight. As
I glance at them, they each recall some task or pleasure of the coming
day. A half-moulded child's head; Aphrodite; a bough of forest-leaves;
music; work; homely fragments, in which lie the secrets of all eternal
truth and beauty. Prophetic all! Only this dumb, woful face seems to
belong to and end with the night. I turn to look at it Has the power of
its desperate need commanded the darkness away? While the room is yet
steeped in heavy shadow, a cool, gray light suddenly touches its head
like a blessing hand, and its groping arm points through the broken
cloud to the far East, where, in the nickering, nebulous crimson, God
has set the promise of the Dawn.

* * * * *

THE REIGN OF KING COTTON.

To every age and to all nations belong their peculiar maxims and
political or religious cries, which, if collected by some ingenious
philosopher, would make a striking compendium of universal history.
Sometimes a curious outward similarity exists between these condensed
national sentences of peoples dissimilar in every other respect. Thus,
to-day is heard in the senescent East the oft-repeated formula of the
Mussulman's faith, "There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is his
Prophet," while in the youthful West a new cry, as fully believed, not
less devout, and scarcely less often repeated, arises from one great
and influential portion of the political and social thinkers of this
country,--the cry that "There is no King but Cotton, and the African is
its High-Priest." According to the creed of philosophy, philanthropy,
and economy in vogue among the sect whose views take utterance in this
formula, King Cotton has now reigned supreme over the temporal affairs
of the princes, potentates, and people of this earth for some thirty
years. Consequently, it is fair to presume that its reign has fully
developed its policy and tendencies and is producing its fruit for good
or evil, especially in the land of its disciples. It is well, therefore,
sometimes to withdraw a little from the dust and smoke of the battle,
which, with us at least, announces the spread of this potentate's power,
and to try to disentangle the real questions at issue in the struggle
from the eternal complications produced by short-sighted politicians and
popular issues. Looking at the policy and tendency of the reign of King
Cotton, as hitherto developed and indicated by its most confidential
advisers and apostles and by the lapse of time in the so-called Slave
States, to what end does it necessarily tend? to what results must it
logically lead?

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