She mentions having seen a common friend, in great bereavement and trouble, who has charged her with a message to her correspondent "if you know of anything to comfort a person when the one they love best dies, for heaven"s sake say it to her--_I_ hadn"t a word to say." And she goes on:
I wrote to you that I was going to Newport, and I meant to go next Tuesday, but I had another hemorrhage last night, and it is impossible to say when I shall be able to leave here. I think I was feeling ill when I last wrote to you, and ever since have been coughing and feeling wretchedly, until finally the hemorrhage has come. If that goes over well I think I shall be better. I am in bed now, on the old plan of gruel and silence, and I may get off without any worse attack this time. It is a perfect day, like summer--my windows are up and the birds sing. It seems quite out of keeping that I should be in bed. I should be all right if I could only get rid of coughing. The warm weather will set me up again. I wonder what you are doing to-day. Probably taking a solitary walk and meditating--on what? Good-bye.
But she went to Newport after a few days apparently; whence comes this.
I believe I was in bed when I last wrote to you, but that attack didn"t prove nearly so bad a one as the previous; I rather bullied it, and after the fourth hemorrhage it ceased; moreover my cough is better since I came here. But I am, to tell the truth, a little homesick--and am afraid I am becoming too much of a baby. Whether it"s from illness or from the natural bent I know not, but there is no comfort in life away from people who care for you--not an heroic statement, I am fully aware. I hear that Wilky is at home, and dare say he will have the kindness to run down and see me while I am here; at least I hope so. But I am not in the mood for writing to-day--I am tired and can only bore you if I kept on. It is just a year since we began to write, and aren"t you by this time a little tired of it? If you are, say so like a man--don"t be afraid of me.
Now I am going to lie down before dressing for dinner. Good-bye.
This pa.s.sage more than a month later makes me ask myself of which of the correspondents it strikes me as most characteristic. The gay clearness of the one looks out--as it always looked out on the least chance given--at the several apparent screens of the other; each of which is indeed disconnectedly, independently clear, but tells too small a part (at least for her pitch of lucidity) of what they together enclose, and what was _quand meme_ of so fine an implication. Delightful at the same time any page from her that is not one of the huddled milestones of her rate of decline.
How can I write to you when I have forgotten all about you?--if one _can_ forget what one has never known. However, I am not quite sure whether it isn"t knowing you too much rather than too little that seems to prevent. Do you comprehend the difficulty? Of course you don"t, so I will explain. The trouble is, I think, that to me you have no distinct personality. I don"t feel sure to whom I am writing when I say to myself that I will write to you. I see mentally three men, all answering to your name, each liable to read my letters and yet differing so much from each other that if it is proper for one of them it"s quite unsuitable to the others. Do you see? If you can once settle for me the question of which gets my letters I shall know better what to say in them. Is it the man I used to see (I can"t say know) at Conway, who had a beard, I think, and might have been middle-aged, and who discussed Trollope"s novels with Kitty and Elly? This was doubtless one of the best of men, but he didn"t _interest_ me, I never felt disposed to speak to him, and used to get so sleepy in his society at about eight o"clock that I wondered how the other girls could stay awake till eleven. Is it _that_ person who reads my letters? Or is it the young man I recently saw at Newport, with a priestly countenance, calm and critical, with whom I had certainly no fault to find as a chance companion for three or four days, but whom I should never have dreamt of writing to or bothering with my affairs one way or the other, happiness or no happiness, as he would doubtless at once despise me for my nonsense and wonder at me for my gravity? Does _he_ get my letters?--or is it finally the being who has from time to time himself written to me, signing by the same name that the other gentlemen appropriate? If my correspondent is this last I know where I stand--and, please heaven, shall stand there some time longer. Him I won"t describe, but he"s the only one of the three I care anything about. My only doubt is because I always address him at Pemberton Square, and I think him the least likely of the three to go there much. But good-bye, whichever you are!
It was not at any rate to be said of her that she didn"t live surrounded, even though she had to go so far afield--very far it may at moments have appeared to her--for the freedom of talk that was her greatest need of all. How happily and hilariously surrounded this next, of the end of the following August, and still more its sequel of the mid-September, abundantly bring back to me; so in the habit were the numerous Emmets, it might almost be said, of marrying the numerous young women of our own then kinship: they at all events formed mainly by themselves at that time the figures and the action of her immediate scene. The marriage of her younger sister was as yet but an engagement--to the brother-in-law of the eldest, already united to Richard Emmet and with Temple kinship, into the bargain, playing between the pairs. All of which animation of prospective and past wedding-bells, with whatever consolidation of pleasant ties, couldn"t quench her ceaseless instinct for the obscurer connections of things or keep pa.s.sionate reflections from awaiting her at every turn. This disposition in her, and the way in which, at the least push, the gate of thought opened for her to its widest, which was to the prospect of the soul and the question of interests on _its_ part that wouldn"t be ignored, by no means fails to put to me that she might well have found the mystifications of life, had she been appointed to enjoy more of them, much in excess of its contentments. It easily comes up for us over the relics of those we have seen beaten, this sense that it was not for nothing they missed the ampler experience, but in no case that I have known has it come up for me so much. In none other have I so felt the naturalness of our asking ourselves what such spirits would have done with their extension and what would have satisfied them; since dire as their defeat may have been we don"t see them, in the ambiguous light of some of their possibilities, at peace with victory. This may be perhaps an illusion of our interest in them, a mere part of its ingenuity; and I allow that if our doubt is excessive it does them a great wrong--which is another way in which they were not to have been righted. We soothe a little with it at any rate our sense of the tragic.
