The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864

"You know, dear child, I should,—we all should, terribly."

"But, Vivia, I mean, that you—that I"—

He paused, the ardor and eagerness suspended on cheek and lip, for Vivia met his glance and understood its simple speech,—since in some degree a dark eye lets you into the soul, where a blue one bluffs you off with its blaze, and under all its lucent splendor is as impenetrable as a turquoise. A girl of more vanity would have waited for plainer words. But Vivia only placed her warm hand on his, and said gently,—

"Ray, I love Beltran."

There was a moment's quiet, while Ray looked away,—supporting his chin upon one hand, and a black cloud sweeping torridly down the stern face. One sharp struggle. A moment's quiet. Into it a wild rose kept shaking sweetness. After it a vireo broke into tremulous melody, gushing higher, fuller, stronger, clearer. Ray turned, his eyes wet, his face beaming. Said he,—

"I am more glad than if it were myself!"

Then Vivia bent, and, flushed with noble shame, she kissed him on the lips. A word, a grasp, she was leaning alone over the old stone wall, the birds were piping and fluting about her, and Ray was gone.

A month of rushing over land and lake, of resting at the very spots where he and Beltran had stayed together three years ago, of repeating the brief strolls they took, of reading again and again that last note, and Ray had crossed the great river of the West, and reached the headquarters of his regiment. There, induing their uniforms, and training their horses, all of which were yet to be shod, they brushed about the country, and skirmished with guerrillas, until going into camp for thorough drill preparatory to active service.

Convoying Government-trains through a region where were assembled in their war-paint thousands of Indians from the wild tribes of the plains and hills was venturous work enough, but it was not that to which Ray aspired. He must be one of those cherubim who on God's bidding speed; he could not serve with those who only stand and wait. His hot soul grew parched and faint with longing, and all the instincts of his battling blood began to war among themselves. At length one night there was hammering and clinking at the red field-fires, and by daybreak they were off for a mad gallop over plain and mountain, down river-banks and across deserts into New Mexico.

Fording the shallow Arkansas, trailing their way through prairie and timber,—reaching and skirting the scorching stretch,—riding all day, consumed with thirst, from green-mantling pool to pool, till the last lay sixty miles behind them, and men and horses made desperately for the stream, dashing in together to drink their fill, when they found it again foaming down the centre of its vast level plain, that receded twenty miles on either side without shrub or hillock,—finally their path wound in among the hills, and a day dawned that Ray will never forget.

The stars were large and solemn, hovering golden out of the high, dark heaven, as the troop defiled into the cañon; they glinted with a steely lustre through the roof of fallen trees that arched the gorge from side to side, then a wind of morning blew and they grew pallid and wan in a shining haze, and, towering far up above them, vaguely terrific in shadow, the horsemen saw the heights they were to climb all grayly washed in the night-dew. So they swept up the mountain-side in their gay and breezy career, on from ascent to ascent, from abutment to abutment, crossing shrunken torrents, winding along sheer precipices, up into the milky clouds of heaven itself, till the rosy flare of dawn bathed all the air about them. There they halted, while, struggling after them, the first triumphant beam struck the bosses of their harness to glittering jewel-points, and, breaking through layer on layer of curdling vapor at their feet, suffused it to a wondrous fleece, where carnation and violet and the fire that lurks in the opal, wreathing with gorgeous involution, seethed together, until, at last, the whole resplendent mist wound itself away in silver threads on the spindles of the wind. Then boot in the stirrup again, onward, over the mountain's ridge, desolate rook defying the sun, downward, plunging through hanging forests, clearing the chasm, bridging ravines, and still at noon the eagles, circling and screaming above them, shook over them the dew from their plumes. Downward afresh in their wild ride, the rainbows of the cascades flying beside them, their afternoon shadows streaming up behind them, darkness beginning to gather in the deeps below them, the mighty mountain-masses around rearing themselves impenetrably in boding blackness and mystery against the yellow gleam, the purple breath of evening wrapping them, the dew again, again the stars, and they camped at the foot of a spur of hills with a waterfall for sentry on their left.

Through all the dash of the day, Ray had been in sparkling spirits, a very ecstasy of excitement, brimmed with an exuberance of valiant glee that played itself away in boyish freaks of daring and reckless acts of horsemanship. Now a loftier mood had followed, and, still wrought to some extreme tension, full of blind anticipation and awful assurance, he sat between the camp-fires, his hands clasped over his knees, and watched the evening star where it hung in a cleft of the rocks and seemed like the advent of some great spirit of annunciation. The tired horses had been staked out to graze, a temporary abatis erected, scouting-parties sent off in opposite directions, and at last the frosty air grew mild and mellow over the savory steam of broiling steaks and coffee smoking on beds of coals. There was a moment's lull in the hum of the little encampment, in all the jest and song and jingling stir of this scornfully intrepid company; perhaps for an instant the sense of the wilderness overawed them; perhaps it was only the customary precursor of increasing murmur;—before leaving his place, Ray suddenly stooped and laid his ear on the earth. There it was! Far off, far off, the phantasmal stroke of hoofs, rapid, many, unswerving. It had come,—all that he had awaited,—fate, or something else. Low and clear in the distance one bugle blew blast of warning. When he rose, the great yellow planet, wheeling slowly down the giant cleft in the rock, had vanished from sight.

