No More Learning

In her creed, environment is destiny. Even such dramatic cli-
maxes as the death of Esther Vanhomrigh, the finding of the body of
Annie in A Village Tragedy,' and Joe in The Vagabonds) saving
the life of his rival whom he hates, are evolved from a chain of
events. Her people, drawn on broad lines, but with infinite discrimi-
nation, and ability to recognize and reproduce subtle distinctions,
work out their own salvation with results as certain as a problem in
mathematics.


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MARGARET L. WOODS
16155
In the matter of style, Mrs. Woods has accepted Boileau's dictum
that as the mind of man teems with confused ideas, he “likes noth-
ing better than to have one of these ideas well elucidated and clearly
presented to him. ” And for her reward she has helped to make
English literature human.
Margaret L. Woods was born in London in 1859, the daughter of
Dean Bradley of Westminster. Early in life she married Dr. Woods,
the president of Trinity College, Oxford. She has published A Vil-
lage Tragedy' (London, 1888), Esther Vanhomrigh' (1891), “The
Vagabonds" (1894), and a volume of Lyrics and Ballads” (1888).
ESTHER VANHOMRIGH'S CONFESSION TO DEAN SWIFT
From “Esther Vanhomrigh. ) By permission of the American Publishers'
Corporation, publishers
HERE
was a thorough search made round the two parlors
and on the stairs, but no paper was to be found.
It was
decided that the dean must have dropped it between St.
James's Street and Bury Street; and the party settled down as
before, with the exception of Esther. When the search had
proved in vain, she remembered seeing a folded piece of paper
lying by the altar rails in church, close by where the dean stood.
Sending welcome injunctions to Patrick, the dean's footman, to
join the revels below-stairs, she ran up for her hood and gloves,
and left the house as quickly and as quietly as she could. The
dusty streets were beginning to be shady, and were compara-
tively quiet, for it was not much past five o'clock; and the
fashionable world had not yet left its after-dinner wine for the
coffee-house, the tavern, or the Mall. Yet had they been noisier
they would have seemed a haven of peace to Esther, a fugitive
from the crowded stage of conventional merriment in which
she had been playing her part for so many hours. She turned
down by St. James's Palace into the Mall, where a certain num-
ber of people were already walking; and so past the milk fair at
the corner, to Spring Gardens. Thence she took a hackney to
the rectory, near the quiet church the Stones had chosen for the
wedding The rector, whose dinner had been large if not lux-
urious, sat over his empty bottle of Florence wine smoking a
pipe of tobacco; and though he wondered much what Miss Van-
homrigh might want with the church key, he sent it down by


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MARGARET L. WOODS
the maid without exerting himself to formulate a question. So
she went on to the church. The flower-seller had gone from
the steps, and the costermonger's cart from below them. Some
grimy children were playing at marbles by the door; and inter-
rupted in their game by the unexpected arrival, gathered round
to stare at her, as she painfully turned the big key in the lock,
with a faint exclamation of annoyance as she split the palm of
her glove in the process. She had no sooner entered than a
pale, inquisitive, snub-nosed little face, about on a level with the
lock, was thrust in after her. She hastily withdrew the key and
closed the door behind her. There was something strange and
unnatural about the emptiness of the place, with the long rays
of the afternoon sun streaming above its untenanted pews and
bulging hassocks and cushions. The church smelt of dust, for it
was not sufficiently fashionable to be open for those daily prayers
which were wont to offer a convenient rendezvous for the beau
and the fine lady. It had none of the dim impressiveness of a
mediæval church, that seems reared with a view to heaven rather
than earth, and whose arches, massive or soaring, neither gain
nor lose by the accidental presence of ephemeral human creatures
below them. No- the building seemed to cry out for a congre-
gation; and the mind's eye involuntarily peopled it with its Sun-
day complement of substantial citizens and their families.
Esther walked quickly up to the altar rails and looked over.
There lay the folded paper, just as she remembered it. She fell
on her knees on the long stool placed there for the convenience
of communicants; not with any idea of reverence, for Esther was
a philosopher after the fashion of the day, but merely in order
to reach the paper with greater ease. She snatched it up and
glanced at it. Yes, it was undoubtedly the lost key. Tossing
her head with a little “Ah! ” of triumph and satisfaction, she put
it away safely in her pocket. The prize was secured; yet she
lingered, ungloved her left hand, and touched a spot of ground
just within the rails, pressing her warm palm and shapely fingers
down upon the cold stone. Just there Swift had stood; so close
to where she knelt that if he stood there now, his robes would
brush her as he moved. She hid her face on the arm that lay
on the communion rails, and with a thrill of passionate adoration
saw once more the impressive figure that she had seen that morn-
ing, and heard again the grave tones of his voice. The sensation
of bustle attendant on a wedding, the near presence of the little


