HOW A STUDENT IN SEARCH OF THE BEAUTIFUL FELL ASLEEP OVER HERR PROFESSOR DOCTOR VISCHER'S "WISSENSCHAFT DES SCHÖNEN," AND WHAT CAME THEREOF.
1.
I swam with undulation soft,
Adrift on Vischer's ocean,
And, from my cockboat up aloft,
Sent down my mental plummet oft,
In hope to reach a notion.
2.
But from the metaphysic sea
No bottom was forthcoming,
And all the while (so drowsily!)
In one eternal note of B
My German stove kept humming.
3.
What's Beauty? mused I. Is it told
By synthesis? analysis?
Have you not made us lead of gold?
To feed your crucible, not sold
Our temple's sacred chalices?
4.
Then o'er my senses came a change:
My book seemed all traditions,
Old legends of profoundest range,
Diablerie, and stories strange
Of goblins, elves, magicians.
5.
Truth was, my outward eyes were closed,
Although I did not know it;
Deep into Dreamland I had dozed,
And found me suddenly transposed
From proser into poet.
6.
So what I read took flesh and blood
And turned to living creatures;
The words were but the dingy bud
That bloomed, like Adam from the mud,
To human forms and features.
7.
I saw how Zeus was lodged once more
By Baucis and Philemon;
The text said, "Not alone of yore,
But every day at every door
Knocks still the masking Demon."
8.
Daimon 't was printed in the book;
And as I read it slowly,
The letters moved and changed and took
Jove's stature, the Olympian look
Of painless melancholy.
9.
He paused upon the threshold worn:—
"With coin I cannot pay you;
Yet would I fain make some return,—
You will not the gift's cheapness spurn,—
Accept this fowl, I pray you.
10.
"Plain feathers wears my Hemera,
And has from ages olden;
She makes her nest in common hay;
And yet, of all the birds that lay,
Her eggs alone are golden."
11.
He turned and could no more be seen.
Old Baucis stared a moment,
Then tossed poor partlet on the green,
And with a tone half jest, half spleen,
Thus made her housewife's comment:
12.
"The stranger had a queerish face,
His smile was most unpleasant;
And though he meant it for a grace,
Yet this old hen of barnyard race
Was but a stingy present.
13.
"She's quite too old for laying eggs,
Nay, even to make a soup of;
It only needs to see her legs,—
You might as well boil down the pegs
I made the brood-hen's coop of!
14.
"More than three hundred such do I
Raise every year, her sisters;
Go, in the woods your fortune try,
All day for one poor earth-worm pry,
And scratch your toes to blisters!"
15.
Philemon found the rede was good;
And turning on the poor hen,
He clapped his hands, he stamped, hallooed,
Hunting the exile toward the wood,
To house with snipe and moor-hen.
16.
A poet saw and cried,—"Hold! hold!
What are you doing, madman?
Spurn you more wealth than can be told,
The fowl that lays the eggs of gold,
Because she's plainly clad, man?"
17.
To him Philemon,—"I'll not balk
Thy will with any shackle;
Wilt add a burden to thy walk?
Then take her without further talk;
You're both but fit to cackle!"
18.
But scarce the poet touched the bird,
It rose to stature regal;
And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred,
A whisper as of doom was heard,—
'T was Jove's bolt-bearing eagle.
19.
As when from far-off cloudbergs springs
A crag, and, hurtling under,
From cliff to cliff the rumor flings,
So she from flight-foreboding wings
Shook out a murmurous thunder.
20.
She gripped the poet to her breast,
And ever upward soaring,
Earth seemed a new-moon in the West,
And then one light among the rest
Where squadrons lie at mooring.
21.
How know I to what o'er-world seat
The eagle bent her courses?
The waves that seem its base to beat,
The gales that round it weave and fleet,
Are life's creative forces.
22.
Here was the bird's primeval nest,
High on a promontory
Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest,
And broods new æons 'neath her breast,
The future's unfledged glory.
23.
I knew not how, but I was there,
All feeling, hearing, seeing;
It was not wind that stirred my hair,
But living breath, the essence rare
Of unembodied being.
24.
And in the nest an egg of gold
Lay wrapt in its own lustre,
Gazing whereon, what depths untold
Within, what wonders manifold
Seemed silently to muster!
25.
Do visions of such inward grace
Still haunt our life benighted?
It glowed as when St. Peter's face,
Illumed, forgets its stony race,
And seems to throb self-lighted.
26.
One saw therein the life of man,—
Or so the poet found it;
The yolk and white, conceive who can,
Were the glad earth, that, floating, span
In the soft heaven around it.
27.
I knew this as one knows in dream,
Where no effects to causes
Are chained as in our work-day scheme,
And then was wakened by a scream
Sent up by frightened Baucis.
28.
"Bless Zeus!" she cried, "I'm safe below!"
First pale, then red as coral;
And I, still drowsy, pondered slow,
And seemed to find, but hardly know,
Something like this for moral.
29.
Each day the world is born anew
For him who takes it rightly;
Not fresher that which Adam knew,
Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew
Dropped on Arcadia nightly.
30.
Rightly?—that's simply: 't is to see
Some substance casts these shadows
Which we call Life and History,
That aimless seem to chase and flee
Like wind-gleams over meadows.
31.
Simply?—that's nobly: 't is to know
That God may still be met with,
Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow
This sense, this heart, this brain aglow,
To grovel and forget with.
32.
Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me,
No chemistry will win you;
Charis still rises from the sea:
If you can't find her, might it be
The trouble was within you?
OUT OF THE SEA.
A raw, gusty afternoon: one of the last dragging breaths of a nor'easter, which swept, in the beginning of November, from the Atlantic coast to the base of the Alleghanies. It lasted a week, and brought the winter,—for autumn had lingered unusually late that year; the fat bottom-lands of Pennsylvania, yet green, deadened into swamps, as it passed over them: summery, gay bits of lakes among the hills glazed over with muddy ice; the forests had been kept warm between the western mountains, and held thus late even their summer's strength and darker autumn tints, but the fierce ploughing winds of this storm and its cutting sleet left them a mass of broken boughs and rotted leaves. In fact, the sun had loitered so long, with a friendly look back-turned into these inland States, that people forgot that the summer had gone, and skies and air and fields were merry-making together, when they lent their color and vitality to these few bleak days, and then suddenly found that they had entertained winter unawares.
Down on the lee coast of New Jersey, however, where the sea and wind spend the year making ready for their winter's work of shipwreck, this storm, though grayer and colder there than elsewhere, toned into the days and nights as a something entirely matter-of-course and consonant. In summer it would have been at home there. Its aspect was different, also, as I said. But little rain fell here; the wind lashed the ocean into fury along the coast, and then rolled in long, melancholy howls into the stretches of barren sand and interminable pine forest; the horizon contracted, though at all times it is narrower than anywhere else, the dome of the sky wider,—clouds and atmosphere forming the scenery, and the land but a round, flat standing-place: but now the sun went out; the air grew livid, as though death were coming through it; solid masses of gray, wet mist moved, slower than the wind, from point to point, like gigantic ghosts gathering to the call of the murderous sea.
"Yonder go the shades of Ossian's heroes," said Mary Defourchet to her companion, pointing through the darkening air.
They were driving carefully in an old-fashioned gig, in one of the lulls of the storm, along the edge of a pine wood, early in the afternoon. The old Doctor,—for it was MacAulay, (Dennis,) from over in Monmouth County, she was with,—the old man did not answer, having enough to do to guide his mare, the sleet drove so in his eyes. Besides, he was gruffer than usual this afternoon, looking with the trained eyes of an old water-dog out to the yellow line of the sea to the north. Miss Defourchet pulled the oil-skin cloth closer about her knees, and held her tongue; she relished the excitement of this fierce fighting the wind, though; it suited the nervous tension which her mind had undergone lately.
It was a queer, lonesome country, the lee coast,—never so solitary as now, perhaps; older than the rest of the world, she fancied,—so many of Nature's voices, both of bird and vegetable, had been entirely lost out of it: no wonder it had grown unfruitful, and older and dumber and sad, listening for ages to the unremorseful, cruel cries of the sea; these dead bodies, too, washed up every year on its beaches, must haunt it, though it was not guilty. She began to say something of this to Doctor Dennis, tired of being silent.
"Your country seems to me always to shut itself out from the world," she said; "from the time I enter that desolate region on its border of dwarf oaks and gloomy fires of the charcoal-burners, I think of the old leper and his cry of 'Unclean! unclean!'"
MacAulay glances anxiously at her, trying to keep pace with her meaning.
"It's a lonesome place enough," he said, slowly. "There be but the two or three farm-keepers; and the places go from father to son, father to son. The linen and carpet-mats in that house you're in now come down from the times before Washington. Stay-at-home, quiet people,—only the men that follow the water, in each generation. There be but little to be made from these flats of white sand. Yes, quiet enough: the beasts of prey aren't scaret out of these pine forests yet, I heard the cry of a panther the other night only, coming from Tom's River: close by the road it was: sharp and sorrowful, like a lost child.—As for ghosts," he continued, after a thoughtful pause, "I don't know any that would have reason for walking, without it was Captain Kidd. His treasure's buried along-shore here."
"Ay?" said Mary, looking up shrewdly into his face.
"Yes," he answered, shaking his head slowly, and measuring his whip with one eye. "Along here, many's the Spanish half-dollar I've picked up myself among the kelp. They do say they're from a galleon that went ashore come next August thirty years ago, but I don't know that."
"And the people in the hamlet?" questioned Mary, nodding to a group of scattered, low-roofed houses.
"Clam-fishers, the maist o' them. There be quite a many wrackers, but they live farther on, towards Barnegat. But a wrack draws them, like buzzards to a carcass."
Miss Defourchet's black eye kindled, as if at the prospect of a good tragedy.
"Did you ever see a wreck going down?" she asked, eagerly.
"Yes,"—shutting his grim lips tighter.
"That emigrant ship last fall? Seven hundred and thirty souls lost, they told me."
"I was not here to know, thank God," shortly.
"It would be a sensation for a lifetime,"—cuddling back into her seat, with no hopes of a story from the old Doctor.
MacAulay sat up stiffer, his stern gray eye scanning the ocean-line again, as the mare turned into the more open plains of sand sloping down to the sea. It was up-hill work with him, talking to this young lady. He was afraid of a woman who had lectured in public, nursed in the hospitals, whose blood seemed always at fever heat, and whose æsthetic taste could seek the point of view from which to observe a calamity so horrible as the emigrant ship going down with her load of lives. "She's been fed on books too much," he thought. "It's the trouble with young women nowadays." On the other hand, for himself, he had lost sight of the current of present knowledges,—he was aware of that, finding how few topics in common there were between them; but it troubled the self-reliant old fellow but little. Since he left Yale, where he and this girl's uncle, Doctor Bowdler, had been chums together, he had lived in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, and many of the rough ways of speaking and acting of the people had clung to him, as their red mud to his shoes. As he grew older, he did not care to brush either off.
Miss Defourchet had been a weight on his mind for a week or more. Her guardian, Doctor Bowdler, had sent her down to board in one of the farm-houses. "The sea-air will do her good, physically," he said in a note to his old chum, with whom he always had kept up a lingering intercourse; "she's been over-worked lately,—sick soldiers, you know. Mary went into the war con amore, like all women, or other happy people who are blind of one eye. Besides, she is to be married about Christmas, and before she begins life in earnest it would do her good to face something real. Nothing like living by the sea, and with those homely, thorough-blood Quakers, for bringing people to their simple, natural selves. By the way, you have heard of Dr. Birkenshead, whom she marries? though he is a surgeon,—not exactly in your profession. A surprisingly young man to have gained his reputation. I'm glad Mary marries a man of so much mark; she has pulled alone so long, she needs a master." So MacAulay had taken pains to drive the young lady out, as to-day, and took a general fatherly sort of charge of her, for his old friend's sake.
