Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX.

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Grey looked after her. Strong, useful, stable: how contented and happy she
had been since she was born! Love, wealth, coming to her as matters of
course. The girl looked out of the dingy window into the wearisome gray
sky. Well, what was the difference between them? What crime had _she_
committed, that God should have so set His face against her from the
first,--from the very first? She had trusted Him more than this woman whom
He seemed glad to bless. There were two or three creamy wild-lilies in a
broken glass on the sill. The girl always loved the flower, because Jesus
had touched it once: it brought her near to him, she fancied. She thought
of him now, seeing them, and put her hand to her head: remembering the
nameless agony he had chosen to bear to show her what a true life should
be; loving him with that desperate hope with which only a woman undone
clings to him upon the cross. And yet--

"It's hard," she said, turning sullenly away from the window.

Whatever the hours of this past day and night had been to her, they had
left one curious mark on her face,--a hollow sinking of the lines about
the mouth, as though years of pain had slowly crept over her. Suffering
had not ennobled her. It is only heroic, large-brained women, with a great
natural grasp of charity, that severe pain lifts out of themselves: weak
souls, like Grey, who starve without daily food of personal love, contract
under God's great judgments, sour into pettish discontent, or grow maudlin
as blind devotees, knowing but two things in eternity,--their own idea of
God, and their own salvation. Nunneries are full of them. Grey had no
vital pith of self-reliance to keep her erect, now that the storm came.
What strength she had was outside: her childlike grip on the hand of the
Man gone before.

"In half an hour." She tried to put that thought out, and look at the
chamber they had given her last night: odd enough for a woman; a
bare-floored, low-ceiled room, the upper story of the fire-engine house:
the same which they had used as a guard-house; but they had no prisoners
now. From this window where she stood John Brown had defended himself; the
marks of bullets were in the walls. She tried to think of all that had
followed that defence, of the four millions of slaves for whom he died,
whose friends in the North would convert their masters into their deadly
foes, and be slothful in helping them themselves. She tried to fill up the
half-hour thinking of this, but it seemed to her she was more to be pitied
than they. Chained to a man she hated. Why, more than four millions of
women had married as she had done: society drove them into it. "In half an
hour." He was coming then. She would be calm about it, would bid him
good-bye without crying. He would suffer less then,--poor Paul! She had
his likeness: she would give that back. She drew it from its hiding-place
and laid it down: the eyes looked at hers with a half-laugh: she turned
away quickly to the window, holding herself up by her shaking hands. If
she could keep it to look at,--at night, sometimes! She would grow old
soon, and in all her life if she had this one little pleasure!

"I will not," she said, pushing it from her. "I will go to God pure."

She heard a man's step on the clay path outside. Only the sentry's. Paul's
was heavier, more nervous. Pen came to her to button his coat.

"To-day are we going home, Sis?"

"Yes, to-day."

God forgive her, if for a moment she loathed the home!

"Pen, will you love me always?"--holding him tight to her breast. "I won't
have anybody but you."

Pen kissed her, the kiss meaning little, and ran out to the sentry, who
made a pet of him. But what the kiss meant was all the future held for
her: she knew that.

Now came the strange change which no logician can believe in or disprove.
While she stood there, holding her hands over her eyes, trying to accept
her fate, it grew too heavy and dark for her to bear. What Helper she
sought then, and how, only those who have found Him know. I only can tell
you that presently she bared her face, her nerves trembling, for the
half-hour was nearly over, but with a brave, still light in her hazel
eyes. The change had come of which every soul is susceptible. Very bitter
tears may have come after that; her life was but a tawdry remnant, she
might still think, for that foul lie of hers long ago; but she would take
up the days cheerfully, and do God's will with them.

There was another step: not the sentry's now. She bathed her red eyes, and
hastily drew her hair back plain. Paul liked the curls falling about her
throat. She must never try to please him again. Never! She must bid him
good-bye now. It meant forever. Maybe when she was dead--He was coming:
she heard his foot on the stairs, his hand on the latch. God help her to
be a true woman!

"Grey!"

He touched the hand covering her eyes.

"It is so cold! You mean to leave me, Grey?"

She drew back, sitting down on a camp-chest, and looked up at him. He had
not come there to tempt her by passionate evil: she saw that. This pain he
had fought with in his soul all night, trying to see what God meant by it,
had left his face subdued, earnest, sorrowful. Perhaps since Paul Blecker
left his mother's knee he had never been so like a child as now.

