The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

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"It is you who do Rosa injustice," Everett answered, and paused. "Were
it to be as you wish," he added, "and we to separate utterly, with no
outwardly acknowledged tie to link us, no letters to pass between us, no
word or sign from one to the other during all the coming years,--suppose
it so,--you would shadow our lives with much unnecessary misery; but you
are mistaken, if you think you would really part us. You do not
understand."

"Nonsense! You talk like a young man in love. You _must_ be reasonable."

Lady Beauchamp, by this time, had worked herself into the usual warmth
with which she argued all questions, great and small, and forgot that
her original intention in speaking to Everett had only been to set
before him the disadvantages of his plans, in order that her own might
come to the rescue with still greater brilliancy and effect.

"You _must_ be reasonable," she repeated. "You don't suppose I have not
my child's happiness at heart in all I plan and purpose? Trust me, I
have had more experience of life than either of you, and it is for me to
interpose between you and the dangers you would blindly rush upon. Some
day you will both thank me for having done so, hard and cruel as you may
think me now."

"No, I do not think you either hard or cruel. You are _mistaken_,
simply. I believe you desire our happiness. I do not reproach or blame
you, Lady Beauchamp," Everett said, sadly.

"Come, come," she cried, touched by his look and manner to an immediate
unfolding of her scheme, "let us look at things again. Perhaps we shall
not find them so hopeless as they look. If I am prudent, Everett, I am
not mercenary. I only want to see Rosa happy. I don't care whether it is
on hundreds a year, or thousands. And the fact is, I have not condemned
your plans without having a more satisfactory one to offer to your
choice. Listen to me."

And she proceeded, with a cleared brow, and the complacency of one who
feels she is performing the part of a good genius, setting everything to
rights, and making everybody comfortable, to unfold the plan _she_ had
devised, by which Everett's future was to be secured, and his marriage
with Rosa looked to as something better than a misty uncertainty at the
end of a vista of years.

Everett must go into the Church. That was, in fact, the profession most
suited to him, and which most naturally offered itself for his
acceptance. His education, his tastes, his habits, all suited him for
such a career. By a happy coincidence, too, it was one in which Lady
Beauchamp could most importantly assist him through her connections. Her
eldest son, the young baronet, had preferment in his own gift, which was
to say, in hers; and not only this, but her sister's husband, the uncle
of Rosa, was a bishop, and one over whom she, Lady Beauchamp, had some
influence. Once in orders, Everett's prosperity was assured. The present
incumbent of Hollingsley was aged; by the time Everett was eligible, he
might, in all probability, be inducted into that living, and Rosa might
then become his wife. Five hundred a year, beside Miss Beauchamp's
dowry, with such shining prospects of preferment to look forward to, was
not an unwise commencement; for Rosa was no mere fine lady, the proud
mother said,--she was sensible and prudent; she would adapt herself to
circumstances. And though, of course, it was not such an establishment
as she well might expect for her daughter, still, since the young people
loved one another, and thought they could be happy under these reduced
circumstances, she would not be too exacting. And Lady Beauchamp at last
paused, and looked in Everett's face for some manifestation of his joy.

Well,--of his gratitude there could be no question. The tears stood in
his earnest eyes, as he took Lady Beauchamp's hand and thanked
her,--thanked her again and again.

"There, there, you foolish boy! I don't want thanks," cried she,
coloring with pleasure though, as she spoke. "My only wish is to see you
two children happy. I _am_ fond of you, Everett; I shall like to see you
my son," she said. "I have tried to smooth the way for you, as far as I
can, over the many difficulties that obstruct it; and I fancy I have
succeeded. What do you say to my plan? When can you be ordained?"

Everett sighed, as he released her hand, and looked at her face, now
flushed with generous, kindly warmth. Well he knew the bitter change
that would come over that face,--the passion of disappointment and
displeasure which would follow his answer to that question.

He could never enter the Church. Sorrowfully, but firmly, he said
it,--with that calm, steady voice and look, of which all who knew him
knew the significance. He could not take orders.

Lady Beauchamp, at first utterly overwhelmed and dumfounded, stood
staring at him in blank silence. Then she icily uttered a few words. His
reasons,--might she ask?

