Books: The Junior Classics Volume 8

S >> Selected and arranged by William Patten >> The Junior Classics Volume 8

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"The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on its dim and perilous way;"

she sang bits of old songs and psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling
the Psalms of David, and the diviner words of his Son and Lord,
with homely odds and ends and scraps of ballads.

Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did
I ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch
voice--the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance,
the bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares,
something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and
in a "fremyt" (querulous, trembling) voice, and he starting up,
surprised, and slinking off as if he were to blame somehow, or had
been dreaming he heard. Many eager questions and beseechings which
James and I could make nothing of, and on which she seemed to set
her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It was very sad, but
better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered
about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to
her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and
metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing
great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and
doating over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain
bonnie wee dawtie!"

The end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver
cord was fast being loosed--that _animula blandula, vagula,
hospes, comesque_ (dear fleeting life, a sojourner and companion)
was about to flee. The body and the soul--companions for sixty
years--were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking,
alone, through the valley of that shadow, into which one day we
must all enter--and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod
and staff were comforting her.

One night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped, asleep; her eyes
were shut. We put down the gas and sat watching her. Suddenly she
sat up in bed and taking a bedgown which was lying on it rolled up,
she held it eagerly to her breast--to the right side. We could see
her eyes bright with surpassing tenderness and joy, bending over
this bundle of clothes. She held it as a woman holds her suckling
child; opening out her nightgown impatiently, and holding it close,
and brooding over it, and murmuring foolish little words, as one
whom his mother comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was
pitiful and strange to see her wasting dying look, keen and yet
vague--her immense love.

"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving away. And then she rocked back
and forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it
her infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor; I declare she's thinkin'
it's that bairn." "What bairn?"

"The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and she's in the
Kingdom, forty years and mair." It was plainly true: the pain in
the breast telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined brain,
was misread and mistaken; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a
breast full of milk, and then the child; and so again once more
they were together, and she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom.

This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but,
as she whispered, she was "clean silly"; it was the lightening
before the final darkness. After having for some time lain
still--her eyes shut, she said, "James!" He came close to her, and
lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him a long
look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked for Rab but could not
see him, then turned to her husband again, as if she would never
leave off looking, shut her eyes and composed herself. She lay for
some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently, that when we
thought she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the
mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness
was breathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the
blank clear darkness of the mirror without a stain. "What is your
life? it is even a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and
then vanisheth away."

Rab all this time had been full awake and motionless; he came
forward beside us; Ailie's hand, which James had held, was hanging
down; it was soaked with his tears; Rab licked it all over
carefully, looked at her, and returned to his place under the
table.

James and I sat, I don't know how long, but for some time--saying
nothing: he started up abruptly, and with some noise went to the
table, and putting his right, fore and middle fingers each into a
shoe, pulled them out, and put them on, breaking one of the leather
latchets, and muttering in anger, "I never did the like o' that
afore."

I believe he never did; nor after either. "Rab!" he said roughly,
and pointing with his thumb to the bottom of the bed. Rab leaped
up, and settled himself; his head and eye to the dead face.
"Maister John, ye'll wait for me," said the carrier, and
disappeared in the darkness, thundering downstairs in his heavy
shoes. I ran to a front window: there he was, already round the
house, and out at the gate fleeing like a shadow.

I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid; so I sat down beside
Rab, and being wearied, fell asleep. I awoke from a sudden noise
outside. It was November, and there had been a heavy fall of snow.
Rab was _in statu quo_ (in the same place); he heard the
noise, too, and plainly knew it, but never moved. I looked out, and
there, at the gate, in the dim morning--for the sun was not up--was
Jess and the cart--a cloud of steam rising from the old mare. I did
not see James; he was already at the door, and came up to the
stairs, and met me. It was less than three hours since he left, and
he must have posted out--who knows how--to Howgate, full nine miles
off; yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He had an
armful of blankets, and was streaming with perspiration. He nodded
to me, spread out on the floor two pairs of clean old blankets,
having at their corners "A. G., 1794," in large letters in red
worsted. These were the initials of Alison Grame, and James may
have looked in at her from without--himself unseen but not
unthought of--when he was "wat, wat and weary," and after having
walked many a mile over the hills, may have seen her sitting, while
"a' the lave were sleepin';" and by the firelight working her name
on the blankets, for her ain James' bed.