...The irretrievableness of the step (her sister E."s marriage) comes over my mind from time to time in such an overwhelming way that it"s most depressing, and I have to be constantly on my guard not to let Temple and Elly see it, as it would naturally not please them. After all, since they are not appalled at what they"ve done, and are quite sure of each other, as they evidently are, why should I worry myself? I am well aware that if all other women felt the seriousness of the matter to the extent I do, hardly any would _ever_ marry, and the human race would stop short. So I ought perhaps to be glad so many people can find and take that "little ease" that Clough talks about, without consciously giving up the "highest thing." And may not this majority of people be the truly wise and my own notions of the subject simply fanatical and impracticable? I clearly see in how small a minority I am, and that the other side has, with Bishop Blougram, the best of it from one point of view; but I can"t help that, can I? We must be true to _ourselves_, mustn"t we? though all the rest of humanity be of a contrary opinion, or else throw discredit upon the wisdom of G.o.d, who made us as we are and not like the next person. Do you remember my old hobby of the "remote possibility of the best thing" being better than a clear certainty of the second best? Well, I believe it more than ever, every day I live. Indeed I don"t believe anything else--but is not that everything? And isn"t it exactly what Christianity means? Wasn"t Christ the only man who ever lived and died _entirely_ for his faith, without a shadow of selfishness?
And isn"t that reason enough why we should all turn to Him after having tried everything else and found it wanting?--turn to Him as the only pure and _unmixed_ manifestation of G.o.d in humanity? And if I believe this, which I think I do, how utterly inconsistent and detestable is the life I lead, which, so far from being a loving and cheerful surrender of itself once for all to G.o.d"s service, is at best but a base compromise--a few moments or acts or thoughts consciously and with difficulty divested of actual selfishness.
Must this always be so? Is it owing to the indissoluble mixture of the divine and the diabolical in us all, or is it because I myself am hopelessly frivolous and trifling? Or is it finally that I really don"t _believe_, that I have still a doubt in my mind whether religion _is_ the one exclusive thing to live for, as Christ taught us, or whether it will prove to be only _one_ of the influences, though a great one, which educate the human race and help it along in that culture which Matthew Arnold thinks the most desirable thing in the world? In fine is it the meaning and end of our lives, or only a moral principle bearing a certain part in our development----?
Since I wrote this I have been having my tea and sitting on the piazza looking at the stars and thinking it most unfaithful and disloyal of me even to speak as I did just now, admitting the possibility of that faith not being everything which yet at moments is so divinely true as to light up the whole of life suddenly and make everything clear. I know the trouble is with _me_ when doubt and despondency come, but on the other hand I can"t altogether believe it wrong of me to have written as I have, for then what becomes of my principle of saying what one really thinks and leaving it to G.o.d to take care of his own glory? The truth will vindicate itself in spite of my voice to the contrary. If you think I am letting myself go this way without sufficient excuse I won"t do it again; but I can"t help it this time, I have n.o.body else to speak to about serious things. If by chance I say anything or ask a question that lies at all near my heart my sisters all tell me I am "queer" and that they "wouldn"t be me for anything"--which is, no doubt, sensible on their part, but which puts an end to anything but conversation of the most superficial kind on mine. You know one gets lonely after a while on such a plan of living, so in sheer desperation I break out where I perhaps more safely can.
Such is the magic of old letters on its subtlest occasions that I reconst.i.tute in every detail, to a vivid probability--even if I may not again proportionately project the bristling image--our scene of next mention; drawing for this upon my uneffaced impression of a like one, my cousin Katharine Temple"s bright nuptials, in the same general setting, very much before, and in addition seeming to see the very muse of history take a fresh scroll in order to prepare to cover it, in her very handsomest hand, well before my eyes. Covered is it now for me with that abounding and interesting life of the generations then to come at the pair of preliminary flourishes ushering in the record of which I thus feel myself still a.s.sist.