They were many, Everett said. Even if no other hindrance existed, in his
own mind and opinions, his reverence for so sacred an office would not
permit him to embrace it as a mere matter of worldly advantage to
himself.

"Grant me patience, young man! Do you mean to tell me you would decline
this career because it promises to put an end to your difficulties? Are
you _quite_ a fool?" the lady burst out, astonishment and anger quite
startling her from all control.

"Bear with what may at first seem to you only folly," Everett answered
her, gently. "I don't think your calmer judgment can call it so. Would
you have me take upon myself obligations that I feel to be most solemn
and most vital, feeling myself unfitted, nay, unable, rightly to fulfil
them? Would you have me commit the treachery to God and man of swearing
that I felt called to that special service, when my heart protested
against my profession?"

"Romantic nonsense! A mere matter of modest scruples! You underrate
yourself, Everett. You are the very man for a clergyman, trust me."

But Everett went on to explain, that it was no question of
under-estimation of himself.

"You do not know, perhaps," he proceeded, while Lady Beauchamp, sorely
tried, tapped her fingers on the table, and her foot upon the
floor,--"you do not know, that, when I was a boy, and until two or three
years ago, my desire and ambition were to be a minister of the Church of
England."

"Well, Sir,--what has made you so much better, or so much worse, since
then, as to alter your opinion of the calling?"

"The reasons which made me abandon the idea three years since, and which
render it impossible for me to consider it now, have nothing to do with
my mental and moral worthiness or unworthiness. The fact is simply, I
cannot become a minister of a Church with many of whose doctrines I
cannot agree, and to which, indeed, I can no longer say I belong. In
your sense of the word, I am far from being a Churchman."

"Do you mean to say you have become a Dissenter?" cried Lady Beauchamp;
and, as if arrived at the climax of endurance, she stood transfixed,
regarding the young man with a species of sublime horror.

"Again, not in your sense of the term," Everett said, smiling; "for I
have joined no sect, attached myself to no recognized body of
believers."

"You belong to nothing, then? You believe in nothing, I suppose?" she
said, with the instinctive logic of her class. "Oh, Everett!" real
distress for the moment overpowering her indignation, "it is those
visionary notions of yours that have brought you to this. It was to be
expected. You poets and dreamers go on refining your ideas, forsooth,
till even the religion of the ordinary world isn't good enough for you."

Everett waited patiently till this first gust had passed by. Then, with
that steady, calm lucidity which, strange to say, was characteristic of
this Visionary's mind and intellect, he explained, so far as he could,
his views and his reasons. It could not be expected that his listener
should comprehend or enter into what he said. At first, indeed, she
appeared to derive some small consolation from the fact that at least
Everett had not "turned Dissenter." She hated Methodists, she
declared,--intending thus to include with sweeping liberality all
denominations in the ban of her disapproval. She would have deemed it an
unpardonable crime, had the young man deserted the Church of his fathers
in order to join the Congregation, some ranting conventicle. But if her
respectability was shocked at the idea of his becoming a Methodist, her
better feelings were outraged when she found, as she said, that he
"belonged to nothing." She viewed with dislike and distrust all forms of
religion that differed from her own; but she could not believe in the
possibility of a religion that had no external form at all. She was
dismayed and perplexed, poor lady! and even paused midway in her
wrathful remonstrance to the misguided young man, to lament anew over
his fatal errors. She could not understand, she said, truly enough,
what in the world he meant. His notions were perfectly extraordinary and
incomprehensible. She was deeply, deeply shocked, and grieved for him,
and for every one connected with him.

In fact, the very earnestness and sincerity in their own opinions of a
certain calibre of minds make them incapable of understanding such a
state of things. That a man should believe differently from all they
have been taught to believe appears to them as simply preposterous as
that he should breathe differently. And so it is that only the highest
order of belief can afford to be tolerant; and, as extremes meet, it
requires a very perfect Faith to be able to sympathize and bear
patiently with Doubt.

There was no chance of Lady Beauchamp's "comprehending" Everett in this
matter. There was something almost pathetic in her mingled anger,
perplexity, and disappointment. She could only look on him as a
headstrong young man, suicidally bent on his own ruin,--turning
obstinately from every offered aid, and putting the last climax of
wretchedness to his isolated and fallen position by "turning from the
faith of his fathers," as she rather imaginatively described his
secession from Orthodoxy.

