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

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

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The Commander-in-Chief is now disengaged, and our party approach him
to pay their respects. By the advice of General J---n, we proffer our
medical services for the day; and we receive a pressure of the hand, a
genial look, and a bind acknowledgment of the offer. But we are told
there will be no general action to-day. Our report of these words, as
we rejoin our companions, is the first intimation given that the
bombardment is deferred. But, though, there is some disappointment,
their surprise is not extreme. For Garibaldi never informs even his
nearest aide-de-camp what he is about to do. In fact, he quaintly says,
"If his shirt knew his plans, he would take it off and burn it." Some
half-hour later, having descended from the eminence, we take our last
look of Garibaldi. He has retired with a single servant to a sequestered
place upon the mount, whither he daily resorts, and where his mid-day
repast is brought to him. Here he spends an hour or two secure from
interruption. What thoughts he ponders in his solitude the reader may
perhaps conjecture as well as his most intimate friend. But for us, with
the holy associations of a very high mountain before our mind, we can
but trust that a prayer, "uttered or unexpressed," invokes the divine
blessing upon the work to which Garibaldi devotes himself,--the
political salvation of his country.

* * * * *

TWO OR THREE TROUBLES.

[Concluded.]

Every day, and twice a day, came Mr. Sampson,--though I have not said
much about it; and now it was only a week before our marriage. This
evening he came in very weary with his day's work,--getting a wretched
man off from hanging, who probably deserved it richly. (It is said,
women are always for hanging: and that is very likely. I remember, when
there had been a terrible murder in our parlors, as it were, and it was
doubtful for some time whether the murderer would be convicted, Mrs.
Harris said, plaintively, "Oh, do hang somebody!") Mr. Sampson did
not think so, apparently, but sat on the sofa by the window, dull and
abstracted.

If I had been his wife, I should have done as I always do now in such a
case: walked up to him, settled the sofa-cushion, and said,--"Here, now!
lie down, and don't speak a word for two hours. Meantime I will tell you
who has been here, and everything." Thus I should rest and divert him by
idle chatter, bathing his tired brain with good Cologne; and if, in the
middle of my best story and funniest joke, he fairly dropped off to
sleep, I should just fan him softly, keep the flies away, say in my
heart, "Bless him! there he goes! hands couldn't mend him!"--and then
look at him with as much more pride and satisfaction than, at any other
common wide-awake face as it is possible to conceive.

However, not being married, and having a whole week more to be silly
in, I was both silly and suspicious. This was partly his fault. He was
reserved, naturally and habitually; and as he didn't tell me he was
tired and soul-weary, I never thought of that. Instead, as he sat on the
sofa, I took a long string of knitting-work and seated myself across the
room,--partly so that he might come to me, where there was a good seat.
Then, as he did not cross the room, but still sat quietly on the sofa,
I began to wonder and suspect. Did he work too hard? Did he dread
undertaking matrimony? Did he wish he could get off? Why did he not come
and speak to me? What had I done? Nothing! Nothing!

Here Laura came in to say she was going to Mrs. Harris's to get the
newest news about sleeves. Mrs. Harris for sleeves; Mrs. Gore for
bonnets; and for housekeeping, recipes, and all that, who but Mrs.
Parker, who knew that, and a hundred other things? Many-sided are we
all: talking sentiment with this one, housekeeping with that, and to a
third saying what wild horses would not tear from us to the two first!

Laura went. And presently he said, wearily, but _I_ thought drearily,--

"Delphine, are you all ready to be married?"

The blood flushed from my heart to my forehead and back again. So, then,
he thought I was ready and waiting to drop like a ripe plum into his
mouth, without his asking me! Am I ready, indeed? And suppose I am
not? Perhaps I, too, may have my misgivings. A woman's place is not a
sinecure. Troubles, annoyances, as the sparks fly upward! Buttons to
begin with, and everything to end with! What did Mrs. Hemans say, poor
woman?

"Her lot is on you! silent tears to weep,
And patient smiles to wear through suffering's hour,
And sumless riches from affection's deep
To pour on"--something--"a wasted shower!"

Yes, wasted, indeed! I hadn't answered a word to his question.

"It seems warm in this room," said he again, languidly; "shall we walk
on the piazza?"

"I think not," I answered, curtly; "I am not warm."

Even that, did not bring him to me. He still leaned his head on his hand
for a minute or two, and then rose from the sofa and sat by the window,
looking at the western sky, where the sun had long gone down. I could
see his profile against the outer light, however, and it did not look
placid. His brow was knit and mouth compressed. So, then, it was all
very likely!