He motioned Rab down, and taking his wife in his arms, laid her in
the blankets, and wapped her carefully and firmly up, leaving the
face uncovered; and then lifting her, he nodded again sharply to
me, and with a resolved but utterly miserable face, strode along
the passage, and downstairs, followed by Rab. I followed with a
light; but he didn't need it. I went out, holding stupidly the
candle in my hand in the calm frosty air; we were soon at the gate.
I could have helped him, but I saw he was not to be meddled with,
and he was strong, and did not need it. He laid her down as
tenderly, as safely, as he had lifted her out ten days before--as
tenderly as when he had her first in his arms when she was only "A.
G."--sorted her, leaving that beautiful sealed face open to the
heavens; and then taking Jess by the head, he moved away. He did
not notice me, neither did Rab, who presided behind the cart.

I stood till they passed through the long shadow of the College,
and turned up Nicholson street. I heard the solitary cart sound
through the streets, and die away and come again; and I returned,
thinking of that company going up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin
Muir, the morning light touching the Pentlands and making them
on-looking ghosts; then down the hill through Auchindinny woods,
past "haunted Woodhouselee"; and as daybreak came sweeping up the
bleak Lammermuirs, and fell on his own door, the company would
stop, and James would take the key, and lift Ailie up again, laying
her on her own bed, and, having put Jess up, would return with Rab
and shut the door.

James buried his wife, with his neighbors mourning, Rab inspecting
the solemnity from a distance. It was snow, and that black ragged
hole would look strange in the midst of the swelling spotless
cushion of white. James looked after everything; then rather
suddenly fell ill, and took to bed; was insensible when the doctor
came, and soon died. A sort of low fever was prevailing in the
village, and his want of sleep, his exhaustion, and his misery,
made him apt to take it. The grave was not difficult to reopen. A
fresh fall of snow had again made all things white and smooth; Rab
once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable.

And what of Rab? I asked for him next week of the new carrier who
got the goodwill of James's business, and was now master of Jess
and her cart. "How's Rab?" He put me off, and said rather rudely,
"What's _your_ business wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so put
off. "Where's Rab?" He, getting confused and red, and intermeddling
with his hair, said, "'Deed sir, Rab's died." "Dead! what did he
die of?" "Weel, sir," said he, getting redder, "he didna exactly
dee; he was killed. I had to brain him wi' a rack-pin; there was
nae doing wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and wadna
come oot. I tempit him wi' the kail and meat, but he wad tak
naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur
gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make awa
wi' the old dowg, his like wasne atween this and Thornhill--but,
'deed, sir, I could do naething else." I believed him. Fit end for
Rab, quick and complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should
he keep the peace and be civil?