Doctor Bowdler had frankly told his niece his reasons for wishing her to go down to the sea-shore. They nettled her more than she chose to show. She was over thirty, an eager humanitarian, had taught the freedmen at Port Royal, gone to Gettysburg and Antietam with sanitary stores,—surely, she did not need to be told that she had yet to begin life in earnest! But she was not sorry for the chance to rest and think. After she married she would be taken from the quiet Quaker society in Philadelphia, in which she always had moved, to one that would put her personal and mental powers to a sharp proof; for Birkenshead, by right of his professional fame, and a curiously attractive personal eccentricity, had gradually become the nucleus of one of the best and most brilliant circles in the country, men and women alike distinguished for their wit and skill in extracting the finest tones from life while they lived. The quiet Quaker girl was secretly on her mettle,—secretly, too, a little afraid. The truth was, she knew Doctor Birkenshead only in the glare of public life; her love for him was, as yet, only a delicate intellectual appreciation that gave her a keen delight. She was anxious that in his own world he should not be ashamed of her. She was glad he was to share this breathing-space with her; they could see each other unmasked. Doctor Bowdler and he were coming down from New York on Ben Van Note's lumber-schooner. It was due yesterday, but had not yet arrived.
"You are sure," MacAulay said to her, as they rode along, "that they will come with Ben?"
"Quite sure. They preferred it to the cars for the novelty of the thing, and the storm lulled the day they were to sail. Could the schooner make this inlet in a sea like that?"
Doctor Dennis, stooping to arrange the harness, pretended not to hear her.
"Ben, at least," he thought, "knows that to near the bar to-day means death."
"One would think," he added aloud, "that Dick Bowdler's gray hairs and thirty years of preaching would have sobered his love of adventure. He was a foolhardy chap at college."
Miss Defourchet's glance grew troubled, as she looked out at the gathering gloom and the crisp bits of yellow foam blown up to the carriage-wheels. Doctor Dennis turned the mare's head, thus hiding the sea from them; but its cry sounded for miles inland to-day,—an awful, inarticulate roar. All else was solemn silence. The great salt marshes rolled away on one side of the road, lush and rank,—one solitary dead tree rising from them, with a fish-hawk's uncouth nest lumbering its black trunk; they were still as the grave; even the ill-boding bird was gone long ago, and kept no more its lonely vigil on the dead limb over wind and wave. She glanced uneasily from side to side: high up on the beach lay fragments of old wrecks; burnt spars of vessels drifted ashore to tell, in their dumb way, of captain and crew washed, in one quick moment, by this muddy water of the Atlantic, into that sea far off whence no voyager has come back to bring the tidings. Land and sea seemed to her to hint at this thing,—this awful sea, cold and dark beyond. What did the dark mystery in the cry of the surf mean but that? That was the only sound. The heavy silence without grew intolerable to her: it foreboded evil. The cold, yellow light of day lingered long. Overhead, cloud after cloud rose from the far watery horizon, and drove swiftly and silently inland, bellying dark as it went, carrying the storm. As the horse's hoofs struck hard on the beach, a bird rose out of the marsh and trailed through the air, its long legs dragging behind it, and a blaze of light feathers on its breast catching a dull glow in the fading evening.
"The blue heron flies low," said the Doctor. "That means a heavier storm. It scents a wreck as keenly as a Barnegat pirate."
"It is fishing, maybe?" said Mary, trying to rouse herself.
"It's no a canny fisher that," shaking his head. "The fish you'd find in its nest come from the deep waters, where heron never flew. Well, they do say," in answer to her look of inquiry, "that on stormy nights it sits on the beach with a phosphoric light under its wing, and so draws them to shore."
"How soon will the storm be on us?" after a pause.
"In not less than two hours. Keep your heart up, child. Ben Van Note is no fool. He'd keep clear of Squan Beach as he would of hell's mouth, such a night as this is going to be. Your friends are all safe. We'll drive home as soon as we've been at the store to see if the mail's brought you a letter."
He tucked in his hairy overcoat about his long legs, and tried to talk cheerfully as they drove along, seeing how pale she was.
"The store" for these two counties was a large, one-roomed frame building on the edge of the great pine woods, painted bright pink, with a wooden blue lady, the old figure-head of some sloop, over the door. The stoop outside was filled with hogsheads and boxes; inside was the usual stock of calicoes, chinaware, molasses-barrels, and books; the post-office, a high desk, on which lay half a dozen letters. By the dingy little windows, on which the rain was now beating sharply, four or five dirty sailors and clam-diggers were gathered, lounging on the counter and kegs, while one read a newspaper aloud slowly. They stopped to look at Miss Defourchet, when she came in, and waited by the door for the Doctor. The gloomy air and forlorn-looking shop contrasted and threw into bright relief her pretty, delicate little figure, and the dainty carriage-dress she wore. All the daylight that was in the store seemed at once to cling to and caress the rare beauty of the small face, with its eager blue eyes and dark brown curls. There was one woman in the store, sitting on a beer-cask, a small, sharp-set old wife, who drew her muddy shoes up under her petticoats out of Mary's way, but did not look at her. Miss Defourchet belonged to a family to whom the ease that money gives and a certain epicureanism of taste were natural. She stood there wondering, not unkindly, what these poor creatures did with their lives, and their dull, cloddish days; what could they know of the keen pains, the pleasures, the ambitions, or loves, that ennobled wealthier souls?
"This be yer papper, Doctor," said one; "but we've not just yet finished it."
"All right, boys; Jem Dexter can leave it to-night, as he goes by. Any mail for me, Joe? But you're waiting, Mother Phebe?"—turning with a sudden gentleness to the old woman near Mary.
"Yes, I be. But it don't matter. Joseph, serve the Doctor,"—beating a tattoo on the counter with her restless hands.
The Doctor did not turn to take his letters, however, nor seem to heed the wind which was rising fitfully each moment without, but leaned leisurely on the counter.
"Did you expect a letter to-day?"—in the same subdued voice.
She gave a scared look at the men by the window, and then in a whisper,—
"From my son, Derrick,—yes. The folks here take Derrick for a joke,—an' me. But I'm expectin'. He said he'd come, thee sees?"
"So he did."
"Well, there's none from Derrick to-day, Mother Phebe," said the burly storekeeper, taking his stubby pipe out of his mouth.
She caught her breath.
"Thee looked carefully, Joseph?"
He nodded. She began to unbutton a patched cotton umbrella,—her lips moving as people's do sometimes in the beginning of second childhood.
"I'll go home, then. I'll be back mail-day, Wednesday, Joseph. Four days that is,—Wednesday."
"Lookee here now, Gran!" positively, laying down the pipe to give effect to his words; "you're killin' yerself, you are. Keep a-trottin' here all winter, an' what sort of a report of yerself'll yer make to Derrick by spring? When that 'ere letter comes, if come it do, I've said I'd put on my cut an' run up with it. See there!"—pulling out her thin calico skirt before the Doctor,—"soaked, she is."
"Thee's kind, Joseph, but thee don't know,"—drawing her frock back with a certain dignity. "When my boy's handwrite comes, I must be here. I learned writin' on purpose that I might read it first,"—turning to Mary.
"How long has your boy been gone?" asked Miss Defourchet, heedless of Joseph's warning "Hush-h!"
"Twenty years, come Febuary," eagerly volunteered one or two voices by the window. "She's never heerd a word in that time, an' she never misses a mail-day, but she's expectin'," added one, with a coarse laugh.
"None o' that, Sam Venners," said Joe, sharply. "If so be as Dirk said he'd come, be it half-a-hunder' years, he'll stan' to 't. I knowed Dirk. Many's the clam we toed out o' th' inlet yonner. He's not the sort to hang round, gnawin' out the old folk's meat-pot, as some I cud name. He"——
"I'll go, if thee'll let me apast," said the old woman, humbly curtsying to the men, who now jammed up the doorway.
"It's a cussed shame, Venners," said Joe, when she was out. "Why can't yer humor the old gran a bit? She's the chicken-heartedest woman ever I knowed," explanatory to Miss Defourchet, "an' these ten years she's been mad-like, waitin' for that hang-dog son of hers to come back."
Mary followed her out on the stoop, where she stood, her ragged green umbrella up, her sharp little face turned anxiously to the far sea-line.
"Bad! bad!" she muttered, looking at Mary.
"The storm? Yes. But you ought not to be out in such weather," kindly, putting her furred hand on the skinny arm.
The woman smiled,—a sweet, good-humored smile it was, in spite of her meagre, hungry old face.
"Why, look there, young woman,"—pulling up her sleeve, and showing the knotted tendons and thick muscles of her arm. "I'm pretty tough, thee sees. There's not a boatman in Ocean County could pull an oar with me when I was a gell, an' I'm tough yet,"—hooking her sleeve again.
The smile haunted Miss Defourchet; where had she seen it before?
"Was Derrick strongly built?"—idly wishing to recall it.
"Thee's a stranger; maybe thee has met my boy?"—turning on her sharply. "No, that's silly,"—the sad vagueness coming back into the faded eyes. After a pause,—"Derrick, thee said? He was short, the lad was,—but with legs and arms as tender and supple as a wild-cat's. I loss much of my strength when he was born; it was wonderful, for a woman, before; I giv it to him. I'm glad of that! I thank God that I giv it to him!"—her voice sinking, and growing wilder and faster. "Why! why!"
Mary took her hand, half-scared, looking in at the store-door, wishing Doctor Dennis would come.
The old woman tottered and sat down on the lower rung of a ladder standing there. Mary could see now how the long sickness of the hope deferred had touched the poor creature's brain, gentle and loving at first. She pushed the wet yellow sun-bonnet back from the gray hair; she thought she had never seen such unutterable pathos or tragedy as in this little cramped figure, and this old face, turned forever watching to the sea.
"Thee doesn't know; how should thee?"—gently, but not looking at her. "Thee never had a son; an' when thee has, it will be born in wedlock. Thee's rich, an' well taught. I was jess a clam-fisher, an' knowed nothin' but my baby. His father was a gentleman: come in spring, an' gone in th' fall, an' that was the last of him. That hurt a bit, but I had Derrick. Oh, Derrick! Derrick!"—whispering, rocking herself to and fro as if she held a baby, cooing over the uncouth name with an awful longing and tenderness in the sound.
Miss Defourchet was silent. Something in all this awed her; she did not understand it.
"I mind," she wandered on, "when the day's work was done, I'd hold him in my arms,—so,—and his sleepy little face would turn up to mine. I seemed to begin to loss him after he was a baby,"—with an old, worn sigh. "He went with other boys. The Weirs and Hallets took him up; they were town-bred people, an' he soon got other notions from mine, an' talked of things I'd heerd nothin' of. I was very proud of my Derrick; but I knowed I'd loss him all the same. I did washin' an' ironin' by nights to keep him dressed like the others,—an' kep' myself out o' their way, not to shame him with his mother."
"And was he ashamed of you?" said Mary, her face growing hot.
"Thee did not know my little boy,"—the old woman stood up, drawing herself to her full height. "His wee body was too full of pluck an' good love to be shamed by his mother. I mind the day I come on them suddint, by the bridge, where they were standin', him an' two o' the Hallets. I was carryin' a basket of herrings. The Hallets they flushed up, an' looked at him to see what he'd do; for they never named his mother to him, I heerd. The road was deep with mud; an' as I stood a bit to balance myself, keepin' my head turned from him, before I knew aught, my boy had me in his arms, an' carried me t' other side. I'm not a heavy weight, thee sees, but his face was all aglow with the laugh.
"'There you are, dear,' he says, puttin' me down, the wind blowin' his brown hair.