"Yes, I must go. He will not claim me. I am glad I was spared that. I'm
going to try and do right with the rest of my life, Paul."

Blecker said nothing, paced the floor of the room, his head sunk on his
breast.

"Let us go out of this," at last. "I'm choked. I think in the free air we
will know what is right, better."

She put on her hood, and they went out, the girl drawing back on the
steps, lest he should offer to assist her.

"I will not touch you, Grey," he said, gravely, "unless you give me
leave."

Somehow, as she followed him down the deserted street, she felt how puny
her trouble was, after all, to his. She had time to notice the drops of
sweat wrung out on his forehead, and wish she dared to wipe them away; but
he strode on in silence, forgetting even her, facing this inscrutable fate
that mastered them, with a strong man's desperation. They came to the
river, out of sight of the town. She stopped.

"We must wait here. I must stay where I can hear the train coming."

"The train,--yes. You are going in it? Yet, Grey, you love me?"

She wrung her hands with a frightened cry.

"Paul, don't tempt me. I'm weak: you know that. Don't make me fouler than
I am. There 's something in the world better for us than love: to try to
be pure and true. You'll help me to be that, dear Paul?"--laying her hand
on his arm, beseechingly. "You'll not keep me back? It's hard, you
know,"--trying to smile, her lips only growing colorless.

"I'll help you, Grey,"--his face distorted, touching her fingers for an
instant with an unutterable tenderness. "I knew this man was here from the
first. If there was crime in our marriage, I took it on myself. I was not
afraid to face hell for you, child. But, Grey," meeting her eye, "I love
you. I will not risk your soul for my selfish pleasure. If it be a crime
for you to stay with me, I will bid you go, and never attempt to see your
face again."

"If it be a crime? You cannot doubt that, Paul!"

"I do doubt it. You can obtain a divorce,"--looking at her, with his color
changing.

She pushed back the hair from her forehead. Her brain ached. Where was all
the clear reasoning she had meant to meet him with?

"No, I will not do that. I know the law says it is right; but Christ
forbade it. I can't argue. I only know his words."

He walked to and fro: he could not be still a minute, when in pain.

"Will you sit there?"--motioning her to a flat rock. "I want to speak to
you."

She sat down,--looked at the river. If she saw that look on his face
longer, she would go to him, though God's own arm stretched between them.
She clenched her little hands together, something in her soul crying out,
"I'm trying to do right," fiercely, to God. Martyrs for every religion
have said the same, when the heat crept closer over the fagots. They were
true to the best they could discover, and He asks no more of any man.

"I want you to hear me patiently," he said, standing near her, and looking
down. "You said there was something better for us in the world than love.
There is nothing for me. I've not been taught much about God or His ways.
I thought I'd learn them through you. I've lived a coarse, selfish life.
You took me out of it. I am not very selfish, loving you, little
Grey,"--with a sad smile,--"for I will give you up sooner than hurt you.
But if I had married you, I think it would have redeemed me. I want you,"
passing his hand over his forehead, uncertainly, "to look at this thing
calmly. We'll put feeling aside. Because--because it matters more than
life or death to me."

He was silent a moment.

"All night I have been trying to face it dispassionately, with reason. I
have succeeded now."

It is a pitiful thing to see a man choke down such weakness. Grey would
not see it: her eyes were fastened on her hands. He controlled himself,
going on rapidly.

"I say nothing of myself. I'm only a weak, passionate man; but I mean to
let your soul be pure. Yet I believe you judge wrongly in this. You think
of marriage, as women in your State and in the South are taught to think,
as a thing irrevocable. There are men in New England who hold other
views,--pure, good men, Grey. I've tried to put you from my mind, and look
at society as it is, with its corrupt, mercenary marriages, and I believe
their theory is the only feasible and just,--that only those bound by
secret affinity to each other are truly married."

Grey's face flushed.

"I have heard the theory, and its results,"--low.

"Because it has been seized upon as a cloak by false men. Use your reason,
Grey. Do not be blinded by popular prejudice. Your fate and mine rest on
this question."

"I will try to understand."

She faced him gravely.

"Whom God hath joined together no man shall put asunder. Somewhere, when
our souls were made, I think, He joined us, Grey. You know that."

"I do know it."

