Margret Howth, a Story of To-day

Rebecca Harding Davis

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. Let me tell you a story of To-Day, - very homely and narrow in its scope and aim. Not of the To-Day whose significance in the history of humanity only those shall read who will live when you and I are dead. We can bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, while the nations of the earth stand afar off. I have no word of this To-Day to speak. I write from the border of the battlefield, and I find in it no theme for shallow argument or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of death has fallen on us; it chills the very heaven. No child laughs in my face as I pass down the street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten to pray; only in the bitterness of endurance, they say "in the morning, 'Would God it were even! ' and in the evening, 'Would God it were morning! '" Neither I nor you have the prophet's vision to see the age as its meaning stands written before God. Those who shall live when we are dead may tell their children, perhaps, how, out of anguish and darkness such as the world seldom has borne, the enduring morning evolved of the true world and the true man

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 27 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819927433
• Langue: English

Extrait

MARGRET HOWTH.
A STORY OF TO-DAY
by
Rebecca Harding Davis
“My matter hath no voice to alien ears.”
TO MY MOTHER.
CHAPTER I.
Let me tell you a story of To-Day, — very homely andnarrow in its scope and aim. Not of the To-Day whose significancein the history of humanity only those shall read who will live whenyou and I are dead. We can bear the pain in silence, if our heartsare strong enough, while the nations of the earth stand afar off. Ihave no word of this To-Day to speak. I write from the border ofthe battlefield, and I find in it no theme for shallow argument orflimsy rhymes. The shadow of death has fallen on us; it chills thevery heaven. No child laughs in my face as I pass down the street.Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten to pray; only in thebitterness of endurance, they say “in the morning, 'Would God itwere even! ' and in the evening, 'Would God it were morning! '”Neither I nor you have the prophet's vision to see the age as itsmeaning stands written before God. Those who shall live when we aredead may tell their children, perhaps, how, out of anguish anddarkness such as the world seldom has borne, the enduring morningevolved of the true world and the true man. It is not clear to us.Hands wet with a brother's blood for the Right, a slavery ofintolerance, the hackneyed cant of men, or the blood-thirstiness ofwomen, utter no prophecy to us of the great To-Morrow of contentand right that holds the world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if Godlives, it is there. The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we havedeafened down as ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of thehour, renews the quiet promise of its coming in simple, humblethings. Let us go down and look for it. There is no need that weshould feebly vaunt and madden ourselves over our self-seen rights,whatever they may be, forgetting what broken shadows they are ofeternal truths in that calm where He sits and with His quiet handcontrols us.
Patriotism and Chivalry are powers in the tranquil,unlimited lives to come, as well as here, I know; but there areless partial truths, higher hierarchies who serve the God-man, thatdo not speak to us in bayonets and victories, — Mercy and Love. Letus not quite neglect them, unpopular angels though they be. Veryhumble their voices are, just now: yet not altogether dead, Ithink. Why, the very low glow of the fire upon the hearth tells mesomething of recompense coming in the hereafter, — Christmas-days,and heartsome warmth; in these bare hills trampled down by armedmen, the yellow clay is quick with pulsing fibres, hints of thegreat heart of life and love throbbing within; slanted sunlightwould show me, in these sullen smoke-clouds from the camp, walls ofamethyst and jasper, outer ramparts of the Promised Land. Do notcall us traitors, then, who choose to be cool and silent throughthe fever of the hour, — who choose to search in common things forauguries of the hopeful, helpful calm to come, finding even inthese poor sweet-peas, thrusting their tendrils through the brownmould; a deeper, more healthful lesson for the eye and soul thanwarring truths. Do not call me a traitor, if I dare weakly to hintthat there are yet other characters besides that of Patriot inwhich a man may appear creditably in the great masquerade, and notblush when it is over; or if I tell you a story of To-Day, in whichthere shall be no bloody glare, — only those homelier, subtilerlights which we have overlooked. If it prove to you that the sun ofold times still shines, and the God of old times still lives, isnot that enough?
My story is very crude and homely, as I said, — onlya rough sketch of one or two of those people whom you see everyday, and call “dregs, ” sometimes, — a dull, plain bit of prose,such as you might pick for yourself out of any of these warehousesor back-streets. I expect you to call it stale and plebeian, for Iknow the glimpses of life it pleases you best to find; idylsdelicately tinted; passion-veined hearts, cut bare for curiouseyes; prophetic utterances, concrete and clear; or some word ofpathos or fun from the old friends who have endenizened themselvesin everybody's home. You want something, in fact, to lift you outof this crowded, tobacco-stained commonplace, to kindle and chafeand glow in you. I want you to dig into this commonplace, thisvulgar American life, and see what is in it. Sometimes I think ithas a new and awful significance that we do not see.