## p. 16157 (#503) ##########################################

MARGARET L. WOODS
16157
crowd of relations, had robbed the scene of its emotional quality
at the time; but now she was fully sensible of its significance.
She was kneeling just where the bride had knelt: and for her
the recollection of the stupid, vulgar girl, who had been round
to St. James's so often lately with tiresome questions about mil-
linery, faded before the realization of the woman's heart that
she had seen beating a few hours ago, on the spot where her
own beat now; not more full, surely not so full of love and pride
in the man beloved, but blest in a completed joy that was not
Esther's yet.
Might it not one day be hers also ? A minute or
two only she continued kneeling, and then passed down the aisle
and out to the steps like a somnambulist, – pale, with wide eyes
and close-pressed brooding lips. Another person so rapt might
have forgotten to lock the door, or else to return the church
key to its owner; but Esther's methodicalness-a natural quality
-
cultivated in response to Swift's approval — never forsook her,
and quite mechanically she struggled with the massive lock and
left the key at the clergyman's house with a message of thanks.
As she called a coach she asked herself with a start whether
she had done these things; then smiled and blushed at her own
self-absorption. Up till now she had had no definite purpose
beyond that of finding the lost paper; and having accomplished
this, she was going home again. But now, smiling, she thought:
“Patrick will be drunk by this time; at least, if he is not drunk
yet, he will not, in justice to himself, leave such a feast until he
is. I had better take it myself. ”
It seemed a simple and natural thing to do: but though Swift
received the Vanhomrighs at his lodgings as often as any other
friends, that did not mean very often; and she knew he hated to
be unexpectedly invaded by any one, most of all by ladies. Yet
to lose this opportunity of finding out the truth about this sud-
den departure would be too tantalizing. It must be only one of
those foolish mystifications by which he loved to throw dust in
the eyes of his acquaintance, and to which she had become almost
resigned. As she drove on, the desire to see him, to ask him a
thousand questions such as he would not answer before others,
and to extract from him a promise to write, grew till it became
a necessity. So she got down at the corner of Bury Street, and
flew on to the well-known door. She did not observe Mr. Eras-
mus Lewis, who was passing through the street on the other
side; but he observed her and her destination. On the door-step


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MARGARET L. WOODS
she paused, struck with sudden terror at finding herself enter-
ing uninvited that presence which could sometimes be so awe-
inspiring. Then with a touch of scorn at her own unreasoning
vacillation, she resolutely raised the knocker.
No one
came in
answer to her rap; but she found that the door was on the latch,
and went in. The doors of most of the rooms stood wide open,
and there was a feeling of loneliness about the dull little house.
She went up-stairs and knocked timidly at Swift's parlor; but
here too no one answered. The bedroom beside was obviously
empty; and with an inconsequent sensation of relief she said to
herself he must be gone out, and peeped carelessly into the par-
lor. It was a dreary room at the best of times; and now it bore
all those marks of disorder and discomfort that attend a move,
even from lodgings. A large wooden case half full of books
stood near the door, the floor and the chairs were strewn with
volumes, and those shabby odds and ends which seem never to
appear except on such occasions; while the hearthstone and empty
grate were piled with an immense heap of papers, mostly torn
up very small.
The cloth had fallen off the heavy old oak
table, which filled the middle of the room, and was generally
completely covered with books and pamphlets. It was quite bare
now, except that the man who sat at one end on a high stool
had bowed his body on it, and lay face downwards on its pol-
ished surface, with arms and tightly clenched hands stretched out
before him. He was wrapped in a loose gown, and wore neither
peruke nor cap; but his head, which must have been left un-
shaven for some time, was covered with a short thick growth of
blue-black hair, dashed with glittering silver at the temples. As
Esther stood by the door, amazed and undecided, a sound broke
from him: a groan, ending in a long, low, sighing wail. It was
a heart-broken sound: the cry of one worn out with some intol-
erable misery of mind or body. In an instant all hesitation
disappeared, all fear or desire for herself, - everything vanished
except the consciousness of her adored friend's anguish. She
moved forward quickly and silently, and falling on her knees by
the table laid her hand on his arm. He made no sign, but again
that muffled wail broke forth, like the lamentation of a damned
spirit. Trembling excessively, she pulled him by the sleeve,
and said in a voice so broken it was scarcely more than a whis-
per:-
Oh, sir! For pity's sake — for God's sake – »


