The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860
V >>
Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19
III.
_Astra castra, numen lumen._
The click of her needles and the soft singing of the night-lamp are the
only sounds breaking the stillness, the awful stillness, of this room.
How the wind blows without! it must be whirling white gusty drifts
through the split hills. If I were as free! Whistling round the gray
gable, tearing the bleak boughs, crying faint, hoarse moans down the
chimneys! A wild, sad gale! There is a lull, a long breathless lull,
before it soughs up again. Oh, it is like a pain! Pain! Why do I think
the word? Must I suffer any more? Am I crazed with opiates? or am I
dying? They are in that drawer,--laudanum, morphine, hyoscyamus, and all
the drowsy sirups,--little drops, but soaring like a fog, and wrapping
the whole world in a dull ache, with no salient sting to catch a groan
on. They are so small, they might be lost in this long, dark room; why
not the pain too, the point of pain, I? A long, dark room; I at one end,
she at the other; the curtains drawn away from me that I may breathe.
Ah, I have been stifled so long! They look down on me, all those old
dead and gone faces, those portraits on the wall,--look all from their
frames at me, the last term of the race, the vanishing summit of their
design. A fierce weapon thrust into the world for evil has that race
been,--from the great gray Willoughby, threatening with his iron eyes
there, to me, the sharp apex of its suffering. A fierce, glittering
blade! Why I alone singled for this curse? Rank blossom, rank decay,
they answer, but falsely. I lie here, through no fault of mine, blasted
by disease, the dread with no relief. A hundred ancestors look from my
walls, and see in me the centre of their lives, of all their little
splendor, of their sins and follies; what slept in them wakes in me. Oh,
let me sleep too!
How long could I live and lose nothing? I saw my face in the hand-glass
this morning,--more lovely than health fashioned it;--transparent skin,
bounding blood, with its fire burning behind the eye, on cheek, on
lip,--a beauty that every pang has aggravated, heightened, sharpened, to
a superb intensity, flushing, rapid, unearthly,--a brilliancy to be
dreamed of. Like a great autumn-leaf I fall, for I am dying,--dying!
Yes, death finds me more beautiful than life made me; but have I lost
nothing? Great Heaven, I have lost all!
A fancy comes to me, that to-day was my birthday. I have forgotten to
mark time; but if it was, I am thirty-two years old. I remember
birthdays of a child,--loving, cordial days. No one remembers to-day.
Why should they? But I ache for a little love. Thirty-two,--that is
young to die! I am too fair, too rich, for death!--not his fit spoil! Is
there no one to save me? no help? can I not escape? Ah, what a vain
eagerness! what an idle hope! Fall back again, heart! Escape? I do not
desire to. Come, come, kind rest! I am tired.
That cap-string has loosened now, and all this golden cataract of hair
has rushed out over the piled pillows. It oppresses and terrifies me. If
I could speak, it seems to me that I would ask Louise to come and bind
it up. Won't she turn and see?
Have I been asleep? What is this in my hands? The amber gods? Oh, yes! I
asked to see them again; I like their smell, I think. It is ten years I
have had them. They enchant; but the charm will not last; nothing will.
I rubbed a little yellow smoke out of them,--a cloud that hung between
him and the world, so that he saw only me,--at least----What am I
dreaming of? All manner of illusions haunt me. Who said anything about
ten years? I have been married ten years. Happy, then, ten years? Oh,
no! One day he woke.--How close the room is! I want some air. Why don't
they do something----
Once, in the pride of a fool, I fear having made some confidence, some
recital of my joy to ears that never had any. Did I say I would not lose
him? Did I say I could live just on the memory of that summer? I lash
myself that I must remember it! that I ever loved him! When he stirred,
when the mist left him, when he found a mere passion had blinded him,
when he spread his easel, when he abandoned love,--was I wretched? I,
too, abandoned love!--more,--I hated! All who hate are wretched. But he
was bound to me! Yes, he might move restlessly,--it only clanked his
chains. Did he wound me? I was cruel. He never spoke. He became
artist,--ceased to be man,--was more indifferent than the cloud. He
could paint me then,--and, revealed and bare, all our histories written
in me, he hung me up beside my ancestors. There I hang. Come from thy
frame, thou substance, and let this troubled phantom go! Come! for he
gave my life to thee. In thee he shut and sealed it all, and left me as
the empty husk. Did she come then? No! I sent for her. I meant to teach
him that he was yet a man,--to open before him a gulf of anguish; but
_I_ slipped down it. Then I dogged them; they never spoke alone; I
intercepted the eye's language; I withered their wintry smiles to
frowns; I stifled their sighs; I checked their breath, their motion.