A RIDE WITH A MAD HORSE A FREIGHT-CAR

By W.H.H. Murray

It was at the battle of Malvern Hill--a battle where the carnage
was more frightful, as it seems to me, than in any this side of the
Alleghanies during the whole war--that my story must begin. I was
then serving as Major in the --th Massachusetts Regiment--the
old--th, as we used to call it--and a bloody time the boys had of
it too. About 2 P.M. we had been sent out to skirmish along the
edge of the wood in which, as our generals suspected, the Rebs lay
massing for a charge across the slope, upon the crest of which our
army was posted. We had barely entered the underbrush when we met
the heavy formations of Magruder in the very act of charging. Of
course, our thin line of skirmishers was no impediment to those
onrushing masses. They were on us and over us before we could get
out of the way. I do not think that half of those running,
screaming masses of men ever knew that they had passed over the
remnants of as plucky a regiment as ever came out of the old Bay
State. But many of the boys had good reason to remember that
afternoon at the base of Malvern Hill, and I among the number: for
when the last line of Rebs had passed over me, I was left among the
bushes with the breath nearly trampled out of me and an ugly
bayonet-gash through my thigh; and mighty little consolation it for
me at that moment to see the fellow who ran me through lying stark
dead at my side, with a bullet-hole in his head, his shock of
coarse black hair matted with blood, and his stony eyes looking
into mine. Well, I bandaged up my limb the best I might and started
to crawl away, for our batteries had opened, and the grape and
canister that came hurtling down the slope passed but a few feet
over my head. It was slow and painful work, as you can imagine, but
at last, by dint of perseverance, I had dragged myself away to the
left of the direct range of the batteries, and, creeping to the
verge of the wood, looked off over the green slope. I understood by
the crash and roar of the guns, the yells and cheers of the men,
and that hoarse murmur which those who have been in battle know,
but which I cannot describe in words, that there was hot work going
on out there; but never have I seen, no, not in that three days'
desperate _melee_ at the Wilderness, nor at that terrific
repulse we had at Cold Harbor, such absolute slaughter as I saw
that afternoon on the green slope of Malvern Hill. The guns of the
entire army were massed on the crest, and thirty thousand of our
infantry lay, musket in hand, in front. For eight hundred yards the
hill sank in easy declension to the wood, and across this smooth
expanse the Rebs must charge to reach our lines. It was nothing
short of downright insanity to order men to charge that hill; and
so his generals told Lee, but he would not listen to reason that
day, and so he sent regiment after regiment, and brigade after
brigade, and division after division, to certain death. Talk about
Grant's disregard of human life, his effort at Cold Harbor--and I
ought to know, for I got a Minie in my shoulder that day--was
hopeful and easy work to what Lee laid on Hill's and Magruder's
divisions at Malvern. It was at the close of the second charge,
when the yelling mass reeled back from before the blaze of those
sixty guns and thirty thousand rifles, even as they began to break
and fly backward toward the woods, that I saw from the spot where I
lay a riderless horse break out of the confused and flying mass,
and, with mane and tail erect and spreading nostril, come dashing
obliquely down the slope. Over fallen steeds and heaps of the dead
she leaped with a motion as airy as that of the flying fox when,
fresh and unjaded, he leads away from the hounds, whose sudden cry
has broken him off from hunting mice amid the bogs of the meadow.
So this riderless horse came vaulting along. Now from my earliest
boyhood I have had what horsemen call a 'weakness' for horses. Only
give me a colt of wild, irregular temper and fierce blood to tame,
and I am perfectly happy. Never did lash of mine, singing with
cruel sound through the air, fall on such a colt's soft hide. Never
did yell or kick send his hot blood from heart to head deluging his
sensitive brain with fiery currents, driving him into frenzy or
blinding him with fear; but touches, soft and gentle as a woman's,
caressing words, and oats given from the open palm, and unfailing
kindness, were the means I used to 'subjugate' him. Sweet
subjugation, both to him who subdues and to him who yields! The
wild, unmannerly, and unmanageable colt, the fear of horsemen the
country round, finding in you not an enemy, but a friend, receiving
his daily food from you, and all those little 'nothings' which go
as far with a horse as a woman, to win and retain affection, grows
to look upon you as his protector and friend, and testifies in
countless ways his fondness for you. So when I saw this horse, with
action so free and motion so graceful, amid that storm of bullets,
my heart involuntarily went out to her, and my feelings rose higher
and higher at every leap she took from amid the whirlwind of fire
and lead. And as she plunged at last over a little hillock out of
range and came careering toward me as only a riderless horse might
come, her head flung wildly from side to side, her nostrils widely
spread, her flank and shoulders flecked with foam, her eye
dilating, I forgot my wound and all the wild roar of battle, and,
lifting myself involuntarily to a sitting posture as she swept
grandly by, gave her a ringing cheer.

"Perhaps in the sound of a human voice of happy mood amid the awful
din she recognized a resemblance to the voice of him whose blood
moistened her shoulders and was even yet dripping from saddle and
housings. Be that as it may, no sooner had my voice sounded than
she flung her head with a proud upward movement into the air,
swerved sharply to the left, neighed as she might to a master at
morning from her stall, and came trotting directly up to where I
lay, and, pausing, looked down upon me as it were in compassion. I
spoke again, and stretched out my hand caressingly. She pricked her
ears, took a step forward and lowered her nose until it came in
contact with my palm. Never did I fondle anything more tenderly,
never did I see an animal which seemed to so court and appreciate
human tenderness as that beautiful mare. I say 'beautiful.' No
other word might describe her. Never will her image fade from my
memory while memory lasts.