But a line to-day to tell you that Elly was safely married on Wednesday. She looked simply beautiful in her wedding garment, and behaved herself throughout with a composure that was as delightful as it was surprising. I send you a photograph of myself that I had taken a few weeks ago. It looks perhaps a trifle melancholy, but I can"t help that--I did the best I could. But I won"t write more--it wouldn"t be enlivening. Everything looks grey and blue in the world nowadays. It will all be bright again in time, I have no doubt; there is no special reason for it; I think I am simply tired with knocking about. Yet my week in Newport might have been pleasant enough if the dentist hadn"t taken that occasion to break my bones for me in a barbarous manner. You are very kind and friendly to me--you don"t know how much happiness your letters give me. You will be surprised, I dare say, but I shall not, at the last day, when the accounts are all settled, to find how much this counts in your favour. Good-bye.
I find my story so attaching that I prize every step of its course, each note of which hangs together with all the others. The writer is expressed to my vision in every word, and the resulting image so worth preserving. Much of one"s service to it is thus a gathering-in of the ever so faded ashes of the happiness that did come to her after all in s.n.a.t.c.hes. Everything could well, on occasion, look "grey and blue," as she says; yet there were stretches, even if of the briefest, when other things still were present than the active symptoms of her state. The photograph that she speaks of above is before me as I write and blessedly helpful to memory--so that I am moved to reproduce it only till I feel again how the fondness of memory must strike the light for apprehension. The plan of the journey to California for the advantage of the climate there was, with other plans taken up and helplessly dropped, but beguiling for the day, to accompany her almost to the end.
The Temple-Emmet caravan have advanced as far as Newport and now propose to retreat again to Pelham without stopping at Boston or anywhere else. My brother-in-law has business in New York and can"t be away any longer. I haven"t been well of late, or I should have run up to Boston for a day or two to take a sad farewell of all I love in that city and thereabouts before I cross the Rocky Mountains. This little trip has been made out for me by my friends; I have determined to go, and shall probably start with Elly and Temple in about ten days, possibly not for a fortnight, to spend the winter in San Francisco. I can"t be enthusiastic about it, but suppose I might as well take all the means I can to get better: a winter in a warm climate _may_ be good for me. In short I am going, and now what I want _you_ to do about it is simply to come and see us before that. Kitty is going to send you a line to add her voice--perhaps that may bring you. You may never see me again, you know, and if I were to die so far away you"d be sorry you hadn"t taken leave of me, wouldn"t you?
The idea of California held, and with other pleasant matters really occupied the scene; out of which moreover insist on shining to me accessory connections, or connections that then were to be: intensely distinct for example the figure of Miss Crawford, afterwards Madame von Rabe, sister of my eminent friend F. Marion of the name and, in her essence, I think, but by a few shades less entire a figure than he--which is saying much. The most endowed and accomplished of men Frank Crawford, so that I have scarcely known another who had more aboundingly lived and wrought, about whom moreover there was singularly more to be said, it struck me, than at all found voice at the time he might have been commemorated. Therefore if the young lady alluded to in my cousin"s anecdote was at all of the same personal style and proportion--well, I should draw the moral if it didn"t represent here too speciously the mouth of a trap, one of those I have already done penance for; the effect of my yielding to which would be a shaft sunk so straight down into matters interesting and admirable and sad and strange that, with everything that was futurity to the occasion noted in our letter and is an infinitely mixed and a heavily closed past now, I hurry on without so much as a glance.
The present plan is to send me to California in about three weeks by water, under the care of one of the Emmet boys and Temple"s valet--for nurse; and by the time I get there, early in December, they will be settled in San Francisco for the winter. The idea of a twenty-one days" sea-voyage is rather appalling--what do you think of it? This day is but too heavenly here. I haven"t been to church, but walking by myself, as happy as possible. When one sleeps well and the sun shines, what happiness to live! I wish you were here--wouldn"t I show you Pelham at high tide, on a day that is simply intoxicating, with a fresh breeze blown through the red and yellow leaves and sunshine "on field and hill, in heart and brain," as Mr. Lowell says. I suppose you remember the pony I drove, and Punch, the little Scotch terrier that tried so to insinuate himself into your affections, on the piazza, the morning you left. The former has been "cutting up," the latter _cut_ up, since then. You wouldn"t believe me when I told you the pony was a highly nervous creature--but she behaved as one the other day when I took the Roman Miss Crawford, who has been staying near here, a ride. She shied at a dog that frightened her, and dragged the cart into a ditch, and tried to get over a stone wall, waggon and all. I of course had to hang on to the reins, but I suggested to Miss Crawford that she should get out, as the cart was pretty steady while the horse"s forefeet were on top of the wall; which she did, into a mud-puddle, and soiled her pretty striped stockings and shoes in a horrible way. It ended by the dear little beast"s consenting to get back upon all fours, but I found it very amusing and have liked her better ever since.... How does Mr. Holmes persevere about smoking? I pity him if he can"t sleep, and wish _I_ had a vicious habit so that I might give it up. But I must finish my tale of the quadruped Punch, who was called upon in the dead of night by five dogs of the neighbourhood and torn to pieces by them.
