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 not only simple and real, it is natural. On every hand, things may
be found that are duplex in form, that associate in pairs, that separate
into halves, that may be divided into two equal parts. Things are
continually sold in pairs, in halves, and in quantities produced by
halving.

The binary base, therefore, is here proposed, as the only proper base
for gradation; and the octonal, as the true commercial base, for
numeration and notation: two bases which in combination form a
binoctonal system that is at once simple, comprehensive, and efficient.

MY LAST LOVE.

I had counted many more in my girlhood, in the first flush of
blossoming,--and a few, good men and true, whom I never meet even now
without an added color; for, at one time or another, I thought I loved
each of them.

"Why didn't I marry them, then?"

For the same reason that many another woman does not. We are afraid to
trust our own likings. Too many of them are but sunrise vapors, very
rosy to begin with, but by mid-day as dingy as any old dead cloud with
the rain all shed out of it. I never see any of those old swains of
mine, without feeling profoundly thankful that I don't belong to him. I
shouldn't want to look over my husband's head in any sense. So they all
got wives and children, and I lived an old maid,--although I was
scarcely conscious of the state; for, if my own eyes or other people's
testimony were to be trusted, I didn't look old, and I'm quite sure I
didn't feel so. But I came to myself on my thirty-second birthday, an
old maid most truly, without benefit of clergy. And thereby hangs this
tale; for on that birthday I first made acquaintance with my last love.

Something like a month before, there had come to Huntsville two
gentlemen in search of game and quiet quarters for the summer. They soon
found that a hotel in a country village affords little seclusion; but
the woods were full of game, the mountain-brooks swarmed with trout too
fine to be given up, and they decided to take a house of their own.
After some search, they fixed on an old house, (I've forgotten whose
"folly" it was called,) full a mile and a half from town, standing upon
a mossy hill that bounded my fields, square and stiff and
weather-beaten, and without any protection except a ragged pine-tree
that thrust its huge limbs beneath the empty windows, as though it were
running away with a stolen house under its arm. The place was musty,
rat-eaten, and tenanted by a couple of ghosts, who thought a fever, once
quite fatal within the walls, no suitable discharge from the property,
and made themselves perfectly free of the quarters in properly weird
seasons. But money and labor cleared out all the cobwebs, (for ghosts
are but spiritual cobwebs, you know,) and the old house soon wore a
charming air of rustic comfort.

I used to look over sometimes, for it was full in view from my
chamber-windows, and see the sportsmen going off by sunrise with their
guns or fishing-rods, or lying, after their late dinner, stretched upon
the grass in front of the house, smoking and reading. Sometimes a
fragment of a song would be dropped down from the lazy wings of the
south wind, sometimes a long laugh filled all the summer air and
frightened the pinewood into echoes, and, altogether, the new neighbors
seemed to live an enviable life. They were very civil people, too; for,
though their nearest path out lay across my fields, and close by the
doorway, and they often stopped to buy fruit or cream or butter, we were
never annoyed by an impertinent question or look. Once only I overheard
a remark not altogether civil, and that was on the evening before my
birthday. One of them, the elder, said, as he went away from my house
with a basket of cherries, that he should like to get speech with that
polyglot old maid, who read, and wrote, and made her own butter-pats.
The other answered, that the butter was excellent at any rate, and
perhaps she had a classical cow; and they went down the lane laughingly
disputing about the matter, not knowing that I was behind the
currant-bushes.

"Polyglot old maid!" I thought, very indignantly, as I went into the
house. "I've a mind not to sell them another cake of my butter. But I
wonder if people call me an old maid. I wonder if I am one."

I thought of it all the evening, and dreamt of it all night, waking the
next morning with a new realization of the subject. That first sense of
a lost youth! How sharp and strong it comes! That suddenly opened north
door of middle life, through which the winter winds rush in, sweeping
out of the southern windows all the splendors of the earlier time; it is
like a sea-turn in late summer. It has seemed to be June all along, and
we thought it was June, until the wind went round to the east, and the
first red leaf admonished us. By-and-by we close, as well as we may,
that open door, and look out again from the windows upon blooms,
beautiful in their way, to which some birds yet sing; but, alas! the
wind is still from the east, and blows as though, far away, it had lain
among icebergs.