"In weight she might have turned, when well conditioned, nine
hundred and fifty pounds. In color she was a dark chestnut, with a
velvety depth and soft look about the hair indescribably rich and
elegant. Many a time have I heard ladies dispute the shade and hue
of her plush-like coat as they ran their white, jeweled fingers
through her silken hair. Her body was round in the barrel and
perfectly symmetrical. She was wide in the haunches, without
projection of the hip bones, upon which the shorter ribs seemed to
lap. High in the withers as she was, the line of her back and neck
perfectly curved, while her deep, oblique shoulders and long,
thick forearm, ridgy with swelling sinews, suggested the perfection
of stride and power. Her knees across the pan were wide, the
cannon-bone below them short and thin; the pasterns long and
sloping; her hoofs round, dark, shiny, and well set on. Her
mane was a shade darker than her coat, fine and thin, as a
thoroughbred's always is whose blood is without taint or cross. Her
ear was thin, sharply pointed, delicately curved, nearly black
around the borders, and as tremulous as the leaves of an aspen. Her
neck rose from the withers to the head in perfect curvature, hard,
devoid of fat, and well cut up under the chops. Her nostrils were
full, very full, and thin almost as parchment. The eyes, from which
tears might fall or fire flash, were well brought out, soft as a
gazelle's, almost human in their intelligence, while over the small
bony head, over neck and shoulders, yea, over the whole body and
clean down to the hoofs, the veins stood out as if the skin were
but tissue-paper against which the warm blood pressed, and which it
might at any moment burst asunder. 'A perfect animal,' I said to
myself as I lay looking her over--'an animal which might have been
born from the wind and the sunshine, so cheerful and so swift she
seems; an animal which a man would present as his choicest gift to
the woman he loved, and yet one which that woman, wife or
lady-love, would give him to ride when honor and life depended on
bottom and speed.'

"All that afternoon the beautiful mare stood over me, while away to
the right of us the hoarse tide of battle flowed and ebbed. What
charm, what delusion of memory held her there? Was my face to her
as the face of her dead master, sleeping a sleep from which not
even the wildest roar of battle, no, nor her cheerful neigh at
morning, would ever wake him? Or is there in animals some instinct,
answering to our intuition, only more potent, which tells them whom
to trust and whom to avoid? I know not, and yet some such sense
they may have, they must have; or else why should this mare so
fearlessly attach herself to me? By what process of reason or
instinct I know not, but there she chose me for her master; for
when some of my men at dusk came searching, and found me, and,
laying me on a stretcher, started toward our lines, the mare,
uncompelled, of her own free will, followed at my side; and all
through that stormy night of wind and rain, as my men struggled
along through the mud and mire toward Harrison's Landing, the mare
followed, and ever after, until she died, was with me, and was
mine, and I, so far as man might be, was hers. I named her Gulnare.

"As quickly as my wound permitted, I was transported to Washington,
whither I took the mare with me. Her fondness for me grew daily,
and soon became so marked as to cause universal comment. I had her
boarded while in Washington at the corner of--Street and--Avenue.
The groom had instructions to lead her around to the window against
which was my bed, at the hospital, twice every day, so that by
opening the sash I might reach out my hand and pet her. But the
second day, no sooner had she reached the street, than she broke
suddenly from the groom and dashed away at full speed. I was lying,
bolstered up in bed, reading, when I heard the rush of flying feet,
and in an instant, with a loud, joyful neigh, she checked herself
in front of my window. And when the nurse lifted the sash, the
beautiful creature thrust her head through the aperture, and rubbed
her nose against my shoulder like a dog. I am not ashamed to say
that I put both my arms around her neck, and, burying my face in
her silken mane, kissed her again and again. Wounded, weak, and
away from home, with only strangers to wait upon me, and scant
service at that, the affection of this lovely creature for me, so
tender and touching, seemed almost human, and my heart went out to
her beyond any power of expression, as to the only being, of all
the thousands around me, who thought of me and loved me. Shortly
after her appearance at my window, the groom, who had divined where
he should find her, came into the yard. But she would not allow him
to come near her, much less touch her. If he tried to approach she
would lash out at him with her heels most spitefully, and then,
laying back her ears and opening her mouth savagely, would make a
short dash at him, and, as the terrified African disappeared around
the corner of the hospital, she would wheel, and, with a face
bright as a happy child's, come trotting to the window for me to
pet her. I shouted to the groom to go back to the stable, for I had
no doubt but that she would return to her stall when I closed the
window. Rejoiced at the permission, he departed. After some thirty
minutes, the last ten of which she was standing with her slim,
delicate head in my lap, while I braided her foretop and combed out
her silken mane, I lifted her head, and, patting her softly on
either cheek, told her that she must 'go.' I gently pushed her head
out of the window and closed it, and then, holding up my hand, with
the palm turned toward her, charged her, making the appropriate
motion, to 'go away right straight back to her stable.' For a
moment she stood looking steadily at me, with an indescribable
expression of hesitation and surprise in her clear, liquid eyes,
and then, turning lingeringly, walked slowly out of the yard.