The coachman heard him crying in the night, and in the morning we found him--that is to say we gathered him together, his dear little tail from one place and his head from another etc! So went out a very sweet little spirit--I wonder where it is now. Don"t tell me he hadn"t more of a soul than that Kaufmann, the fat oysterman.
I find bribes to recognition and recovery quite mercilessly multiply, and with the effort to brush past them more and more difficult; with the sense for me at any rate (whatever that may be worth for wisdom or comfort) of sitting rather queerly safe and alone, though as with a dangle of legs over the edge of a precipice, on the hither side of great gulfs of history. But these things, dated toward the end of that November, speak now in a manner for themselves.
My pa.s.sage for California is taken for the 4th of December; Elly and Temple have written to me to come at once--they are settled in San Francisco for the winter. My brother-in-law here has been promised that I shall be made so comfortable I shan"t want to tear myself from the ship when I arrive. The captain is a friend of Temple"s, and also of my uncle Captain Temple, and both of them are going to arrange so for me that I fully expect the ship to be hung with banners and flowers when I step on board.... I enjoyed my time in Boston far more than I had expected--in fact immensely, and wouldn"t have missed it for anything; I feel now as if it had _necessarily_ had to happen. I don"t know how I should have done the winter, and especially started off for an indefinitely long absence in the west without the impetus that it gave me in certain directions--the settling down and shaking up, the dissipating of certain impressions that I had thought fixed and the strengthening of others that I hadn"t been so sure of: an epoch in short. I dare say you have had such--in which a good deal of living was done in a short time, to be turned over and made fruitful in days to come. I saw Mr. Holmes once, and was very glad of that glimpse, short as it was. I went home by way of Newport, where I stayed two days--and where I was surprised to hear of Fred Jones"s engagement to Miss Rawle of Philadelphia. Do you know her? When I got to New York I went to the Hones" to ask something about Fred and his affairs and found that Miss Rawle was staying next door with Mrs. w.i.l.l.y Duncan; so I went in to see her on the spur of the moment, very much as I had come from the boat, not particularly presentable for a first call: however, I thought if she had a soul she wouldn"t mind it--and such I found the case.... Lizzie Boott was as sweet and good to me as ever; I think she is at once the most unselfish and most unegotistical girl I know--they don"t always go together.
What follows here has, in its order, I think, that it still so testifies to life--if one doesn"t see in it indeed rather perhaps the instinct on the writer"s part, though a scarce conscious one, to wind up the affairs of her spirit, as it were, and be able to turn over with a sigh of supreme relief for an end intimately felt as at hand. The moral fermentation breaking through the bustle of outward questions even at a time when she might have thrown herself, as one feels, on the great soft breast of equalising Nature, or taken her chance of not being too wrong, is a great stroke of truth. No one really could be less "morbid"; yet she would take no chance--it wasn"t in her--of not being right with the right persons; among whom she so ranked her correspondent.
My address at San Francisco will be simply Care of C. Temple Emmet, Esq.; and I am surely off this time unless heaven interposes in a miraculous way between now and Sat.u.r.day. I"ve no great courage about it, but after all it"s much the same to me where I am; life is always full of interest and mystery and happiness to me, and as for the voyage, the idea of three weeks of comparative solitude between sea and sky isn"t unattractive.... I know that by my question [as to why he had written, apparently, that she was, of her nature, "far off" from him] I am putting an end to that delightful immunity I have enjoyed so much with you from sickening introspection, a.n.a.lysis of myself and yourself, that exhausting and nauseating subjectivity, with which most of my other friends see fit to deluge me, thereby taking much that is refreshing out of life. Don"t be afraid of "hurting my feelings" by anything you can say. Our friendship has always been to my mind a one-sided thing, and if you should tell me you find me in any way unsympathetic or unsatisfactory it won"t disappoint me, and I won"t even allow myself to think I"m sorry. I feel so clearly that G.o.d knows best, and that we ought neither of us surely to wish to distort his creatures from the uses he made them for, just to serve our own purposes--that is to get a little more sympathy and comfort. We must each of us, after all, live out our own lives apart from everyone else; and yet, this being once understood as a fundamental truth, there is n.o.body"s sympathy and approval that would encourage me so much as yours. I mean that if one"s heart and motives could be known by another as G.o.d knows them, without disguise or extenuation, and if it should _then_ prove that on the _whole_ you didn"t think well of me, it would, more than anything else could, shake my confidence in my own instincts, which must after all forever be my guide. And yet, as I said before, I am quite prepared for the worst, and shall listen to it, if necessary, quite humbly.