"One of the Hallets brought my basket over then, an' touched his hat as if I'd been a lady. That was the last time my boy had his arms about me: next week he went away. That night I heerd him in his room in the loft, here an' there, here an' there, as if he couldn't sleep, an' so for many nights, comin' down in the mornin' with his eye red an' swollen, but full of the laugh an' joke as always. The Hallets were with him constant, those days, Judge Hallet, their father, were goin' across seas, Derrick said. So one night, I'd got his tea ready, an' were waitin' for him by the fire, knittin',—when he come in an' stood by the mantel-shelf, lookin' down at me, steady. He had on his Sunday suit of blue, Jim Devines giv him.
"'Where be yer other clothes, my son?' I said.
"'They're not clean,' says he. 'I've been haulin' marl for Springer this week. He paid me to-night; the money's in the kitchen-cupboard.'
"I looked up at that, for it was work I'd never put him to.
"'It'll buy thee new shoes,' said I.
"'I did it for you, mother,' he says, suddint, puttin' his hand over his eyes. 'I wish things were different with you.'
"'Yes, Derrick.'
"I went on with my knittin'; for I never talked much to him, for the shame of my bad words, since he'd learned better. But I wondered what he meant; for wages was high that winter, an' I was doin' well.
"'If ever,' he says, speakin' low an' faster, 'if ever I do anything that gives you pain, you'll know it was for love of you I did it. Not for myself, God knows! To make things different for you.'
"'Yes, Derrick,' I says, knittin' on, for I didn't understan' thin. Afterwards I did. The room was dark, an' it were dead quiet for a bit; then the lad moved to the door.
"'Where be thee goin', Derrick?' I said.
"He come back an' leaned on my chair.
"'Let me tell you when I come back,' he said. 'You'll wait for me?' stoopin' down an' kissin' me.
"I noticed that, for he did not like to kiss,—Derrick. An' his lips were hot an' dry.
"'Yes, I'll wait, my son,' I said. 'Thee'll not be gone long?'
"He did not answer that, but kissed me again, an' went out quickly.
"I sat an' waited long that night, an' searched till mornin'. There's been a many nights an' days since, but I've never found him. The Hallets all went that night, an' I heerd Derrick went as waiter-boy, so's to get across seas. It's twenty years now. But I think he'll come,"—looking up with a laugh.
Miss Defourchet started; where had she known this woman? The sudden flicker of a smile, followed by a quick contraction of the eyelids and mouth, was peculiar and curiously sensitive and sad; somewhere, in a picture maybe, she had seen the same.
Doctor Dennis, who had waited purposely, came out now on the stoop. Miss Defourchet looked up. The darkness had gathered while they stood there; the pine woods, close at the right, began to lower distant and shapeless; now and then the wind flapped a raw dash of rain in their faces, and then was suddenly still. Behind them, two or three tallow candles, just lighted in the store, sputtered dismal circles of dingy glare in the damp fog; in front, a vague slope of wet night, in which she knew lay the road and the salt marshes; and far beyond, distinct, the sea-line next the sky, a great yellow phosphorescent belt, apparently higher than their heads. Nearer, unseen, the night-tide was sent in: it came with a regular muffled throb that shook the ground. Doctor Dennis went down, and groped about his horse, adjusting the harness.
"The poor beast is soaked to the marrow: it's a dull night: d'ye hear how full the air is of noises?"
"It be the sea makin' ready," said Joe, in a whisper, as if it were a sentient thing and could hear. He touched the old woman on the arm and beckoned her inside to one of the candles.
"There be a scrap of a letter come for you; but keep quiet. Ben Van Note's scrawl of a handwrite, think."
The letters were large enough,—printed, in fact: she read it but once.
"Your Dirk come Aboord the Chief at New York. I knowed him by a mark on his wrist—the time jim hallet cut him' you mind. he is aged and Differentt name. I kep close. we sail to-day and Ill Breng him Ashor tomorrer nite plese God. be on Handd."
She folded the letter, crease by crease, and put it quietly in her pocket. Joe watched her curiously.
"D' Ben say when the Chief ud run in?"
"To-night."
"Bah-h! there be n't a vessel within miles of this coast,—without a gale drives 'm in."
She did not seem to hear him: was feeling her wet petticoats and sleeves. She would shame Derrick, after all, with this patched, muddy frock! She had worked so long to buy the black silk, gown and white neckercher that was folded in the bureau-drawer to wear the day he'd come back!
"When he come back!"
Then, for the first time, she realized what she was thinking about. Coming to-night!
Presently Miss Defourchet went to her where she was sitting on a box in the dark and rain.
"Are you sick?" said she, putting her hand out.
"Oh, no, dear!" softly, putting the fingers in her own, close to her breast, crying and sobbing quietly. "Thee hand be a'most as soft as a baby's foot," after a while, fancying the little chap was creeping into her bosom again, thumping with his fat feet and fists as he used to do. Her very blood used to grow wild and hot when he did that, she loved him so. And her heart to-night was just as warm and light as then. He was coming back, her boy: maybe he was poor and sick, a worn-out man; but in a few hours he would be here, and lay his tired head on her breast, and be a baby again.
Joe went down to the Doctor with a lantern.
"Van Note meant to run in the Chief to-night,"—in an anxious, inquiring whisper.
"He's not an idiot!"
"No,—but, bein' near, the wind may drive 'em on the bar. Look yonder."
"See that, too, Joe?" said bow-legged Phil, from Tom's River, who was up that night.
"That yellow line has never been in the sky since the night the James Frazier—Ach-h! it's come!"
He had stooped to help Doctor Dennis with his harness, but now fell forward, clapping his hands to his ears. A terrible darkness swept over them; the whole air was filled with a fierce, risping crackle; then came a sharp concussion, that seemed to tear the earth asunder. Miss Defourchet cried aloud: no one answered her. In a few moments the darkness slowly lifted, leaving the old yellow lights and fogs on sea and land. The men stood motionless as when the tornado passed, Doctor Dennis leaning on his old mare, having thrown one arm about her as if to protect her, his stern face awed.
"There's where it went," said Joe, coolly, drawing his hands from his pockets, and pointing to a black gap in the pine woods. "The best farms in this Jersey country lie back o' that. I told you there was death in the pot, but I didn't think it ud 'a' come this fashion."
"When will the storm be on us?" asked Mary, trembling.
Joe laughed sardonically.
"Haven't ye hed enough of it?"
"There will be no rain after a gust like that," said MacAulay. "I'll try and get you home now. It has done its worst. It will take years to wipe out the woe this night has worked."
The wind had fallen into a dead silence, frightened at itself. And now the sudden, awful thunder of the sea broke on them, shaking the sandy soil on which they stood.
"Thank God that Van Note is so trusty a sailor as you say!" said Mary, buttoning her furs closer to her throat. "They're back in a safe harbor, I doubt not."
Joe and Doctor Dennis exchanged significant glances as they stood by the mare, and then looked again out to sea.
"Best get her home," said Joe, in a whisper.
Doctor Dennis nodded, and they made haste to bring the gig up to the horse-block.
Old Phebe Trull had been standing stirless since the gust passed. She drew a long breath when Mary touched her, telling her to come home with them.
"That was a sharp blow. I'm an old Barnegat woman, an' I've known no such cutters as that. But he'll come. I'm expectin' my boy to-night, young woman. I'm goin' to the beach now to wait for him,—for Derrick."
In spite of the queer old face peering out from the yellow sun-bonnet, with its flabby wrinkles and nut-cracker jaws, there was a fine, delicate meaning in the smile with which she waved her hand down to the stormy beach.
"What's that?" said Doctor Dennis, starting up, and holding his hand behind his ear. His sandy face grew pale.
"I heard nothing," said Mary.
The next moment she caught a dull thud in the watery distance, as if some pulse of the night had throbbed feverishly.
Bow-legged Phil started to his feet.
"It's the gun of the Chief! Van Note's goin' down!" he cried, with a horrible oath, and hobbled off, followed by the other men.
"His little brother Benny be on her," said Joe. "May God have mercy on their souls!"
He had climbed like a cat to the rafters, and thrown down two or three cables and anchors, and, putting them over his shoulders, started soberly for the beach, stopping to look at Miss Defourchet, crouched on the floor of the store.
"You'd best see after her, Doctor. Ropes is all we can do for 'em. No boat ud live in that sea, goin' out."
Going down through the clammy fog, his feet sinking in the marsh with the weight he carried, he could see red lights in the mist, gathering towards shore.
"It's the wrackers goin' down to be ready for mornin'."
And in a few moments stood beside them a half-dozen brawny men, with their legs and chests bare. The beach on which they stood glared white in the yellow light, giving the effect of a landscape in Polar seas. One or two solitary headlands loomed gloomily up, covered with snow. In front, the waters at the edge of the sea broke at their feet in long, solemn, monotonous swells, that reverberated like thunder,—a death-song for the work going on in the chaos beyond.
"Thar's no use doin' anything out thar," said one of the men, nodding gloomily to a black speck in the foaming hell. "She be on the bar this ten minutes, an' she 's a mean-built craft, that Chief."
"Couldn't a boat run out from the inlet?" timidly ventured an eager, blue-eyed little fellow.
"No, Snap," said Joe, letting his anchor fall, and clearing his throat. "Well, there be the end of old Ben, hey? Be yer never tired, yer cruel devil?" turning with a sudden fierceness to the sly foam creeping lazily about his feet.
There was a long silence.
"Bowlegs tried it, but his scow stud still, an' the breakers came atop as if it war a clam-shell. He warn't five yards from shore. His Ben's aboard." Another peal of a gun from the schooner broke through the dark and storm.
"God! I be sick o' sittin' on shor', an' watchin' men drownin' like rats on a raft," said Joe, wiping the foam from his thick lips, and trotting up and down the sand, keeping his back to the vessel.
Some of the men sat down, their hands clasped about their knees, looking gravely out.
"What cud we do, Joey?" said one. "Thar be Hannah an' the children; we kin give Hannah a lift. But as for Ben, it 's no use thinkin' about Ben no more."
The little clam-digger Snap was kindling a fire out of the old half-burnt wrecks of vessels.
"It's too late to give 'em warnin'," he said; "but it'll let 'em see we're watchin' 'em at the last. One ud like friends at the last."
The fire lighted up the shore, throwing long bars of hot, greenish flame up the fog.
"Who be them, Joe?" whispered a wrecker, as two dim figures came down through the marsh.
"She hev a sweetheart aboord. Don't watch her."
The men got up, and moved away, leaving Miss Defourchet alone with Doctor Dennis. She stood so quiet, her eyes glued on the dull, shaking shadow yonder on the bar, that he thought she did not care. Two figures came round from the inlet to where the water shoaled, pulling a narrow skiff.
"Hillo!" shouted Doctor Dennis. "Be you mad?"
The stouter of the figures hobbled up. It was Bowlegs. His voice was deadened in the cold of the fog, but he wiped the hot sweat from his face.
"In God's name, be thar none of ye ull bear a hand with me? Ud ye sit here an' see 'em drown? Benny's thar,—my Ben."
Joe shook his head.
"My best friend be there," said the old Doctor. "But what can ye do? Your boat will be paper in that sea, Phil."
"That's so," droned out one or two of the wreckers, dully nodding.
"Curses on ye for cowards, then!" cried Bowlegs, as he plunged into the surf, and righted his boat. "Look who's my mate, shame on ye!"
His mate shoved the skiff out with an oar into the seething breakers, turning to do it, and showed them, by the far-reaching fire-light, old Phebe Trull, stripped to her red woollen chemise and flannel petticoat, her yellow, muscular arms and chest bare. Her peaked old face was set, and her faded blue eye aflame. She did not hear the cry of horror from the wreckers.
"Ye've a better pull than any white-liver of 'em, from Tom's to Barnegat," gasped Bowlegs, struggling against the surf.