Having set out on my race of suspecting, my steeds did not lag. They
were winged already, and I goaded them continually with memories. There
was nothing I did not think of or accuse him of,--especially, the last
and worst sin of breaking off our engagement at the eleventh hour!--and
I, who had suffered silently, secretly, untold torments about that name
of his,--nobody, no man, could ever guess how keenly, because no man can
ever feel as a woman does about such things! Men,--they would as soon
marry Tabitha as Juliana. They could call her "Wife." It made no matter
to them. What did any man care, provided she chronicled small beer,
whether she had taste, feeling, sentiment, anything? Here I was wrong,
as most passionate people are at some time in their lives. Some men do
care.

At the moment I had reached the top-most pinnacle of my wrath, and was
darting lightnings on all mankind, Polly showed in Lieutenant Herbert,
with his book of promised engravings.

With a natural revulsion of temper, I descended rapidly from my
pinnacle, and, stepping half-way across the room, met the Lieutenant
with unusual cordiality. Mr. Sampson bowed slightly and sat still. I
drew two chairs towards the centre-table, lighted the argand, and seated
myself with the young officer to examine and admire the beautiful
forms in which the gifted artist has clothed the words rather than the
thoughts of the writer,--out of the coarse real, lifting the scenes into
the sweet ideal,--and out of the commonest, rudest New-England life,
bringing the purest and most charming idyllic song. We did not say this.

I looked across at the window, where still sat the figure, motionless.
Not a word from him. I looked at Lieutenant Herbert. He was really very
handsome, with an imperial brow, and roseate lips like a girl's. Somehow
he made me think of Claverhouse,--so feminine in feature, so martial in
action! Then he talked,--talked really quite well,--reflected my own
ideas in an animated and eloquent manner.

Why it was,--whether Herbert suspected we had had a lovers' quarrel,--or
whether his vanity was flattered at my attention to him, which was
entirely unusual,--or whether my own excited, nervous condition led me
to express the most joyous life and good-humor, and shut down all my
angry sorrow and indignant suspicions, while I smiled and danced over
their sepulchre,--however it was, I know not,--but a new sparkle
came into the blue eyes of the young militaire. He was positively
entertaining. Conscious that he was talking well, he talked better. He
recited poetry; he was even witty, or seemed so. With the magnetism of
cordial sympathy, I called out from his memory treasures new and old. He
became not only animated, but devoted.

All this time the figure at the window sat calm and composed. It was
intensely, madly provoking. He was so very sure of me, it appeared, he
would not take the trouble to enter the lists to shiver a lance with
this elegant young man with the beautiful name, the beautiful lips, and
with, for the last half-hour at least, the beautiful tongue. He would
not trouble himself to entertain his future wife. He would not trouble
himself even to speak. Very well! Very well indeed! Did the Lieutenant
like music? If "he" did not care a jot for me, perhaps others did. My
heart beat very fast now; my cheeks burned, and my lips were parched. A
glass of water restored me to calmness, and I sat at the piano. Herbert
turned over the music, while I rattled off whatever came to my fingers'
ends,--I did not mind or know what. It was very fine, I dare say. He
whispered that it was "so beautiful!"--and I answered nothing, but kept
on playing, playing, playing, as the little girl in the Danish story
keeps on dancing, dancing, dancing, with the fairy red shoes on. Should
I play on forever? In the church,--out of it,--up the street,--down the
street,--out in the fields,--under the trees,--by the wood,--by the
water,--in cathedrals,--I heard something murmuring,--something softly,
softly in my ear. Still I played on and on, and still something murmured
softly, softly in my ear. I looked at the window. The head was leaned
down, and resting on both arms. Fast asleep, probably. Then I played
louder, and faster, and wilder.

Then, for the first time, as deaf persons are said to hear well in
the noise of a crowded street, or in a rail-car, so did I hear in the
musical tumult, for the first time, the words of Herbert. They had been
whispered, and I had heard, but not perceived them, till this moment.

I turned towards him, looked him full in the face, and dropped both
hands into my lap. Well might I be astonished! He started and blushed
violently, but said nothing. As for me, I was never more calm in my
life. In the face of a real mistake, all imaginary ones fell to the
ground, motionless as so many men of straw. With an instinct that went
before thought, and was born of my complete love and perfect reliance on
my future husband, I pushed back the music-stool, and walked straight
across the room to the window.

His head was indeed leaned on his arms; but he was white and insensible.