I am very much inclined to trust your opinion before my own.
An hour later. _Sold_ again, by all that"s wonderful--I had almost said by all that"s d.a.m.nable, though it isn"t exactly that. My brother d.i.c.k has just walked in with a telegram from Temple: "I shall be back in December--don"t send M." A tremendous revulsion of feeling and a general sigh of relief have taken place on this announcement, and it"s all right, I"m sure, though when I wrote you an hour ago I thought the same of the other prospect.
One catches one"s breath a little, frankly, at what was to follow the above within a few days--implying as it does that she had drawn upon herself some fairly direct statement of her correspondent"s reserves of view as to her human or "intellectual" composition. To have _had_ such reserves at such an hour, and to have responded to the invitation to express them--for invitation there had been--is something that our actual larger light quite helps us to flatter ourselves _we_ shouldn"t have been capable of. But what was of the essence between these admirable persons was exactly the tone of truth; the larger light was all to wait for, and the real bearings of the hour were as unapparent as the interlocutors themselves were at home in clearness, so far as they might bring that ideal about. And whatever turn their conversation took is to the honour always of the generous girl"s pa.s.sion for truth. As this long letter admirably ill.u.s.trates that, I withdraw from it almost nothing. The record of the rare commerce would be incomplete without it; all the more perhaps for the wonder and pain of our seeing the n.o.ble and pathetic young creature have, of all things, in her predicament, to plead for extenuations, to excuse and justify herself.
I understood your letter perfectly well--it was better than I feared it might be, but bad enough. Better because I knew already all it told me, and had been afraid there might be some new and horrible development in store for me which I hadn"t myself felt; but bad enough because I find it in itself, new or old, such a disgusting fact that I am intellectually so unsympathetic. It is a fault I feel profoundly conscious of, but one that, strange to say, I have only of late been conscious of _as_ a fault. I dare say I have always known, in a general way, that I am very un.o.bservant about things and take very little interest in subjects upon which my mind doesn"t naturally dwell; but it had never occurred to me before that it is a fault that ought to be corrected. Whether because I have never been given to studying myself much, but have just let myself go the way my mind was most inclined to, more interested in the subject itself than in the fact that it interested me; or whether because one is averse to set oneself down as indolent and egotistic I don"t know; at all events I have of late seen the thing in all its unattractiveness, and I wish I could get over it. Do you think that, now I am fully roused to the fact, my case is hopeless? Or that if I should try hard for the next twenty-five years I might succeed in modifying it? I am speaking now of a want of interest in _all_ the rest of the world; of not having the desire to investigate subjects, naturally uninteresting to me, just because they are interesting to some other human being whom I don"t particularly owe anything to except that he _is_ a human being, and so his thoughts and feelings ought to be respected by me and sympathised with. Not to do this is, I know, unphilosophic and selfish, conceited and altogether inhuman. To be unselfish, to live for other people, to mould our lives as much as possible on the model of Christ"s all-embracing humanity, seems most clearly to my mind the one thing worth living for; and yet it is still the hardest thing for me to do, and I think I do it less than anybody else who feels the necessity of it strongly at all.
I am glad you still go to an occasional ball--I should rather like to meet you at one myself; it"s a phase of life we have seen so little of together. I have been feeling so well lately that I don"t know what to make of it. I don"t remember ever in my life being in such good spirits. Not that they are not in general pretty natural to me when there is the slightest excuse for them, but now everything seems bright and happy, my life so full of interest, my time so thoroughly filled and such a delicious calm to have settled down on my usually restless spirit. Such an enjoyment of the _present_, such a grateful contentment, is in each new day as I see it dawn in the east, that I can only be thankful and say to myself: "Make a note of this--you are happy; don"t forget it, nor to be thankful for this beautiful gift of life." This is Sunday morning, and I wonder whether you are listening to Phillips Brooks. I understand how you feel about his preaching--that it is all feeling and no reason; I found it so myself last winter in Philadelphia: he was good for those within the pale, but not good to convince outsiders that they should come in. I am glad, however, that he preaches in this way--I think his power lies in it; for it seems to me, after all, that what comfort we get from religion, and what light we have upon it, come to us through feeling, that is through trusting our instinct as the voice of G.o.d, the Holy Ghost, though it may at the same time appear to us directly against what our intellect teaches us. I don"t mean by this that we should deny the conclusions arrived at by our intellect--which on the contrary I believe we should trust and stand by to the bitter end, whenever this may be. But let us fearlessly trust our _whole_ nature, showing our faith in G.o.d by being true to ourselves all through, and not dishonouring Him by ignoring what our heart says because it is not carried out by our intellect, or by wilfully blunting our intellectual perception because it happens to run against some cherished wish of our heart.