Idle words passed our lips; we three lived in a real world of silence,
agonized mutes. She went. Summer by summer my father brought her to us.
Always memory was kindled afresh, always sorrow kept smouldering. Once
she came; I lay here; she has not left me since. He,--he also comes; he
has soothed pain with that loveless eye, carried me in untender arms,
watched calmly beside my delirious nights. He who loved beauty has
learned disgust. Why should I care? I, from the slave of bald form,
enlarged him to the master of gorgeous color; his blaze is my ashes. He
studies me. I owe him nothing.
Is it near morning? Have I dozed again? Night is long. The great
hall-clock is striking,--throb after throb on the darkness. I remember,
when I was a child, watching its lengthened pendulum swing as if time
were its own, and it measured the thread slowly, loath to
part,--remember streaking its great ebony case with a little finger,
misting it with a warm breath. Throb after throb,--is it going to peal
forever? Stop, solemn clangor! hearts, stop! Midnight.
The nurses have gone down; she sits there alone. Her bent side-face is
full of pity. Now and then her head turns; the great brown eyes lift
heavily, and lie on me,--heavily, as if the sight of me pained her. Ah,
in me perishes her youth! death enters her world! Besides, she loves me.
I do not want her love,--I would fling it off; but I am faint,--I am
impotent,--I am so cold! Not that she lives, and I die,--not that she
has peace, and I tumult,--not for her voice's music,--not for her eye's
lustre,--not for any charm of her womanly presence,--neither for her
clear, fair soul,--nor that, when the storm and winter pass, and I am
stiff and frozen, she smiles in the sun, and leads new life,--not for
all this I hate her; but because my going gives her what I
lost,--because, I stepped aside, the light falls on her,--because from
my despair springs her happiness. Poor fool! let her be happy, if she
can! Her mother was a Willoughby! And what is a flower that blows on a
grave?
Why do I remember so distinctly one night alone of all my life,--one
night, when we dance in the low room of a seaside cottage,--dance to
Lu's singing? He leads me to her, when the dance is through, brushing
with his head the festooned nets that swing from the rafters,--and in at
the open casement is blown a butterfly, a dead butterfly, from off the
sea. She holds it compassionately till I pin it on my dress,--the wings,
twin magnificences, freckled and barred and dusty with gold, fluttering
at my breath. Some one speaks with me; she strays to the window, he
follows, and they are silent. He looks far away over the gray loneliness
stretching beyond. At length he murmurs: "A brief madness makes my long
misery. Louise, if the earth were dazzled aside from her constant
pole-star to worship some bewildering comet, would she be more forlorn
than I?"
"Dear Rose! your art remains," I hear her say.
He bends lower, that his breath may scorch her brow. "Was I wrong? Am I
right?" he whispers, hurriedly. "You loved me once; you love me now,
Louise, if I were free?"
"But you are not free."
She does not recoil, yet her very atmosphere repels him, while looking
up with those woful eyes blanching her cheek by their gathering
darkness. "And, Rose,"----she sighs, then ceases abruptly, while a
quiver of sudden scorn writhes spurningly down eyelid and nostril and
pains the whole face.
He erects himself, then reaches his hand for the rose in her belt,
glances at me,--the dead thing in my bosom rising and falling with my
turbulent heart,--holds the rose to his lips, leaves her. How keen are
my ears! how flushed my cheek! how eager and fierce my eyes! He
approaches; I snatch the rose and tear its petals in an angry shower,
and then a dim east-wind pours in and scatters my dream like flakes of
foam. All dreams go; youth and hope desert me; the dark claims me. O
room, surrender me! O sickness and sorrow, loose your weary hold!
It maddens me to know that the sun will shine again, the tender grass
grow green, the veery sing, the crocus come. She will walk in the light
and re-gather youth, and I moulder, a forgotten heap. Oh, why not all
things crash to ruin with me?
Pain, pain, pain! Where is my father? Why is he away, when they know I
die? He used to hold me once; he ought to hear me when I call. He would
rest me, and stroke the grief aside,--he is so strong. Where is he?
These amulets stumbling round again? Amber, amber gods, you did mischief
in your day! If I clutched you hard, as Lu did once, all your spells
would be broken.--It is colder than it was. I think I will go to sleep.
What was that? How loud and resonant! It stuns me. It is too sonorous.