She stood up, not shrinking from his eye now,--her womanly nature, clear
and brave, looking out from hers.

"I will not speak of love: you know what that is. You know you need me:
you have moulded your very thought and life in mine. It is right it should
be so. God meant it. He made them male and female: taught them by that
instinct of nearness to know when the two souls mated in eternity had
found each other. Then the only true marriage comes,--pure, helpful,
resting on God, stretching out strong, healthy aid to His humanity. The
true souls, lovers, have found each other now, Grey."

He came to her,--took her hands in his.

"I know that,"--her pale face still lifted.

"Then,"--all the passion of a life in his voice,--"what shall come between
us? If, in God's eye, who is Love, you love me purely, have given me the
life of your life to keep, is a foul, lying vow, uttered to a man scarce
made in God's image, to keep us apart? I tell you, your soul's health and
mine depend on this."

She did not speak: her breath came labored and thick.

"You will come with me, Grey. You shall not go back to the slavery yonder,
dragging out the bit of time God gave you, in which to develop your soul,
in coddling selfish brats, and kitchen-work. There are homes where men and
women enfranchise themselves from the cursed laws of
society,--Phalansteries,--where each soul develops itself out of the inner
centre of eternal truth and love according to its primal bent, free to
yield to its instincts and affinities. I learned their theory long ago,
but I never believed in it until now. We will go there, Grey. We will be
governed by the laws of our own nature. It will be a free, beautiful life,
my own. Music and Art and Nature shall surround us with an eternal
harmony. We will have work, true work, such as suits our native power;
these talents smothered in your brain and mine shall come to life in
vigorous growth. Here in the world, struggling meanly for food, this
cannot be. That shall be the true Utopia, Grey. Some day all mankind shall
so live. We, now. "Will you come?"--drawing her softly towards him. "You
do not yield?"--looking in her face. "I am sincere. I see the truth of the
life-scheme of these people through my love for you. No human soul can
reach its full stature, unless it be free and happy. There is no chain on
women such as marriages like yours."

Still silence.

"I say that there are slaveries in society, and false marriages are the
worst; and until you and all women are free from them, you never can
become what God meant you to be. Do I speak truth?"

"It is true."

"You will come with me, then?"--his face growing red.

For one moment her head rested against the rock, languid and nerveless.
Then she stood erect.

"I will not go, Paul."

He caught her arm; but she shook him off, and held her hand to her side to
keep down an actual physical pain that some women suffer when their hearts
are tried. Her eyes, it may be, were wakened into a new resolve. It was
useless for him now to appeal to feeling or passion: he had left the
decision to her reason,--to her faith. They were stronger than he.

"I will not go, Paul."

No answer.

"I have no words like you,"--raising her hands to her head,--"but I feel
you are wrong in what you say."

She tried to collect herself, then went on.

"It is true that women sell themselves. I did it,--to escape. I was taught
wrong, as girls are. It's true, Paul, that women are cramped and unhappy
through false marriages, and that there are cursed laws in society that
defraud the poor and the slave."

She stopped, pale and frightened, struggling to find utterance, not being
used to put her thought into words. He watched her keenly.

"But it is _not_ true, Paul,"--with choked eagerness,--"that this life was
given to us only to develop our souls, to be free and happy. That will
come after,--in heaven. It is given here only to those who pray for it.
There's something better here."

"What?"

"To submit. It seems to me there are some great laws--for the good of all.
When we break them, we must submit. Let them go over us, and try to help
others,--what is that text?" holding her head a minute,--"'even as the Son
of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.'"

"You mean to submit?"

"I do. I married that man of my own free will: driven, maybe, by mean
fears,--but--I did it. I will not forswear myself."

She gained courage as she went on.

"I believe that God Himself, and that our Lord, taught the meaning of a
true marriage as you do,--that without that affinity it is none. The curse
comes to every woman who disregards it. It has come to me. I'll bear it."

"Throw it off. Come out of the foul lie."

"I will live no lie, Paul. I never would have gone with John Gurney as his
wife, if he had claimed me."

"Then you are free to be mine,"--coming a step nearer.

She drew back.

"I don't think He taught that. I cannot go behind His words."

"Grey, I will not drag you one step where your free will does not lead
you. Last night I said, 'I love this woman so well that I will leave her
sooner than drag her into crime.' You shall do what you think right. I
will be silent."