## p. 16159 (#505) ##########################################

MARGARET L. WOODS
16159
With an impatient gesture he folded his arms round his head,
so as more completely to shield his face, and spoke hoarsely from
beneath them: “You confounded rascal, I thought you knew bet-
ter! Go-go-go, I say! ”
The last words were spoken with increasing vehemence.
Esther, who had often been awe-struck before him, did not fear
him now. He was suffering, how or why she knew not; and
without her reverence for him being in any way impaired, he
awoke her instinctive feeling of responsibility towards all suffer-
ing creatures. The first shock over, she was comparatively calm
again, only thinking with painful intensity what she had better
do. So for a minute or two they both remained in the same
position, till he burst out again with greater violence than before:
"Knave! Beast! Idiot! Go, go! ”
Then she touched his hand. "It is Hess,” she said.
He lifted his head slowly, and turned his face towards her,
as though with reluctance. It was pale with the livid pallor of
a dark skin no longer young, and the firm lines of mouth and
cheek were slackened and hollowed. He looked a ghost; but
hardly the ghost of himself. In a minute, as he realized Esther's
presence, the life and individuality began to return to his face,
but in no amiable form.
“So, madam,” he said after a pause, with a grimace that did
duty for a smile, “ you are here! Ha! Charming! Pray, to what
am I indebted, et cætera ? »
Esther was too much shocked at his appearance to consider
how he received her.
“I have brought the paper you lost,” she returned hastily.
«'Tis here. But no matter — you are ill. You must let me find
your drops for you, and send for Dr. Arbuthnot. ”
He sat upright, and clutching the edge of the stool on which
he sat with both hands,—“I am not ill,” he said with harsh
impatience. Leave me. ”
«
“You are either ill or in some great trouble,” she replied:
«in either case not fit to be alone. If you will not have my
company, you must let me send you some other friend; though
a truer one it cannot be. Patrick will only come home to sleep
off his wine. ”
“Friend! ” he cried, friend! ”
And with a shriek of laughter he rocked himself to and fro
on the stool. Esther was standing up now; she looked at him
)
»


## p. 16160 (#506) ##########################################

16160
MARGARET L. WOODS
steadily, with a severity born rather of amazement than of any
conscious criticism of his conduct: but he was calm again so in-
stantaneously that she almost doubted whether it was he who had
laughed. They were silent for a minute or two, looking at each
other. He was apparently calm, but the singular blueness of his
eyes had disappeared; they glittered under the heavy black eye-
brows, each with a curious spark in it, not at all like the azure
eyes so familiar to his friends. The change in them made his
whole face look different; from having been pale, it had now
flushed a dark red.
“You talk to me of friends, child,” he resumed hoarsely, but
in a more normal tone, leaning forward and smiling at her
bitterly, both his hands still clutching the stool, “as though you
expected me to believe in 'em, or to fancy you believed in 'em.
No, no, Governor Huff has too much wit for that. Friends!
Fellows that suck your brains, suck 'em dry, dry, and pay you
with their damned promises; that when you've slaved and slaved
and made a million enemies, and when they think you're done
with, fling you out an Irish deanery, as you might fling a stick
into the sea for your dog - Hi! Swim for it, sir! He paused
a moment, moistened his dry lips, and drawing in his breath
let it out again in a low fierce exclamation. « But 'tis not I, 'tis
they who are done with,- Oxford, Bolingbroke. Puppets! Pawns
on the board! Oh, when I am gone they'll know themselves,
and whistle me back when 'tis too late. And I shall come, ay,
blundering fool that I am, I shall come. The moths,- do you
remember at Kensington, Hess ? — they come back to frizzle
where they frizzled before, don't they ? ”
He laughed again the same sudden shrieking laugh. The
perpendicular line was defining itself on Esther's white brow;
a line which looked severe, but really indicated only anxiety or
bewilderment.
"I esteem your political friends as little as you do," she
replied, mentioning them disdainfully, and thought I esteemed
'em less.
have others - better ones Mr. Gay, Mr.
Pope-
"Mr. Addison - Mr. Steele,” — he broke in with a mincing
accent meant to imitate her feminine voice. « Was that what
you was going to say, miss? Ha, ha, ha! Warm-hearted, generous
Joseph! Steele, true as-thyself! Gay, now — Gay's a charming
fellow when one feels charmingly. As to Pope,”— at that name
But you
>>