And, as may be concluded, the mother of Rosa was inexorable, as regarded
the engagement between the young people. It must at once be cancelled.
She could not for one moment suffer the idea of her daughter's remaining
betrothed to the mere adventurer she considered Everett Gray had now
become. If, poor as he was, he had thought fit to embrace a profession
worthy of a gentleman, the case would have been different. But if his
romantic notions led him to pursue such an out-of-the-way course as he
had laid out for himself, he must excuse her, if she forbade her child
from sharing it. Under present circumstances, his alliance could but be
declined by the Beauchamp family, she said, with her stateliest air. And
the next minute, as Everett held her hand, and said good-bye, she melted
again from that frigid dignity, and, looking into the frank, manly, yet
gentle face of the young man, cried,--

"Are you _quite_ decided, Everett? Will you take time to consider? Will
you talk to Rosa about it, first?"

"No, dear Lady Beauchamp. I know already what she would say. I have
quite decided. Thank you for all your purposed kindness. Believe that I
am not ungrateful, even if I seem so."

"Oh, Everett,--Everett Gray! I am very sorry for you, and for your
mother, and for all connected with you. It is a most unhappy business.
It gives me great pain thus to part with you," said Lady Beauchamp, with
real feeling.

And so the interview ended, and so ended the engagement.

Nothing else could have been expected, every one said who heard the
state of the case, and knew what Lady Beauchamp had wished and Everett
had declined. There were no words to describe how foolishly and weakly
he had acted. "Everybody" quite gave him up now. With his romantic,
transcendental notions, what _would_ become of him, when he had his own
way to make in the world?

But Everett had consolation and help through it all; for Rosa, the woman
he loved, his mother, and his sister believed in him, and gloried in
what other people called his want of common sense. Ay, though the
horrible wrench of parting was suffered by Rosa every minute of every
day, and the shadow of that dreadful, unnatural separation began to
blacken her life even before it actually fell upon her,--through it all,
she never wavered. When he first told her that he must go, that it was
the one thing he held it wise and right to do, she shrunk back
affrighted, trembling at the coming blankness of a life without him. But
after a while, seeing the misery that came into _his_ face reflected
from hers, she rose bravely above the terrible woe, and then, with her
arms round him and her eyes looking steadfastly into his, she said, "I
love you better than the life you are to me. So I can bear that you
should go."

And he said, "There can be no real severance between those who love as
we do. God, in His mercy and tenderness, will help us to feel that
truth, every hour and every day."

For they believed thus,--these two young Visionaries,--and lived upon
that belief, perhaps, when the time of parting came. And it may be that
the thought of each was very constantly, very intimately present to the
other, during the many years that followed. It may be that this species
of mental atmosphere, so surrounding and commingling with all other
things more visibly and palpably about them, _did_ cause these dreamers
to be happier in their love than many externally united ones, whose lot
appears to us most fair and smooth and blissful. Time and distance,
leagues of ocean and years of suspense, are not the most terrible things
that can come between two people who love one another.

* * * * *

And so Everett Gray, his mother, and his sister, went to Canada. A year
after, Agnes was married to Charles Barclay, then a thriving merchant in
Montreal. When the people at home heard of this, they very wisely
acknowledged "how much good there had been in that young man, in spite
of his rashness and folly in early days. No fear about such a man's
getting on in life, when once he gave his mind to it," and so forth.

Meanwhile, our Visionary----But what need is there to trace him, step by
step, in the new life he doubtless found fully as arduous as he had
anticipated? That it was a very struggling, difficult, and uncongenial
life to him can be well understood. These reminiscences of Everett Gray
relate to a long past time. We can look on his life now as almost
complete and finished, and regard his past as those in the valley look
up to the hill that has nothing between it and heaven.

Many years he remained in Canada, working hard. Tidings occasionally
reached England of his progress. Rosa, perhaps, heard such at rare
intervals,--though somewhat distorted, it may be, from their original
tenor, before they reached her. But it appeared certain that he was
"getting on." In defiance and utter contradiction of all the sapient
predictions there anent, it seemed that this dreamy, poetizing Everett
Gray was absolutely successful in his new vocation of man-of-business.

