“Lor’ a massy! young lady, be you altogether daft? In my best of days, never was I lips for kissing. And the bootifulest creatur—Come now, I ain’t saved your life, have I now?”
“Yes, fifty times over—fifty thousand times. Uncle Sam, don’t you know Erema?”
“My eyes be dashed! And dashed they be, to forget the look of yours, my dearie. Seven days have I marched without thanking the Lord; and hot coals of fire has He poured upon me now, for His mercy endureth forever. To think of you—to think of you—as like my own child as could be—only of more finer breed—here standing in front of me, like this here! There! I never dreamed to do that again, and would scorn a young man at the sight of it.”
The Sawyer was too honest to conceal that he was weeping. He simply turned his tanned and weathered face toward the door-post, not to hide his tears, but reconcile his pride by feigning it. I felt that he must be at very low ebb, and all that I had seen of other people’s sorrow had no power to assuage me. Inside the door, to keep the hot wind out and hide my eyes from the old man’s face, I had some little quiet sobs, until we could both express ourselves.
“It is poor Firm, the poor, poor lad!—oh, what hath happened him? That I should see the day!”
Uncle Sam’s deep voice broke into a moan, and he bowed his rough forehead on his arm, and shook. Then I took him by the sleeve and brought him in.
“Not dead—poor Firm, your only one—not dead?” as soon as words would come, I asked, and trembled for the opening of his lips.
“Not dead—not quite; but ten times worse. He hath flown into the face of the Lord, like Saul and his armor-bearer; he hath fallen on his own sword; and the worst of it is that the darned thing won’t come out again.”
“Firm—the last person in the world to do it! Oh, Uncle Sam, surely they have told you—”
“No lies—no lie at all, my dear. And not only that, but he wanteth now to die—and won’t be long first, I reckon. But no time to lose, my dear. The Lord hath sent you to make him happy in his leaving of the world. Can ‘e raise a bed and a doctor here? If he would but groan, I could bear it a bit, instead of bleeding inward. And for sartin sure, a’ would groan nicely, if only by force of habit, at first sight of a real doctor.”
“There are half a dozen here,” I said; “or at least close by. He shall have my own bed. But where is he?”
“We have laid ‘un in the sand,” he answered, simply, “for to dry his perspiration. That weak the poor chap is that he streameth night and day, miss. Never would you know him for our Firm now, any more than me for Sampson Gundry. Ah me! but the Lord is hard on us!”
Slowly and heavily he went his way to fetch poor Firm to the hospital; while, with light feet but a heavy heart, I returned to arouse our managers. Speedily and well were all things done; and in half an hour Finn lay upon my bed, with two of the cleverest surgeons of New York most carefully examining his wasted frame. These whispered and shook their heads, as in such a case was indispensable; and listening eagerly, I heard the senior surgeon say, “No, he could never bear it.” The younger man seemed to think otherwise, but to give way to the longer experience. Then dear Uncle Sam, having bought a new hat at the corner of the street, came forward. Knowing too well what excitement is, and how it changes every one, I lifted my hand for him to go back; but he only put his great hot web of fingers into mine, and drew me to him softly, and covered me up with his side. “He heareth nort, nort, nort,” he whispered to me; and then spoke aloud:
“Gentlemen and ladies—or ladies and gentlemen, is the more correct form nowadays—have I leave to say a word or two? Then if I have, as your manner to me showeth, and heartily thanking you for that same, my words shall go into an acorn-cup. This lad, laid out at your mercy here, was as fine a young fellow as the West hath ever raised—straight and nimble, and could tell no lie. Family reasons, as you will excoose of, drew him to the arms of rebellion. I may have done, and overdone it myself, in arguing cantrips and convictions, whereof to my knowledge good never came yet. At any rate, off he went anyhow, and the force of nature drew me after him. No matter that to you, I dare say; but it would be, if you was in it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, here he is, and no harm can you make out of him. Although he hath fought for the wrong side to our thinking, bravely hath he fought, and made his way to a colonelship, worth five thousand dollars, if ever they pay their wages. Never did I think that he would earn so much, having never owned gifts of machinery; and concerning the handling of the dollars, perhaps, will carry my opinion out. But where was I wandering of a little thing like that?