So I mused all the morning, watering the sentiment with a bit of a
shower out of my cloud; and when the shadows turned themselves, I went
out to see how old age would look to me in the fields and woods. It was
a delicious afternoon, more like a warm dream of hay-making, odorous,
misty, sleepily musical, than a waking reality, on which the sun shone.
Tremulous blue clouds lay down all around upon the mountains, and lazy
white ones lost themselves in the waters; and through the dozing air,
the faint chirp of robin or cricket, and ding of bells in the woods, and
mellow cut of scythe, melted into one song, as though the heart-beat of
the luscious midsummer-time had set itself to tune.

I walked on to loiter through the woods. No dust-brush for brain or
heart like the boughs of trees! There dwells a truth, and pure, strong
health within them, an ever-returning youth, promising us a glorious
leafage in some strange spring-time, and a symmetry and sweetness that
possess us until our thoughts grow skyward like them, and wave and sing
in some sunnier strata of soul-air. In the woods I was a girl again, and
forgot the flow of the hours in their pleasant companionship. I must
have grown tired and sat down by a thicket of pines to rest, though I
have forgotten, and perhaps I had fallen asleep; for suddenly I became
conscious of a sharp report, and a sharper pain in my shoulder, and,
tearing off my cape, I found the blood was flowing from a wound just
below the joint. I remember little more, for a sudden faintness came
over me; but I have an indistinct remembrance of people coming up, of
voices, of being carried home, and of the consternation there, and long
delay in obtaining the surgeon. The pain of an operation brought me
fully to my senses; and when that was over, I was left alone to sleep,
or to think over my situation at leisure. I'm afraid I had but little of
a Christian spirit then. All my plans of labor and pleasure spoiled by
this one piece of carelessness! to call it by the mildest term. All
those nice little fancies that should have grown into real
flesh-and-blood articles for my publisher, hung up to dry and shrivel
without shape or comeliness! The garden, the dairy, the new bit of
carriage-way through the beeches,--my pet scheme,--the new music, the
sewing, all laid upon the shelf for an indefinite time, and I with no
better employment than to watch the wall-paper, and to wonder if it
wasn't almost dinner- or supper-time, or nearly daylight! To be sure, I
knew and thought of all the improving reflections of a sick-room; but it
was much like a mild-spoken person making peace among twenty quarrelsome
ones. You can see him making mouths, but you don't hear a word he says.

A sick mind breeds fever fast in a sick body, and by night I was in a
high fever, and for a day or two knew but little of what went on about
me. One of the first things I heard, when I grew easier, was, that my
neighbor, the sportsman, was waiting below to hear how I was. It was the
younger one whose gun had wounded me; and he had shown great solicitude,
they said, coming several times each day to inquire for me. He brought
some birds to be cooked for me, too,--and came again to bring some
lilies he had gone a mile to fetch, he told the girl. Every day he came
to inquire, or to bring some delicacy, or a few flowers, or a new
magazine for me, until the report of his visit came to be an expected
excitement, and varied the dull days wonderfully. Sickness and seclusion
are a new birth to our senses, oftentimes. Not only do we get a real
glimpse of ourselves, undecked and unclothed, but the commonest habits
of life, and the things that have helped to shape them day by day, put
on a sort of strangeness, and come to shake hands with us again, and
make us wonder that they should be just exactly what they are. We get at
the primitive meaning of them, as if we rubbed off the nap of life, and
looked to see how the threads were woven; and they come and go before us
with a sort of old newness that affects us much as if we should meet our
own ghost some time, and wonder if we are really our own or some other
person's housekeeper.

I went through all this, and came out with a stock of small facts
beside,--as, that the paper-hanger had patched the hangings in my
chamber very badly in certain dark spots, (I had got several headaches,
making it out,)--that the chimney was a little too much on one
side,--that certain boards in the entry-floor creaked of their own
accord in the night,--that Neighbor Brown had tucked a few new shingles
into the roof of his barn, so that it seemed to have broken out with
them,--and any number of other things equally important. At length I got
down-stairs, and was allowed to see a few friends. Of course there was
an inundation of them; and each one expected to hear my story, and to
tell a companion one, something like mine, only a little more so. It was
astonishing, the immense number of people that had been hurt with guns.
No wonder I was sick for a day or two afterward. I was more prudent next
time, however, and, as the gossips had got all they wanted, I saw only
my particular friends. Among these my neighbor, the sportsman, insisted
on being reckoned, and after a little hesitation we were obliged to
admit him. I say we,--for, on hearing of my injury, my good cousin, Mary
Mead, had come to nurse and amuse me. She was one of those safe,
serviceable, amiable people, made of just the stuff for a satellite, and
she proved invaluable to me. She was immensely taken with Mr. Ames, too,
(I speak of the younger, for, after the first call of condolence, the
elder sportsman never came,) and to her I left the task of entertaining
him, or rather of doing the honors of the house,--for the gentleman
contrived to entertain himself and us.