"Good bye, then, Paul."

Yet he did not take the offered hand: stood moodily looking down into the
water, crushing back something in his heart,--the only thing in his life
dear or pleasant, it may be.

"Oh, if women knew what it is to sell themselves! They will marry more
purely, maybe, soon. I believe that Christ made the marriage-vow binding,
Paul, because, though some might break it with pure intent, yet, if it
were of no avail, as it is in those Homes you talk of, and in Indiana,
women would become more degraded by brutal men, live falser lives, than
even now. I'm afraid, Paul,"--with a sorrowful smile,--"men will have to
educate the inner law of their natures more, before they can live out from
it: until then we'll have to obey an outer law. You know how your
Phalansteries have ended."

While she spoke, she gathered her mantle about her. It was a good thing to
talk, fast and lightly, so that he would leave her without more pain. God
had helped her do right. It was bravest, most Christ-like, for her to bear
the loss she had brought on herself, and to renounce a happiness she had
made guilty. But, if women knew--Sitting on the rock by the water's edge,
she thrust her fingers into the damp mould with a thought of the time when
she could lie under it,--grow clean, through the strange processes of
death, from all impurity. If she could but creep down there now, a
false-sworn, unloving wife, out of this man's sight, out of God's sight!

"Will you go?"--looking up with blanched cheek. "You were never so noble
as now, Paul Blecker, when you left me to myself to judge. If you had only
touched my love"--

"You would have yielded. I know. I'm not utterly base, Grey. I am glad,"
his face growing red, "you think I have been honorable. I tried to be. I
want to act as a man of gentle blood and a Christian would do,--though I'm
not either."

It was a chivalric face that looked down on her, though nervous and
haggard. She saw that. How bare and mean her life yawned before her that
moment! how all quiet and joy waited for her in the arms hanging
listlessly by his side, as if their work in life were done! Must she
sacrifice her life to an eternal law of God? _Was_ this Free Love so vile
a thing?

"Will you go?"--rising suddenly. "While you stand there, the Devil comes
very near me, Paul." She held out her hand. "You would despise me, if I
yielded now."

"I might, but I would love you all the same, Grey,"--with a miserable
attempt at a smile. He took the hand, holding it in his a moment. "Good
bye,"--all feeling frozen out of his voice. "You've done right, Grey. It
will be better for us some day. We'll think of that,--always."

"You suffer. I have made your life wretched,"--clinging suddenly to him,

"No."--turning his head away. "Never mind. I am not a child, Grey. Men do
not die of grief. They take up hard work, and that strengthens them. And
my little girl will be happy. Her God will bless her; for she _is_ a true,
good girl. Yes, true. You judged rightly."

For Blecker had taken up the alien Socialist dogma that day sincerely, but
driven to it by passion: now he swayed back to his old-fashioned faith in
marriage, as one comes to solid land after a plunge in the upheaving surf.

"Good bye, Paul."

The sunlight fell on their faces with a white brilliance, as they stood,
their hands clasped, for a moment. The girl never saw it afterwards
without a sudden feeling of hate, as though it had jeered at her mortal
pain. Then Paul Blecker stood alone by the river-side, with only a dull
sense that the day was bright and unfeeling, and that something was gone
from the world, never to come back. The life before he had known her
offered itself to him again in a bare remembrance: the heat to get
on,--the keen bargains,--friendships with fellows that shook him off when
they married, not caring that it hurt him,--he, without a home or
religion, keeping out of vice only from an inborn choice to be clean. That
was all. Pah! God help us! What was this life worth, after all? He glanced
at the town, laid in ashes. The war was foul indeed, yet in it there was
room for high chivalric purpose. Could he so end his life? She would know
it, and love him more that he died an honorable death. Shame! and cowardly
too!--was there nothing worth finding in the world besides a woman's
love?--he was no puling boy. If there were, what was it--for him?

He looked down at the dull sweep of the valley, heard the whistle of the
train that was carrying her away, and saw the black trail of smoke against
the sky,--stood silently watching it until the last bit of smoke even had
disappeared. A woman would have worked off in tears or hysteric cries what
pain came then; but the man only swallowed once or twice, lighted his
cigar, and with a grim smile went down the road.