“It hath pleased the Lord, who doeth all things well, when finally come to look back upon—the Lord hath seen fit to be down on this young man for going agin his grandfather. From Californy—a free State, mind you—he come away to fight for slavery. And how hath he magnified his office? By shooting the biggest man on that side, the almighty foe of the Union, the foremost captain of Midian—the general in whom they trusted. No bullets of ours could touch him; but by his own weapons he hath fallen. And soon as Ephraim Gundry heard it, he did what you see done to him.”
Uncle Sam having said his say—which must have cost him dearly—withdrew from the bed where his grandson’s body lay shrunken, lax, and grimy. To be sure that it was Firm, I gave one glance—for Firm had always been straight, tall, and large—and then, in a miserable mood, I stole to the Sawyer’s side to stand with him. “Am I to blame? Is this my fault? For even this am I to blame?” I whispered; but he did not heed me, and his hands were like hard stone.
After a long, hot, heavy time, while I was laboring vainly, the Sawyer also (through exhaustion of excitement) weary, and afraid to begin again with new bad news, as beaten people expect to do, the younger surgeon came up to him, and said, “Will you authorize it?”
“To cut ‘un up? To show your museums what a Western lad is? Never. By the Blue River he shall have a good grave. So help me God, to my own, my man!”
“You misunderstand me. We have more subjects now than we should want for fifty years. War knocks the whole of their value on the head. We have fifty bodies as good as this, and are simply obliged to bury them. What I mean is, shall we pull the blade out?”
“Can he do any thing with that there blade in him? I have heard of a man in Kentucky once—”
“Yes, yes; we know all those stories, Colonel—suit the newspapers, not the journals. This fellow has what must kill him inside; he is worn to a shadow already. If there it is left, die he must, and quick stick; inflammation is set up already. If we extract it, his chance of surviving is scarcely one in a hundred.”
“Let him have the one, then, the one in the hundred, like the ninety and nine lost sheep. The Lord can multiply a hundredfold—some threescore, and some an hundredfold. I will speak to Him, gentlemen, while you try the job.”
CHAPTER LVII
FEMALE SUFFRAGE
All that could be done by skill and care and love, was done for Firm. Our lady manager and head nurse never left him when she could be spared, and all the other ladies vied in zeal for this young soldier, so that I could scarcely get near him. His grandfather’s sad and extraordinary tale was confirmed by a wounded prisoner. Poor Ephraim Gundry’s rare power of sight had been fatal perhaps to the cause he fought for, or at least to its greatest captain. Returning from desperate victory, the general, wrapped in the folds of night, and perhaps in the gloom of his own stern thoughts, while it seemed quite impossible that he should be seen, encountered the fire of his own troops; and the order to fire was given by his favorite officer, Colonel Firm Gundry. When the young man learned that he had destroyed, by a lingering death, the chief idol of his heart, he called for a rifle, but all refused him, knowing too well what his purpose was. Then under the trees, without a word or sigh, he set the hilt of his sword upon the earth, and the point to his heart—as well as he could find it. The blade passed through him, and then snapped off—But I can not bear to speak of it.
And now, few people might suppose it, but the substance of which he was made will be clear, when not only his own knowledge of his case but also the purest scientific reasoning established a truth more frankly acknowledged in the New World than in the Old one. It was proved that, with a good constitution, it is safer to receive two wounds than one, even though they may not be at the same time taken. Firm had been shot by the captain of Mexican robbers, as long ago related. He was dreadfully pulled down at the time, and few people could have survived it. But now that stood him in the very best stead, not only as a lesson of patience, but also in the question of cartilage. But not being certain what cartilage is, I can only refer inquirers to the note-book of the hospital, which has been printed.
For us it was enough to know that (shattered as he was and must be) this brave and single-minded warrior struggled for the time successfully with that great enemy of the human race, to whom the human race so largely consign one another and themselves. But some did say, and emphatically Uncle Sam, that Colonel Firm Gundry—for a colonel he was now, not by courtesy, but commission—would never have held up his head to do it, but must have gone on with his ravings for death, if somebody had not arrived in the nick of time, and cried over him—a female somebody from old England.
And, even after that, they say that he never would have cared to be a man again, never would have calmed his conscience with the reflection, so commonplace and yet so high—that having done our best according to our lights, we must not dwell always on our darkness—if once again, and for the residue of life, there had not been some one to console him—a consolation that need not have, and is better without, pure reason, coming, as that would come, from a quarter whence it is never quite welcome. Enough for me that he never laid hand to a weapon of war again, and never shall unless our own home is invaded.
