The Choir Invisible

J >> James Lane Allen >> The Choir Invisible

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

John Gray's school-children grew to be men and women. For the men there were
no longer battles to fight in Kentucky, but there were the wars of the
Nation; and far away on the widening boundaries of the Republic they
conquered or failed and fell; as volunteers with Perry in the victory on
Lake Erie; in the awful massacre at the River Raisin; under Harrison at the
Thames; in the mud and darkness of the Mississippi at New Orleans, repelling
Pakenham's charge with Wellington's veteran, victory-flushed campaigners.

The school-master's friend, the parson, he too had known his more peaceful
warfare, having married and become a manifold father. Of a truth it was
feared at one period that the parson was running altogether to prayers and
daughters. For it was remarked that with each birth, his petitions seemed
longer and his voice to rise from behind the chancel with a fresh wail as of
one who felt a growing grievance both against himself and the almighty.
Howbeit, innocently enough after the appearance of the fifth female infant,
one morning he preached the words: "No man knoweth what manner of creature
he is"; and was unaware that a sudden smile rippled over the faces of his
hearers. But it was not until later on when mother and six were packed into
one short pew at morning service, that they became known in a body as the
parson's Collect for all Sundays.

Sometimes the little ones were divided and part of them sat in another pew
where there was a single occupant--a woman--childless.

"Yes"," she had said, "I shall go softly all my years."

The plants she had brought that summer from Virginia had long since become
old bushes. The Virginia Creeper had climbed to the tops of the trees. The
garden, though in the same spot, was another place now, with vine-heavy
arbours and sodden walks running between borders of flowers and
vegetables--daffodils and thyme--in the quaint Virginia fashion. There was a
lawn covered as the ancestral one had been with the feathery grass of
England. There was a park where the deer remained at home in their
wilderness.

Crowning this landscape of comfort and good taste, stood the house. Often of
nights when its roof lay deep under snow and the eaves were bearded with
hoary icicles, there were candles twinkling at every window and the sounds
of music and dancing in the parlours. Once a year there was a great venison
supper in the dining-room, draped with holly and mistletoe. On Christmas eve
man a child's sock or stocking was hung--no one knew when or by whom--around
the shadowy chimney-seat of her room; and every Christmas morning the little
negros from the cabins knew to whom each of these belonged. In spring,
parties of young girls and youths came out from town for fishing parties and
picknicked in the lawn amid the dandelions and under the song of the
blackbird; during the summer, for days at a time, other gay company filled
the house; of autumns there were nutting parties in the russet woods. Other
guests also, not young, not gay. Aaron Burr was entertained there; there met
for counsel the foremost Western leaders in his magnificent conspiracy. More
than one great man of his day, middle-aged, unmarried, began his visits,
returned oftener for awhile--always alone--and one day drove away
disappointed.

Through seasons and changes she had gone softly: never retreating from life
but drawing about her as closely as she could its ties, its sympathies, it
duties: in all things a character of the finest equipois, the truest
moderation.

But these are women of the world--some of us men may have discerned one of
them in the sweep of our experiences--to whom the joy and the sorrow come
alike with quietness. For them there is neither the cry of sudden delight
nor the cry of sudden anguish. Gazing deep into their eyes, we are reminded
of the light of dim churches; hearing their voices, we dream of some
minstrel whose murmurs reach us imperfectly through his fortress wall;
beholding the sweetness of their faces, we are touched as by the appeal of
the mute flowers; merely meeting them in the street, we recall the
long-vanished image of the Divine Goodess. They are the women who have
missed happiness and who know it, but having failed of affection, give
themselves to duty. And so life never rises high and close about them as
about one who stands waist-deep in a wheat-field, gathering at will either
its poppies or its sheaves; it flows forever away as from one who pauses
waist-deep in a stream and hearkens rather to the rush of all things toward
the eternal deeps. It was into the company of theses quieter pilgrims that
she had passed: she had missed happiness twice.

Her beauty had never failed. Nature had fought hard in her for all things;
and to the last youth of her womanhood it burned like an autumn rose which
some morning we may have found on the lawn under a dew that is turning to
ice. But when youth was gone, in the following years her face began to
reflect the freshness of Easter lilies. For prayer will in time make the
human countenance its own divinest alter; years upon years of true thoughts,
like ceaseless music shut up within, will vibrate along the nerves of
expression until the lines of the living instrument are drawn into
correspondence, and the harmony of visible form matches the unheard
harmonies of the mind. It was about this time also that there fell upon her
hair the earliest rays of the light which is the dawn of Eternal Morning.