Does sound flash? Ah! the hour. Another? How long the silver toll swims
on the silent air! It is one o'clock,--a passing bell, a knell. If I
were at home by the river, the tide would be turning down, down, and out
to the broad, broad sea. Is it worth while to have lived?
Have I spoken? She looks at me, rises, and touches that bell-rope that
always brings him. How softly he opens the door! Waiting, perhaps. Well.
Ten years have not altered him much. The face is brighter,
finer,--shines with the eternal youth of genius. They pause a moment; I
suppose they are coming to me; but their eyes are on each other.
Why must the long, silent look with which he met her the day I got my
amber strike back on me now so vindictively? I remember three looks:
that, and this, and one other,--one fervid noon, a look that drank my
soul, that culminated my existence. Oh, I remember! I lost it a little
while ago. I have it now. You are coming? Can't you hear me? See! these
costly _liqueurs_, these precious perfumes beside me here, if I can
reach them, I will drench the coverlet in them; it shall be white and
sweet as a little child's. I wish they were the great rich lilies of
that day; it is too late for the baby May-flowers. You do not like
amber? There the thread breaks again! the little cruel gods go tumbling
down the floor! Come, lay my head on your breast! kiss my life off my
lips! I am your Yone! I forgot a little while,--but I love you, Rose!
Rose!
* * * * *
Why! I thought arms held me. How clear the space is! The wind from
out-doors, rising again, must have rushed in. There is the quarter
striking. How free I am! No one here? No swarm of souls about me? Oh,
those two faces looked from a great mist, a moment since; I scarcely see
them now. Drop, mask! I will not pick you up! Out, out into the gale!
back to my elements!
So I passed out of the room, down the staircase. The servants below did
not see me, but the hounds crouched and whined. I paused before the
great ebony clock; again the fountain broke, and it chimed the
half-hour; it was half-past one; another quarter, and the next time its
ponderous silver hammers woke the house it would be two. Half-past one?
Why, then, did not the hands move? Why cling fixed on a point five
minutes before the first quarter struck? To and fro, soundless and
purposeless, swung the long pendulum. And, ah! what was this thing I had
become? I had done with time. Not for me the hands moved on their
recurrent circle any more.
I must have died at ten minutes past one.
THE POET'S FRIENDS.
The Robin sings in the elm;
The cattle stand beneath,
Sedate and grave, with great brown eyes,
And fragrant meadow-breath.
They listen to the flattered bird,
The wise-looking, stupid things!
And they never understand a word
Of all the Robin sings.
THE MEMORIAL OF A. B., OR MATILDA MUFFIN.
THE MEMORIAL OF A. B.
_Humbly Showeth_:--
Ladies and gentlemen,--enlightened public,--kind audience,--dear
readers,--or whatever else you may be styled,--whose eyes, from remote
regions of east, west, or next door, solace themselves between the brown
covers of this magazine, making of themselves flowers to its lunar
brilliancy,--I wish to state, with all humility and self-disgust, that I
am what is popularly called a literary woman.
In the present state of society, I should feel less shame in declaring
myself the elect lady of Dunderhed Van Nudel, Esquire, that wealthy
Dutch gentleman, aged seventy, whom we all know. It is true, that, as I
am young and gay and intelligent, while he is old and stupid and very
low Dutch indeed, such an announcement would be equivalent to saying
that I was bought by Mr. Van Nudel for half a million of dollars; but
then that is customary, and you would all congratulate me.
Also, I should stand a better chance of finding favor in your eyes, if I
declared myself to be an indigent tailoress; for no woman should use her
head who can use her hands,--a maxim older than Confucius.
Or even if I were a school-ma'am! (blessed be the man who has brought
them into fashion and the long path!) In that case, you might say, "Poor
thing! isn't she interesting? quite like _the_ school-mistress!"--And I
am not averse to pity, since it is love's poor cousin, nor to belonging
to a class mentioned in Boston literary society. I really am not!
But the plain truth is, I earn my living by writing. Sewing does not
pay. I have no "faculty" at school-keeping; for I invariably spoil all
the good children, and pet all the pretty ones,--a process not
conducive, as I am told, to the development of manners or morals;--so I
write: just as Mr. Jones makes shoes, Mr. Peters harangues the jury, Mr.
Smith sells calico, or Mr. Robinson rolls pills.
For, strange as it may seem, when it is so easy to read, it is hard work
to write,--_bona fide_, undeniable hard work. Suppose my head cracks and
rings and reels with a great ache that stupefies me? In comes Biddy with
a letter.
"The editor of the 'Monthly Signpost' would be much obliged to
Miss Matilda Muffin for a tale of four pages, to make up the
June number, before the end of next week.