"But," you will say, "how can a man live torn to pieces this way by these contrary currents?" Well, I know it is hard to keep our faith _sure_ of a standpoint where these apparent inconsistencies are all reconciled and the jangle and discord sound the sweetest harmony; but I do believe there _is_ one, in G.o.d, and that we must only try to have that faith and never mind how great the inconsistency may seem, nor how perplexing the maze it leads us through. Let us never give up one element of the problem for the sake of coming to a comfortable solution of it in this world. I don"t blame those eager minds that are always worrying, studying, investigating, to _find_ the solution here below; it is a n.o.ble work, and let them follow it out (and without a bit of compromise) to whom G.o.d has given the work. But whether we find it or not I would have them and all of us feel that it is to _be_ found, if G.o.d wills--and through no other means surely than by our being _true_. Blessed are they who have not seen and who have yet believed. But I am going out now for a walk! We have had the most delightful weather this whole week, and capital sleighing, and I have spent most of my time driving myself about with that same dear little pony. I went to town yesterday to a matinee of William Tell; it was delightful and I slept all night after it too. I am reading German a little every day, and it"s beginning to go pretty well. Good-bye. Don"t tire yourself out between work and dissipation.
I find myself quite sit up to her, as we have it to-day, while she sits there without inconvenience, after all that has happened, under the dead weight of William Tell; the relief of seeing her sublimely capable of which, with the reprieve from her formidable flight to the Pacific doubtless not a little contributing, helps to draw down again the vision, or more exactly the sound, of the old New York and Boston Opera as our young generation knew and artlessly admired it; admired it, by my quite broken memories of the early time, in Brignoli the sweet and vague, in Susini the deep and rich, in Miss Kellogg the native and charming, in Adelaide Phillipps the universal, to say nothing of other acclaimed warblers (they appear to me to have warbled then so much more than since) whom I am afraid of not placing in the right perspective.
They warbled Faust a dozen times, it comes back to me, for once of anything else; Miss Kellogg and Brignoli heaped up the measure of that success, and I well remember the great yearning with which I heard my cousin describe her first enchanted sense of it. The next in date of the letters before me, of the last day but one of December "69, is mainly an interesting expression of the part that music plays in her mental economy--though but tentatively offered to her correspondent, who, she fears, may not be musical enough to understand her, understand how much "spiritual truth has been "borne in" upon me by means of harmony: the relation of the part to the whole, the absolute value of the individual, the absolute necessity of uncompromising and unfaltering truth, the different ways in which we like our likes and our unlikes," things all that have been so made clearer to her. Of a singular grace in movement and att.i.tude, a grace of free mobility and activity, as original and "unconventional" as it was carelessly natural, she never looked more possessed of her best resources than at the piano in which she delighted, at which she had ardently worked, and where, slim and straight, her shoulders and head constantly, sympathetically swaying, she discoursed with an admirable touch and a long surrender that was like a profession of the safest relation she could know. Comparatively safe though it might have been, however, in the better time, she was allowed now, I gather, but little playing, and she is deep again toward the end of January "70 in a quite other exposure, the old familiar exposure to the "demon," as she calls it, "of the Why, Whence, Whither?"
Long as the letter is I feel it a case again for presentation whole; the last thoughts of her life, as they appear, breathe in it with such elevation. They seem to give us her last words and impulses, and, with what follows of the middle of February, const.i.tute the moving climax of her rich short story.
There have been times (and they will come again no doubt) when I could write to you about ordinary things in a way at least not depressing; but for a good while now I have felt so tired out, bodily and mentally, that I couldn"t conscientiously ask you to share my mood. The life I live here in the country, and so very much alone, is capable of being the happiest or the unhappiest of existences, as it all depends so on oneself and is so very little interfered with by outside influences. Perhaps I am more than usually subject to extremes of happiness and of depression, yet I suppose everyone must have moments, even in the most varied and distracting life, when the old questioning spirit, the demon of the Why, Whence, Whither? stalks in like the skeleton at the feast and takes a seat beside him. I say everyone, but I must except those rare and happy souls who really believe in Christianity, who no longer strive after even goodness as it comes from one"s own effort, but take refuge in the mysterious sacrifice of Christ, his merit sufficing, and in short throw themselves in the orthodox way on the consoling truth of the Atonement--to me hitherto neither comprehensible nor desirable. These people, having completely surrendered self, having lost their lives, as it were in Christ, must truly have found them, must know the rest that comes from literally casting their care of doubt and strife and thought upon the Lord.
