Theodore Winthrop

“ I felt that I could carry double responsibility, as Fulano had carried double weight. God has given me the blessing of a great, vigorous life. My body has always been a perfect machine for my mind’s work, such as that may be; and never a better machine, with every valve, crank, joint, and journal in good order, than on that dawn at Luggernel Springs.
If I had not awaked alive from top to toe, from tip to tip, from end to end, alive in muscle, nerve, and brain, the Luggernel Champagne Spring would have put life into me. ”

“ Their brown flanks grew ruddy with the low sunshine. A cloud of golden dust rose and hung over them. The air was loud with their lowing. Relieved from their drags, the herd frisked away with unwieldy gambolling. We turned to the camp, that improvised city in the wilderness.
Nothing could be more systematic than its arrangement. Order is welcome in the world. Order is only second to beauty. It is, indeed, the skeleton of beauty. Beauty seeks order, and becomes its raiment. Every great white-hooded, picturesque wagon of the Mormon caravan was in its place. ”

“ He straightened himself in his saddle, gave his fair moustache a twirl, and hummed, for gayety of heart, “Ah non giunge!” to the beat of his mustang’s hoofs.
We were riding at the bottom of a little hollow. The dusty trail across the unfenced wilderness, worn smooth and broad as a turnpike by the march of myriad caravans, climbed up the slopes before and behind us, like the wake of a ship between surges. The mail train had disappeared over the ridge. Our horses had gone with it. Brent and I were alone, as if the world held no other tenants. ”

“ Padiham was as gruff as yesterday, but his gruffness gave him flavor. Better a boor than a flunkey. There is excitement in talking with a man who respects you exactly in proportion to your power, and ignores you if you are a muff.
We went at our work without delay. For nearly two hours I put myself and kept myself at Short’s Cut-off. Padiham’s skill and readiness astonished me. Great artists are labor-saving machines to themselves; they leap to a conclusion in a moment, where a potterer would be becalmed for a tide. ”

“ It is not a charming region, that breadth of the world between the Foolonner Mine and the Great Salt Lake. Much is dusty desert; much is dreary plain, bushed with wild sage, the wretchedest plant that grows; much is rugged mountain. A grim and desolate waste. But large and broad. Unbroken and undisturbed, in its solemn solitude, by prettiness. No thought of cottage life there, or of the tame, limited, submissive civilization that hangs about lattices and trellises, and pets its chirping pleasures, keeping life as near the cradle as it may. ”

“ Sup, Fulano! This spot was worth the gallop to see Sup, Fulano, the brave, and may no stain of this day’s righteous death-doing rest upon your guiltless life!
Brent was lying under the spruces, drowsing with fatigue, reaction, and loss of blood. Miss Clitheroe sat by watching him. These fine beings have an exquisitely tenacious vitality. The happiness of release had suddenly kindled all her life again. As she rose to meet me, there was light in her eyes and color in her cheeks. ”

“ Besides, in Lancashire, particularly, we never see the sun; we see smoke; we breathe smoke; smoke spoils the fragrance and darkens the hue of all our life. I hate chimneys, sir; I have seen great fortunes go up them. I might perhaps tell you something of my own experience in looking up a certain tall chimney not a hundred miles from Clitheroe, and seeing ancestral acres fly up it, and ancestral pictures and a splendid old mansion all going off in smoke. ”

“ Some people seem only to know the value of rubbish. They guard old shoes, old hats, cracked mugs, battered tins, as articles of virtu. Some of the wagons were crowded with such cherished trash. Some had been lightened of such burdens by the wayside, and so were snug and orderly nestling-places; but the rat’s-nests quite outnumbered the wren’s-nests.
A small, neat wagon stood near the head of the train. We might have merely glanced at it, and passed by, as we had done elsewhere along the line; but, as we approached, our attention was caught by Murker and Larrap. ”

“ He looks at the world through the spectacles of his style. He loves mist and hates sunshine, or loves brooks and shrinks from the gloom of forests primeval, or adores meadows and haystacks, and dreads the far sweeping plain and the sovran [Pg 56] snow-peak. Even the greatest artist runs a risk, which only the greater than greatest escape, of suiting Nature to themselves, not themselves to Nature. Brent with Nature was like a youth with the maiden he loves. She was always his love, whatever she could do; however dressed, in clouds or sunshine, unchanging fair ”

“ She insisted upon her share of camp-duty; and her great gray eyes were often to be seen gravely fixed upon a frying-pan, or watching a roasting bird, as it twirled slowly before the fire, with a strip of pork featly disposed overhead to baste that succulent revolver; while Brent, poor fellow, lay upon the grass, wrapped in blankets, slowly accumulating force for the next day’s journey, and watched her with wonderment and delight that she could condescend to be a household goddess. ”