Now don't imagine the man a hero, for he was no such thing. He was very
good-looking,--some might say handsome,--well-bred, well educated, with
plenty of common information picked up in a promiscuous intercourse with
town and country people, rather fine tastes, and a great, strong,
magnanimous, physical nature, modest, but perfectly self-conscious. That
was his only charm for me. I despise a mere animal; but, other things
being equal, I admire a man who is big and strong, and aware of his
advantages; and I think most women, and very refined ones, too, love
physical beauty and strength much more than they are willing to
acknowledge. So I had the same admiration for Mr. Ames that I should
have had for any other finely proportioned thing, and enjoyed him very
much, sitting quietly in my corner while he chatted with Mary, or told
me stories of travel or hunting, or read aloud, which he soon fell into
the way of doing.

We did try, as much as hospitality permitted, to confine his visits to a
few ceremonious calls; but he persisted in coming almost every day, and
walked in past the girl with that quiet sort of authority which it is so
difficult to resist. In the same way he took possession of Mary and me.
He was sure it must be very dull for both of us; therefore he was going,
if we would pardon the liberty, to offer his services as reader, while
my nurse went out for a ride or a walk. Couldn't I sit out under the
shadow of the beech-trees, as well as in that hot room? He could lift
the chair and me perfectly well, and arrange all so that I should be
comfortable. He would like to superintend the cooking of some birds he
brought one day. He noticed that the girl didn't do them quite as nicely
as he had learned to do them in the woods. And so in a thousand things
he quietly made us do as he chose, without seeming to outrage any rule
of propriety. When I was able to sit in a carriage, he persuaded me to
drive with him; and I had to lean on his arm, when I first went round
the place to see how matters went on.

Once I protested against his making himself so necessary to us, and told
him that I didn't care to furnish the gossips so much food as we were
doing.

When I turned him out of doors, he would certainly stay away, he said;
but he thought, that, as long as I was an invalid, I needed some one to
think and act for me and save me the trouble, and, as no one else seemed
disposed to take the office, he thought it was rather his duty and
privilege,--especially, he added, with a slight smile, as he was quite
sure that it was not very disagreeable to us. As for the gossips, he
didn't think they would make much out of it, with such an excellent
duenna as Cousin Mary,--and, indeed, he heard the other day that he was
paying attention to her.

I thought it all over by myself, when he had gone, and came to the
conclusion that it was not necessary for me to resign so great a
pleasure as his society had become, merely for the fear of what a few
curious people might say. Even Mary, cautious as she was, protested
against banishing him for such a reason; and, after a little talking
over of the matter among ourselves, we decided to let Mr. Ames come as
often as he chose, for the remaining month of his stay.

That month went rapidly enough, for I was well enough to ride and walk
out, and half the time had Mr. Ames to accompany me. I got to value him
very much, as I knew him better, and as he grew acquainted with my
peculiarities; and we were the best friends in the world, without a
thought of being more. No one would have laughed at that more than we,
there was such an evident unsuitableness in the idea. At length the time
came for him to leave Huntsville; his house was closed, except one room
where he still preferred to remain, and his friend was already gone. He
came to take tea with us for the last time, and made himself as
agreeable as ever, although it evidently required some effort to do so.
Soft-hearted Cousin Mary broke down and went off crying when he bade her
good-bye, after tea; but I was not of such stuff, and laughingly rallied
him on the impression he had made.

"Get your bonnet, and walk over to the stile with me, Miss Rachel," he
said. "It isn't sunset quite yet, and the afternoon is warm. Come! it's
the last walk we shall take together."

I followed him out, and we went almost silently across the fields to the
hill that overlooked the strip of meadow between our houses. There was
the stile over which I had looked to see him spring, many a time.