I say hitherto the doctrine of the vicarious suffering of Christ has been to me not only incomprehensible but also unconsoling; I didn"t want it and didn"t understand even intellectually the feeling of people who do. I don"t mean to say that the life and death of Christ and the example they set for us have not been to me always the brightest spot in history--for they have; but they have stood rather as an example that we must try to follow, that we must by constant and ceaseless effort bring our lives nearer to--but always, to some extent at least, through ourselves, that is through ourselves with G.o.d"s help, got by asking Him for it and by His giving it to us straight and with no mediation. When I have seen as time went by my own shortcomings all the more instead of the less frequent, I have thought: "Well, you don"t try hard enough; you are not really in earnest in thinking that you believe in the Christian life as the only true one." The more I tried, nevertheless, the less it seemed like the model life; the best things I did continued to be the more spontaneous ones; the greatest efforts had the least success; until finally I couldn"t but see that if this was Christianity it was not the "rest" that Christ had promised his disciples--it was nothing more than a pagan life with a high ideal, only an ideal so high that nothing but failure and unhappiness came from trying to follow it. And one night when I was awake through all the hours it occurred to me: What if this were the need that Christianity came to fill up in our hearts? What if, after all, that old meaningless form of words that had been sounded in my unheeding ears all my days were suddenly to become invested with spirit and truth? What if this were the good tidings that have made so many hearts secure and happy in the most trying situations? For if morality and virtue were the test of a Christian, certainly Christ would never have likened the kingdom of heaven to a little child, in whose heart is no struggle, no conscious battle between right and wrong, but only unthinking love and trust.
However it may turn out, whether it shall seem true or untrue to me finally, I am at least glad to be able to put myself intellectually into the place of the long line of Christians who have felt the need and the comfort of this belief. It throws a light upon Uncle Henry"s talk, which has seemed to me hitherto neither reasonable nor consoling. When I was with him it so far disgusted me that I fear I showed him plainly that I found it not only highly unpractical, but ign.o.ble and shirking. I knew all the while that he disliked what he called my pride and conceit, but felt all the same that his views didn"t touch my case a bit, didn"t give me the least comfort or practical help, and seemed to me wanting in earnestness and strength. _Now_ I say to myself: What if the good gentleman had all along really got hold of the higher truth, the purer spirituality? Verily there are two sides to everything in this world, and one becomes more charitable the older one grows.
However, if I write at this length it is because I am feeling to-day too seedy for anything else. I had a hemorrhage a week ago, which rather took the life out of me; but as it was the only one I feel I should by this time be coming round again--and probably might if I hadn"t got into a sleepless state which completely knocks me up. The old consolatory remark, "Patience, neighbour, and shuffle the cards," ought to impart a little hope to me, I suppose; but it"s a long time since I"ve had any trumps in my hand, and you know that with the best luck the game always tired me. w.i.l.l.y James sometimes tells me to behave like a man and a gentleman if I wish to outwit fate. What a _real_ person he is! He is to me in nearly all respects a head and shoulders above other people. How is Wendell Holmes? Elly is having the gayest winter in Washington and wants me to go to them there, which I had meant to do before the return of my last winter"s illness. But it"s not for me now.
Later.--I have kept my letter a day or two, thinking I might feel in tune for writing you a better one and not sending this at all.
But alas I shall have to wait some time before I am like my old self again, so I may as well let this go. You see I"m not in a condition, mentally or physically, to take bright and healthy views of life. But if you really care you may as well see this mood as another, for heaven only knows when I shall get out of it. Can you understand the utter weariness of thinking about one thing all the time, so that when you wake up in the morning consciousness comes back with a sigh of "Oh yes, here it is again; another day of doubting and worrying, hoping and fearing has begun." If I don"t get any sleep at all, which is too frequently the case, the strain is a "leetle" bit too hard, and I am sometimes tempted to take a drop of "pison" to put me to sleep in earnest. That momentary vision of redemption from thinking and striving, of a happy rest this side of eternity, has vanished away again. I can"t help it; peaceful, desirable as it may be, the truth is that practically I don"t believe it. It was such a sudden thing, such an entire change from anything that had ever come to me before, that it seemed almost like an inspiration, and I waited, almost expecting it to continue, to be permanent. But it doesn"t stay, and so back swings the universe to the old place--paganism, naturalism, or whatever you call the belief whose watchword is "G.o.d and our own soul." And who shall say there is not comfort in it? One at least feels that here one breathes one"s native air, welcoming back the old _human_ feeling, with its beautiful pride and its striving, its despair, its mystery and its faith. Write to me and tell me whether, as one goes on, one must still be tossed about more and more by these conflicting feelings, or whether they finally settle themselves quietly one way or the other and take only their proper share at least of one"s life. This day is like summer, but I should enjoy it more if last night hadn"t been quite the most unpleasant I ever spent. I got so thoroughly tired about two in the morning that I made up my mind in despair to give the morphine another trial, and as one dose had no effect took two; the consequence of which is that I feel as ill to-day as one could desire. I can tell you, sir, you had better prize the gift of sleep as it deserves while you have it. If I don"t never write to you no more you"ll know it"s because I really wish to treat you kindly. But one of these days you"ll get another kind of letter, brim-full perhaps with health and happiness and thoroughly ashamed of my present self. I had a long letter yesterday from Harry James at Florence--enjoying Italy but homesick. Did you see those verses in the North American translated from the Persian? Good-bye.