For after many months—each equal to a year of teaching and of humbling—there seemed to be a good time for me to get away and attend to my duties in England. Of these I had been reminded often by letters, and once by a messenger; but all money matters seemed dust in the balance where life and death were swinging. But now Uncle Sam and his grandson, having their love knit afresh by disaster, were eager to start for the Saw-mill, and trust all except their own business to Providence.
I had told them that, when they went westward, my time would be come for starting eastward; and being unlikely to see them again, I should hope for good news frequently. And then I got dear Uncle Sam by himself, and begged him, for the sake of Firm’s happiness, to keep him as far as he could from Pennsylvania Sylvester. At the same time I thought that the very nice young lady who jumped upon his nose from the window, Miss Annie—I forgot her name, or at any rate I told him so—would make him a good straightforward wife, so far as one could tell from having seen her. And that seemed to have been settled in their infancy. And if he would let me know when it was to be, I had seen a thing in London I should like to give them.
When I asked the Sawyer to see to this, instead of being sorry, he seemed quite pleased, and nodded sagaciously, and put his hat on, as he generally did, to calculate.
“Both of them gals have married long ago,” he said, looking at me with a fine soft gaze; “and bad handfuls their mates have got of them. But what made you talk of them, missy—or ‘my lady,’ as now you are in old country, I hear—what made you think of them like that, my dearie?”
“I can’t tell what made me think of them. How can I tell why I think of every thing?”
“Still, it was an odd thing for your ladyship to say.”
“Uncle Sam, I am nobody’s ladyship, least of all yours. What makes you speak so? I am your own little wandering child, whose life you saved, and whose father you loved, and who loses all who love her. Even from you I am forced to go away. Oh, why is it always my fate—my fate?”
“Hush!” said the old man; and I stopped my outburst at his whisper. “To talk of fate, my dearie, shows either one thing or the other—that we have no will of our own, or else that we know not how to guide it. I never knew a good man talk of fate. The heathens and the pagans made it. The Lord in heaven is enough for me; and He always hath allowed me my own free-will, though I may not have handled ‘un cleverly. And He giveth you your own will now, my missy—to go from us or to stop with us. And being as you are a very grand young woman now, owning English land and income paid in gold instead of greenbacks—the same as our nugget seems likely—to my ideas it would be wrong if we was so much as to ask you.”
“Is that what you are full of, then, and what makes you so mysterious? I did think that you knew me better, and I had a right to hope so.”
“Concerning of yourself alone is not what we must think of. You might do this, or you might do that, according to what you was told, or, even more, according to what was denied you. For poor honest people, like Firm and me, to deal with such a case is out of knowledge. For us it is—go by the will of the Lord, and dead agin your own desires.”
“But, dear Uncle Sam,” I cried, feeling that now I had him upon his own tenterhooks, “you rebuked me as sharply as lies in your nature for daring to talk about fate just now; but to what else comes your own conduct, if you are bound to go against your own desire? If you have such a lot of freewill, why must you do what you do not like to do?”
“Well, well, perhaps I was talking rather large. The will of the world is upon us as well. And we must have respect for its settlements.”
“Now let me,” I said, with a trembling wish to have every thing right and maidenly. “I have seen so much harm from misunderstandings, and they are so simple when it is too late—let me ask you one or two questions, Uncle Sam. You always answer every body. And to you a crooked answer is impossible.”
“Business is business,” the Sawyer said. “My dear, I contract accordingly.”
“Very well. Then, in the first place, what do you wish to have done with me? Putting aside all the gossip, I mean, of people who have never even heard of me.”
“Why, to take you back to Saw-mill with us, where you always was so natural.”
“In the next place, what does your grandson wish?”
“To take you back to Saw-mill with him, and keep you there till death do you part, as chanceth to all mortal pairs.”
“And now, Uncle Sam, what do I wish? You say we all have so much free-will.”
“It is natural that you should wish, my dear, to go and be a great lady, and marry a nobleman of your own rank, and have a lot of little noblemen.”
“Then I fly against nature; and the fault is yours for filling me so with machinery.”