“ CHAPTER VI. JAKE SHAMBERLAIN.
If Heaven’s climate approaches the perfect charm of an American October, I accept my place in advance, and book my lodgings for eternity.
The climate of the best zone in America is transcendent for its purpose. Its purpose is to keep men at their keenest, at high edge and high ardor all the time. Then, for enchanting luxury of repose, when ardent summer has achieved its harvest, and all the measure of the year is full, comes ripe October, with its golden, slumberous air. The atmosphere is visible sunshine. Every leaf in the forest changes to a resplendent blossom. ”

“ The words and air jarred upon both of us.
“Nil humani a me alienum puto, I repeat,” said Brent, “but that foul stuff is not the voice of humanity. Let’s go look at the horses. They do not belie their nobler nature, and are not in the line of degradation. I cannot harden myself not to shrink from the brutal element wherever I find it; whether in two horse-thieves on the plains, or in a well-dressed reprobate of society at the club in New York.”
“Brutes in civilization are just as base, but not so blatant.” ”

“ A man who cannot dispense with luxury, and who does not love hard fare, hard bed, hard travel, and all manner of robust, vigorous, tense work, is a weakling and a soft. Sybaris is a pretty town, rose-leaves are a delicate mattrass, Lydian measures are dulcet to soul and body: also, the wilderness is “no mean city”; hemlock or heather for couch, brocken for curtain, are not cruelty; prairie gales are a brave lullaby for adults.
Simple furniture and simple fare a campaigner needs for the plains,—for chamber furniture, a pair of blankets; for kitchen furniture, a frying-pan and a coffee-pot ”

“ There they came! Gerrian’s whole band of horses in full career! First, their heads suddenly [Pg 28] lifted above a crest of the prairie, then they burst over, like the foam and spray of a black, stormy wave when a blast strikes it, and wildly swept by us with manes and tails flaring in the wind. It was magnificent. My heart of a horseman leaped in my breast. “Hurrah!” I cried.
“Hurrah ’tis!” said Gerrian.
The herd dashed by in a huddle, making for the corral. ”

“ A great snow-peak, like one of the Tacomas of Oregon, is a terrible monitor over a land; but it is also a benignant sovereign, a presence, calm, solemn, yet not without a cheering and jubilant splendor. A range of sharp, peremptory mountains, like the Sierra Nevada, insists upon taking thought away from the grovelling flats where men do their grubbing for the bread of daily life, and up to the master heights, whither in all ages seers have gone to be nearer mystery and God. ”

“ Civilization was the novelty to us. Tea with a gentleman and lady was a privilege quite unheard of. We should both have been ready to devote ourselves to a woman far less charming than our hostess. But here was a pair—the beautiful daughter, the father astray—whom we must know more of. I felt myself taking a very tender interest in their welfare, revolving plans in my mind to learn their history, and, if it might be done, to persuade the father out of his delusion.
“Now, gentlemen,” said our friend, playing his part with mild gracefulness, like an accomplished host; “sit down on the blankets. ”

“ Eastward rose the noble blue barrier of the Sierra, with here and there a field, a slope, a spot, or a pinnacle of the snow that names it Nevada. A landscape of larger feeling than any we can show in the old States, on the tame side of the continent. Those rigorous mountain outlines on the near horizon utterly dwarf all our wooded hills, Alleghanies, Greens, Whites. A race trained within sight of such loftiness of nature must needs be a loftier race than any this land has yet known. Put cheap types of mankind within the influence of the sublimities, and they are cowed ”

“ Of course this experience had a tendency to drive Brent out of the common paths, to make him a seer instead of a doer. The vulgar cannot comprehend that, when a man is selected by character and circumstance, acting together under the name of destiny, to be a seer, he must see to the end before he begins to say what he sees, to be a guide, a monitor, and a helper. The vulgar, therefore, called Brent a wasted life, a man of genius manqué, a pointless investigator, a purposeless dreamer. The vulgar loves to make up its mind prematurely. ”

“ Sizzum and his brother saints chased them; but presently, losing sight of them in the dusk, they staggered off toward camp, singing uproariously. Their leader on this festival had somewhat forgotten the dignity of the apostle and captain.
This low rioting was doubly disgusting to me, after the sad evening with our friends. I found Sizzum more offensive as a man of the world than as a saint. I say man of the world, because the gambling scenes of nominal gentlemen are often just as hateful, if more decorous, than those of that night. I walked slowly off toward camp, sorrowful and sick at heart. ”

“ Life was wasting from him, as it ever does when man pursues the elusive and unattained. When a man like Brent once voluntarily concentrates all his soul on one woman, worthy of his love, thenceforth he must have love for daily food, or life burns dim and is a dying flame. ”