## p. 16161 (#507) ##########################################

MARGARET L. WOODS
16161
(
he dropped his sneer and spoke with sombre earnestness — “as to
Pope, never talk of him, Hesskin. He's a thing I believe in, I
will believe in, I tell you, Brat — so don't let's think of him
for fear for fear - Ah! Did you say he was crooked ? »
«I said nothing, sir,” she replied with dignity: "I would aim
at no man's defects of person, least of all at Mr. Pope's. But if
I cannot name a man friend but you'll mock at him, I'll bring
your women friends to your mind,- the truest, the most attached
of 'em. ” And she held her head higher. «There's Lady Betty
Germayne, my mother, Molly, and — myself. That's four. ”
Women's friendship! Women's friendship! By the powers,
she talks as though it were a thing to be calculated, — four
—
female friendships to one male. Pshaw! Weigh froth! Weigh
moonshine! They're more weighable than the parcel of vanity
and caprice called female friendship. Don't I know why Madam
Van and you were all anxiety to know Mr. Gay before I left ?
Why, to be sure, she must have a poet in her ante-chamber like
other women of quality ; for Madam Van is as mad as old New-
castle, and thinks herself a duchess. And when that poor dean
that's been so useful is gone, why, he's gone; and Hess must get
another fellow to teach her how to talk and make the wits in
love with her. Ay, I know what your female friendship's worth. ”
Esther stood upright beside him. She made no visible motion
while he spoke; but she held her head higher, the frown on her
brow deepened, and she looked down at him with eyes in which
an angry light began to burn, and cheeks flushing with an indig-
nant red. He tried to meet her gaze indifferently as he finished
speaking, but his own sank beneath it; and before she made any
answer he hung his head as one rebuked.
“You dare to say so! ” she said at last sternly. "And to me! »
Then after a pause, “Unworthy!
“Unworthy! Most unworthy! ” she ejacu-
lated.
Her words did not exactly represent her feeling. She was
more moved by horror and surprise that he should speak in a
way so unlike and so degrading to himself, than at his prepos-
terous reflections on herself and Mrs. Vanhomrigh. But what-
ever the precise proportion in which her emotions were mingled,
she stood there the very image of intense yet self-contained indig-
nation, fixing upon him a steady look of stern reproof. She who
had so often trembled before his least frown did not fear his fury
now, in this feverish sickness of his soul. He was silent, looking
XXVII-IOII


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MARGARET L. WOODS
(c
her eyes.
at the table and drumming on it like a boy, half sullen, half
ashamed. Then on a sudden, putting both hands to his head
with a contortion of pain, «Oh, my head! my head! ” he cried.
“O God! - 0 God! »
And he rolled on the table in a paroxysm of anguish, moan-
ing inarticulately either prayers or curses. Every physical pang
that he endured created its mental counterpart in her; and her
whole soul was concentrated in a passionate prayer for help for
the body and mind of him laid there in anguish and disarray.
At length the paroxysm subsided, almost as suddenly as it had
come; but for a time he seemed unable to speak. Shading his
brow with his 'hand, he looked at her from time to time with a
faint, pleading, almost timid smile. This piteous smile, so unlike
any look she had ever seen or fancied on those haughty feat-
ures, was more than Esther could bear. Her breath came quick,
a strangling sob rose in her throat, and the hot tears blinded
But he had too often, quite mistakenly, praised her
as above the female weakness of tears; and she had too often
blushed to think of those tears of hers by the river at Windsor,
and those in the Sluttery, to weep again in his company. No,
she would rather choke than do it. So she could not answer
that pleading look with a kind one, but faced him with drooped
eyelids, lips severely close, flushed cheeks, and heaving bosom.
He spoke at last in a languid, hesitating voice, but calm and like
his own; no longer with the confused articulation of the fierce
grinding tones which had shocked Esther when he was talking
to her before.
“I beg your pardon, Essie, very humbly; yours and good
Madam Van's as well. You'd grant me grace if you only knew
what a bad head I have. Oh, such a racking head, Hess! The
pains of hell gat hold upon me,' last night when I came home
from Parson's Green; and all because of the least bit of fruit
from his glass-house the mad Peterborough would have me to
eat. No, I'll not do it again: fruit always did give me a bad
head. You've forgiven me, Brat, ha'n't you ? »
But Esther could not yet answer or meet that anxious, hum-
ble look of his.
“Essie! ” he cried pleadingly, “Essie! ” and stretched out his
hand towards hers as though to touch it, yet without doing so.
"Hess! ” he cried again. "What!
. "! You can't forgive your
poor friend, that hardly knows what he says when he cries aloud
(