"Come here!" I said, sternly and commandingly, to Herbert, who stood
where I had left him. "Now, if you can, hold him, while I wheel this
sofa;--and now, ring the bell, if you please."

We placed him on the couch, and Polly came running in.

"Now, good-night, Sir; we can take care of him. With very many thanks
for your politeness," I added, coldly; "and I will send home the book
to-morrow."

He muttered something about keeping it as long as I wished, and I turned
my back on him.

"Oh! oh!--what had _he_ thought all this time?--what had he suffered?
How his heart must have been agonized!--how terribly he must have felt
the mortification,--the distress! Oh!"

We recovered him at length from the dead faint into which he had fallen.
Polly, who thought but of the body, insisted on bringing him "a good
heavy-glass of Port-wine sangaree, with toasted crackers in it"; and
wouldn't let him speak till he had drunken and eaten. Then she went out
of the room, and left me alone with my justly incensed lover.

I took a _brioche_, and sat down humbly at the head of the sofa. He held
out his hand, which I took and pressed in mine,--silently, to be
sure; but then no words could tell how I had felt, and now felt,--how
humiliated! how grieved! How wrongly I must have seemed to feel and to
act! how wrongly I must have acted,--though my conscience excused me
from feeling wrongly,--so to have deluded Herbert!

At last I murmured something regretful and tearful about Lieutenant
Herbert--Herbert! how I had admired that name!--and now, this Ithuriel
touch, how it had changed it and him forever to me! What was in a
name?--sure enough! As I gazed on the pale face on the couch, I should
not have cared, if it had been named Alligator,--so elevated was I
beyond all I had thought or called trouble of that sort! so real was the
trouble that could affect the feelings, the sensitiveness, of the noble
being before me!

At length he spoke, very calmly and quietly, setting down the empty
tumbler. I trembled, for I knew it must come.

"I was so glad that fool came in, Del! For, to tell the truth, I felt
really too weak to talk. I haven't slept for two nights, and have been
on my feet and talking for four hours,--then I have had no dinner"--

"Oh!"

"And a damned intelligent jury, (I beg your pardon, but it's a great
comfort to swear, sometimes,) that I can't humbug. But I must! I must,
to-morrow!" he exclaimed, springing up from the sofa and walking
hurriedly across the room.

"Oh, do sit down, if you are so tired!"

"I cannot sit down, unless you will let me stop thinking. I have but one
idea constantly."

"But if the man is guilty, why do you want to clear him?" said I.

Not a word had he been thinking of me or of Herbert all this time! But
then he had been thinking of a matter of life and death. How all, all my
foolish feelings took to flight! It was some comfort that my lover had
not either seen or suspected them. He thought he must have been nearly
senseless for some time. The last he remembered was, we were looking at
some pictures.

Laura came in from Mrs. Harris's, and, hearing how the case was,
insisted on having a chicken broiled, and that he should eat some
green-apple tarts, of her own cooking,--not sentimental, nor even
wholesome, but they suited the occasion; and we sat, after that, all
three talking, till past twelve o'clock. No danger now, Laura said, of
bad dreams, if he did go to bed.

"But why do you care so very much, if you don't get him off?--you
suppose him guilty, you say?"

"Because, Delphine, his punishment is abominably disproportioned to his
offence. This letter of the law killeth. And then I would get him off,
if possible, for the sake of his son and the family. And besides all
that, Del, it is not for me to judge, you know, but to defend him."

"Yes,--but if you do your best?" I inquired.

"A lawyer never does his best," he replied, hastily, "unless he
succeeds. He must get his client's case, or get him off, I must get some
sleep to-night," he added, "and take another pull. There's a man on the
jury,--he is the only one who holds out. I know I don't get him. And I
know why. I see it in the cold steel of his eyes. His sister was left,
within a week of their marriage-day, by a scoundrel,--left, too, to
disgrace, as well as desertion,--and his heart is bitter towards all
offences of the sort. I must get that man somehow!"

He was standing on the steps, as he spoke, and bidding me good-night;
but I saw his head and heart were both full of his case, _and nothing
else._

The words rang in my ear after he went away: "Within a week of their
marriage-day!" In a week we were to have been married. Thank Heaven, we
were still to be married in a week. And he had spoken of the man as "a
scoundrel," who left her. America, indeed! what matters it? Still, there
would be the same head, the same heart, the same manliness, strength,
nobleness,--all that a woman can truly honor and love. Not military, and
not a scoundrel; but plain, massive, gentle, direct. He would do. And a
sense of full happiness pressed up to my very lips, and bubbled over in
laughter.