“ Only the great chiefs were in toggery of old uniforms, blossoming into brass buttons wherever a button could bourgeon. And only the great chiefs resembled frowzy scarecrows. The women, melancholy, as the abused women of barbarians always are, were slouching about at slave work. All greeted Ruby as a friend, with sonorous grunts.
Society, even of Sioux, dwelling under buffalo hide foolscaps, was humane after our journey. The barracks of Laramie, lonely outpost on a bleak plain, were fairly beautiful in their homelike homeliness. Man without a roof is mere chaos. ”

“ He did not, as he said, as yet feel any great interest in their doctrines; but he remembered them with good-will from his coal-pit days, and whenever an emissary of the faith came by, he always found a friend in Hugh Clitheroe. They had evidently flattered him. It was rare, of course, to find a protector among the gentry, and they made the most of the chance.
Poor old man! I could trace the progress of his disappointment, and his final fall into that miserable superstition. He had been a free-thinker; never industrious or self-possessed enough to become a fundamental thinker. ”

“ Seems to me I have seen cavaliers before, aiding beauties with like ardor, on the carpet, in the parlor, over the Sèvres and the silver. And when I saw it, I thought, “O cavalier! O beauty! beware, or do not beware, just as you deem best, but know that there is peril!” For love can improvise out of the steam of a teapot a romance as big and sudden and irrepressible as the Afreet that swelled from the casket by the sea-shore in the Arabian story. ”

“ At the left rode Brent, our leader. He knew the region; he made the plan; he had the hope; his was the ruling passion,—stronger than brotherhood, than revenge. Love made him leader of that galloping three. His iron-gray went grandly, with white mane flapping the air like a signal-flag of reprieve. Eager hope and kindling purpose made the rider’s face more beautiful than ever. He seemed to behold Sidney’s motto written on the golden haze before him, “Viam aut inveniam aut faciam.” ”

“ Padiham went on filing, in a grim, intelligent way. I glanced about the shop.
There were models all about of machines, some known, some strange to me; disconnected portions of inventions lying side by side, and wanting only a bolt or a screw to be organized and ready to rush at pumping, or lifting, or dragging, or busy duty of some useful kind. There was store, too, of interesting rubbish,—members of futile models, that could not do busy duty of their kind for some slight error, and worth careful study as warnings; for failure with mechanics is the schoolmaster of success. ”

“ I knew, for he had been my teacher, how, when youth first looked widely forth for visions of the Infinite, he had learned to comprehend, day after day, night after night, the large delight of heaven; whether the busy heaven, when the golden sun makes our sky blue above us, and reveals on earth the facts that we must deal with and by which we must be taught our laws, or the quiet heaven of night, with its starry tokens of grander fruition, when we shall live for grander days. ”

“ A man never attains to that stolidity of content except in England, where the air’s exciting oxygen is well weakened with fog, and the air’s exhilarating ozone is quite discharged from dancing attendance. London and England were not strange to me; but a great city is ever new, and after two years’ inane staring at a quartz-mine, town and townsfolk were still lively contrast to my mind. ”

“ Every day he grew a little weaker in body; but every day the strong spirit lifted the body to its work. He must live to be our guide, that he felt. He must be cheerful, gay even, lest the lady he had saved should too bitterly feel that her safety was daily paid for by his increasing agony. Every day that ichor of love baptized him with new life. ”

“ And so, when his time came to perceive the higher significance of Art, as man’s rudimentary efforts toward creations diviner and more orderly than those of earth, he had gone to Art with the unerring eye and interpreting love of a fresh soul, schooled by Nature only, blind to Art’s baser fancies, and hospitable to its holier dreams. [Pg 266] No ugly visions could visit the uncontrolled hours of a brain so stored. ”

“ You were right when you said a man cannot be a good artisan unless he has a bit of the artist in him.
“It was by going to a print-shop with drawings to sell that I found my dear lass. She had painted me, and sold the picture to the dealer for bread. I wouldn’t have noticed the picture except for the dwarf in it, and now I wouldn’t be a finished man for the world. Yes, there I was, Dwarf George, picking daisies on the edge of a coal-pit; there I was, just as I used to look, with the coal-dust ground into me, trying to make friends with the fresh innocent daisies in the sunshine. ”

“ My mind always acts quick. I seem always to have been discussing my decisions with myself, years before the subject of decision comes to me. Whatever happens, falls on me with the force of a doom. I loved Miss Clitheroe’s voice the instant I heard its brave tenderness answering her father. ”

“ It was clearly out of tenderness to him that she avoided the real objections she must have to such a scene.
“It is quite too noisy and dusty for Miss Clitheroe in the fort,” said I, and I took his arm. “Come, sir, let us walk about and have a chat in the open air.”
I led him off, poor old gentleman, facile under my resolute control. All he had long ago needed was a firm man friend to take him in hand and be his despot; but the weaker he was, the less he could be subject to his daughter. It is the feeble, unmasculine men who fight most petulantly against the influence and power of women. ”