"Twice a day for nearly a month, while I lay in the hospital, did
Gulnare visit me. At the appointed hour the groom would slip her
headstall, and, without a word of command, she would dart out of
the stable, and, with her long, leopard-like lope, go sweeping down
the street and come dashing into the hospital yard, checking
herself with the same glad neigh at my window; nor did she ever
once fail, at the closing of the sash, to return directly to her
stall. The groom informed me that every morning and evening, when
the hour of her visit drew near, she would begin to chafe and
worry, and, by pawing and pulling at the halter, advertise him that
it was time for her to be released.

"But of all exhibitions of happiness, either by beast or man, hers
was the most positive on that afternoon when, racing into the yard,
she found me leaning on a crutch outside the hospital building. The
whole corps of nurses came to the doors, and all the poor fellows
that could move themselves--for Gulnare had become a universal
favorite, and the boys looked for her daily visits nearly, if not
quite, as ardently as I did--crawled to the windows to see her.
What gladness was expressed in every movement! She would come
prancing toward me, head and tail erect, and, pausing, rub her head
against my shoulder, while I patted her glossy neck; then suddenly,
with a sidewise spring, she would break away, and with her long
tail elevated until her magnificent brush, fine and silken as the
golden hair of a blonde, fell in a great spray on either flank,
and, her head curved to its proudest arch, pace around me with that
high action and springing step peculiar to the thoroughbred. Then
like a flash, dropping her brush and laying back her ears and
stretching her nose straight out, she would speed away with that
quick, nervous, low-lying action which marks the rush of racers,
when side by side and nose to nose lapping each other, with the
roar of cheers on either hand and along the seats above them, they
come straining up the home stretch. Returning from one of these
arrowy flights, she would come curvetting back, now pacing sidewise
as on parade, now dashing her hind feet high into the air, and anon
vaulting up and springing through the air, with legs well under
her, as if in the act of taking a five-barred gate, and finally
would approach and stand happy in her reward--my caress.

"The war, at last, was over, Gulnare and I were in at the death
with Sheridan at the Five Forks. Together we had shared the pageant
at Richmond and Washington, and never had I seen her in better
spirits than on that day at the capital. It was a sight indeed to
see her as she came down Pennsylvania Avenue. If the triumphant
procession had been all in her honor and mine, she could not have
moved with greater grace and pride. With dilating eye and tremulous
ear, ceaselessly champing her bit, her heated blood bringing out
the magnificent lacework of veins over her entire body, now and
then pausing, and with a snort gathering herself back upon her
haunches as for a mighty leap, while she shook the froth from her
bits, she moved with a high, prancing step down the magnificent
street, the admired of all beholders. Cheer after cheer was given,
huzza after huzza rang out over her head from roofs and balcony,
bouquet after bouquet was launched by fair and enthusiastic
admirers before her; and yet, amid the crash and swell of music,
the cheering and tumult, so gentle and manageable was she, that,
though I could feel her frame creep and tremble under me as she
moved through that whirlwind of excitement, no check or curb was
needed, and the bridle-lines--the same she wore when she came to me
at Malvern Hill--lay unlifted on the pommel of the saddle. Never
before had I seen her so grandly herself. Never before had the fire
and energy, the grace and gentleness, of her blood so revealed
themselves. This was the day and the event she needed. And all the
royalty of her ancestral breed--a race of equine kings--flowing as
without taint or cross from him that was the pride and wealth of
the whole tribe of desert rangers, expressed itself in her. I need
not say that I shared her mood. I sympathized in her every step. I
entered into all her royal humors. I patted her neck and spoke
loving and cheerful words to her. I called her my beauty, my pride,
my pet. And did she not understand me? Every word! Else why that
listening ear turned back to catch my softest whisper; why the
responsive quiver through the frame, and the low, happy neigh?
'Well,' I exclaimed, as I leaped from her back at the close of the
review--alas! that words spoken in lightest mood should portend so
much!--'well, Gulnare, if you should die, your life has had its
triumph. The nation itself, through its admiring capital, has paid
tribute to your beauty, and death can never rob you of your fame.'
And I patted her moist neck and foam-flecked shoulders, while the
grooms were busy with head and loins.

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