She had never ceased to watch his career as part of her very life. Time was
powerless to remove him farther from her than destiny had removed him long
before: it was always yesterday; the whole past with him seemed caught upon
the clearest mirror just at her back. Once or twice a year she received a
letter, books, papers, something; she had been kept informed of the birth of
his children. From other sources--his letters to the parson, traders between
Philadelphia and the West--she knew other things: he had risen in the world,
was a judge, often leading counsel in great cases, was almost a great man.
She planted her pride, her gratitude, her happiness, on this new soil: they
were the few seed that a woman in the final years will sow in a window-box
and cover the window-pane and watch and water and wake and think of in the
night--she who was used once to range the fields.

But never from the first to last had she received a letter from him that was
transparent; the mystery stayed unlifted; she had to accept the constancy of
his friendship without its confidence. Question or chiding of course there
never was from her; inborn refinement alone would have kept her from
curiosity or prying; but she could not put away the conviction that the
concealment which he steadily adhered to was either delicately connected
with his marriage or registered but too plainly some downward change in
himself. Which was it, or was it both? Had he too missed happiness? Missed
it as she had--by a union with a perfectly commonplace, plodding,
unimaginative, unsympathetic, unrefined nature? And was it a mercy to be
able to remember him, not to know him?

These thoughts filled her so often, so often! For into the busiest life--the
life that toils to shut out thought--the inevitable leisure will come; and
with the leisure will return the dreaded emptiness, the loneliness, the
never stifled need of sympathy, affection, companionship--for that world of
two outside of which every other human being is a stranger. And it was he
who entered into all these hours of hers as by a right that she had neither
the heart nor the strength to question.

For behind everything else there was one thing more--deeper than anything
else, dearer, more sacred; the feeling she would never surrender that for a
while at least he had cared more for her than he had ever realized.

One mild afternoon of autumn she was walking with quiet dignity around her
garden. She had just come from town where she had given to Jouett the last
sitting of her portrait, and she was richly dressed in the satin gown and
cap of lace which those who see the picture nowadays will remember. The
finishing of it had saddened her a little; she meant to leave it to him; and
she wondered whether, when he looked into the eyes of this portrait, he
would at last understand": she had tried to tell him the truth; it was the
truth that Jouett painted.

Thus she was thinking of the past as usual; and once she paused in the very
spot where one sweet afternoon of May long ago he had leaned over the fence,
holding in his hand his big black had decorated with a Jacobin cockade, and
had asked her consent to marry Amy. Was not yonder the very maple, in the
shade of which he and she sat some weeks later while she had talked with him
about the ideals of life? She laughed, but she touched her handkerchief to
her eyes as she turned to pass on. Then she stopped abruptly.

Coming down the garden walk toward her with a light rapid step, his head in
the air, a smile on his fresh noble face, an earnest look in his gray eyes,
was a tall young fellow of some eighteen years. A few feet off he lifted his
hat with a free, gallant air, uncovering a head of dark-red hair, closely
curling.

"I beg your pardon, madam," he said, in a voice that fell on her ears like
music long remembered. "Is this Mrs. Falconer?"

"Yes," she replied, beginning to tremble, "I am Mrs. Falconer."

"Then I should like to introduce myself to you, dearest madam. I am John
Gray, the son of your old friend, and my father sends me to you to stay with
you if you will let me. And he desires me to deliver this letter."

"John Gray!" she cried, running forward and searching his face. "You John
Gray! You! Take off your hat!" For a moment she looked at his forehead and
his hair; her eyes became blinded with tears. She threw her arms around his
neck with a sob and covered his face with kisses.

"Madam," said the young fellow, stooping to pick up his hat, and laughing
outright at his own blushes and confusion, "I don't wonder that my father
thinks so much of you!"

"I never did that to your father!" she retorted. Beneath the wrinkled ivory
of her skin a tinge of faintest pink appeared and disappeared.

Half and hour later she was sitting at a western window. Young John Gray had
gone to the library to write to his father and mother, announcing his
arrival; and in her lap lay his father's letter which with tremulous fingers
she was now wiping her spectacles to read. In all these years she had never
allowed herself to think of her John Gray as having grown older; she saw him
still young, as when he used to lean over the garden fence. But now the
presence of this son had the effect of suddenly pushing the father far on
into life; and her heart ached with this first realization that he too must
have passed the climbing-point and have set his feet on the shaded downward
slope that leads to the quiet valley.