Every man was on his feet, the place in alarum. Behind and beside them loomed the precipice and the waterfall;—there was surrender, there was conquest; there was no retreat. The fires were extinguished, the breastworks strengthened, weapons adjusted, and all the ireful preparations for hasty battle made. Then they expected their foe. Slowly over the crown of the mountain above them an aurora crept and brandished its spears.

As they waited there those few breathless moments, Ray examined his rifle coolly enough, and listened to the chirp of a solitary cricket that sung its thin strain so unbrokenly on the edge of strife as to represent something sublime in its petty indifference. He was stationed on the extreme left; near him the tumult of the torrent drowned much discordant noise, its fairy scarf forever forming and falling and floating on the evening air. He thought of Vivia sitting far away and looking out upon the quiet starlight night; then he thought of swampy midnight lairs, with maddened men in fevered covert there,—of little children crying for their mothers,—of girls betrayed to hell,—of flesh and blood at price,—of blistering, crisping fagot and stake to-day,—of all the anguish and despair down there before him. And with the vivid sting of it such a wrath raged along his veins, such a holy fire, that it seemed there were no arms tremendous enough for his handling, through his shut teeth darted imprecatory prayers for the power of some almighty vengeance, his soul leaped up in impatient fury, his limbs tingled for the death-grapple, when suddenly sound surged everywhere about them and they were in the midst of conflict. Silver trumpet-peals and clash and clang of iron, crying voices, whistling, singing, screaming shot, thunderous drum-rolls, sharp sheet of flame and instant abyss of blackness, horses' heads vaulting into sight, spurts of warm blood upon the brow, the bullet rushing like a blast beside the ear, all the terrible tempest of attack, trampled under the flashing hoof, climbing, clinching, slashing, back-falling beneath cracking revolvers, hand to hand in the night, both bands welded in one like hot and fusing metal, a spectral struggle of shuddering horror only half guessed by lurid gleams and under the light cloud flying across the stars. Clearly and remotely over the plain the hidden east sent up a glow into the sky; its reflection lay on Ray; he fought like one possessed of a demon, scattering destruction broadcast, so fiercely his anger wrapped him, white and formidable. Fresh onset after repulse, and, like the very crest of the toppling wave, one shadowy horseman in all the dark rout, spurring forward, the fight reeling after him, the silver lone star fitfully flashing on his visor, the boy singled for his rifle;—inciting such fearless rivalry, his fall were the fall of a hundred. Something hindered; the marksman delayed an instant; he would not waste a shot; and watching him, the dim outline, the sweeping sabre, the proud prowess, a strange yearning pity seized Ray, and he had half the mind to spare. In the midst of the shock and uproar there came to him a pulse of the brain's double action; he seemed long ago to have loved, to have admired, to have gloried in this splendid valor. But with the hint, and the humanity of it, back poured the ardor of his sacred devotion, all the impulsions of his passionate purpose: here was God's work! And then, with one swift bound of magnificent daring and defiance, the horseman confronted him, the fore-feet of his steed planted firmly half up the abatis, and his steel making lightnings round about him. There was a blinding flare of light full upon Ray's fiery form; in the sudden succeeding darkness horseman and rider towered rigid like a monolith of black marble. A great voice cried his name, a sabre went hurtling in one shining crescent across the white arc of the waterfall. Too late! There was another flare of light, but this time on the rider's face, a sound like the rolling of the heavens together in a scroll, and Ray, in one horrid, dizzy blaze, saw the broad gleam of the ivory brow, of the azure fire in the eyes, heard the heavy, downfalling crash, and, leaping over the abatis, deep into the midst of the slippery, raging death below, seized and drew something away, and fell upon it prostrate. There, under the tossing torrent, dragging himself up to the seal of their agony and their reproach, Ray looked into those dead eyes, which, lifted beyond the everlasting stars, felt not that he had crossed their vision.

Far away from outrage and disaster, many a weary stretch of travel, the meadow-side cottage basked in the afternoon sunlight of late Indian-summer. All the bare sprays of its shadowing limes quivered in the warmth of their purple life against a divine depth of heaven, and the woody distances swathed themselves in soft blue smoke before the sighing south-wind.