She was wrestling for life with Death itself; but the quiet, tender smile did not leave her face.
"My God! ef I cud pull as when I was a gell!" she muttered. "Derrick, I'm comin'! I'm comin', boy!"
The salt spray wet their little fire of logs, beside which Snap sat crying,—put it out at last, leaving a heap of black cinders. The night fell heavier and cold; boat and schooner alike were long lost and gone in outer darkness. As they wandered up and down, chilled and hopeless, they could not see each other's faces,—only the patch of white sand at their feet. When they shouted, no gun or cry answered them again. All was silence, save the awful beat of the surf upon the shore, going on forever with its count, count of the hours until the time when the sea shall at last give up its dead.
Ben Van Note did not run the Chief in near shore purposely; but the fog was dense, and Ben was a better sailor than pilot. He took the wheel himself about an hour before they struck,—the two or three other men at their work on deck, with haggard, anxious faces, and silent: it is not the manner of these Jersey coast-men to chatter in heavy weather.
Philbrick, Doctor Bowdler's boy, lounged beside Ben, twisting a greasy lantern: "a town-bred fellow," Ben said; "put him in mind of young, rank cheese."
"You'd best keep a sharp eye, Van Note," he said; "this is a dirty bit of water, and you've two great men aboard: one patcher of the body, t' other of the soul."
"I vally my own neck more than either," growled Ben, and after a while forced himself to add, "He's no backbone,—the little fellow with your master, I mean."
"Umph!" superciliously, "I'd like to see the 'little fellow' making neat bits out of that carcass of yours! His dainty white fingers carve off a fellow's legs and arms, caring no more than if they were painting flowers. He is a neat flower-painter, Dr. Birkenshead; moulds in clay, too."
He stared as Van Note burst into a coarse guffaw.
"Flower-painter, eh? Well, well, young man. You'd best go below. It's dirtier water than you think."
Doctors Bowdler and Birkenshead were down in the little cabin, reading by the dull light of a coal-oil lamp. When the vessel began to toss so furiously, the elder man rose and paced fussily to and fro, rubbing his fingers through his iron-gray hair. His companion was too much engrossed by his paper to heed him. He had a small, elegantly shaped figure,—the famous surgeon,—a dark face, drawn by a few heavy lines; looking at it, you felt, that, in spite of his womanish delicacies of habit, which lay open to all, never apologized for, he was a man whom you could not approach familiarly, though he were your brother born. He stopped reading presently, slowly folding the newspaper straight, and laying it down.
"That is a delicious blunder of the Administration," with a little gurgling laugh of thorough relish. "You remember La Rochefoucauld's aphorism, 'One is never so easily deceived as when one seeks to deceive others'?"
Doctor Bowdler looked uncomfortable.
"A selfish French Philister, La Rochefoucauld!" he blurted out. "I feel as if I had been steeped in meanness and vulgarity all my life, when I read him."
"He knew men," said the other, coolly, resetting a pocket set of chessmen on the board where they had been playing,—"Frenchmen," shortly.
"Doctor Birkenshead," after a pause, "you appear to have no sympathies with either side, in this struggle for the nation's life. You neither attack nor defend our government."
"In plain English, I have no patriotism? Well, to be honest, I don't comprehend how any earnest seeker for truth can have. If my country has truth, so far she nourishes me, and I am grateful; if not,—why, the air is no purer nor the government more worthy of reverence because I chanced to be born here."
"Why, Sir," said the Doctor, stopping short and growing red, "you could apply such an argument as that to a man's feeling for his wife or child or mother!"
"So you could," looking closely at the queen to see the carving.
Doctor Bowdler looked at him searchingly, and then began his angry walk again in silence. What was the use of answering? No wonder a man who talked in that way was famed in this country and in Europe for his coolness and skill in cutting up living bodies. And yet—remorsefully, looking furtively at him—Birkenshead was not a hard fellow, after all. There was that pauper-hospital of his; and he had known him turn sick when operating on children, and damn the people who brought them to him.
Doctor Bowdler was a little in dread of this future husband of his niece, feeling there was a great gulf between them intellectually, the surgeon having a rare power in a line of life of which he knew nothing. Besides, he could not understand him,—not his homely, keen little face even. The eyes held their own thought, and never answered yours; but on the mouth there was a forlorn depression sometimes, like that of a man who, in spite of his fame, felt himself alone and neglected. It rested there now, as he idly fingered the chessmen.
"Mary will kiss it away in time, maybe,"—doubting, as he said it, whether Mary did not come nearer the man's head than his heart. He stopped, looking out of the hole by the ladder that served the purpose of a window.
"It grows blacker every minute. I shall begin to repent tempting you on such a harebrained expedition, Doctor."
"No. This Van Note seems a cautious sailor enough," carelessly.
"Yes. He's on his own ground, too. We ought to run into Squan Inlet by morning. Did you speak?"
Birkenshead shook his head; the Doctor noticed, however, that his hand had suddenly stopped moving the chessmen; he rested his chin in the other.
"Some case he has left worries him," he thought. "He's not the man to relish this wild-goose chase of mine. It's bad enough for Mary to jar against his quiet tastes with her reforming whims, without my"——
"I would regret bringing you here," he said aloud, "if I did not think you would find a novelty in this shore and people. This coast is hardly 'canny,' as MacAulay would say. It came, literally, out of the sea. Sometime, ages ago, it belonged to the bed of the ocean, and it never has reconciled itself to the life of the land; its Flora is different from that of the boundaries; if you dig a few feet into its marl, you find layers of shells belonging to deep soundings, sharks' teeth and bones, and the like. The people, too, have a 'marvellously fishy and ancient smell.'"
The little man at the table suddenly rose, pushing the chessmen from him.
"What is there to wonder at?"—with a hoarse, unnatural laugh. "That's Nature. You cannot make fat pastures out of sea-sand, any more than a thorough-blood gentilhomme out of a clam-digger. The shark's teeth will show, do what you will." He pulled at his whiskers nervously, went to the window, motioning Doctor Bowdler roughly aside. "Let me see what the night is doing."
The old gentleman stared in a grave surprise. What had he said to startle Birkenshead so utterly out of himself? The color had left his face at the first mention of this beach; his very voice was changed, coarse and thick, as if some other man had broken out through him. At that moment, while Doctor Bowdler stood feebly adjusting his watch-chain, and eying his companion's back, like one who has found a panther in a domestic cat, and knows not when he will spring, the tornado struck the ocean a few feet from their side, cleaving a path for itself into deep watery walls. There was an instant's reeling and intense darkness, then the old Doctor tried to gather himself up, bruised and sick, from the companion-way, where he had been thrown.
"Better lie still," said Birkenshead, in the gentle voice with which he was used to calm a patient.
The old gentleman managed to sit up on the floor. By the dull glare of the cabin-lantern he could see the surgeon sitting on the lower rung of the ladder, leaning forward, holding his head in his hands.
"Strike a light, can't you, Birkenshead? What has happened? Bah! this is horrible! I have swallowed the sea-water! Hear it swash against the sides of the boat! Is the boat going to pieces?"
"And there met us 'a tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,'" said Birkenshead, looking up with a curious smile.
"Did there?"—rubbing his shoulder. "I've kept clear of the sea so far, and I think in future—Hark! what's that?" as through the darkness and the thunderous surge of the water, and the short, fierce calls of the men on board, came a low shivering crack, distinct as a human whisper. "What is it, Birkenshead?" impatiently, when the other made no answer.
"The schooner has struck the bar. She is going to pieces."
The words recalled the old servant of Christ from his insane fright to himself.
"That means death! does it not?"
"Yes."
The two men stood silent,—Doctor Bowdler with his head bent and eyes closed. He looked up presently.
"Let us go on deck now and see what we can do,"—turning cheerfully. "No, there are too many there already."
There was an old tin life-preserver hanging on a hook by the door; the surgeon climbed up to get it, and began buckling it about the old man in spite of his remonstrances. The timbers groaned and strained, the boat trembled like some great beast in its death-agony, settled heavily, and then the beams on one side of them parted. They stood on a shelving plank floor, snapped off two feet from them, the yellow sky overhead, and the breakers crunching their footing away.
"O God!" cried Bowdler, when he looked out at the sea. He was not a brave man; and he could not see it, when he looked; there was but a horror of great darkness, a thunder of sound, and a chilly creeping of salt-water up his legs, as if the great monster licked his victim with his lifeless tongue. Straight in front of them, at the very edge of the horizon, he thought the little clam-digger's fire opened a tunnel of greenish light into the night, "dull and melancholy as a scene in Hades." They saw the men sitting around the blaze with their hands clasped about their knees, the woman's figure alone, and watching.
"Mary!" cried the old man, in the shrill extremity of his agony.
His companion shivered.
"Take this from me, boy!" cried Doctor Bowdler, trying to tear off the life-preserver. "It's a chance. I've neither wife nor child to care if I live or die. You're young; life's beginning for you. I've done with it. Ugh! this water is deadly cold. Take it, I say."
"No," said the other, quietly restraining him.
"Can you swim?"
"In this sea?"—with a half-smile, and a glance at the tossing breakers.
"You'll swim? Promise me you'll swim! And if I come to shore and see Mary?"
Birkenshead had regained the reticent tone habitual to him.
"Tell her, I wish I had loved her better. She will understand. I see the use of love in this last hour."
"Is there any one else?"
"There used to be some one. Twenty years ago I said I would come, and I'm coming now."
"I don't hear you."
Birkenshead laughed at his own thought, whatever it was. The devil who had tempted him might have found in the laugh an outcry more bitter than any agony of common men.
The planks beneath their feet sank inch by inch. They were shut off from the larboard side of the vessel. For a time they had heard oaths and cries from the other men, but now all was silent.
"There is no help coming from shore,"—(the old man's voice was weakening,)—"and this footing is giving way."
"Yes, it's going. Lash your arms to me by your braces, Doctor. I can help you for a few moments."
So saying, Birkenshead tore off his own coat and waistcoat; but as he turned, the coming breaker dashed over their heads, he heard a faint gasp, and when his eyes were clear of the salt, he saw the old man's gray hair in the midst of a sinking wave.
"I wish I could have saved him," he said,—then made his way as best he could by feet and hands to a bulk of timber standing out of the water, and sitting down there, clutched his hands about his knees, very much as he used to do when he was a clam-digger and watched the other boys bringing in their hauls.
"Twenty years ago I said I'd come, and I'm coming," he went on repeating.
Derrick Trull was no coward, as boy or man, but he made no effort to save himself; the slimy water washed him about like a wet rag. He was alone now, if never before in those twenty years; his world of beautiful, cultured, graceful words and sights and deeds was not here, it was utterly gone out; there was no God here, that he thought of; he was quite alone: so, in sight of this lee coast, the old love in that life dead years ago roused, and the mean crime dragged on through every day since gnawed all the manliness and courage out of him.
She would be asleep now, old Phebe Trull,—in the room off the brick kitchen, her wan limbs curled up under her check nightgown, her pipe and noggin of tea on the oven-shelf; he could smell the damp, musty odor of the slop-sink near by. What if he could reach shore? What if he were to steal up to her bed and waken her?
"It's Derrick, back, mother," he would say. How the old creature would skirl and cry over her son Derrick!—Derrick! he hated the name. It belonged to that time of degradation and stinting and foulness.