"Sit down a moment, until the sun is quite down," he said, making room
for me beside him on the topmost step. "See how splendid that sky is! a
pavilion for the gods!"

"I should think they were airing all their finery," I answered. "It
looks more like a counter spread with bright goods than anything else I
can think of."

"That's a decidedly vulgar comparison, and you're not in a spiritual
mood at all," he said. "You've snubbed me two or three times to-night,
when I've tried to be sentimental. What's amiss with you?" and he bent
his eyes, full of a saucy sort of triumph, upon mine.

"I don't like parting with friends; it sets me all awry," I said, giving
back his own self-assured look. I was sorry to have him go; but if he
thought I was going to cry or blush, he was mistaken.

"You'll write to me, Miss Rachel?" he asked.

"No, Mr. Ames,--not at all," I said.

"Not write? Why not?" he asked, in astonishment.

"Because I don't believe in galvanizing dead friendships," I answered.

"Dead friendships, Miss Rachel? I hope ours has much life in it yet," he
said.

"It's in the last agony, Sir. It will be comfortably dead and buried
before long, with a neat little epitaph over it,--which is much the best
way to dispose of them finally, I think."

"You're harder than I thought you were," he said. "Is that the way you
feel towards all your friends?"

"I love my friends as well as any one," I answered. "But I never hold
them when they wish to be gone. My life-yarn spins against some other
yarn, catches the fibres, and twists into the very heart"----

"So far?" he asked, turning his eyes down to mine.

"Yes," I said, coolly,--"for the time being. You don't play at your
friendships, do you? If so, I pity you. As I was saying, they're like
one thread. By-and-by one spindle is moved, the strands spin away from
each other, and become strange yarn. What's the use of sending little
locks of wool across to keep them acquainted? They're two yarns from
henceforth. Reach out for some other thread,--there's plenty near,--and
spin into that. We're made all up of little locks from other people, Mr.
Ames. Won't it be strange, in that great Hereafter, to hunt up our own
fibres, and return other people's? It would take about forty-five
degrees of an eternity to do that."

"I shall never return mine," he said. "I couldn't take myself to pieces
in such a style. But won't you write at all?"

"To what purpose? You'll be glad of one letter,--possibly of two. Then
it will be, 'Confound it! here's a missive from that old maid! What a
bore! Now I suppose I must air my wits in her behalf; but, if you ever
catch me again,'----_Exit_."

"And you?" he asked, laughing.

"I shall be as weary as you, and find it as difficult to keep warmth in
the poor dying body. No, Mr. Ames. Let the poor thing die a natural
death, and we'll wear a bit of crape a little while, and get a new
friend for the old."

"So you mean to forget me altogether?"

"No, indeed! I shall recollect you as a very pleasant tale that is
told,--not a friend to hanker after. Isn't that good common sense?"

"It's all head-work,--mere cold calculation," he said; "while I"----He
stopped and colored.

"Your gods, there, are downright turn-coats," I said, coming down from
the stile. "Their red mantles are nothing but pearl-colored now, and
presently they'll be russet-gray. That whippoorwill always brings the
dew with him, too; so I must go home. Good-night, and good-bye, Mr.
Ames."

"I scarcely know how to part with you," he said, taking my hand. "It's
not so easy a thing to do."

"People say, 'Good-bye,' or 'God bless you,' or some such civil phrase,
usually," I said, with just the least curl of my lip,--for I knew I had
got the better of him.

He colored again, and then smiled a little sadly.

"Ah! I'm afraid I leave a bigger lock than I take," he exclaimed. "Well,
then, good friend! good-bye, and God bless you, too! Don't be quite so
hard as you promise to be."

I missed him very much, indeed; but if any think I cried after him, or
wrote verses, or soliloquized for his sake, they are much mistaken. I
had lost friends before, and made it a point to think just as little of
them as possible, until the sore spot grew strong enough to handle
without wincing. Besides, my cousin stayed with me, and all my good
friends in the village had to come out for a call or a visit to see how
the land lay; so I had occupation enough. Once in a while I used to look
over to the old house, and wish for one good breezy conversation with
its master; and when the snow came and lay in one mass upon the old
roof, clear down to the eaves, like a night-cap pulled down to the eyes
of a low-browed old woman, I moved my bed against the window that looked
that way. These forsaken nests are gloomy things enough!