Round the girl who sat on the low door-stone, with idle hands crossed before her, puffs of ravishing resinous fragrance floated and fainted. Two butterflies, that spread their broad yellow wings like detached flakes of living sunshine stolen out of the sweet November weather, fluttered between the glossy darkness of her hair and a little posthumous rose, that, blowing beside the door, with time only half to unfold its white petals, surveyed the world in a quaint and sad surprise.

Vivia looked on all the tender loveliness of the dying year with a listless eye: waiting, weary waiting, makes the soul torpid to all but its pain. It was long since there had been any letter from Ray. In all this oppression of summer and of autumn there had come no report of Beltran. Her heart had lost its proud assurance, worn beneath the long strain of such suspense. Could she but have one word from him, half the term of her own life would be dust in the balance. A thousand fragmentary purposes were ever flitting through her thought. If she might know that he was simply living, if she could be sure he wanted her, she would make means to break through that dividing line, to find him, to battle by his side, to die at his feet! Her Beltran! so grave, so good, so heroic! and the thought of him in all his pride and beauty and power, in all his lofty gentleness and tender passion, in his strength tempered with genial complaisance and gracious courtesy, sent the old glad life, for a second, spinning from heart to lip.

The glassy lake began to ruffle itself below her, feeling the pulses of its interfluent springs, or sending through unseen sluices word of nightfall and evening winds to all its clustering companions that darkened their transparent depths in forest-shadows. As she saw it, and thought how soon now it would ice itself anew, the remembrance rushed over her, like a warm breath, of the winter's night after their escape from its freezing pool, when Beltran sat with them roasting chestnuts and spicing ale before the fire that so gayly crackled up the kitchen-chimney, a night of cheer. And how had it all faded! whither had they all separated? where were those brothers now? Heaven knew.

It had been a hard season, these months at the cottage. The price of labor had been high enough to exceed their means, and so the land had yielded ill, the grass was uncut on many a meadow; Ray's draft had not been honored; Vivia had of course received no dividend from her Tennessee State-bonds, and her peach-orchards were only a place of forage. Still Vivia stayed at the cottage, not so much by fervent entreaty, or because she had no other place to go to, as because there were strange, strong ties binding her there for a while. Should all else fail, with the ripened wealth of her voice at command, her future was of course secure from want. But there was a drearier want at Vivia's door, which neither that nor any other wealth would ever meet.

Little Jane came up the field with a basket of the last barberries lightly poised upon her head. A narrow wrinkle was beginning to divide the freckled fairness of her forehead. She kept it down with many an endeavor. Trying to croon to herself as she passed, and stopping only to hang one of the scarlet girandoles in Vivia's braids, she went in. The sunshine, loath to leave her pleasant little figure, followed after her, and played about her shadow on the floor.

Vivia still sat there and questioned the wide atmosphere, that, brooding palpitant between her and the lake, still withheld the desolating secret that horizon must have whispered to horizon throughout the aching distance.

"Oh that the bells in all these silent spires
Would clash their clangor on the sleeping air,
Ring their wild music out with throbbing choirs,
Ring peace in everywhere!"

she sang, and trembled as she sang. But there the burden broke, and rising, her eyes shaded by her hand, Vivia gazed down the lonely road where a stage-coach rolled along in a cloud of dust. What prescience, what instinct, it was that made her throw the shawl over her head, the shawl that Beltran liked to have her wear, and hasten down the field and away to lose herself in the wood, she alone could have told.

The slow minutes crept by, the coach had passed at length with loud wheel and resounding lash, its last dust was blowing after it, and it had left upon the door-stone a boy in army-blue, with his luggage beside him. A ghastly visage, a shrunken form, a crippled limb, were what he brought home from the war. With his one foot upon the threshold, he paused, and turned the face, gray under all its trace of weather, and furrowed, though so young, to meet the welcoming wind. He gazed upon the high sky out of which the sunshine waned, on the long champaign blending its gold and russet in one, on the melancholy forest over which the twilight was stealing; he lifted his cap with a gesture as if he bade it all farewell,—then he grasped his crutch and entered.

Without a word, Mrs. Vennard dropped the needles she was sorting upon the mat about her. Little Jane sprang forward, but checked herself in a strange awe.

"Let me go to bed, auntie," said he, with a dry sob; "and I never want to get up again!"

Midnight was winding the world without in a white glimmer of misty moonlight, when the sharp beam of a taper smote Ray's sleepless eyes, and he saw Vivia at last standing before him. Over her wrapper clung the old shawl whose snowy web was sown with broidery of linnæa-bells, green vine and rosy blossom. Round her shoulders fell her shadowy hair. Through her slender fingers the redness of the flame played, and on her cheek a hectic coming and going like the broad beat and flush of an artery left it whiter than the spectral moonlight on the pane. She took away her hand, and let the illumination fall full upon his face,—a face haggard as a dead man's.