Doctor Birkenshead lifted himself up. Pish! the old fish-wife had long since forgotten her scapegrace son,—thought him dead. He was dead. He wondered—and this while every swash of the salt-water brought death closer up to his lips—if Miss Defourchet had seen "Mother Phebe." Doubtless she had, and had made a sketch of her to show him;—but no, she was not a picturesque pauper,—vulgar, simply. The water came up closer; the cold of it, and the extremity of peril, or, maybe, this old gnawing at the heart, more virulent than either, soon drew the strength out of his body: close study and high living had made the joints less supple than Derrick Trull's: he lay there limp and unable,—his brain alert, but fickle. It put the watery death out of sight, and brought his familiar every-day life about him: the dissecting-room; curious cases that had puzzled him; drawing-rooms, beautiful women; he sang airs from the operas, sad, broken little snatches, in a deep, mellow voice, finely trained,—fragments of a litany to the Virgin. Birkenshead's love of beauty was a hungry monomania; his brain was filled with memories of the pictures of the Ideal Mother and her Son. One by one they came to him now, the holy woman-type which for ages supplied to the world that tenderness and pity which the Church had stripped from God. Even in his delirium the man of fastidious instincts knew this was what he craved; even now he remembered other living mothers he had known, delicate, nobly born women, looking on their babes with eyes full of all gracious and pure thoughts. With the sharp contrast of a dream came the old clam-digger, barefoot in the mud, her basket of soiled clothes on her shoulder,—her son Derrick, a vulgar lad, aping gentility, behind her. Closer and closer came the waters; a shark's gray hide glittered a few feet from him. Death, sure of his prey, nibbled and played with it; in a little while he lay supine and unconscious.
Reason came back to him like an electric shock; for all the parts of Dr. Birkenshead's organization were instinctive, nervous, like a woman's. When it came, the transient delirium had passed; he was his cool, observant self. He lay on the wet floor of a yawl skiff, his head resting on a man's leg; the man was rowing with even, powerful strokes, and he could feel rather than see in the darkness a figure steering. He was saved. His heart burned with a sudden glorious glow of joy, and genial, boyish zest of life,—one of the excesses of his nature. He tried to speak, but his tongue was stiff, his throat dry; he could have caressed the man's slimy sleeve that touched his cheek, he was so glad to live. The boatman was in no humor for caresses; he drew his labored breath sharply, fighting the waves, rasping out a sullen oath when they baffled him. The little surgeon had tact enough to keep silent; he did not care to talk, either. Life rose before him a splendid possibility, as never before. From the silent figure at the helm came neither word nor motion. Presently a bleak morning wind mingled with the fierce, incessant nor'easter; the three in the yawl, all sea-bred, knew the difference.
"Night ull break soon," said Bowlegs.
It did break in an hour or two into a ghastly gray dawn, bitter cold,—the slanting bars of sharp light from beyond the sea-line falling on the bare coast, on a headland of which moved some black, uneasy figures.
"Th' wrackers be thar."
There was no answer.
"Starboard! Hoy, Mother Phebe!"
She swayed her arms round, her head still fallen on her breast. Doctor Birkenshead, from his half-shut eyes, could see beside him the half-naked, withered old body, in its dripping flannel clothes, God! it had come, then, the time to choose! It was she who had saved, him! she was here,—alive!
"Mother!" he cried, trying to rise.
But the word died in his dry throat; his body, stiff and icy cold, refused to move.
"What ails ye?" growled the man, looking at her. "Be ye giv' out so near land? We've had a jolly seinin' together," laughing savagely, "ef we did miss the fish we went for, an' brought in this herrin'."
"Thee little brother's safe, Bowlegs," said the old woman, in a feeble, far-off voice. "My boy ull bring him to shore."
The boatman gulped back his breath; it sounded like a cry, but he laughed it down.
"You think yer Derrick ull make shore, eh? Well, I don't think that ar way o' Ben. Ben's gone under. It's not often the water gets a ten-year-older like that. I raised him. It was I sent him with Van Note this run. That makes it pleasanter now!" The words were grating out stern and sharp.
"Thee knows Derrick said he'd come," the woman said simply.
She stooped with an effort, after a while, and, thrusting her hand under Doctor Birkenshead's shirt, felt his chest.
"It's a mere patchin' of a body. He's warm yet. Maybe," looking closely into the face, "he'd have seen my boy aboord, an' could say which way he tuk. A drop of raw liquor ull bring him round."
Phil glanced contemptuously at the surgeon's fine linen, and the diamond solitaire on the small, white hand.
"It's not likely that chap ud know the deck-hands. It's the man Doctor Dennis was expectin'."
"Ay?" vaguely.
She kept her hand on the feebly beating heart, chafing it. He lay there, looking her straight in the eyes; in hers—dull with the love and waiting of a life—there was no instinct of recognition. The kind, simple, blue eyes, that had watched his baby limbs grow and strengthen in her arms! How gray the hair was! but its bit of curl was in it yet. The same dear old face that he used to hurry home at night to see! Nobody had loved him but this woman,—never; if he could but struggle up and get his head on her breast! How he used to lie there when he was a big boy, listening to the same old stories night after night,—the same old stories! Something homely and warm and true was waking in him to-night that had been dead for years and years; this was no matter of æsthetics or taste, it was real, real. He wondered if people felt in this way who had homes, or those simple folk who loved the Lord.
Inch by inch, with hard, slow pulls, they were gaining shore. Mary Defourchet was there. If he came to her as the clam-digger's bastard son, owning the lie he had practised half his life,—what then? He had fought hard for his place in the world, for the ease and culture of his life,—most of all, for the society of thorough-bred and refined men, his own kindred. What would they say to Derrick Trull, and the mother he had kept smothered up so long? All this with his eyes fixed on hers. The cost was counted. It was to give up wife and place and fame,—all he had earned. It had not been cheaply earned. All Doctor Birkenshead's habits and intellect, the million nervous whims of a sensitive man, rebelled against the sacrifice. Nothing to battle them down but—what?
"Be ye hurt, Mother Phebe? What d'yer hold yer breath for?"
She evaded him with a sickly smile.
"We're gamin', Bowlegs. It's but a few minutes till we make shore. He'll be there, if—if he be ever to come."
"Yes, Gran," with a look of pity.
The wind stood still; it held its breath, as though with her it waited. The man strained against the tide till the veins in his brawny neck stood out purple. On the bald shore, the dim figures gathered in a cluster, eagerly watching. Old Phebe leaned forward, shading her eyes with her hand, peering from misty headland to headland with bated breath. A faint cheer reached them from land.
"Does thee know the voices, Bowlegs?"—in a dry whisper.
"It be the wreckers."
"Oh!—Derrick," after a pause, "would be too weak to cheer; he'd be worn with the swimmin'. Thee must listen sharp. Did they cry my name out? as if there was some 'ut for me?"
"No, Mother," gruffly. "But don't ye lose heart after twenty years' waitin'."
"I'll not."
As he pulled, the boatman looked over at her steadily.
"I never knowed what this was for ye, till now I've loss Ben," he said, gently. "It's as if you'd been lossin' him every day these twenty years."
She did not hear him; her eyes, straining, scanned the shore; she seemed to grow blind as they came nearer; passed her wet sleeve over them again and again.
"Thee look for me, Bowlegs," she said, weakly.
The yawl grated on the shallow waters of the bar; the crowd rushed down to the edge of the shore, the black figures coming out distinct now, half a dozen of the wreckers going into the surf and dragging the boat up on the beach. She turned her head out to sea, catching his arm with both hands.
"Be there any strange face to shore? Thee didn't know him. A little face, full o' th' laugh an' joke, an' brown curls blown by the wind."
"The salt's in my eyes. I can't rightly see, Mother Phebe."
The surgeon saw Doctor Bowdler waiting, pale and haggard, his fat little arms outstretched: the sea had spared him by some whim, then. When the men lifted him out, another familiar face looked down on him: it was Mary. She had run into the surf with them, and held his head in her arms.
"I love you! I love you!" she sobbed, kissing his hand.
"There be a fire up by the bathing-houses, an' hot coffee," said old Doctor Dennis, with a kindly, shrewd glance at the famous surgeon. "Miss Defourchet and Snap made it for you. She knew you, lying in the yawl."
Birkenshead, keeping her hand, turned to the forlorn figure standing shivering alone, holding both palms pressed to her temples, her gray hair and clothes dripping.
"Thee don't tell me that he's here, Bowlegs," she said. "There might be some things the wrackers hes found up in the bathin'-houses. There might,—in the bathin'-houses. It's the last day,—it's twenty year"——
Doctor Birkenshead looked down at the beautiful flushed face pressed close to his side, then pushed it slowly from him. He went over to where the old woman stood, and kneeled beside her in the sand, drawing her down to him.
"Mother," he said, "it's Derrick, mother. Don't you know your boy?"
With the words the boy's true spirit seemed to come back to him,—Derrick Trull again, who went with such a hot, indignant heart to win money and place for the old mother at home. He buried his head in her knees, as she crouched over him, silent, passing her hands quickly and lightly over his face.
"God forgive me!" he cried. "Take my head in your arms, mother, as you used to do. Nobody has loved me as you did. Mother! mother!"
Phebe Trull did not speak one word. She drew her son's head close into her trembling old arms, and held it there motionless. It was an old way she had of caressing him.
Doctor Dennis drew the eager, wondering crowd away from them.
"I don't understand," said Doctor Bowdler, excitedly.
"I do," said his niece, and, sitting down in the sand, looked out steadfastly to sea.——
Bow-legged Phil drove the anchor into the beach, and pulled it idly out again.
"I've some 'ut here for you, Phil," said Joe, gravely. "The water washed it up."
The fellow's teeth chattered as he took it.
"Well, ye know what it is?" fiercely. "Only a bit of a Scotch cap,"—holding it up on his fist. "I bought it down at Port Monmouth, Saturday, for him. I was a-goin' to take him home this week up to the old folks in Connecticut. I kin take that instead, an' tell 'em whar our Benny is."
"That's so," said Joe, his eye twinkling as he looked over Phil's shoulder.
A fat little hand slapped the said shoulder, and "Hillo, Bowlegs!" came in a small shout in his ear. Phil turned, looked at the boy from head to foot, gulped down one or two heavy breaths.
"Hi! you young vagabond, you!" he said, and went suddenly back to his anchor, keeping his head down on his breast for a long while.——
He had piled up the sand at her back to make her a seat while they waited for the wagons. Now he sat on her skirts, holding her hands to warm them. He had almost forgotten Mary and the Doctor. Nature or instinct, call it what you will, some subtile whim of blood called love, brought the old clam-digger nearer to him than all the rest of the world. He held the bony fingers tight, looked for an old ring she used to wear, tried to joke to bring out the flicker of a smile on her mouth, leaned near to catch her breath. He remembered how curiously sweet it used to be, like new milk.
The dawn opened clear and dark blue; the sun yet waited below the stormy sea. Though they sat there a long while, she was strangely quiet,—did not seem so much afraid of him as she used to be when he began to rise above her,—held his hand, with a bright, contented face, and said little else than "My boy! my boy!" under her breath. Her eyes followed every movement of his face with an insatiate hunger; yet the hesitation and quiet in her motions and voice were unnatural. He asked her once or twice if she were ill.
"Wait a bit, an' I'll tell thee, Derrick," she said. "Thee must remember I'm not as young as I was then," with a smile. "Thee must speak fast, my son. I'd like to hear of thee gran' home, if thee's willin'."
He told her, as he would to please a child, of the place and fame and wealth he had won; but it had not the effect he expected. Before he had finished, the look in her eyes grew vague and distant. Some thought in the poor clam-digger's soul made these things but of little moment. She interrupted him.
"There be one yonner that loves my boy. I'd like to speak a word to her before—Call her, Derrick."
He rose and beckoned to Miss Defourchet. When she came near, and saw the old woman's face, she hurried, and, stooping down quickly, took her head in her arms.
"Derrick has come back to you," she said. "Will you let him bring me with him to call you mother?"
"Mary?"
She did not look at him. Old Phebe pushed her back with a searching look.
"Is it true love you'll give my boy?"
"I'll try." In a lower voice,—"I never loved him so well as when he came back to you."