## p. 16163 (#509) ##########################################

MARGARET L. WOODS
16163
>>
-
in his misery. Can't you forgive me, little Hesskin? Do- do
now forgive me. ”.
Esther was still kneeling like one in prayer, with her cheek
leaned on her clasped hands; but now the color had ebbed from
it and left her very pale, and the resolute lines of her lips had
softened. She lifted to his her great eyes, luminous with tears
repressed and an irrepressible fire of passion, and he started as
he met them.
“Forgive you ? ” she cried in a voice whose deep vibrating
music thrilled him in spite of himself; and then the same words
again, but set to some new harmony - “Forgive you? Why,
I love you! ”
The mental shock was sufficient to have thrust him back
again into that Inferno from which he had just escaped; but it
had the opposite effect. The weak, helpless feeling in the brain,
that usually remained with him for long after such an attack,
passed suddenly almost entirely away. Yes, it was a shock, For
weeks a dim troubling something, to which he obstinately refused
to give the shape of an idea, had been stirring in the depths of
his mind; and he had kept it down there by main force. Now
it sprang up before him, full-armed, like Minerva.
"I am obliged to you, Essie,” he said. "I should have been
sorry if I had offended you past your forgiveness. But now
you talk as wildly as I did. Had we not been friends so long,
I might misunderstand your meaning. ”
“Ah! ” she cried, leaping to her feet, and tossing back her
hood with a fierce, impatient gesture, you wish to misunderstand
it! You that have plagued me, tortured me with your questions,
now you would fain not hear the answer to 'em all. You that
have told me a thousand times to show you my heart, now you
will not see it. But you know, you know what you are to me;
- and a tearless sob strangled her voice.
“Your friend, Essie,” he said gravely, flinching before this
outburst of a passion it had been beyond his power to imagine.
“Friend! ” she cried, friend! ” and laughed, not bitterly, but
with a kind of wild tenderness. « Could Adam call the God that
shaped him out of dust his friend'? No, he must worship, he
must adore him. You shaped me. I was nothing, nothing,
before you taught me how to think, how to feel, and to love
what you love and despise what you despise. I am the creature
»
»
(C
«


## p. 16164 (#510) ##########################################

16164
MARGARET L. WOODS
(
of your hands, you made me and I am yours. You may be
sorry for't, but 'tis too late now to help it. ”
Swift made an attempt to assume that awful air with which
he was wont to cow the boldest of his friends or foes, but he
felt the attempt to be a failure.
"Hush, Essie! ” he cried. « What you are saying is very
wrong: 'tis rank blasphemy, and I will not hear it. ”
Esther turned from him, and paced the room for a minute
or two in a silence which Swift did not break, with her head
thrown back, and biting her under lip, as was her wont. Look-
ing on the ground, not at him, who had once more shaded his
face with one hand, she began again:
“We are neither of us enthusiasts, and I cannot pick my
words. Oh, that I could find one sharp enough to cut right
through my breast and show you my heart! Once you said I
should cease to be your friend on the day when I was afraid to
pin my heart to my sleeve-ruffles — yes, those were your very
words, pin it to my sleeve-ruffles'- for your inspection. You
forget, but I remember. Now you don't love to see it, but 'tis
too late to go back. If I said I worshiped you as one worships
God, I spoke wrongly. God is a long way off, and we have
never seen him, but we know he cannot need us. But you”-
she paused before him with clasped hands, like a worshiper
before a shrine-"you are far indeed above other men, yet you
are a man, and here among us; and you have often — ah! do not
try to deny it: little, nothing as I am compared to you, you have
often, often needed me! How can I choose but worship, adore, -
love you ? ”
And as she ended, she fell on her knees once more, and bend-
ing over his hand, that still lay stretched out on the table, touched
it with a swift hot kiss, and bowed her forehead on her folded
arms.
There was a sharp tap at the door. Some one must have
mounted the stairs unheard by either of them. Quick as light-
ning Esther sprang up and pulled her hood over her face.
Swift made a dash for his peruke, which lay on a neighboring
chair; but he had not got his head well into it when the door
was flung open, and, loudly announced by an invisible some one,
Mr. Erasmus Lewis walked in.
.


## p. 16165 (#511) ##########################################

16165
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
(1848–1894)
N THE novels of Constance Fenimore Woolson, a certain subtle
element of femininity is blended with masculine vigor and
disinterestedness. She had the self-restraint to stand aside
from her creations, yet she met the necessities of her art with a
woman's intuition. For this reason her novels are among the most
charming in the whole range of American fiction; satisfactory because
they always conform to a high standard of literary excellence, having
nothing about them shabby or careless or indifferent. Their author
looks upon life with that steadiness and clearness of gaze which is
only possible to one who wishes to see things as a whole, and as
they are. Miss Woolson might be called a realist for this reason;
yet she is also true to the unknown romance which forever haunts
the souls of men.
Although she is primarily a novelist, not a little of her power is
shown in her short stories. Of these she has written a great number,
their backgrounds being generally the scenes with which she was at
the time familiar. She was all her life a wanderer, so that she wrote
with equal freedom of New England and its people, of New York
life, of the South, of Americans and Italians in Florence and Venice
and Rome.
She was born in Claremont, New Hampshire, 1848; a great-niece of
James Fenimore Cooper, she was to give early evidence of possessing
not a small share of his literary power. As a child she was taken to
Cleveland, Ohio, where she received her primary education; going
later to a French school in New York city, a school reproduced per-
haps in her novel (Anne. ' She lived in Cleveland until the death of
her father, Charles Jarvis Woolson, in 1869. From 1873 to 1879 she
lived with her mother in Florida and in other Southern States, -a
sojourn whose fruits appear in the book of short stories of life in the
South headed by Rodman the Keeper,' and in East Angels. ' Miss
Woolson seemed capable of appreciating with equal intensity the
stern, self-sufficing, conscientious New England character, and the
sensuous, easy, lovable nature of the far South. She drew both with
equal truth, and enjoyed contrasting them by bringing them together;
as in the story (The Front Yard,' — in which a good-for-nothing
family of Italian peasants have for a stepmother a New England
woman who lives a modified New England life in Assisi, — in East
Angels,' and elsewhere. Her later short stories are nearly all of