His letter began lightly:

"I send John to you with the wish that you will be to the son the same
inspiring soul you once were to the father. You will find him headstrong and
with great notions of what he is to be in the world. But he is warm-hearted
and clean-hearted. Let him do for you the things I used to do; let him hold
the yarn on his arms for you to wind off, and read to you your favourite
novels; he is a good reader for a young fellow. And will you get out your
spinning-wheel some night when the logs are in roaring in the fireplace and
let him hear its music? Will you some time with your hands make him a
johnny-cake on a new ash shingle? I want him to know a woman who can do all
things and still be a great lady. And lay upon him all the burdens that in
any way you can, so that he shall not think too much of what he may some day
do in life, but, of what he is actually doing. We get great reports of the
Transylvania University, of the bar of Lexington, of the civilization that I
foresaw would spring up in Kentucky; and I send John to you with the wish
that he hear lectures and afterward go into the office of some one whom I
shall name, and finally marry and settle there for life. You recall this as
the wish of my own; through John shall be done what I could not do. You see
how stubborn I am! I have given him the names of my school-children. He is
to find out those of them who still live there, and to tell me of those who
have passed away or been scattered.

"I do not know; but if at the end of life I should be left alone here,
perhaps I shall make my way back to Kentucky to John, as the old tree falls
beside the young one."

>From this point the tone of the letter changed.

"And now I am going to open to you what no other eye has ever seen, must
ever see--one page in the book of my life."

When she reached these words with a contraction of the heart and a loud
throbbing of the pulses in her ears, she got up and locked the letter in her
bureau. Then, commanding herself, she went to the dining-room, and with her
own hands prepared the supper table; got our her finest linen, glass,
silver; had the sconces lighted, extra candelabra brought in; gave orders
for especial dishes to be cooked; and when everything was served, seated her
guest at the foot of the table and let him preside as though it were his old
rightful place. Ah, how like his father he was! Several times when the
father's name was mentioned, he quite choked up with tears.

At an early hour he sought rest from the fatigue of travel. She was left
alone. The house was quiet. She summoned the negro girl who slept on the
floor in her room and who was always with her of evenings:

"You can go to the cabin till bedtime. And when you come in, don't make any
noise. And don't speak to me. I shall be asleep."

Then seating herself beside the little candle stand which mercifully for her
had had shed its light on so many books in the great lonely bedchamber, she
re-read those last words:

"And now I am going to open to you what no other eye has ever seen, must
ever see--one page in the book of my life:

"Can you remember the summer I left Kentucky? On reaching Philadelphia I
called on a certain family consisting, as I afterwards ascertained, of
father, mother, and daughter; and being in search of lodgings, I was asked
to become a member of their household. This offer was embraced the more
eagerly because I was sick for a home that summer and in need of some kind
soul to lean on in my weakness. I had indeed been led for these reasons to
seek their acquaintance--the father and mother having known my own parents
even before I met them. You will thus understand how natural a haven with my
loneliness and amid such memories this house became to me, and upon what
grounds I stood in my association with its members from the beginning.

"When the lawsuit went against me and I was wrongfully thrown into jail for
debt, their faithful interest only deepened. Very poor themselves, they
would yet have make any sacrifice in my behalf. During the months of my
imprisonment they were often with me, bringing every comfort and brightening
the dulness of many an hour.

"Upon my release I returned gladly to their joyous household, welcomed I
could not say with what joyous affection. Soon afterwards I found a position
in the office of a law firm and got my start in life.

"And now I cross the path of some things that cannot be written. But you who
know what my life and character had been will nobly understand: remember
your last words to me.

"One day I offered my hand to the daughter. I told her the whole truth: that
there was some one else--not free; that no one could take the place of this
other was filling at the moment, and would always fill. Nevertheless, if she
would accept me on these conditions, everything that it was in my power to
promise she could have.

"She said that in time she would win the rest.

"A few weeks later that letter came from you, bringing the intelligence that
changed everything. (Do you remember my reply? I seem only this moment to
have dropped the pen.) As soon as I could control myself, I told her that
now you were free, that it was but justice and kindness alike to her and to
me that I should give here the chance to reconsider the engagement. A week
passed, I went again. I warned her how different the situation had become. I
could promise less than before--I could not say how little. A month later I
went again.