The old woman was silent a long time.
"Thee's right. It was good for Derrick to come back to me. I don't know what that big world be like where thee an' Derrick's been. The sea keeps talkin' of it, I used to think; it's kep' moanin' with the cries of it. But the true love at home be worth it all. I knowed that always. I kep' it for my boy. He went from it, but it brought him back. Out of the sea it brought him back."
He knew this was not his mother's usual habit of speech. Some great truth seemed coming closer to the old fish-wife, lifting her forever out of her baser self. She leaned on the girl beside her, knowing her, in spite of blood and education, to be no truer woman than herself. The inscrutable meaning of the eyes deepened. The fine, sad smile came on the face, and grew fixed there. She was glad he had come,—that was all. Mary was a woman; her insight was quicker.
"Where are you hurt?" she said, softly.
"Hush! don't fret the boy. It was the pullin' last night, think. I'm not as strong as when I was a gell."
They sat there, watching the dawn break into morning. Over the sea the sky opened into deeps of silence and light. The surf rolled in, in long, low, grand breakers, like riders to a battle-field, tossing back their gleaming white plumes of spray when they touched the shore. But the wind lulled as though something more solemn waited on the land than the sea's rage or the quiet of the clouds.
"Does thee mind, Derrick," said his mother, with a low laugh, "how thee used to play with this curl ahint my ear? When thee was a bit baby, thee begun it. I've kep' it ever since. It be right gray now."
"Yes, mother."
He had crept closer to her now. In the last half-hour his eyes had grown clearer. He dared not look away from her. Joe and Bowlegs had drawn near, and Doctor Bowdler. They stood silent, with their hats off. Doctor Bowdler felt her pulse, but her son did not touch it. His own hand was cold and clammy; his heart sick with a nameless dread. Was he, then, just too late?
"Yes, I did. I kep' it for thee, Derrick. I always knowed thee'd come,"—in a lower voice. "There's that dress, too. I'd like thee to've seen me in that; but"——
"Take her hands in yours," whispered Mary.
"Is it thee, my son?"—with a smile. After a long pause,—"I kep' it, an' I kep' true love for thee, Derrick. God brought thee back for 't, I think. It be the best, after all. He'll bring thee to me for 't at th' last, my boy,—my boy!"
As the faint voice lingered and died upon the words, the morning sun shone out in clear, calm glory over the still figures on the beach. The others had crept away, and left the three alone with God and His great angel, in whose vast presence there is no life save Love, no future save Love's wide eternity.
MY STUDENT LIFE AT HOFWYL.
There flourished, in the heart of the Swiss Republic, during some twenty or twenty-five years, commencing about the year 1810, an educational institution, in the nature of a private college, which, though it attracted much public attention at the time, being noticed with commendation, as I remember, in a report made by the Count Capo d'Istria to the Emperor Alexander of Russia, yet has never, I think, been appreciated at its full deserts, nor generally recognized for the admirable institution it was,—unparalleled, in the character of the spirit which pervaded it, and in many of the practical results obtained, by any establishment for learning that has ever come under my observation.
I was educated there, from the age of sixteen or seventeen to twenty. Passing into its tranquil scenes from the quiet of home and the hands of a private tutor, with the sunny hopes and high ideal and scanty experience of youth, much that I found there appeared to me at the time but natural and in the ordinary course of things, which now, by the light of a life's teachings, and by comparison with the realities as I have found them, seems to me, as I look back, rather in the nature of a dream of fancy, tinged with the glamour of optimism, than like the things one really meets with in the work-a-day world. I say this, after making what I think due allowance for the Claude-Lorraine tints in which youth is wont to invest its early recollections.
It was one of several public institutions for education founded by the benevolent enterprise of a very remarkable man. Emanuel von Fellenberg was born of a patrician family of Bern. His father had been a member of the Swiss Government, and a friend of the celebrated Pestalozzi,—a friendship which descended to the son. His mother was a descendant of the stout Van Tromp, the Dutch admiral, who was victor in more than thirty engagements, and whose spirit and courage she is said to have inherited. To this noble woman young Fellenberg owed ideas of liberty and philanthropy beyond the age in which he lived and the aristocratic class to which he belonged.
Educated at Colmar and Tübingen, the years immediately succeeding his college life were spent in travels, which brought him, at the age of twenty-three, and just after the death of Robespierre, to Paris, where he had an opportunity of studying men in the subsiding tumult of a terrible revolution.
The result appears to have been a conviction that the true element of human progress was to be found less in correction of the adult than in training of the youth. His mind imbued with the two great ideas of freedom and education, he returned to his native Bern; but taking part there against the French, he was banished, remaining in Germany an exile for several years, and during that period planning emigration, with several friends, to the United States. This intention he abandoned, on being recalled to his native country, and there offered important diplomatic and military service. In the latter capacity he quelled an insurrection of the peasantry in the Oberland; but, prompted by that sympathy for the laboring classes which was a strong element in his character, he granted these people terms so liberal that his Government refused to ratify them, whereupon he threw up his commission, recurring to his favorite educational projects, and serving for a time on the Board of Education in Bern.
But it soon became apparent that the ideas of his colleagues and himself differed too widely to permit united action. They were thinking of the commonplace routine of school instruction,—reading, writing, arithmetic, and the like. He looked to education as the regenerating agent of the world,—that agent without the aid of which liberty runs into license, and the rule of the many, as he had witnessed it in terror-stricken France, may become one of the worst forms of despotism. He looked beyond mere pedagogical routine or formal learning, to the living spirit,—to the harmonious development of every human faculty and affection, intellectual, moral, spiritual.
Resigning his situation on the Bernese Board of Education, Fellenberg expended a large fortune in the purchase of the estate of Hofwyl, about two leagues from Bern, and the erection there of the building necessary to carry into effect his own peculiar views.
It was a favorite idea of his, that society can be most effectually influenced for good by training its extremes in social position: those, on the one hand, who are born to wealth and station, whence are usually chosen lawgivers, statesmen, leaders of public opinion; and those, on the other hand, born to a heritage of ignorance and neglect, and too often trained even from tender age to vice and violence. He sought to bring these extremes of European society into harmonious relation with each other,—to raise the one from hereditary dependence and degradation, to imbue the other with healthy ideas of true nobility in place of the morbid prejudices of artificial rank. In both these efforts he was eminently successful,—in the latter, more so, in my judgment, than any educator of his age.
The establishments of Hofwyl proper[A] were, accordingly, two in number, quite distinct from each other: the Vehrli-Knaben, (Vehrli's boys,) as they were called, from the name of their admirable young teacher, Vehrli, essentially an agricultural school, on the manual-labor principle; and the college, of which it is my chief object to sketch the plan and its results. To this latter institution, in consequence of the numerous and expensive branches taught and the great number of professors employed, (about one to each four students,) those only, with few exceptions, could obtain admission whose parents possessed ample means,—the exceptions being the sons of a few of Fellenberg's Swiss friends, in moderate circumstances, whom, when they showed great promise, he admitted with little or no charge. It was by associating these with his own children in their studies that the nucleus of this college was originally formed.
From their very inception, these projects met with discouragement and opposition, especially from the patrician class, to which Fellenberg belonged. Even in republican Switzerland, these men held that their rank exonerated them from any occupation that savored much of utility; and it was with a feeling almost of dishonor to their order that they saw one of their number stoop (it was thus they phrased it) to the ignoble task of preceptor. It need hardly be said that Fellenberg held on his way, undisturbed by the idle noise of prejudice like this.
Into the Vehrli school were received destitute orphans, foundlings, and those whose parents were too indigent to provide for their education. Their time was divided nearly equally between the labors of the field and the lessons of the school. They were trained as farmers and teachers. Besides the ordinary branches, they were well grounded in botany and drawing, and made great proficiency in vocal music. Vehrli devoted himself, heart and soul, to the instruction of these children. He worked with them, studied with them, wore the same homely dress, partook of the same plain fare, slept in the same dormitory,—in short, spent his life wholly among them. After a time his pupils were in great request throughout Europe, both as teachers and as agricultural superintendents. I found one of them, when many years since I visited Holland, intrusted with the care of a public seminary supported by the Dutch Government, and his employers highly appreciated his character and abilities. The children remained till they were of age, repaying by their labor in the latter years a portion of the expenses of their early education. Ultimately this school became nearly self-supporting.
Between Vehrli's children, as we used to call them, and ourselves there was not much communication. We met occasionally only; but when we did meet, there existed the most friendly relations between us. I saw but little of the internal arrangements of that establishment, and am unable, at this distance of time, to furnish detailed information regarding it. I proceed to give some account of the college, of which, for three years, I was a student.
Of that little republic it can truly be said, that its tranquillity was never disturbed by one dividing prejudice of rank, of country, or of religion. We had among our number (usually amounting to one hundred students) dukes and princes, some of them related to crowned heads; and we had the recipients, already alluded to, of Fellenberg's bounty; but not in word or bearing was there aught to mark difference of artificial rank. We had Swiss, Germans, Russians, Prussians, Dutch, French, Italians, English, and I know not what other nationalities; but not one unkindly sentiment or illiberal prejudice arose among us on account of birthplace. We had Protestants, Catholics, members of the Greek Church, and members of no church at all; but never, in language or feeling, did I perceive any shade of coldness or aversion that had its rise in theological differences. Fellenberg had succeeded in instilling into our little community his own noble principles of republican dignity, cosmopolitan amity, and religious toleration.
No one was addressed by his title; and to the tuft-hunters of English universities it will appear scarcely credible that I lived several weeks as a student at Hofwyl before I accidentally learned who were the princes and other nobles, and who the objects of M. de Fellenberg's charity. It was, I think, some six weeks or two months after my arrival that I was conversing with a good-natured fellow-student, with whom I had become well acquainted under his familiar nickname of Stösser. I remarked to him that before I reached Hofwyl I had heard that there were several noblemen there, and I asked what had become of them.
"Why," said he, smiling, "they are here still."
"Indeed!" said I; "which are they?"
He requested me to guess. I named several of the students who had appeared to me to have the greatest consideration among their fellows. He shook his head, and laughed. "These are all merchants and commoners. Try again." I did so, but with no better success; and at last he named, to my surprise, several young men who had seemed to me to have but an indifferent share of influence or respect,—among the rest, one who was slightingly treated, and avoided rather than sought, by his companions. He was the nephew of the King of Würtemberg.
A day or two afterwards I chanced to learn that the young man whom I had thus questioned was himself a Russian prince, grandson of the noted Suwaroff,—Catharine's Suwaroff. He had charge of our flock of goats, of which I shall by-and-by have occasion to speak; and he took to the office very kindly.
In like manner, it might have puzzled me, after a three-years' residence, to call to mind whether those with whom I was as intimate as with my own brother were Protestants or Catholics or neither; and at this distance of time I have forgotten. The reason is simple: we never debated on theological subjects at all. M. de Fellenberg read to us occasional lectures on religion; but they were practical, not doctrinal,—embracing those essentials which belong to all Christian sects, thus suiting Protestant and Catholic alike. The Catholics, it is true, had from time to time a priest to confess them, who doubtless enjoined the regular weekly fast; yet we of the Protestant persuasion used, I believe, to eat as much fish and as many frogs on Fridays as they.
A striking feature in our system of instruction was the absence of all punishment, except such as was self-inflicted, under a code of laws of our own, hereafter to be noticed. Twice, or perhaps three times, during the term of my residence, one of the pupils, on account of repeated inattention, or for similar venial cause, was requested by the professor, during the course of the recitation, to leave the room. But this was quite an event, to be talked of for a week, so contrary was it to the regular, quiet, uncoercing routine of the institution. No expulsion ever occurred. I do not myself remember to have received, either from M. de Fellenberg or from any of his professors, one harsh word during the three happy years I spent at Hofwyl.