Your ears are openest to the war-trumpet now. Ha!that is spirit-stirring! — that wakes up the old Revolutionaryblood! Your manlier nature had been smothered under drudgery, thepoor daily necessity for bread and butter. I want you to go downinto this common, every-day drudgery, and consider if there mightnot be in it also a great warfare. Not a serfish war; notaltogether ignoble, though even its only end may appear to be yourdaily food. A great warfare, I think, with a history as old as theworld, and not without its pathos. It has its slain. Men and women,lean-jawed, crippled in the slow, silent battle, are in youralleys, sit beside you at your table; its martyrs sleep under everygreen hill-side.
You must fight in it; money will buy you nodischarge from that war. There is room in it, believe me, whetheryour post be on a judge's bench, or over a wash-tub, for heroism,for knightly honour, for purer triumph than his who falls foremostin the breach. Your enemy, Self, goes with you from the cradle tothe coffin; it is a hand-to-hand struggle all the sad, slow way,fought in solitude, — a battle that began with the firstheart-beat, and whose victory will come only when the drops oozeout, and sudden halt in the veins, — a victory, if you can gain it,that will drift you not a little way upon the coasts of the wider,stronger range of being, beyond death.
Let me roughly outline for you one or two lives thatI have known, and how they conquered or were worsted in the fight.Very common lives, I know, — such as are swarming in yondermarket-place; yet I dare to call them voices of God, — all!
My reason for choosing this story to tell you issimple enough.
An old book, which I happened to find to-day,recalled it. It was a ledger, iron-bound, with the name of the firmon the outside, — Knowles & Co. You may have heard of the firm:they were large woollen manufacturers: supplied the home market inIndiana for several years. This ledger, you see by the writing, hasbeen kept by a woman. That is not unusual in Western trading towns,especially in factories where the operatives are chiefly women. Insuch establishments, they can fill every post successfully, butthat of overseer: they are too hard with the hands for that.
The writing here is curious: concise, square, notflowing, — very legible, however, exactly suited to its purpose.People who profess to read character in chirography would decipherbut little from these cramped, quiet lines. Only this, probably:that the woman, whoever she was, had not the usual fancy of her sexfor dramatizing her soul in her writing, her dress, her face, —kept it locked up instead, intact; that her words and looks, likeher writing, were most likely simple, mere absorbents by which shedrew what she needed of the outer world to her, not flaunting helpsto fling herself, or the tragedy or comedy that lay within, beforecareless passers-by. The first page has the date, in red letters,October 2, 1860, largely and clearly written. I am sure the woman'shand trembled a little when she took up the pen; but there is nosign of it here; for it was a new, desperate adventure to her, andshe was young, with no faith in herself. She did not lookdesperate, at all, — a quiet, dark girl, coarsely dressed inbrown.
There was not much light in the office where shesat; for the factory was in one of the close by-streets of thetown, and the office they gave her was only a small square closetin the seventh story. It had but one window, which overlooked aback-yard full of dyeing vats. The sunlight that did contrive tostruggle in obliquely through the dusty panes and cobwebs of thewindow, had a sleepy odour of copperas latent in it. You smelt itwhen you stirred. The manager, Pike, who brought her up, had laidthe day-books and this ledger open on the desk for her. As soon ashe was gone, she shut the door, listening until his heavy boots hadthumped creaking down the rickety ladder leading to theframe-rooms. Then she climbed up on the high office-stool (climbed,I said, for she was a little, lithe thing) and went to work,opening the books, and copying from one to the other as steadily,monotonously, as if she had been used to it all her life. Here arethe first pages: see how sharp the angles are of the blue and blacklines, how even the long columns: one would not think, that, as thesteel pen traced them out, it seemed to be lining out her life,narrow and black. If any such morbid fancy were in the girl's head,there was no tear to betray it. The sordid, hard figures seemed toher types of the years coming, but she wrote them downunflinchingly: perhaps life had nothing better for her, so she didnot care. She finished soon: they had given her only an hour ortwo's work for the first day. She closed the books, wiped the pensin a quaint, mechanical fashion, then got down and examined her newhome.
It was soon understood. There were the walls withtheir broken plaster, showing the laths underneath, with here andthere, over them, sketches with burnt coal, showing that herpredecessor had been an artist in his way, — his name, P.Teagarden, emblazoned on the ceiling with the smoke of a candle;heaps of hanks of yarn in the dusty corners; a half-used broom;other heaps of yarn on the old toppling desk covered with dust; araisin-box, with P. Teagarden done on the lid in bas-relief, halffull of ends of cigars, a pack of cards, and a rotten apple. Thatwas all, except an impalpable sense of dust and worn-outnesspervading the whole. One thing more, odd enough there: a wire cage,hung on the wall, and