The Sawyer was beaten, and he never said again that a woman can not argue.
CHAPTER LVIII
BEYOND DESERT, AND DESERTS
From all the carnage, havoc, ruin, hatred, and fury of that wicked war we set our little convoy forth, with passes procured from either side. According to all rules of war, Firm was no doubt a prisoner; but having saved his life, and taken his word to serve no more against them, remembering also that he had done them more service than ten regiments, the Federal authorities were not sorry to be quit of him.
He, for his part, being of a deep, retentive nature, bore in his wounded breast a sorrow which would last his lifetime. To me he said not a single word about his bitter fortune, and he could not bring himself to ask me whether I would share it. Only from his eyes sometimes I knew what he was thinking; and having passed through so much grief, I was moved with deep compassion. Poor Firm had been trained by his grandfather to a strong, earnest faith in Providence, and now this compelled him almost to believe that he had been specially visited. For flying in the face of his good grandfather, and selfishly indulging his own stiff neck, his punishment had been hard, and almost heavier than he could bear. Whatever might happen to him now, the spring and the flower of his life were gone; he still might have some calm existence, but never win another day of cloudless joy. And if he had only said this, or thought about it, we might have looked at him with less sadness of our own.
But he never said any thing about himself, nor gave any opening for our comfort to come to him. Only from day to day he behaved gently and lovingly to both of us, as if his own trouble must be fought out by himself, and should dim no other happiness. And this kept us thinking of his sorrow all the more, so that I could not even look at him without a flutter of the heart, which was afraid to be a sigh.
At last, upon the great mountain range, through which we now were toiling, with the snow little more than a mantle for the peaks, and a sparkling veil for sunrise, dear Uncle Sam, who had often shown signs of impatience, drew me apart from the rest. Straightforward and blunt as he generally was, he did not seem altogether ready to begin, but pulled off his hat, and then put it on again, the weather being now cold and hot by turns. And while he did this he was thinking at his utmost, as every full vein of his forehead declared. And being at home with his ways, I waited.
“Think you got ahead of me? No, not you,” he exclaimed at last, in reply to some version of his own of my ideas, which I carefully made a nonentity under the scrutiny of his keen blue eyes. “No, no, missy; you wait a bit. Uncle Sam was not hatched yesterday, and it takes fifty young ladies to go round him.”
“Is that from your size, Uncle Sam, or your depth?”
“Well, a mixture of both, I do believe. Now the last thing you ever would think of, if you lived to be older than Washington’s nurse, is the very thing I mean to put to you. Only you must please to take it well, according to my meaning. You see our Firm going to a shadow, don’t you? Very well; the fault of that is all yourn. Why not up and speak to him?”
“I speak to him every day, Uncle Sam, and I spare no efforts to fatten him. I am sure I never dreamed of becoming such a cook. But soon he will have Suan Isco.”
“Old Injun be darned! It’s not the stomach, it’s the heart as wants nourishment with yon poor lad. He looketh that pitiful at you sometimes, my faith, I can hardly tell whether to laugh at his newings or cry at the lean face that does it.”
“You are not talking like yourself, Uncle Sam. And he never does any thing of the kind. I am sure there is nothing to laugh at.”
“No, no; to be sure not. I made a mistake. Heroic is the word, of course—every thing is heroic.”
“It is heroic,” I answered, with some vexation at his lightness. “If you can not see it, I am sorry for you. I like large things; and I know of nothing larger than the way poor Firm is going on.”
“You to stand up for him!” Colonel Gundry answered, as if he could scarcely look at me. “You to talk large of him, my Lady Castlewood, while you are doing of his heart into small wittles! Well, I did believe, if no one else, that you were a straightforward one.”
“And what am I doing that is crooked now?”
“Well, not to say crooked, Miss ‘Rema; no, no. Only onconsistent, when squared up.”
“Uncle Sam, you’re a puzzle to me to-day. What is inconsistent? What is there to square up?”
He fetched a long breath, and looked wondrous wise. Then, as if his main object was to irritate me, he made a long stride, and said, “Soup’s a-bilin now.”
“Let it boil over, then. You must say what you mean. Oh, Uncle Sam, I only want to do the right!”
“I dessay. I dessay. But have you got the pluck, miss? Our little missy would ‘a done more than that. But come to be great lady—why, they take another tune. With much mind, of course it might be otherwise. But none of ‘em have any much of that to spare.”