"Ah, well--that is all!

"The summer after my marriage I travelled to Virginia regarding a landsuit.
One day I rode far out of my course into the path of the country where you
lived. I remained some days strolling over the silent woods and fields,
noting the bushes on the lawn, such as you had carried over into Kentucky,
hunting out the quiet nooks where you were used to read in your girlhood.
Those long, sweet, sacred summer days alone with you there before you were
married! O Jessica! Jessica! Jessica! Jessica! And to this day the sight of
peach blossoms in the spring--the rustle of autumn leaves under my feet! Can
you recall the lines of Malory? 'Men and women could love together seven
years, and then was love truth and faithfulness.' How many more than seven
have I loved you!--you who never gave me anything but friendship, but who
would in time, I hope, have given me everything if I had come back. Ah, I
did come back! Many a time even now as soon as I have hurried through the
joyous gateways of sleep, I come back over the mountains to you as naturally
as though there had been no years to separate and to age. Let me tell you
all this! My very life would be incomplete without it! I owed something to
you long before I owed anything to another: a duty can never set aside a
duty. And as to what I have owed you since, it becomes more and more the
noblest earthly that I shall ever leave unpaid. I did not know you perfectly
when we parted: I was too young, too ignorant of the world, too ignorant of
many women. A man must have touched their coarseness in order to appreciate
their refinement; have been wounded by untruthfulness to understand their
delicate honour; he must have been driven to turn his eyes mercifully away
from their stain before he can ever look with all the reverence and
gratitude of his heart and soul upon their brows of chastity.

"But of my life otherwise. I take it fir granted that you would know where I
stand, what I have become, whether I have kept faith with the ideals of my
youth.

"I have succeeded, perhaps reached now what men call the highest point of
their worldly prosperity, made good my resolve that no human power should
defeat me. All that Macbeth had not I have: a quiet throne of my own,
children, wife, troops of friends, duties, honours, ease. There have been
times when with natural misgiving lest I had wandered too far these many
summers on a sea of glory, I have prepared for myself the lament of Wolsey
on his fall: yet ill fortune had not overwhelmed me or mine.

"All this prosperity, as the mere fruit of my toil, has been less easy than
for many. I may not boast the Apostle that I have fought a good fight, but I
can say that I fought a hard one. The fight will always be hard for any man
who undertakes to conquer life with the few simple weapons I have used and
who will accept victory only upon such terms as I have demanded. For be my
success small or great, it has been won without inner compromise or other
form of self-abasement. No man can look me in the eyes and say I ever
wronged him for my own profit; none may charge that I have smiled on him in
order to use him, or call him my friend that I might make him do for me the
work of a servant.

"Do not imagine I fail to realize that I have added my full share to the
general evil of the world: in part unconsciously, in part against my
conscious will. It is the knowledge of this influence of imperfection
forever flowing from myself to all others that has taught me charity with
all the wrongs that flow from others toward me. As I have clung to myself
despite the evil, so I have clung to the world despite all the evil that is
in the world. To lose faith in men, not humanity; to see justice go down and
not believe in the triumph of injustice; for every wrong that you weakly
deal another or another deals you to love more and more the fairness and
beauty of what is right; and so to turn with ever-increasing love from the
imperfection that is in us all to the Perfection that is above us all--the
perfection that is God: this is one of the ideals of actual duty that you
once said were to be as candles in my hand. Many a time this candle has gone
out; but as quickly as I could snatch any torch--with your sacred name on my
lips--it has been relighted.

"My candles are all beginning to burn low now. For as we advance far on into
life, one by one our duties end, one by one the lights go out. Not much
ahead of me now must lurk the great mortal changes, coming always nearer,
always faster. As they approach, I look less to my candles, more toward my
candles, more toward my lighthouses--those distant unfailing beacons that
cast their rays over the stormy sea of this life from the calm ocean of the
Infinate. I know this: that if I should live to be an old man, my duties
ended and my candles gone, it is these that will shine in upon me in that
vacant darkness. And I have this belief: that if we did but recognize them
aright, these ideals at the close of life would become one with the ideals
of youth. We lost them as we left mortal youth behind; we regain them as we
enter upon youth immortal.

"If I have kept unbroken faith with any of mine, thank you. And thank God!"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15