"Very respectfully, etc., etc."
Miss Muffin's head looks her in the face, (metaphorically,) and says,
"You can't!"--but her last year's bonnet creaks and rustles from the
bandbox, finally lifts the lid and peeps out. Gracious! the ghost in
Hamlet was not more of an "airy nothing" than that ragged, faded,
dilapidated old structure of crape and blonde. The bonnet retires to the
sound of slow music; the head slinks back and holds its tongue; Miss
Muffin sits down at her table; scratch, scratch, scratch, goes the old
pen, and the ideas catch up with it, it is so shaky; and the words go
tumbling over it, till the _t_s go out without any hats on, and the
eyes--no, the _i_s (_is_ that the way to pluralize them?)--get no dots
at all; and every now and then the head says, softly, "Oh, dear!" Miss
Muffin goes to something called by novel-writers "repose," toward one
o'clock that night, and the next night, and the next; she obliges the
"Monthly Signpost" with a comic story at a low price, and buys herself a
decent little bonnet for Sundays, replenishing her wardrobe generally by
the same process; and the head considers it work, I assure you.
But this is not the special grievance to which I direct this Memorial. I
like to work; it suits me much better to obtain my money by steady,
honest effort than it would to depend on anybody else for one round
cent. If I had a thousand dollars unexpectedly left me by some unknown
benefactor, I don't think it would be worth five cents on the dollar,
compared with what I earn; there is a healthy, trustworthy pleasure in
that, never yet attained by gifted or inherited specie. Neither is it
the publicity of the occupation that I here object to. I knew that,
before I began to write; and many an hour have I cried over the thought
of being known, and talked about, and commented on,--having my dear
name, that my mother called me by, printed on the cover of a magazine,
seeing it in newspapers, hearing it in whispers, when Miss Brown says to
Miss Black under her breath,--"That girl in the straw bonnet is Matilda
Muffin, who writes for the 'Snapdragon' and the 'Signpost.'"
I knew all this, as I say. I dreaded and hated it. I hate it now. But I
had to work, and this was the only way open to me; so I tried to be
brave, and to do what I ought, and let the rest go. I cannot say I am
very brave yet, or that I don't feel all this; but I do not memorialize
against it, because it is necessary to be borne, and I must bear it.
When I go to the dentist's to have a tooth out, I sit down, and hold the
chair tight, and open my mouth as wide as it will open, but I always
say, "Oh! don't, doctor! I can't! I can't possibly!" till the iron
what-d'you-call-it enters my soul and stops my tongue.
Yes, when I began to write, I knew I should some day see my name in
print. I knew people would wonder who and what I was, and how I
looked;--I had done it myself. I knew that I should be delivered over to
be the prey of tongues and the spoil of eyes. I was aware, I think, I am
aware now, of every possible "disagreeable" that can befall the state. I
am accustomed to hear people say, if I venture a modest opinion about a
dinner, "Dear me! as if a literary woman knew anything about
cooking!"--I endure that meekly, sustained by the inner consciousness
that I _can_ cook much better than any artist in that line I ever yet
encountered. Likewise I am used to hear people say, "I suppose you don't
waste your valuable time in sewing?" when a look at my left forefinger
would insure me a fraternal grip from any member of the Seamstress's
Friends Society anywhere. I do not either scold or cry when accidentally
some visitor discovers me fitting my dress or making my bonnet, and
looks at me with a "fearful joy," as if I were on a tight-rope. I even
smile when people lay my ugly shawl or _passe_ bonnet, that I bought
because they were cheap, and wear for the same reason, at the door of
the "eccentricities of genius." And I am case-hardened to the
instantaneous scattering and dodging of young men that ensue the moment
I enter a little party, because "gentlemen are so afraid of literary
women." I don't think gentlemen are; I know two or three who never
conceal a revolver in the breast of their coat when they talk to me, and
who sometimes even offer to go home with me from a tea-party all alone,
and after dark too. It is true, one or two of these are "literary"
themselves; the others I knew before I was dyed blue; which may account
for it. Also I am impervious to anonymous letters, exhorting me to all
kinds of mental and moral improvement, or indulging in idle
impertinences about my private affairs, the result of a knowledge about
me and the aforesaid affairs drawn solely from my "Pieces in Prose and
Verse."
Then as to the matter of the romantic stories that are afloat concerning
me, I am rather amused than otherwise by them. I have a sentimental
name, by the religious and customary ordinance of baptism, legally my
own; and at first, being rather loath to enter the great alliterative
ranks of female writers by my lawful title of Matilda Muffin, I signed
my writings "A. B."