The last of all is full both of realities and illusions, the latter insistently living through all the distress of the former. And I should like to say, or to believe, that they remained with her to the end, which was near.
Don"t be alarmed at my pencil--I am not in bed but only bundled-up on the piazza by order of the doctor.... I started for New York feeling a good deal knocked up, but hoping to get better from the change; I was to stay there over Sunday and see Dr. Metcalfe, who has a high reputation and was a friend of my father"s. I left a request at his office that he would come to me on Sunday P.M.; but in the meantime my cousin Mrs. Minturn Post, with whom I was staying, urged upon me her physician, Dr. Taylor, who came on Sat.u.r.day night, just as I was going to bed, and, after sounding my lungs, told me very dreadful things about them. As his verdict was worse than Metcalfe"s proved I will tell you what he said first. He began very solemnly: "My dear young lady, your right lung is diseased; all your hemorrhages have come from there. It must have been bad for at least a year before they began. You must go to Europe as soon as possible." This was not cheerful, as I had been idiot enough to believe some time ago such a different explanation.
But of course I wanted to learn what he absolutely thought, and told him I wasn"t a bit afraid. If there weren"t tubercles was I curable and if there _were_? was I hopeless? I asked him for the very worst view he had conscientiously to take, but didn"t mean definitely to ask how long I should live, and so was rather unprepared for his reply of "Two or three years." I didn"t however wish to make him regret his frankness, so I said, "Well, Doctor, even if my right lung were all gone I should make a stand with my left," and then, by way of showing how valiant the stand would be, fainted away. This, I should say, was owing a good deal to my previous used-up condition from want of sleep. It made him at any rate hasten to a.s.sure me that there was every possibility of my case being not after all so bad--with which he took his departure; to my great relief as I didn"t think him at all nice. His grammar was bad, and he made himself generally objectionable.
The next night dear Dr. Metcalfe came, whom I love for the gentlest and kindest soul I have ever seen. To start with he"s a gentleman, as well as an excellent physician, and to end with he and my father were fond of each other at West Point, and he takes a sort of paternal interest in me. He told me that my right lung is decidedly weaker than my left, which is quite sound, and that the hemorrhage has been a good thing for it and kept it from actual disease; and also that if I can keep up my general health I may get all right again. He has known a ten times worse case get entirely well. He urged me not to go to Washington, but decidedly to go to Europe; so this last is what I am to do with my cousin Mrs. Post if I am not dead before June. In a fortnight I"m to go back to New York to be for some time under Metcalfe"s care. I feel tired out and hardly able to stir, but my courage is good, and I don"t propose to lose it if I can help, for I know it all depends on myself whether I get through or not. That is if I begin to be indifferent to what happens I shall go down the hill fast. I have fortunately, through my mother"s father, enough Irish blood in me rather to enjoy a good fight. I feel the greatest longing for summer or spring; I should like it to be always spring for the rest of my life and to have all the people I care for always with me! But who _wouldn"t_ like it so? Good-bye.
To the gallantry and beauty of which there is little surely to add. But there came a moment, almost immediately after, when all illusion failed; which it is not good to think of or linger on, and yet not pitiful not to note. One may have wondered rather doubtingly--and I have expressed that--what life would have had for her and how her exquisite faculty of challenge could have "worked in" with what she was likely otherwise to have encountered or been confined to. None the less did she in fact cling to consciousness; death, at the last, was dreadful to her; she would have given anything to live--and the image of this, which was long to remain with me, appeared so of the essence of tragedy that I was in the far-off aftertime to seek to lay the ghost by wrapping it, a particular occasion aiding, in the beauty and dignity of art. The figure that was to hover as the ghost has at any rate been of an extreme pertinence, I feel, to my doubtless too loose and confused general picture, vitiated perhaps by the effort to comprehend more than it contains. Much as this cherished companion"s presence among us had represented for William and myself--and it is on _his_ behalf I especially speak--her death made a mark that must stand here for a too waiting conclusion. We felt it together as the end of our youth.
THE END
The following typographical errors have been corrected by the etext transcriber:
which I left in one of the of the library"s mantelpiece=>which I left in one of the library"s mantelpiece
qui s"est allongee malgre moi. Ton frere, James William.=>qui s"est allongee malgre moi. Ton frere, James William.
At about 5 the fearful reveille calls us>=At about 5 the fearful reveille calls us
quand meme>=quand meme
my own that it should beeome so=>my own that it should become so
I dont care much what it may be=>I don"t care much what it may be