"You are a happy girl, Del. Mrs. Harris says the court and everybody is
talking of Mr. Sampson's great plea in that Shore case. Whether he gets
it or not, his fortune is made. They say there hasn't been such an
argument since Webster's time,--so irresistible. It took every body off
their feet."

I did not answer a word,--only clothed my soul with sackcloth and ashes,
and called it good enough for me.

We went to bed. But in the middle of the night I waked Laura.

"What's the matter?" said she, springing out of bed.

"Don't, Laura!--nothing," said I.

"Oh, I thought you were ill! I've been sleeping with one eye open, and
just dropped away. What is it?"

"Do lie down, then. I only wanted to ask you a question."

"Oh, _do_ go to sleep! It's after three o'clock now. We never shall get
up. Haven't you been asleep yet?"

"No,--I've been thinking all the time. But you are impatient. It's no
matter. Wait till to-morrow morning."

"No. I am awake now. Tell me, and be done with it, Del."

"But I shall want your opinion, you know."

"Oh, _will_ you tell me, Del?"

"Well, it is this. How do you think a handsome, a _very_ handsome
chess-table would do?"

"Do!--for what?"

"Why,--for my aunt's wedding-gift, you know."

"Oh, that! And you have waked me up, at this time of night, from the
nicest dream! You cruel thing!"

"I am so sorry, Laura! But now that you are awake, just tell me how you
like the idea;--I won't ask you another word."

"Very well,--very good,--excellent," murmured Laura.

In the course of the next ten minutes, however, I remembered that Laura
never played chess, and that I had heard Mr. Sampson say once that he
never played now,--that it was too easy for work, and too hard for
amusement. So I put the chess-table entirely aside, and began again.

A position for sleep is, unluckily, the one that is sure to keep one
awake. Lying down, all the blood in my body kept rushing to my brain,
keeping up perpetual images of noun substantives. If I could have spent
my fifty dollars in verbs, in taking a journey, in giving a _fete
champetre_! (Garden lighted with Chinese lanterns, of course,--house
covered inside and out with roses.) Things enough, indeed, there were to
be bought. But the right thing!

A house, a park, a pair of horses, a curricle, a pony-phaeton. But how
many feet of ground would fifty dollars buy?--and scarcely the hoof of
a horse.

There was a diamond ring. Not for me; because "he" had been too poor
to offer me one. But I could give it to him. No,--that wouldn't do. He
wouldn't wear it,--nor a pin of ditto. He had said, simplicity in dress
was good economy and always good taste. No. Then something else,--that
wouldn't wear, wouldn't tear, wouldn't lose, rust, break.

As to clothes, to which I swung back in despair,--this very Aunt Allen
had always sent us all our clothes. So it would only be getting
more, and wouldn't seem to be anything. She was an odd kind of
woman,--generous in spots, as most people are, I believe. Laura and
I both said, (to each other,) that, if she would allow us a hundred
dollars a year each, we could dress well and suitably on it. But,
instead of that, she sent us every year, with her best love, a
trunk full of her own clothes, made for herself, and only a little
worn,--always to be altered, and retrimmed, and refurbished: so that,
although worth at first perhaps even more than two hundred dollars,
they came, by their unfitness and non-fitness, to be worth to us only
three-quarters of that sum; and Laura and I reckoned that we lost
exactly fifty dollars a year by Aunt Allen's queerness. So much for our
gratitude! Laura and I concluded it would be a good lesson to us about
giving; and she had whispered to me something of the same sort, when
I insisted on dressing Betsy Ann Hemmenway, a little mulatto, in an
Oriental caftan and trousers, and had promised her a red sash for her
waist. To be sure, Mrs. Hemmenway despised the whole thing, and said she
"wouldn't let Betsy Ann be dressed up like a circus-rider, for nobody";
and that she should "wear a bonnet and mantilly, like the rest of
mankind." Which, indeed, she did,--and her bonnet rivalled the
_coiffures_ of Paris in brilliancy and procrastination; for it never
came in sight till long after its little mistress. However, of that
by-and-by. I was only too glad that Aunt Allen had not sent me another
silk gown "with her best love, and, as she was only seventy, perhaps it
might be useful." No,--here was the fifty-dollar note, thank Plutus!

But then, what to do with it? Sleeping, that was the question. Waking,
that was the same.

At twelve o'clock Mr. Sampson came to dine with us, and to say he was
the happiest of men.