The news that he had become a partner in the firm he had entered as a
clerk was communicated in a letter from himself to Lady Beauchamp. In it
he, for the first time since his departure, spoke of Rosa; but he spoke
of her as if they had parted but yesterday; and, in asking her mother's
sanction to their betrothal _now_, urged, as from them both, their claim
to have that boon granted at last.

Lady Beauchamp hastily questioned her daughter.

"You must have been corresponding with the young man all this time?" she
said.

But Rosa's denial was not to be mistaken.

"He has heard of you, then, through some one," the practical lady went
on; "or, for anything he knows, you may be married, or going to be
married, instead of waiting for him, as he seems to take it for granted
you have been all this time."

"He was right, mother," Rosa only said.

"Right, you foolish girl? You haven't half the spirit I had at your age.
I would have scorned that it should have been said of _me_ that I
'waited' for any man."

"But if you loved him?"

"Well, if he loved _you_, he should have taken more care than to leave
you on such a Quixotic search for independence as his."

"He thought it right to go, and he trusted me; we had faith in one
another," Rosa said; and she wound her arms round her mother, and looked
into her face with eyes lustrous with happy tears. For, from that lady's
tone and manner, despite her harsh words, she knew that the opposition
was withdrawn, and that Everett's petition was granted.

They were married. It is years ago, now, since their wedding-bells rung
out from the church-tower of Hazlewood, blending with the sweet
spring-air and sunshine of a joyous May-day. The first few years of
their married life were spent in Canada. Then they returned to England,
and Everett Gray put the climax to the astonishment of all who knew him
by purchasing back a great part of Hazlewood with the fruits of his
commercial labors in the other country.

At Hazlewood they settled, therefore. And there, when he grew to be an
old man, Everett Gray lived, at last, the peaceful, happy life most
natural and most dear to him. No one would venture to call the
successful merchant a Visionary; and even his brother owns that "the old
fellow has got more brains, after all, by Jove! than he ever gave him
credit for." Yet, as the same critic, and others of his calibre, often
say of him, "He has some remarkably queer notions. There's no making him
out,--he is so different from other people."

Which he is. There is no denying this fact, which is equally evident in
his daily life, his education of his children, his conduct to his
servants and dependants, his employment of time, his favorite aims in
life, and in everything he does or says, in brief. And of course there
are plenty who cavil at his peculiar views, and who cannot at all
understand his unconventional ways, and his apparent want of all worldly
wisdom in the general conduct of his affairs. And yet, somehow, these
affairs prosper. Although he declined a valuable appointment for his
son, and preferred that he should make his own way in the profession he
had chosen, bound by no obligation, and unfettered by the trammels of
any party,--although he did this, to the astonishment of all who did
_not_ know him, yet is it not a fact that the young barrister's career
has been, and is, as brilliant and successful as though he had had a
dozen influential personages to advance him? And though he permitted his
daughter to marry, not the rich squire's son, nor the baronet, who each
sought her hand, but a man comparatively poor and unknown, who loved
her, and whom she loved, did it not turn out to be one of those
marriages that we can recognize to have been "made in heaven," and even
the worldly-wise see to be happy and prosperous?

But our Everett is growing old. His hair is silver-white, and his tall
figure has learned to droop somewhat as he walks. Under the great
beech-trees at Hazlewood you may have seen him sitting summer evenings,
or sauntering in spring and autumn days, sometimes with his
grandchildren playing about him, but always with _one_ figure near him,
bent and bowed yet more than his own, with a still sweet and lovely face
looking placidly forth from between its bands of soft, white hair.

How they have loved, and do love one another, even to this their old
age! All the best and truest light of that which we call Romance shines
steadily about them yet. No sight so dear to Everett's eyes as that
quiet figure,--no sound so welcome to his ears as her voice. She is all
to him that she ever was,--the sweetest, dearest, best portion of that
which we call his life.

