Castle Nowhere

C >> Constance Fenimore Woolson >> Castle Nowhere

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'What! Has he gone, then? Has Jarvis gone?'

Springing to her feet she confronted him with clinched hands and
dilated eyes. Of all the words she had heard but one; he had gone! The
poor old man tried to draw her down again into the shelter of his
arms, but she seemed turned to stone, her slender form was rigid.
'Where is he? Where is Jarvis? What have you done with him,--you,
you!'

The quick unconscious accusation struck to his heart. 'Child,' he said
in a broken voice, 'I tried to keep him. I would have given him my
place in your love, in your life, but he would not. He has gone, he
cares not for you; he is a hard, evil man.'

'He is not! But even if he were, I love him,' said the girl,
defiantly.

Then she threw up her arms towards heaven (alas! it was no heaven to
her, poor child) as if in appeal. 'Is there no one to help me?' she
cried aloud.

'What can we do, dear?' said the old man, standing beside her and
smoothing her hair gently. 'He would not stay,--I could not keep him!'

'I could have kept him.'

'You would not ask him to stay, if he wished to go?'

'Yes, I would; he must stay, for my sake.'

'But if he had loved you, dear, he would not have gone.'

'Did he say he did not love me?' demanded Silver, with gleaming eyes.

Old Fog hesitated.

'Did he say he did not love me? Did Jarvis say that?' she repeated,
seizing his arm with grasp of fire.

'Yes; he said that.'

But the lie meant to rouse her pride, killed it; as if struck by a
visible hand, she swayed and fell to the floor.

The miserable old man watched her all the night. She was delirious,
and raved of Waring through the long hours. At daylight he left her
with Orange, who, not understanding these white men's riddles, and
sorely perplexed by Waring's desertion, yet cherished her darling with
dumb untiring devotion, and watched her every breath.

Following the solitary trail over the snow-covered ice and thence
along-shore towards the east journeyed old Fog all day in the teeth of
the wind, dragging a sledge loaded with furs, provisions, and dry
wood; the sharp blast cut him like a knife, and the dry snow-pellets
stung as they touched his face, and clung to his thin beard coated
with ice. It was the worst day of the winter, an evil, desolate,
piercing day; no human creature should dare such weather. Yet the old
man journeyed patiently on until nightfall, and would have gone
farther had not darkness concealed the track; his fear was that new
snow might fall deeply enough to hide it, and then there was no more
hope of following. But nothing could be done at night, so he made his
camp, a lodge under a drift with the snow for walls and roof, and a
hot fire that barely melted the edges of its icy hearth. As the blaze
flared out into the darkness, he heard a cry, and followed; it was
faint, but apparently not distant, and after some search he found the
spot; there lay Jarvis Waring, helpless and nearly frozen. 'I thought
you farther on,' he said, as he lifted the heavy, inert body.

'I fell and injured my knee yesterday; since then I have been freezing
slowly,' replied Waring in a muffled voice. 'I have been crawling
backwards and forwards all day to keep myself alive, but had just
given it up when I saw your light.'

All night the old hands worked over him, and they hated the body they
touched; almost fiercely they fed and nourished it, warmed its blood,
and brought back life. In the dawning Waring was himself again; weak,
helpless, but in his right mind. He said as much, and added, with a
touch of his old humor, 'There is a wrong mind you know, old
gentleman.'

The other made no reply; his task done; he sat by the fire waiting. He
had gone after this fellow, driven by fate; he had saved him, driven
by fate. Now what had fate next in store? He warmed his wrinkled hands
mechanically and waited, while the thought came to him with bitterness
that his darling's life lay at the mercy of this man who had nothing
better to do, on coming back from the very jaws of death, than make
jests. But old Fog was mistaken; the man had something better to do,
and did it. Perhaps he noted the expression of the face before him;
perhaps he did not, but was thinking, young man fashion, only of
himself; at any rate this is what he said: 'I was a fool to go. Help
me back, old man; it is too strong for me,--I give it up.'

'Back,--back where?' said the other, apathetically.

Waring raised his head from his pillow of furs. 'Why do you ask when
you know already! Back to Silver, of course; have you lost your mind?'

His harshness came from within; in reality it was meant for himself;
the avowal had cost him something as it passed his lips in the form of
words; it had not seemed so when in the suffering, and the cold, and
the approach of death, he had seen his own soul face to face and
realized the truth.

So the two went back to the castle, the saved lying on the sledge, the
savior drawing it; the wind was behind them now, and blew them along.
And when the old man, weary and numb with cold, reached the ladder at
last, helped Waring, lame and irritable, up to the little snow-covered
balcony, and led the way to Silver's room,--when Silver, hearing the
step, raised herself in the arms of the old slave and looked eagerly,
not at him, no, but at the man behind,--did he shrink? He did not; but
led the reluctant, vanquished, defiant, half-angry, half-shamed lover
forward, and gave his darling into the arms that seemed again almost
unwilling, so strong was the old opposing determination that lay bound
by love's bonds.

Silver regained her life as if by magic; not so Waring, who lay
suffering and irritable on the lounge in the long room, while the girl
tended him with a joy that shone out in every word, every tone, every
motion. She saw not his little tyrannies, his exacting demands, his
surly tempers; or rather she saw and loved them as women do when men
lie ill and helpless in their hands. And old Fog sat apart, or came
and went unnoticed; hours of the cold days he wandered through the
forests, visiting the traps mechanically, and making tasks for himself
to fill up the time; hours of the cold evenings, he paced the
snow-covered roof alone. He could not bear to see them, but left the
post to Orange, whose black face shone with joy and satisfaction over
Waring's return.