The mildness with which the students were treated by their instructors reacted upon them in their intercourse with each other. Duels, so common among the students of German universities, were an unheard-of absurdity, though we had a fencing-master, and took regular lessons in the use of the small sword, skill in the management of which was considered an indispensable item in the education of a gentleman. Quarrels such as elsewhere terminate in blows were scarcely known among us. I recall but two, both of which were immediately arrested by the spectators, who felt their college dishonored by such an exhibition of evil passion and violence. One of these was commenced by a youth coming only two weeks before from an English school. The other occurred, one evening when a small party of us had assembled in a private room, between a fiery young Prussian count and a sturdy, unbending Swiss. The dispute grew warm, and was about to proceed to extremities, when we who were by-standers made no scruple to terminate it in our own way. We pounced upon the disputants without warning, carried them off, each to his own room, on our shoulders, and there, with a hearty laugh at their folly, set them down to cool. All this was done so suddenly and so good-naturedly that they themselves could not refrain from joining in the merriment which so whimsical a conclusion to their quarrel had elicited.
I have heard and read much of the pluck and manliness that are supposed to grow out of the English habit of settling school quarrels by boxing, after the fashion of prize-fighters in the ring. But I do not think it would have been a very safe experiment for one of these pugilistic young gentlemen to offer an insult to a Hofwyl student, even though the manhood of this latter had never been tested by pounding another's face with his fist. Brutality and cowardice are often close allies; and his anger, when roused, is most to be dreaded, who so bears himself as to give no one just cause of offence. Boxing-matches and duels are becoming, as they ought to be, like the ordeal by combat, antiquated modes of testing the courage or settling the disputes whether of boys or men, among the civilized portion of mankind.
But though little prone to quarrel, our indignation, I must confess, was sometimes readily enough roused, when occasion called it forth. I remember an instance in which, perhaps, the conservative portion of my readers may think we carried matters somewhat to an extreme.
It happened that three officers of distinction from the Court of Würtemberg arrived, one day, on a visit to M. de Fellenberg. They desired to see their sovereign's nephew, the same Prince Alexander of Würtemberg to whom I have already alluded as being no favorite among us. He was accordingly sent for; and the interview took place in an open space in front of M. de Fellenberg's Schloss, where four or five students, of whom I was one, happened to be at the time, not more than eight or ten steps distant. The officers, as they approached the Prince, uncovered, and stood, during the conversation which ensued, with their plumed hats in their hands. The young man, on the contrary, whose silly airs had been a chief cause of his unpopularity among us, did not remove the little student-cap he wore, but remained covered, without any intimation to his visitors to resume their hats.
This was too much for us. "Do look!" said one of our group,—"if there isn't that fellow Alexander standing with his cap on, and letting these officers talk to him bareheaded!" And then, raising his voice so as to be heard by the parties concerned, he said,—"Alexander, take off your cap!"
But the cap did not stir. We took a step or two nearer, and another of our party said,—
"Alexander, if you don't take that cap off, yourself, I'll come and take it off for you."
This time the admonition had effect. The cap was slowly removed, and we remained to make sure that it was not resumed, until the officers, bowing low, took their leave,—carrying, I fear, to their royal master no very favorable report touching the courtly manners of Hofwyl.
It was small marvel that an institution of practice so democratically heterodox should awaken the jealousy of European legitimacy. And it was probably with feelings more of sorrow than surprise, that Fellenberg, about the year 1822, received from the Austrian authorities a formal intimation that no Austrian subject would thereafter be allowed to enter the college, and an order that those who were then studying there should instantly return home. Than this tyrannical edict of the Austrian autocrat,[B] the same who did not blush to declare "that he desired to have loyal subjects, not learned men, in his dominions," no greater compliment could have been paid to Fellenberg or his institutions.
The course of instruction pursued at Hofwyl included the study of the Greek, Latin, French, and German languages, the last of which was the language of our college,—history, geography, chemistry, mechanics,—mathematics, in a thorough course, embracing the highest branches,—drawing, and music, vocal and instrumental,—and, finally, riding, fencing, and gymnastics. The recitations (Stunden, that is, hours, we called them, for each lasted a single hour only) were essentially conversational. The lessons in drawing, however, extended to two consecutive hours, and included copying from the antique. There was a riding-school and a considerable stud attached to the college; and the highest class were in the habit of riding out once a week with M. de Fellenberg, many of whose practical life-lessons, given as I rode by his side during these pleasant excursions, I well remember yet.
The number of professors was large, compared to that of the taught, being from twenty-five to thirty, though the college seldom contained more than one hundred students. The number in each class was small, usually from ten to fifteen.
Latin and Greek, though thoroughly taught, did not engross the same proportion of time which in many other colleges is devoted to them. Not more time was given to each than to ancient and modern history, and less than to mathematics. This last was a special object of study. It was taught, as was history, by extempore lectures, while the students took notes in short-hand; and we seldom employed any printed work to aid us, in the evening, in making out from recollection, aided by these notes, a written statement of the propositions and their solution, to be handed, next day, to the professor. This plan impressed on our minds, not indeed the exact form of words or the particular set of phrases of the books, but the essential principles of the science,—so that, when, in after years, amid the business of life, details and demonstrations had faded from my memory, I have never found difficulty in working these out afresh, and recalling and rearranging them, without aid from books.
One little incident connected with my mathematical studies still comes back to me with a pleasant impression. My chief college friend was young De Saussure, grandson of the naturalist of that name, who, the first with a single exception, reached the summit of Mont Blanc. The subject of our lecture was some puzzling proposition in the differential calculus, and De Saussure propounded to the professor a knotty difficulty in connection with it. The professor replied unsatisfactorily. My friend still pressed his point, and the professor rejoined very learnedly and ingeniously, but without really meeting the case; whereupon De Saussure silently assented, as if quite satisfied.
"You were not satisfied with that explanation," said I to De Saussure, as we walked to our rooms.
"Of course not," was his reply; "but would you have had me before the class shame the good man who takes so much pains with us and is usually so clear-headed? We must work it out ourselves to-night."
This trifle may afford a glimpse of the relation between professor and student at Hofwyl. There was no antagonism between them. The former was regarded, not as a pedagogue, from whom to stand aloof,—not, because of his position of authority, as a natural enemy, to be resisted, so far as resistance was safe,—but as an elder friend, whom it was a privilege (and it was one often enjoyed) to converse with, out of college hours, in a familiar way. During the hours of recreation, the professors frequently joined in our games. Nor did I observe that this at all diminished the respect we entertained for them or the progress we made under their care.
Emulation was limited among us to that which naturally arises among young men prosecuting the same studies. It was not artificially excited. There were no prizes; there was no taking rank in classes; there was not even the excitement of public examinations. Many may think this a hazardous experiment. I am not sure whether classical proficiency did not, to a certain extent, suffer from it. I am not sure whether some sluggards did not, because of it, lag behind. Yet the general proficiency in learning was satisfactory; and the student, when he entered the world, missed no college excitants, but bore with him a love and a habit of study needing no spur, and which insured the continuance of education far beyond the term of his college years. For he had learned to seek knowledge for itself, for the pleasing occupation it brings, for the power it gives, for the satisfaction it leaves behind; and he required no more highly seasoned inducements to continue the search through life.
Yet it was not the peculiar mode of imparting instruction, nor yet the variety, the extent, and the utility of the knowledge acquired, that chiefly characterized the institution of the Swiss patriot. It was the noble spirit of freedom, the purity of motive, the independence of purpose, the honesty of conduct, the kindness of intercourse, the union and forbearance and high-spirited republicanism, pervading alike our hours of study, of amusement, and of social converse. These it was that distinguished Hofwyl; and these it is that still cause its former pupils to look back on the years spent within its peaceful precincts as the best and the happiest of their lives.
To such results there mainly contributed a remarkable feature in the economy of the institution I have been describing,—a feature, so far as I know, not adopted in any similar institution, at least to the extent to which it was carried by us.
I have said that reward and punishment by the college authorities, or by M. de Fellenberg, their head, were virtually excluded from this system. Considering the heterogeneous materials that were collected together from half the nations of the world, some having been nursed and petted in the lap of aristocracy, and others, probably, sent thither because their parents could not manage them at home,—considering, too, the comparatively late age at which students enter such a college, many of them just from schools where severity was the rule and artificial reward the stimulant,—considering all this, I doubt whether the mild, uncoercing, paternal government of Hofwyl would have been a success, but for the peculiarity here referred to coming in aid of our teachers, and supplying motives and restraints to ourselves. It was in this wise.
Hofwyl was not only an institution for education, it was also an independent, self-governing community. It had its code of laws, its council of legislation, its court of judges, its civil and military officers, its public treasury. It had its annual elections, by ballot, at which each student had a vote,—its privileges, equally accessible to all,—its labors and duties, in which all took a share. It proposed and debated and enacted its own laws, from time to time modifying them, but not often nor radically. It acted independently of the professors, and of Fellenberg himself, except that our foster-father (Pflegevater, as we used to call him) retained a veto, which, however, like Queen Victoria, he never exercised. Never, I think, were laws framed with a more single eye to the public good, or more strictly obeyed by those who framed them.
Nor was this an unwilling obedience, an eye-service constrained by fear or force. It was given cheerfully, honestly. We had ourselves assisted in framing, and given our votes in enacting, our code of laws. We felt them to be our own, and as such it became a point of honor with us to conform to them in spirit as in letter.
I know not whether the idea of this juvenile self-regulating republic (Verein, we called it) originated with Fellenberg or with some of the students; but, whatever its origin, I believe it to have been the chief lever that raised the moral and social character of our college to the height it ultimately attained. It gave birth to public spirit, and to social and civic virtues. It nurtured a conscious independence, that submitted with pleasure to what it knew to be the will of the whole, and felt itself bound to submit to nothing else. It created young republicans, and awakened in them that devotion to the public welfare and that zeal for the public good, which we seek too often, alas, in vain, in older, but not wiser, communities.
When I said that we had no rewards at Hofwyl, I ought to have admitted that the annual election to the offices of our Verein acted indirectly as a powerful stimulus to industry and good conduct. At these elections was to be read, as on a moral thermometer, the graduated scale of public opinion. The result of each election informed us with certainty who had risen and who had fallen in the estimate of his fellows.
For it was felt that public opinion among us, enlightened and incorrupt, operated with strict justice. In that young commonwealth, to deserve well of the republic was to win its confidence and obtain testimonial of its approbation. There not one sinister motive swayed our votes,—neither favoritism, nor envy, nor any selfish inducement. There was not even canvassing for favorite candidates. There was quiet, dispassionate discussion of respective merits; but the one question which the elector asked himself or his neighbor was, "Who can fill most efficiently such or such an office?"—the answer to that question furnishing the motive for decision. I cannot call to mind a single instance, during the three years I passed at Hofwyl, in which even a suspicion of an electioneering cabal or other factious proceeding attached to an election among us. It can scarcely be said that there were candidates for any office. Preferment was, indeed, highly valued, as a testimonial of public confidence; but it was not sought, directly or indirectly, and was accepted rather as imposing duty than conferring privilege. The Lacedemonian, who, when he lost his election as one of the Three Hundred, went away rejoicing that there were found in Sparta three hundred better men than he, is extolled as a model, of ideal virtue. Yet such virtue was matter of common occurrence and of little remark at Hofwyl. There were not only one or two, but many among us, who would have sincerely rejoiced to find others, more capable than themselves, preferred to office in their stead.
All this sounds, I dare say, Utopian and extravagant. As I write, it seems to myself so widely at variance with a five-and-twenty years' experience of public life, that I should scruple at this distance of time to record it, had I not, thirty years ago, when my recollections were fresh, noted them down minutely and conscientiously. It avails nothing to tell me that such things cannot be,—for at Hofwyl they were. I describe a state of society which I witnessed, of which I was myself a part.