* * * * *

My story is nearly ended. I have no time nor wish, these war-days, to
study dramatic effects, or to shift large and cautiously painted scenes or
the actors, for the mere tickling of your eyes and ears. One or two facts
in the history of these people are enough to give for my purpose: they are
for women,--nervous, greedy, discontented women: to learn from them (if I
could put the truth into forcible enough English) that truth of Christ's
teaching, which has unaccountably been let slip out of our modern
theology, that his help is temporal as well as spiritual, deals with
coarsest, most practical needs, and is sworn to her who struggles to be
true to her best self, that what she asks, believing, she shall receive.
_That_ is the point,--believing. "Therefore I say unto you, What things
soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye
_shall_ have them."

How many tragedies of life besides finespun novels would suddenly be
brought to an end, if the heroine were only a common-sense, believing
Christian of the old-fashioned pattern! Doctor Blecker, going into the war
after the day he parted from the girl at Harper's Ferry, with a sense of
as many fighting influences in his life as there were in the army, had no
under-sight of the clear mapping-out of the years for him, controlled by
the simple request of the woman yonder who loved him. She dared not repeat
that prayer now; but it had gone up once out of a childish trust, and was
safely written down above.

Let us pass over five or six months, and follow Paul Blecker to
Fredericksburg, the night after that bloodiest day for the Federal forces,
in December. It was the fourth battle in which he had taken part. Now a
man grows _blase_, in a manner, even of wholesale slaughter; he plodded
his way quietly, indifferently almost, therefore, over the plateau below
the first range of hills, his instrument-case in hand, drinking from his
brandy-flask now and then, to keep down nausea. The night was clear,--a
low, wan moon peering from the west, a warm wind from the river drifting
the heavy billows of smoke away from the battle-field. He picked his steps
with difficulty, unwilling to tread upon even the dead: they lay in heaps
here, thrown aside by the men who were removing the wounded. The day was
lost: he fancied he could read on even the white upturned faces a bitter
defeat. Firing had ceased an hour ago; only at long intervals on the far
left a dull throb was heard, as though the heart of the Night pulsed
heavily and feverishly in her sleep: no other sound, save the constant,
deadening roll of ambulances going out from this Valley of Death. The
field where he stood was below the ridge on which were placed Lee's
batteries; for ten hours the grand division of Sumner had charged the
heights here, the fog shutting out from them all but the impregnable foe
in front, and the bit of blue sky above, the last glimpse of life they
were to see,--charging with the slow, cumulative energy of an ocean-surf
upon a rock, and ebbing back at last, spent, leaving behind the drift of a
horrible wetness on the grass, and uncounted murdered souls to go back to
God.

The night now was bright and colorless, as I said, except where a burning
house down by the canal made a faded saffron glare. The Doctor had entered
a small thicket of locust-trees; the moonlight penetrated clearly through
their thin trunks, but the dead on the grass lay in shadow. He carried a
lantern, therefore, as he gently turned them over, searching for some one.
It was a Pennsylvania regiment which had held that wood
longest,--McKinstry's. Half a dozen other men were employed like the
Doctor,--Irish, generally: they don't forget the fellows that messed with
them as quickly as our countrymen do.

"We're in luck, Dan Reilly," said one. "Here's the Docthor himself. Av we
hed the b'ys now, we'd be complate,"--turning over one face after another,
unmistakably Dutch or Puritan.

"Ev it's Pat O'Shaughnessy yez want," said another, "he'd be afther
gittin' ayont the McManuses, an' here they are. They're Fardowners on'y.
Pat's Corkonian, _he_ is; he'll be nearer th' inemy by a fut, I'll ingage
yez."

"He's my cousin,"--hard tugging at the dead bodies with one arm;--the
other hung powerless. "I can't face Mary an' her childher agin an' say I
lift her man widout Christian burial.--Howld yer sowl! Dan Reilly, give us
a lift; here he is. Are ye dead, Pat?"

One eye in the blackened face opened.

"On'y my leg. 'O'Shaughnessy agin th' warld, an' the warld agin th'
Divil!'"--which was received with a cheer from the Corkonians.

"Av yer Honor," insinuated Dan, "wud attind to _this_ poor man, we'd be
proud to diskiver the frind you're in sarch of."

Blecker glanced at the stout Irishmen about him, with kind faces under all
the whiskey, and stronger arms than his own."

"I will, boys. You know him,--he's in your regiment,--Captain McKinstry.
He fell in this wood, they tell me."

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