"That is, of course, I shall be, next week," said he, smiling and
correcting himself. "But I am rather happy now; for I've got my case,
and Shore has sailed for Australia. Good riddance, and may he never
touch _these_ shores any more!"

He had been shaking hands with everybody, he said,--and was so glad to
be out of it!

"Now that it is all over, I wish you would tell me why you are so glad,
when you honestly believe the man guilty," said I.

"Oh, my child, you are supposing the law to be perfect. Suppose the old
English law to be in force now, making stealing a capital offence. You
wouldn't hang a starving woman or child who stole the baker's loaf from
your window-sill this morning before Polly had time to take it in, would
you? Yet this was the law until quite lately."

"After all, I don't quite see either how you can bear to defend him, if
you think him guilty, or be glad to have him escape, if he is,--I mean,
supposing the punishment to be a fair one."

"Because I am a frail and erring man, Delphine, and like to get my case.
If my client is guilty,--as we will suppose, for the sake of argument,
he is,--he will not be likely to stop his evil career merely because he
has got off now, and will be caught and hanged next time, possibly.
If he does stop sinning, why, so much the better to have time for
repentance, you know."

"Don't laugh,--now be serious."

"I am. Once, I made up my mind as to my client's guilt from what he told
and did not tell me, and went into court with a heavy heart. However, in
the course of the trial, evidence, totally unexpected to all of us, was
brought forward, and my client's innocence fully established. It was a
good lesson to me. I learned by experience that the business of counsel
is to defend or to prosecute, and not to judge. The judge and jury are
stereoscopic and see the whole figure."

How wise and nice it sounded! Any way, I wasn't a stereoscope, for I saw
but one side,--the one "he" was on.

Monday morning. And we were to be married in the evening,--by ourselves,
--nobody else. That was all the stipulation my lover made.

"I will be married morning, noon, or night, as you say, and dress and
behave as you say; but not in a crowd of even three persons."

"Not even Laura?"

"Oh, yes! Laura."

"Not even Polly?"

"Oh, yes! the household."

And then he said, softly, that, if I wanted to please him,--and he knew
his darling Del did,--I would dress in a white gown of some sort, and
put a tea-rose in my beautiful dark hair, and have nobody by but just
the family and old Mr. Price, the Boynton minister.

"I know that isn't what you thought of, exactly. You thought of being
married in church"----

"Oh, dear, dear! old Mr. Price!"--but I did not speak.

"But if you would be willing?"----

"I supposed it would be more convenient," I muttered.

Visions of myself walking up the aisle, with a white silk on, tulle
veil, orange-flowers, of course, (so becoming!) house crowded with
friends, collation, walking under the trees,--all faded off with a
mournful cry.

It was of no use talking. Whatever he thought best, I should do, if it
were to be married by the headsman, supposing there were such a person.
This was all settled, then, and had been for a week.

Nobody need say that lovers, or even married lovers, have but one mind.
They have two minds always. And that is sometimes the best of it; since
the perpetual sacrifices made to each other are made no sacrifices, but
sweet triumphs, by their love. Still, just as much as green is composed
of yellow and blue, and purple of red and blue, the rays can any time
be separated, and they always have a conscious life of their own. Of
course, I had a sort of pleasure even in giving up my marriage in
church; but I kept my blue rays, for all that,--and told Laura I dreaded
the long, long prayer in that evening's service, and that I hoped in
mercy old Mr. Price would have his wits about him, and not preach a
funeral discourse.

"Old Mr. Price is eighty-nine years old, Laura says," said I.

"Yes. He was the minister who married my father and mother, and has
always been our minister," answered my lover.

And so it was settled.

Laura was rolling up tape, Monday morning, as quietly as if there were
to be no wedding. For my part, I wandered up and down, and could not set
myself about anything.

"Old Mr. Price! and a great long prayer! And that is to be the end
of it! My wedding-dress all made, and not to be worn! Flowers ditto!
Nowhere to go, and so I shall stay at home. He has no house; so Taffy is
to come to mine!"

And here I burst out laughing; for it was as well to laugh as cry; and
besides, I said a great many things on purpose to have Laura say what
she always did,--and which, after all, it was sweet to me to hear. Those
were silly days!

"No, Del,--that is not the end of it,--only the beginning of it,--of a
happy, useful, good life,--your path growing brighter and broader every
year,--and--and--we won't talk of the garlands, dear; but your heart
will have bridal-blossoms, whether your head has or not."

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