As partial explanation, I may state, that to office, among us, was attached no patronage and no salary.
The proceeds of our public treasury, (Armenkasse, we called it,) to which each contributed according to his means and inclination, went exclusively for the relief of the poor. We had a superintendent of the poor, and a committee whose duty it was to visit the indigent families in our neighborhood, ascertain their wants and their character, and afford them relief, especially in winter. This relief was given in the form sometimes of money, sometimes of food, clothing, or furniture; to some we furnished goats, selected when in milk from a flock we had, and which were left with them for a longer or shorter period. Our fund was ample, and I think judiciously dispensed.
The laws and regulations of our Verein extended to the police and the moral government of our little community. The students were divided into six circles, (Kreise,) and for the government of each of these we elected a guardian or councillor (Kreisrath). These were our most important officers,—their province embracing the social life and moral deportment of each member of the Kreis. This, one might imagine, would degenerate into an inquisitorial or intermeddling surveillance; but in practice it never did. Each Kreis was a band of friends, and its chief was the friend most valued and esteemed among them. It had its weekly meetings; and I remember, in all my life, no pleasanter gatherings than these. Myself a Kreisrath towards the close of my student life, I bore home with me no more valued memorial than a brief letter of farewell, expressive of affection and gratitude, signed by each member of the Kreis.
Our judiciary consisted of a bench of three judges, whose sessions were held in our principal hall with all due formality,—two sentinels, with swords drawn, guarding the doors. The punishments within its power to inflict were a vote of censure, fines, deprivation of the right of suffrage, declaration of ineligibility to office, and degradation from office. This last punishment was not inflicted on any student during my residence at Hofwyl. Trials were very rare; and I do not remember one, except for some venial offence. The offender usually pleaded his own cause; but, if he preferred it, he might procure a friend to act as his advocate.
The dread of public censure, thus declared by sentence after formal trial, was great and influential among us. Its power may be judged from the following example.
Two German princes, sons of a wealthy nobleman, the Prince of Tour and Taxis, having been furnished by their father with a larger allowance of pocket-money than they could legitimately spend at Hofwyl, conceived a somewhat irregular mode of disposing of part of it. They were in the habit of occasionally getting up late at night, after all their comrades had retired to rest, and proceeding to the neighboring village of Buchsee, there to spend an hour or two in a tavern, smoking and drinking lager-bier.
Now we had no strict college bounds, and no prohibition against entering a tavern, though we knew that M. de Fellenberg objected to our contracting the latter habit. Our practice on Sundays may illustrate this. That day was strictly kept and devoted to religious exercises until midday, when we dined. After dinner it was given up to recreation, and our favorite Sunday recreation was, to form into parties of two or three and sally forth, Ziegenhainer in hand, on excursions many miles into the beautiful and richly cultivated rolling country that surrounded us, usually ascending some eminence whence we could command a full view of the magnificent Bernese Alps, their summits covered with eternal snow. It sometimes happened that on these excursions we were overtaken by a storm, or perhaps, having wandered farther than we intended, were tired and hungry. In either case, we did not scruple to enter some country tavern and procure refreshments there. But whenever we did so, it was a custom—not a written law, but a custom sanctioned by all our college traditions—to visit, on our return, the professor who had charge of the domestic department of our institution,—a short, stout, middle-aged man, the picture of good-humor, but not deficient in decision and energy when occasion demanded,—it was our uniform custom to call upon this gentleman, Herr Lippe, and inform him that we had visited such or such a tavern, and the occasion of our doing so. A benignant smile, and his usual "It is very well, my sons," closed such interviews.
But the use of tobacco—passing strange, that, in a German college!—was forbidden by our rules; so also was a departure, after the usual hour of rest, from the college buildings, except for good reason shown. Thus Max and Fritz Taxis (so the youths were called) had become offenders, amenable to justice.
The irregularity of which they had been guilty, the only one of the kind I recollect, became known accidentally to one of our number. There existed among us not even the name of informer; it was considered a duty to give notice to the proper authorities of any breach of our laws. This was accordingly done in the present instance; and the brothers were officially notified that on the following day their case would be brought up, and they would be heard in their own defence. The elder of the two, Max, held some minor office; and the sentence would probably have been a vote of censure or a fine for both, and a forfeiture of the office in the case of the elder brother. But this was more than they could make up their minds to bear. Accordingly, the night previous to their trial, they decamped secretly, hired a carriage at a neighboring village, and, being well provided with money, returned to their parents.
We afterwards ascertained that M. de Fellenberg did not send after them, in pursuit or otherwise,—did not even write to their parents, but suffered the fugitives to tell their own story in their own way.
The result was, that in a few weeks the father came, bringing with him the runaways, and asking, as a favor, that M. de Fellenberg would once more make trial of them,—which he very willingly did. They were received by us with kindness, and no allusion was ever made to the cause of their absence. They remained several years, quiet and law-abiding members of our Verein, but neither attained to any office of trust again.
Our recreations consisted of public games, athletic exercises, gymnastics, and—what was prized above all—an annual excursion on foot, of about six weeks' duration.
One of our most favorite amusements in the way of athletic exercise was throwing the lance (Lanzenwerfen.) The weapons used were stout ashen spears, from six to seven feet long, heavily shod with iron, and sharp-pointed; the target, a squared log of hard wood firmly set in the ground, about six feet high,—the upper portion, or head, which it was the chief object to hit, a separate block, attached to the trunk by stout hinges. This exercise required great strength as well as skill. A dozen or more engaged in it at a time, divided into two sides of supposed equal force; and the points gained by each stroke were reckoned according to its power and accuracy,—double, if the head was struck, and one point added whenever the spear remained fixed in the wood without touching the ground. We attained great skill in this exercise.
We had fencing-lessons twice a week; and there were many swordsmen in the elder classes who need not have feared any ordinary antagonist. Of this a fencing-master from a neighboring Canton, on occasion of a visit to our teacher, had one day tangible and somewhat mortifying proof.
Much has been said, sometimes in ridicule, sometimes in condemnation, of gymnastic exercises. We spent an hour a day, just before dinner, in the gymnasium. And my three-years' experience induces me to regard these exercises, judiciously conducted, not only as beneficial, but indispensable to a complete system of education. They are to the body what intellectual labors are to the mind. They produce a vigor, an agility, an address, a hardihood, a presence of mind in danger, which I have never seen attained to the same extent under any other circumstances. They fortify the health and strengthen the nerves. Their mental and moral influence, also, is great. My observation convinces me that they equalize the spirits, invigorate the intellect, and calm the temper. I am witness to the fact that no one among the Hofwyl students was injured by them in any way, and that very many acquired a strength and an address that astonished themselves. I myself had been in feeble health for several years before my arrival; yet I left Hofwyl, not only perfectly well, but athletic; and I have not had a serious illness since. I cannot believe, that, under a well-regulated system, gymnastics cause injury or expose to danger.
Our annual excursions, which were undertaken in the charming autumn of that bright and beautiful climate, by those among our students who, like myself, were too far from home to return thither during the holidays, were looked forward to, for weeks, with brilliant anticipations of pleasure, which, strange to say, were realized. Our favorite professor, Herr Lippe, accompanied us on these expeditions. Our number was commonly from thirty to thirty-five.
It was usually about the first of August, that, equipped in the plain student-costume of the college, with knapsack on shoulder, and long, iron-shod mountain-staff in hand, we went forth, an exultant party, on "the journey," as we called it. Previously to our departure, Herr Lippe, at a public meeting of the intended excursionists, had chalked out for us the proposed route; and when we found, as on two occasions land to the lakes of Northern Italy, our enthusiasm broke forth in bursts of applause.
Our usual day's journey was eighteen or twenty miles, sometimes twenty-five or even more. We breakfasted very early, walked till about midday, when we sought some shady nook where we could enjoy a lunch of bread and wine, with grapes, or goat's-milk cheese, when these luxuries could be procured. Then we despatched, in advance, some of our best pedestrians, as commissariat of the party, to order supper preparatory to our arrival. How joyfully we sat down to that evening meal! How we talked over the events of the day, the magnificent scenes we had passed through, the little adventures we had met with! The small country taverns seldom furnished more than six or eight beds; so that more than three fourths of our number usually slept in some barn well furnished with hay or straw. How soundly we slept, and how merry the awaking! There were among us, as among German students there always are, excellent musicians, well-trained to sing their stirring national airs, or gems from the best operas, or the like,—duets, trios, quartets. After our frugal noonday meal in the shade, or perhaps when we had surmounted some mountain-pass, and came suddenly, as we reached the verge of the descent, upon some magnificent expanse of valley or champaign scenery stretching out far beneath us, it was our habit to call a halt for music. The fresh grass, dotted, perhaps, with Alpine roses, furnished seats; and our vocalists drawing from their knapsacks the slender cahier containing melodies expressly selected for the occasion and arranged in parts, we had, under the most charming circumstances, an impromptu concert. I have heard much better music since, but never any that I enjoyed more.
On one of these excursions we passed by Napoleon's wonderful road, the Simplon, into one of the most beautiful regions of Italy. The first night at Baveno was delicious. The soft Italian air,—the moonlight on the placid lake, on the softly rounded olive-clad hills, on the trellised vines, so picturesque, compared to the formal vineyards of France,—all in such contrast to the giant mountain-peaks of granite, snow-covered, cutting through the clouds, the vast glacier, bristling with ice-blocks, sliding-down, an encroacher on the valley's verdure,—in such marvellous contrast to all that region of rock and ice and mountain-torrent and rugged path, and grand, rude, wild majesty of aspect, it seemed like passing in a single day into another and a gentler world.
Then came the quiet excursions on the lakes,—Lugano, Maggiore, Como: such a rest to our blistered feet! Those blisters were a drawback; but what episode in human life has none? We strayed through the lime-groves of the Isola Bella, where I exchanged the few words of Italian of which I was master with a fair and courteous madonna who crossed our path,—ascended, by clambering up within one of the folds of the Saint's short mantle, the gigantic bronze statue of the holy Borromeo, sat down inside the head, and looked out through the eyebrows on the lake under whose waters lies buried the wide-brimmed shovel-hat which once covered the shaven crown, but was swept off by the storm-wind one winter night.
Throughout the term of these charming excursions the strictest order was observed. And herein was evinced the power of that honorable party-spirit prevalent among us, which imposed on every one of us a certain charge as to the good conduct of the whole,—making each, as it were, alive to the faults and responsible for the misconduct of our little community. Rude noise, unseemly confusion, the least approach to dissipation at a tavern, or any other violation of propriety on the road, would have been considered as an insult to the college. And thus it happened that we established throughout Switzerland a character for decorum such as no other institution ever obtained.
Nor did influences thus salutary cease with the term of our college life. So far as I know anything of the after fortunes of my college mates, they did honor to their alma mater,—if older and more learned foundations will not grudge our institution that name. As a body, they were distinguished for probity and excellent conduct; some attained eminence. Even that Alexander of Würtemberg, whom we so lightly esteemed, I afterwards heard spoken of as one of the most estimable young princes of the court he graced. Seven years ago I met at Naples (the first time since I left Hofwyl) our quondam Master of the Goats, now an officer of the Emperor of Russia's household, and governor of one of the Germano-Russian provinces. We embraced after the hearty German fashion,—still addressed each other, as of old, with the familiar du and dich,—sat down, forgetting the present, and were soon deep in college reminiscences, none the less interesting that they were more than thirty years old.
Over these old reminiscences I find myself lingering. Yet they have stretched already, perhaps, as far as may interest others. With me they have left a blessing,—a belief which existing abuses cannot shake nor worldly skepticisms destroy: an abiding faith in human virtue and in social progress.