## p. 16166 (#512) ##########################################

16166
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
Italy, or of Americans in Italy. She herself lived abroad continuously
after 1880, dying in Venice January 23d, 1894.
The scenes of her novels are laid in her own country, recalling
the associations of her childhood, —'Horace Chase, however, being
a novel of life in North Carolina. Anne,' 'Jupiter Lights,' (For the
Major,' have their setting in the North; East Angels,' in the far
South. Of these novels (Anne) is the most powerful and striking,
showing as it does Miss Woolson's ability to portray many kinds
of people — above all, her skill in the portraiture of women. She un-
derstood her own sex; her heroines are in no wise remarkable. They
may be met every day; their weakness, their strength, their love,
are found in every household. She understood men as well as an
unmarried woman can understand them, an unmarried woman with
the intuition of the artist. She understood perhaps best of all “the
common people,” especially their homely and hearty qualities. In
her novels she rarely gives way to sentiment or to feminine pathos;
the reader receives the impression that she has certain marketable
qualities in writing under curb. Her reserve force is a part of her
charm. On the whole her novels are strong, sane, and wholesomely
objective, having nothing in common with the hysteria of current
fiction. They fulfill the best purpose of a novel, to entertain without
enervating
RODMAN THE KEEPER
From Rodman the Keeper, and Other Southern Sketches. ) Published by
Harper & Brothers. Copyright 1880, by D. Appleton & Co.
“K
EEPER of what? Keeper of the dead. Well, it is easier to
keep the dead than the living; and as for the gloom of
the thing, the living among whom I have been lately
were not a hilarious set. ”
John Rodman sat in the doorway and looked out over his
domain. The little cottage behind him was empty of life save
himself alone. In one room the slender appointments provided
by government for the keeper, who being still alive must sleep
and eat, made the bareness doubly bare: in the other the desk
and the great ledgers, the ink and pens, the register, the
loud-ticking clock on the wall, and the flag folded on a shelf,
were all for the kept — whose names, in hastily written, blotted
rolls of manuscript, were waiting to be transcribed in the new
red-bound ledgers in the keeper's best handwriting day by day,
while the clock was to tell him the hour when the flag must