“Your view is a narrow one,” I replied, knowing how that would astonish him. “You judge by your own experience only; and to do that shows a sad want of breadth, as the ladies in England express it.”
The Sawyer stared, and then took off his hat, and then felt all about for his spectacles. The idea of being regarded by a “female” from a larger and loftier point of view, made a new sensation in his system.
“Yes,” I continued, with some enjoyment, “let us try to look largely at all things, Uncle Sam. And supposing me capable of that, what is the proper and the lofty course to take?”
He looked at me with a strange twinkle in his eyes, and with three words discomfited me—“Pop the question.”
Much as I had heard of woman’s rights, equality of body and mind with man, and superiority in morals, it did not appear to me that her privilege could be driven to this extent. But I shook my head till all my hair came down; and so if our constitutional right of voting by color was exercised, on this occasion it claimed the timid benefit of ballot.
With us a suggestion, for the time discarded, has often double effect by-and-by; and though it was out of my power to dream of acting up to such directions, there could be no possible harm in reviewing such a theory theoretically.
Now nothing beyond this was in my thoughts, nor even so much as that (safely may I say), when Firm and myself met face to face on the third day after Uncle Sam’s ideas. Our little caravan, of which the Sawyer was the captain, being bound for Blue River and its neighborhood, had quitted the Sacramento track by a fork on the left not a league from the spot where my father had bidden adieu to mankind. And knowing every twist and turn of rock, our drivers brought us at the camping-time almost to the verge of chaparral.
I knew not exactly how far we were come, but the dust-cloud of memory was stirring, and though mountains looked smaller than they used to look, the things done among them seemed larger. And wandering forth from the camp to think, when the evening meal was over, lo! there I stood in that selfsame breach or portal of the desert in which I stood once by my father’s side, with scared and weary eyes, vainly seeking safety’s shattered landmark. The time of year was different, being the ripe end of October now; but though the view was changed in tint, it was even more impressive. Sombre memories, and deep sense of grandeur, which is always sad, and solemn lights, and stealing shadows, compassed me with thoughtfulness. In the mouth of the gorge was a gray block of granite, whereupon I sat down to think.
Old thoughts, dull thoughts, thoughts as common as the clouds that cross the distant plain, and as vague as the wind that moves them—they please and they pass, and they may have shed kindly influence, but what are they? The life that lies before us is, in some way, too, below us, like yon vast amplitude of plain; but it must be traversed foot by foot, and laboriously travailed, without the cloudy vaporing or the high-flown meditation. And all that must be done by me, alone, with none to love me, and (which for a woman is so much worse) nobody ever to have for my own, to cherish, love, and cling to.
Tier upon tier, and peak over peak, the finest mountains of the world are soaring into the purple firmament. Like northern lights, they flash, or flush, or fade into a reclining gleam; like ladders of heaven, they bar themselves with cloudy air; and like heaven itself, they rank their white procession. Lonely, feeble, puny, I look up with awe and reverence; the mind pronounces all things small compared with this magnificence. Yet what will all such grandeur do—the self-defensive heart inquires—for puny, feeble, lonely me?
Before another shadow deepened or another light grew pale, a slow, uncertain step drew near, and by the merest chance it happened to be Ephraim Gundry’s. I was quite surprised, and told him so; and he said that he also was surprised at meeting me in this way. Remembering how long I had been here, I thought this most irrational, but checked myself from saying so, because he looked so poorly. And more than that, I asked him kindly how he was this evening, and smoothed my dress to please his eye, and offered him a chair of rock. But he took no notice of all these things.
I thought of the time when he would have behaved so very differently from this, and nothing but downright pride enabled me to repress vexation. However, I resolved to behave as kindly as if he were his own grandfather.
“How grand these mountains are!” I said. “It must do you good to see them again. Even to me it is such a delight. And what must it be to you, a native?”
“Yes, I shall wander from them no more. How I wish that I had never done so?”
“Have men less courage than women?” I asked, with one glance at his pale worn face. “I owe you the debt of life; and this is the place to think and speak of it. I used to talk freely of that, you know. You used to like to hear me speak; but now you are tired of that, and tired of all the world as well, I fear.”