"Ray," she said, "where is Beltran?" Only silence replied to her. He lay and stared up at her in a fixed and glassy glare. Breathless silence. Then Ray groaned, and turned his face to the wall. Vivia blew out the light.

The weeks crept away with the setting-in of the frosts. Little Jane's heart was heavy for all the misery she saw about her, but she had no time to make moan. Ray's amputated ankle was giving fresh trouble, and after that was well over, he still kept his room, refusing food or fire, and staring with hot, wakeful eyes at the cold ceiling. Vivia lingered, subdued and pale, beside the hearth, doing any quiet piece of work that came to hand; no one had seen her shed tears,—she had shown no strenuous sorrow; on the night of Ray's return she had slept her first unbroken sleep for months; her nerves, stretched so intensely and so long, lay loosely now in their passionate reaction; some element more interior than they saved her from prostration. She stayed there, sad and still, no longer any sparkle or flush about her, but with a mildness so unlike the Vivia of June that it had in it something infinitely touching. She would have been glad to assist little Jane in her crowded duties, yet succeeded only in being a hindrance; and learning a little of broths and diet-drinks every day, she contented herself with sitting silent and dreamy, and transforming old linen garments into bandages. Mrs. Vennard, meanwhile, waited on her nephew and bewailed herself.

But for little Jane,—she had no time to bewail herself. She had all these people, in fact, on her hands, and that with very limited means to meet their necessities. It was true they need not experience actual want,—but there was her store to be managed so that it should be at once wholesome and varied, and the first thing to do was to take an account of stock. The autumn's work had already been well done. She had carried berries enough to market to let her preserve her quinces and damsons in sirups clear as sunshine, and make her tiny allowance of currant and blackberry wines, where were innocently simulated the flavors of rare vintages. Crook-necked squashes decked the tall chimney-piece amid bunches of herbs and pearly strings of onions. She and Vivia had gathered the ripened apples themselves, and now goodly garlands of them hung from the attic-rafters, above the dried beans whose blossoms had so sweetened June, and above last year's corn-bins. That corn the first passing neighbor should take to mill and exchange a portion of for cracked wheat; and as the flour-barrel still held out, they would be tolerably well off for cereals, little Jane thought. They had kept only one cow, and Tommy Low would attend to her for the sake of his suppers,—suppers at which Vivia must forego her water-cresses now; but Janet had a bed of mushrooms growing down-cellar, that, broiled and buttered, were, she fancied, quite equal to venison-steaks. The hens, of course, must be sacrificed, all but a dozen of them; for, as there was no fresh meat for them in winter, they wouldn't lay, and would be only a dead weight, she said to herself, as, with her apron thrown over her neck, she stood watching them, finger on lip. However, that would give them poultry all through the holidays. Then there were the pigs to be killed on halves by a neighbor, as almost everything else out-doors had now to be done; and when that was accomplished, she found no time to call her soul her own while making her sausage and bacon and souse and brawn. Part of the pork would produce salt fish, without which what farm-house would stand?—and with old hucklebones, her potatoes and parsnips, those ruby beets and golden carrots, there was many a Julien soup to be had. Jones's-root, bruised and boiled, made a chocolate as good as Spanish. Instead of ginger, there were the wild caraway-seeds growing round the house. If she could only contrive some sugar and some vanilla-beans, she would be well satisfied to open her campaign. But as there had been for weeks only one single copper cent and two postage-stamps in the house, that seemed an impossibility. Hereupon an idea seized little Jane, and for several days she was busy in a mysterious rummage. Garrets and closets surrendered their hoards to her; files of old newspapers, old ledgers, old letter-backs, began to accumulate in heaps,—everything but books, for Jane had a religious respect for their recondite lore; she cut the margins off the magazines, and she grew miserly of the very shreds ravelling under Vivia's fingers. At length, one morning, after she had watched the windows unweariedly as a cat watches a mouse-hole, she hurriedly exclaimed,—

"There he is!"

"Who" asked Mrs. Vennard as hurriedly, with a dim idea that people in their State received visits from the sheriff.

"Our treasurer!" said little Jane.

And, indeed, the red cart crowned with yellow brooms and dazzling tin, the delight of housewives in lone places, was winding along the road; and in a few moments little Jane accosted its driver, standing victorious in the midst of her bags and bundles and baskets.

"How much were white rags?"

"Twelve cents."

Laconic, through the urgencies of tobacco.

"What?"

"Twelve cents."

"And colored?"

"Wal, they were consider'ble."

"And paper?"

"Six cents. 'T used to be half a cent Six cents now."

"But the reason?" breathlessly.

"Reckoned 'twas the war's much as anything."

One good thing out of Nazareth! Little Jane saw herself on the road to riches, and immediately had thoughts of selling the whole household-equipment for rags. She displayed her commodities.

"Did he pay in money?"

"Didn't like to; but then he did."

"Fine day, to-day."