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rise over the mounds where reposed the bodies of fourteen thou-
sand United States soldiers — who had languished where once
stood the prison-pens on the opposite slopes, now fair and peace-
ful in the sunset; who had fallen by the way in long marches
to and fro under the burning sun; who had fought and died on
the many battle-fields that reddened the beautiful State, stretch-
ing from the peaks of the marble mountains in the smoky west
down to the sea islands of the ocean border. The last rim of the
sun's red ball had sunk below the horizon line, and the western
sky glowed with deep rose color, which faded away above into
pink, into the salmon tint, into shades of that far-away heavenly
emerald which the brush of the earthly artist can never repro-
duce, but which is found sometimes in the iridescent heart of
the opal. The small town, a mile distant, stood turning its back
on the cemetery: but the keeper could see the pleasant, rambling
old mansions, each with its rose-garden and neglected outlying
fields, the empty negro quarters falling into ruin, and everything
just as it stood when on that April morning the first gun was
fired on Sumter; apparently not a nail added, not a brushful
of paint applied, not a fallen brick replaced, or latch or lock
repaired.
The keeper had noted these things as he strolled through
the town, but not with surprise; for he had seen the South in
its first estate, when, fresh, strong, and fired with enthusiasm, he
too had marched away from his village home with the colors
flying above and the girls waving their handkerchiefs behind, as
the regiment, a thousand strong, filed down the dusty road.
That regiment, a weak, scarred two hundred, came back a year
later with lagging step and colors tattered and scorched, and
the girls could not wave their handkerchiefs, wet and sodden
with tears. But the keeper, his wound healed, had gone again;
and he had seen with his New England eyes the magnificence
and the carelessness of the South, her splendor and negligence,
her wealth and thriftlessness, as through Virginia and the fair
Carolinas, across Georgia and into sunny Florida, he had marched
month by month, first a lieutenant, then captain, and finally ma-
jor and colonel, as death mowed down those above him, and he
and his good conduct were left. Everywhere magnificence went
hand in hand with neglect, and he had said so as chance now
and then threw a conversation in his path.
“We have no such shiftless ways,” he would remark, after
he had furtively supplied a prisoner with hard-tack and coffee.
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"And no such grand ones, either,” Johnny Reb would reply,
if he was a man of spirit; and generally he was.
The Yankee, forced to acknowledge the truth of this state-
ment, qualified it by observing that he would rather have more
thrift with a little less grandeur; whereupon the other answered
that he would not: and there the conversation rested. So now
ex-Colonel Rodman, keeper of the national cemetery, viewed the
little town in its second estate with philosophic eyes. « It is
part of a great problem now working itself out; I am not here
to tend the living but the dead,” he said.
Whereupon, as he walked among the long mounds, a voice
seemed to rise from the still ranks below: “While ye have time,
do good to men,” it said. Behold, we are beyond your care. ”
But the keeper did not heed.
This still evening in early February he looked out over the
level waste. The little town stood in the lowlands: there were
no hills from whence cometh help-calm heights that lift the
soul above earth and its cares; no river to lead the aspirations
of the children outward toward the great sea. Everything was
monotonous; and the only spirit that rose above the waste was
a bitterness for the gained and sorrow for the lost cause. The
keeper was the only man whose presence personated the for-
mer in their sight, and upon him therefore, as representative,
the bitterness fell; not in words, but in averted looks, in sudden
silences when he approached, in withdrawals and avoidance, until
he lived and moved in a vacuum: wherever he went there was
presently no one save himself; the very shop-keeper who sold him
sugar seemed turned into a man of wood, and took his money
reluctantly, although the shilling gained stood perhaps for that
day's dinner.
So Rodman withdrew himself, and came and went among
them no more: the broad acres of his domain gave him as much
exercise as his shattered ankle could bear; he ordered his few
supplies by the quantity, and began the life of a solitary, his
island marked out by the massive granite wall with which the
United States government has carefully surrounded those sad
Southern cemeteries of hers — sad, not so much from the number
of the mounds representing youth and strength cut off in their
bloom,- for that is but the fortune of war,- as for the complete
isolation which marks them. “Strangers in a strange land” is
the thought of all who, coming and going to and from Florida,
turn aside here and there to stand for a moment among the


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closely ranged graves which seem already a part of the past –
that near past which in our hurrying American life is even now
so far away.
The government work was completed before the
keeper came: the lines of the trenches were defined by low
granite copings, and the comparatively few single mounds were
headed by trim little white boards bearing generally the word
“Unknown,” but here and there a name and an age,- in most
cases a boy from some far-away Northern State; "twenty-one,”
"twenty-two," said the inscriptions; the dates were those dark
years among the sixties, measured now more than by anything
else in the number of maidens widowed in heart, and women
widowed indeed, who sit still and remember while the world
rushes by. At sunrise the keeper ran up the Stars and Stripes;
and so precise were his ideas of the accessories belonging to the
place, that from his own small store of money he had taken
enough, by stinting himself, to buy a second flag for stormy
weather, so that, rain or not, the colors should float over the
dead. This was not patriotism so called or rather miscalled, it
was not sentimental fancy, it was not zeal or triumph: it was
simply a sense of the fitness of things, a conscientiousness which
had in it nothing of religion, unless indeed a man's endeavor
to live up to his own ideal of his duty be a religion. The
same feeling led the keeper to spend hours in copying the rolls.
"John Andrew Warren, Company G, Eighth New Hampshire
Infantry,” he repeated, as he slowly wrote the name, giving
"John Andrew” clear, bold capitals and a lettering impossible
to mistake; died August 15, 1863, aged twenty-two years. ”_"He
came from the prison-pen yonder, and lies somewhere in those
trenches, I suppose. Now then, John Andrew, don't fancy I am
I
sorrowing for you; no doubt you are better off than I am at this
very moment. But none the less, John Andrew, shall pen, ink,
and hand do their duty to you. For that I am here. ”
Infinite pains and labor went into these records of the dead;
one hair's-breadth error and the whole page was replaced by a
new one. The same spirit kept the grass carefully away from
the low coping of the trenches, kept the graveled paths smooth
and the mounds green, and the bare little cottage neat as a man-
of-war. When the keeper cooked his dinner, the door toward
the east, where the dead lay, was scrupulously closed; nor was
it opened until everything was in perfect order again. At sunset
the flag was lowered; and then it was the keeper's habit to
walk slowly up and down the path until the shadows veiled the