I had no thought of hearing again of him or from him, and was surprised,
when, in a month, a review came, and before long another, and afterwards
a box, by express, with a finely kept bouquet, and, in mid-winter, a
little oil-painting,--a delicious bit of landscape for my _sanctum_, as
he said in the note that accompanied it. I heard from him in this way
all winter, although I never sent word or message back again, and tried
to think I was sorry that he did not forget me, as I had supposed he
would. Of course I never thought of acknowledging to myself that it was
possible for me to love him. I was too good a sophist for that; and,
indeed, I think that between a perfect friendship and a perfect love a
fainter distinction exists than many people imagine. I have known
likings to be colored as rosily as love, and seen what called itself
love as cold as the chilliest liking.

One day, after spring had been some time come, I was returning from a
walk and saw that Mr. Ames's house was open. I could not see any person
there; but the door and windows were opened, and a faint smoke crept out
of the chimney and up among the new spring foliage after the squirrels.
I had walked some distance, and was tired, and the weather was not
perfect; but I thought I would go round that way and see what was going
on. It was one of those charming child-days in early May, laughing and
crying all in one, the fine mist-drops shining down in the sun's rays,
like star-dust from some new world in process of rasping up for use. I
liked such days. The showers were as good for me as for the trees. I
grew and budded under them, and they filled my soul's soil full of
singing brooks.

When I reached the lawn before the door, Mr. Ames came out to see
me,--so glad to meet that he held my hand and drew me in, asking two or
three times how I was and if I were glad to see him. He had called at
the house and seen Cousin Mary, on his way over, he said,--for he was
hungering for a sight of us. He was not looking as well as when he left
in the autumn,--thinner, paler, and with a more anxious expression when
he was not speaking; but when I began to talk with him, he brightened
up, and seemed like his old self. He had two or three workmen already
tearing down portions of the finishing, and after a few moments asked me
to go round and see what improvements he was to make. We stopped at last
at his chamber, a room that looked through the foliage towards my house.

"This is my lounging-place," he said, pointing to the sofa beneath the
window. "I shall sit here with my cigar and watch you this summer; so be
circumspect! But are you sure that you are glad to see me?"

"To be sure. Do you take me for a heathen?" I said. "But what are you
making such a change for? Couldn't the old house content you?"

"It satisfies me well enough; but I expect visitors this summer who are
quite fastidious, and this old worm-eaten wood-work wouldn't do for
them. What makes you look so dark? Don't you like the notion of my
lady-visitors?"

"I didn't know that they were to be ladies until you told me," I said;
"and it's none of my business whom you entertain, Mr. Ames."

"There wasn't much of a welcome for them in your face, at any rate," he
answered. "And to tell the truth, I am not much pleased with the
arrangement myself. But they took a sudden fancy for coming, and no
amount of persuasion could induce them to change their minds. It's
hardly a suitable place for ladies; but if they will come, they must
make the best of it."

"How came you ever to take a fancy to this place? and what makes you
spend so much money on it?" I asked.

"You don't like to see the money thrown away," he said, laughing. "The
truth is, that I've got a skeleton, like many another man, and I've been
trying these two years to get away from it. The first time I stopped to
rest under this tree, I felt light-hearted. I don't know why, except it
was some mysterious influence; but I loved the place, and I love it no
less now, although my skeleton has found a lodging-place here too."

"Of course," I said, "and very appropriately. The house was haunted
before you came."

"It was haunted for me afterward," he said softly, more to himself than
to me; "sweet, shadowy visions I should be glad to call up now." And he
turned away and swallowed a sigh.

I pitied him all the way home, and sat up to pity him, looking through
the soft May starlight to see the lamp burning steadily at his window
until after midnight. From that time I seemed to have a trouble,--though
I could scarcely have named or owned it, it was so indefinite.

He came to see me a few days afterward, and sat quite dull and
abstracted until I warmed him up with a little lively opposition. I
vexed him first, and then, when I saw he was interested enough to talk,
I let him have a chance; and I had never seen him so interesting. He
showed me a new phase of his character, and I listened, and answered him
in as few words as possible, that I might lose nothing of the
revelation. When he got up to go away, I asked him where he had been to
learn and think so much since the last autumn. He began to be, I thought
and hoped, what a sterner teaching might have made him before.

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