“No, I am tired of nothing, except my own vile degradation. I am tired of my want of spirit, that I can not cast my load. I am tired of my lack of reason, which should always guide a man. What is the use of mind or intellect, reasoning power, or whatever it is called, if the whole of them can not enable a man to hold out against a stupid heart?”
“I think you should be proud,” I said, while trembling to approach the subject which never had been touched between us, “at having a nature so sensitive. Your evil chance might have been any body’s, and must of course have been somebody’s. But nobody else would have taken it so—so delightfully as you have done!”
“Delightfully! Is that the word you use? May I ask who gets any delight from it?”
“Why, all who hate the Southern cause,” I replied, with a sudden turn of thought, though I never had meant to use the word. “Surely that needs no explanation.”
“They are delighted, are they? Yes, I can very well believe it. Narrow-minded bigots! Yes, they are sure to be delighted. They call it a just visitation, of course, a righteous retribution. And they hope I may never get over it.”
“I pray you to take it more gently,” I said; “they are very good men, and wish you no harm. But they must have their own opinions; and naturally they think them just.”
“Then all their opinions are just wrong. They hope to see me go down, to my grave. They shall not have that pleasure. I will outlive every old John Brown of them. I did not care two cents to live just now. Henceforth I will make a point of it. If I cannot fight for true freedom any more, having ruined it perhaps already, the least I can do is to give no more triumph to its bitter enemies. I will eat and drink, and begin this very night. I suppose you are one of them, as you put their arguments so neatly. I suppose you consider me a vile slave-driver?”
“You are very ill,” I said, with my heart so full of pity that anger could not enter; “you are very ill, and very weak. How could you drive the very best slave now—even such a marvel as Uncle Tom?”
Firm Gundry smiled; on his lean dry face there shone a little flicker, which made me think of the time when he bought a jest-book, published at Cincinnati, to make himself agreeable to my mind. And little as I meant it, I smiled also, thinking of the way he used to come out with his hard-fought jokes, and expect it.
“I wish you were at all as you used to be,” he said, looking at me softly through the courage of his smile, “instead of being such a grand lady.”
“And I wish you were a little more like yourself,” I answered, without thinking; “you used to think always there was nobody like me.”
“Suppose that I am of the same opinion still? Tenfold, fiftyfold, a millionfold?”
“To suppose a thing of that sort is a little too absurd, when you have shown no sign of it.”
“For your own dear sake I have shown no sign. The reason of that is too clear to explain.”
“Then how stupid I must be not to see an atom of it!”
“Why, who would have any thing to say to me—a broken-down man, a fellow marked out for curses, one who hates even the sight of himself? The lowest of the low would shun me.”
He turned away from me, and gazed back toward the dismal, miserable, spectral desert; while I stood facing the fruitful, delicious, flowery Paradise of all the world. I thought of the difference in our lots, and my heart was in misery about him. Then I conquered my pride and my littleness and trumpery, and did what the gentle sweet Eve might have done. And never have I grieved for that action since.
With tears on my cheeks quite undissembled, and a breast not ashamed of fluttering, I ran to Firm Gundry, and took his right hand, and allowed him no refuge from tender wet eyes. Then before he could come to see the meaning of this haste—because of his very high discipline—I was out of his distance, and sitting on a rock, and I lifted my eyes, full of eloquence, to his; then I dropped them, and pulled my hat forward, and said, as calmly as was possible, “I have done enough. The rest remains with you, Firm Gundry.”
The rest remained with him. Enough that I was part of that rest; and if not the foundation or crown of it, something desirous to be both, and failing (if fail it ever does) from no want of trial. Uncle Sam says that I never fail at all, and never did fail in any thing, unless it was when I found that blamed nugget, for which we got three wagon-loads of greenbacks; which (when prosperity at last revives) will pay perhaps for greasing all twelve wheels.
Jowler admits not that failure even. As soon as he recovered from canine dementia, approaching very closely to rabies, at seeing me in the flesh once more (so that the Sierra Nevada rang with avalanches of barking), he tugged me to the place where his teeth were set in gold, and proved that he had no hydrophobia. His teeth are scanty now, but he still can catch a salmon, and the bright zeal and loyalty of his soft brown eyes and the sprightly elevation of his tail are still among dogs as pre-eminent as they are to mankind inimitable.