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CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
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mounds on each side, and there was nothing save the peaceful
green of earth.
«So time will efface our little lives and sorrows,”
he mused, “and we shall be as nothing in the indistinguishable
past. ” Yet none the less did he fulfill the duties of every day
and hour with exactness. "At least they shall not say that I was
lacking,” he murmured to himself as he thought vaguely of the
future beyond these graves. Who they were, it would have
troubled him to formulate, since he was one of the many sons
whom New England in this generation sends forth with a belief
composed entirely of negatives. As the season advanced, he
worked all day in the sunshine. “My garden looks well,” he
said. . « I like this cemetery, because it is the original resting-
place of the dead who lie beneath. They were not brought here
from distant places, gathered up by contract, numbered, and de-
scribed, like so much merchandise; their first repose has not been
broken, their peace has been undisturbed. Hasty burials the
prison authorities gave them: the thin bodies were tumbled into
the trenches by men almost as thin; for the whole State went
hungry in those dark days. There were not many prayers, no
tears, as the dead-carts went the rounds. But the prayers had
been said, and the tears had fallen, while the poor fellows were
still alive in the pens yonder; and when at last death came, it
was like a release. They suffered long; and I for one believe
that therefore shall their rest be long,- long and sweet. ”
After a time began the rain,—the soft, persistent, gray rain
of the Southern lowlands,- and he stayed within and copied an-
other thousand names into the ledger. He would not allow him-
self the companionship of a dog, lest the creature should bark
at night and disturb the quiet. There was no one to hear save
himself, and it would have been a friendly sound as he lay awake
on his narrow iron bed; but it seemed to him against the spirit
of the place. He would not smoke, although he had the soldier's
fondness for a pipe. Many a dreary evening, beneath a hastily
built shelter of boughs, when the rain poured down and every-
thing was comfortless, he had found solace in the curling smoke;
but now it seemed to him that it would be incongruous, and at
times he almost felt as if it would be selfish too. “They cannot
smoke, you know, down there under the wet grass,” he thought,
as standing at the window he looked toward the ranks of the
mounds stretching across the eastern end from side to side — “my
parade-ground,” he called it. And then he would smile at his
own fancies, draw the curtain, shut out the rain and the night,
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C
light his lamp, and go to work on the ledgers again. Some of
the names lingered in his memory; he felt as if he had known
the men who bore them, as if they had been boys together, and
were friends even now although separated for a time. "James
Marvin, Company B, Fifth Maine. The Fifth Maine was in the
seven days' battle. I say, do you remember that retreat down
the Quaker church road, and the way Phil Kearny held the
rear-guard firm ? ” And over the whole seven days he wandered
with his mute friend, who remembered everything and everybody
in the most satisfactory way. One of the little head-boards in
the parade-ground attracted him peculiarly because the name
inscribed was his own:
Rodman, Company A, One Hun-
dred and Sixth New York. ”
“I remember that regiment: it came from the extreme north-
ern part of the State. Blank Rodman must have melted down
here, coming as he did from the half-arctic region along the St.
Lawrence. I wonder what he thought of the first hot day, say
in South Carolina, along those simmering rice-fields ? ” He grew
into the habit of pausing for a moment by the side of this grave
every morning and evening. «Blank Rodman.
« Blank Rodman. It might easily
have been John. And then where should I be ? ”
But Blank Rodman remained silent; and the keeper, after
pulling up a weed or two and trimming the grass over his rela-
tive, went off to his duties again. “I am convinced that Blank
is a relative,” he said to himself; distant perhaps, but still a
kinsman. ”
One April day the heat was almost insupportable; but the sun's
rays were not those brazen beams that sometimes in North-
ern cities burn the air and scorch the pavements to a white
heat, - rather were they soft and still; the moist earth exhaled
her richness, not a leaf stirred, and the whole level country
seemed sitting in a hot vapor bath. In the early dawn the
keeper had performed his outdoor tasks; but all day he remained
almost without stirring in his chair between two windows, striv-
ing to exist. At high noon out came a little black, bringing his
supplies from the town, whistling and shuffling along, gay as a
lark. The keeper watched him coming slowly down the white
road, loitering by the way in the hot blaze, stopping to turn a
somersault or two, to dangle over a bridge rail, to execute various
impromptu capers all by himself. He reached the gate at last,
entered, and having come all the way up the path in a hornpipe
step, he set down his basket at the door to indulge in one long
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(
and final double-shuffle before knocking. "Stop that! ” said the
keeper through the closed blinds.