Yes, I speak advisedly, and say he _is_, they _are_. It is strange that
this Visionary, who was wont to be reproached with the unpracticality of
all he did or purposed, the unreality of whose life was a byword, should
yet impress himself and his existence so vividly on those about him that
even now we cannot speak of him as one that is _no more_. He seems still
to be of us, though we do not see him, and his place is empty in the
world.

His wife went first. She died in her sleep, while he was watching her,
holding her hand fast in his. He laid the last kisses on her eyes, her
mouth, and those cold hands.

After that, he seemed _to wait_. They who saw him sitting _alone_ under
the beech-trees, day by day, found something very strangely moving in
the patient serenity of his look. He never seemed sad or lonely through
all that time,--only patiently hopeful, placidly expectant. So the
autumn twilights often came to him as he stood, his face towards the
west, looking out from their old favorite spot.

One evening, when his daughter and her husband came out to him, he did
not linger, as was usual with him, but turned and went forward to meet
them, with a bright smile, brighter than the sunset glow behind him, on
his face. He leaned rather heavily on their supporting arms, as they
went in. At the door, the little ones came running about him, as they
loved to do. Perhaps the very lustre of his face awed them, or the sight
of their mother's tears; for a sort of hush came over them, even to the
youngest, as he kissed and blessed them all.

And then, when they had left the room, he laid his head upon his
daughter's breast, and uttered a few low words. He had been so happy, he
said, and he thanked God for all,--even to this, the end. It had been so
good to live!--it was so happy to die! Then he paused awhile, and closed
his eyes.

"In the silence, I can hear your mother's voice," he murmured, and he
clasped his hands. "O thou most merciful Father, who givest this last,
great blessing, of the new Home, where she waits for me!--and God's love
is over all His worlds!"

He looked up once again, with the same bright, assured smile. That smile
never faded from the dead face; it was the last look which they who
loved him bore forever in their memory.

And so passed our Visionary from that which we call Life.

THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA.

1675.

Raze these long blocks of brick and stone,
These huge mill-monsters overgrown;
Blot out the humbler piles as well,
Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell
The weaving genii of the bell;
Tear from the wild Cocheco's track
The dams that hold its torrents back;
And let the loud-rejoicing fall
Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;
And let the Indian's paddle play
On the unbridged Piscataqua!
Wide over hill and valley spread
Once more the forest, dusk and dread,
With here and there a clearing cut
From the walled shadows round it shut;
Each with its farm-house builded rude,
By English yeoman squared and hewed,
And the grim, flankered blockhouse, bound
With bristling palisades around.

So, haply, shall before thine eyes
The dusty veil of centuries rise,
The old, strange scenery overlay
The tamer pictures of to-day,
While, like the actors in a play,
Pass in their ancient guise along
The figures of my border song:
What time beside Cocheco's flood
The white man and the red man stood,
With words of peace and brotherhood;
When passed the sacred calumet
From lip to lip with fire-draught wet,
And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smoke
Through the gray beard of Waldron broke,
And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea
For mercy, struck the haughty key
Of one who held in any fate
His native pride inviolate!

* * * * *

"Let your ears be opened wide!
He who speaks has never lied.
Waldron of Piscataqua,
Hear what Squando has to say!

"Squando shuts his eyes and sees,
Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.
In his wigwam, still as stone,
Sits a woman all alone,

"Wampum beads and birchen strands
Dropping from her careless hands,
Listening ever for the fleet
Patter of a dead child's feet!

"When the moon a year ago
Told the flowers the time to blow,
In that lonely wigwam smiled
Menewee, our little child.

"Ere that moon grew thin and old,
He was lying still and cold;
Sent before us, weak and small,
When the Master did not call!

"On his little grave I lay;
Three times went and came the day;
Thrice above me blazed the noon,
Thrice upon me wept the moon.

"In the third night-watch I heard,
Far and low, a spirit-bird;
Very mournful, very wild,
Sang the totem of my child.

"'Menewee, poor Menewee,
Walks a path he cannot see:
Let the white man's wigwam light
With its blaze his steps aright.

"'All-uncalled, he dares not show
Empty hands to Manito:
Better gifts he cannot bear
Than the scalps his slayers wear.'

"All the while the totem sang,
Lightning blazed and thunder rang;
And a black cloud, reaching high,
Pulled the white moon from the sky.

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