Two reprobatory poems addressed to those initials came to me through
the medium of the "Snapdragon," immediately after my having printed in
that spicy paper a pensive little poem called "The Rooster's Cry": one,
in Spenserian measure, rebuking me for alluding lightly to serious
subjects,--a thing I never do, I am sure, and I can't imagine what "J.
H. P." meant; and another, in hexameter, calling upon me to "arouse,"
and "smile," and "struggle on," and, in short, to stop crying and behave
myself,--only it was said in figures. I'm much obliged to "Quintius" for
the advice; but I should like to explain, that I am subject to the
toothache, and when it is bad I cannot possibly write comic poetry. I
must be miserable, but it's only toothache, thank you!
Then I have heard several times, in the strictest confidence, the whole
history of "A. B., who writes for the 'Snapdragon.'" Somebody told me
she was a lady living on the North River, very wealthy, very haughty,
and very unhappy in her domestic relations. Another said she was a young
widow in Alabama, whose mother was extremely tyrannical, and opposed her
second marriage. A third person declared to me that A. B. was a
physician in the navy,--a highly educated man, but reduced in
circumstances. I think that was a great compliment,--to be actually
taken for a man! I felt it to be "the proudest moment of my life," as
ship-captains say, when they return thanks for the silver teapot richly
chased with nautical emblems, presented by the passengers saved from the
wreck, as a token of gratitude for the hencoops thrown overboard by the
manly commander. However, I called myself a woman in the very next
contribution, for fear of the united wrath of the stronger sex, should I
ever be discovered to have so imposed upon the public; although I know
several old women who remain undiscovered to this day, simply because
they avail themselves of a masculine signature.
There were other romances, too tedious to mention, depicting me
sometimes as a lovely blonde, writing graceful tales beneath a bower of
roses in the warm light of June; sometimes as a respectable old maid,
rather sharp, fierce, and snuffy; sometimes as a tall, delicate,
aristocratic, poetic looking creature, with liquid dark eyes and heavy
tresses of raven hair; sometimes as a languishing, heart-broken woman in
the prime of life, with auburn curls and a slow consumption.
Perhaps it may be as well to silence all conjecture at once, by stating
that I am a woman of----no, I won't say how old, because everybody will
date me from this time forward, and I shall not always be willing to
tell how old I am! I am not very young now, it is true; I am more than
sixteen and less than forty; so when our clergyman requested all between
those ages to remain after service for the purpose of forming a week-day
Bible-class, I sat still, and so did everybody else except Mrs. Van
Doren, whose great-grandchild was christened in the morning;--our church
is a new one.
However, this is digressing. I am not very tall, nor very short; I am
rather odd-looking, but decidedly plain. I have brown hair and eyes, a
pale light complexion, a commonplace figure, pretty good taste in dress,
and a quick sense of the ludicrous, that makes me laugh a great deal,
and have a good time generally.
I live at home, in the town of Blank, in a quiet by-street. My parents
are both living, and we keep one Irish girl. I go to church on Sundays,
and follow my trade week-days.
I write everything I do write in my own room, which is not so pleasant
as a bower of roses in some respects, but is preferable in regard to
earwigs and caterpillars, which are troublesome in bowers. I have a
small pine table to write on, as much elderly furniture as supplies me
places for sleep and my books, a small stove in winter, (which is
another advantage over bowers,) and my "flowing draperies" are blue
chintz, which I bought at a bargain; some quaint old engravings of
Bartolozzi's in black and gilt frames; a few books, among which are
prominently set forth a volume of "The Doctor,"--Nicolo de' Lapi, in
delightful bindings of white parchment,--Thomas a Kempis,--a Bible, of
English type and paper,--and Emerson's Poems, bound in Russia leather.
Not that I have no other books,--grammars, and novels, and cook-books,
in gorgeous array,--but these are within reach from my pillow, when I
want to read myself asleep; and a plaster cast of Minerva's owl mounts
guard above them, curious fowl that it is.
The neighbors think I am a pretty nice girl, and my papa secretly exults
over me as a genius, but he don't say much about it. And there, dear
public, you have Matilda Muffin as she is, which I hope will quash the
romances, amusing though they be.
But when, after much editorial correspondence, and persevering whispers
of kind friends who had been told the facts in confidence, A. B. became
only the pretext of a mystery, and I signed myself by my full name, the
question naturally arose,--"Who _is_ Matilda Muffin?"
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19