But after a time fate swung around (as she generally does if impatient
humanity would but give her a chance). Waring's health grew, and so
did his love. He had been like a strong man armed, keeping his palace;
but a stronger than he was come, and, the combat over, he went as far
the other way and adored the very sandals of the conqueror. The gates
were open, and all the floods were out.

And Silver? As he advanced, she withdrew. (It is always so in love, up
to a certain point; and beyond that point lies, alas! the broad
monotonous country of commonplace.)

This impetuous, ardent lover was not the Jarvis she had known, the
Jarvis who had been her master, and a despotic one at that.
Frightened, shy, bewildered, she fled away from all her dearest joys,
and stayed by herself in the flower-room with the bar across the door,
only emerging timidly at mealtimes and stealing into the long room
like a little wraith; a rosy wraith now, for at last she had learned
to blush. Waring was angry at this desertion, but only the more in
love; for the violet eyes veiled themselves under his gaze, and the
unconscious child-mouth began to try to control and conceal its
changing expressions, and only succeeded in betraying them more
helplessly than ever. Poor little solitary maiden-heart!

Spring was near now; soft airs came over the ice daily, and stirred
the water beneath; then the old man spoke. He knew what was coming, he
saw it all, and a sword was piercing his heart; but bravely he played
his part. 'The ice will move out soon, in a month or less you can sail
safely,' he said, breaking the silence one night when they two sat by
the fire, Waring moody and restless, for Silver had openly repulsed
him, and fled away early in the evening. 'She is trifling with me,' he
thought, 'or else she does not know what love is. By heavens, I will
teach her though--' As far as this his mind had journeyed when Fog
spoke. 'In a month you can sail safely, and I suppose you will go for
good this time?'

'Yes.'

Fog waited. Waring kicked a fallen log into place, lit his pipe then
let it go out, moved his chair forward, then pushed it back
impatiently, and finally spoke. 'Of course I shall take Silver; I
intend to make Silver.'

'At last?'

'At last. No wonder you are glad--'

'Glad,' said Fog,--'glad!' But the words were whispered, and the young
man went on unheeding.

'Of course it is a great thing for you to have the child off your
hands and placed in a home so high above your expectations. Love is a
strange power. I do not deny that I have fought against it, but--but
why should I conceal? I love Silver with all my soul, she seems to
have grown into my very being.'

It was frankly and strongly uttered; the good side of Jarvis Waring
came uppermost for the moment.

Old Fog leaned forward and grasped his hand. 'I know you do,' he said.
'I know something of men, and I have watched you closely, Waring. It
is for this love that I forgive--I mean that I am glad and thankful
for it, very thankful.'

'And you have reason to be,' said the younger man, withdrawing into
his pride again. 'As my wife, Silver will have a home, a circle of
friends, which--But you could not understand; let it pass. And now,
tell me all you know of her.'

The tone was a command, and the speaker leaned back in his chair with
the air of an owner as he relighted his pipe.

But Fog did not shrink. 'Will you have the whole story?' he asked
humbly.

'As well now as ever, I suppose, but be as brief as possible,' said
the young man in a lordly manner. Had he not just conferred an
enormous favor, an alliance which might be called the gift of a
prince, on this dull old backwoodsman?

'Forty years ago or thereabouts,' began Fog in a low voice, 'a crime
was committed in New York City. I shall not tell you what it was, there
is no need; enough that the whole East was stirred, and a heavy reward
was offered for the man who did the deed. I am that man.'

Waring pushed back his chair, a horror came over him, his hand sought
for his pistol; but the voice went on unmoved. 'Shall I excuse the
deed to you, boy? No, I will not. It was done and I did it, that is
enough, the damning fact that confronts and silences all talk of
motive or cause. This much only will I say; to the passion of the act
deliberate intention was not added, and there was no gain for the
doer; only loss, the black eternal loss of everything in heaven above,
on the earth beneath, or in the waters that are under the earth, for
hell itself seemed to spew me out. At least so I thought as I fled
away, the mark of Cain upon my brow; the horror was so strong upon me
that I could not kill myself, I feared to join the dead. I went to and
fro on the earth, and walked up and down in it; I fled to the
uttermost parts of the sea, and yet came back again, moved by a
strange impulse to be near the scene of my crime. After years had
passed, and with them the memory of the deed from the minds of others,
though not from mine, I crept to the old house where my one sister was
living alone, and made myself known to her. She left her home, a
forlorn place, but still a home, and followed me with a sort of dumb
affection,--poor old woman. She was my senior by fifteen years, and I
had been her pride; and so she went with me from the old instinct,
which still remained, although the pride was dead, crushed by slow
horror. We kept together after that, two poor hunted creatures instead
of one; we were always fleeing, always imagining that eyes knew us,
that fingers pointed us out. I called her Shadow, and together we took
the name of Fog, a common enough name, but to us meaning that we were
nothing, creatures of the mist, wandering to and fro by night, but in
the morning gone. At last one day the cloud over my mind seemed to
lighten a little, and the thought came to me that no punishment can
endure forever, without impugning the justice of our great Creator. A
crime is committed, perhaps in a moment; the ensuing suffering, the
results, linger on earth, it may be for some years; but the end of it
surely comes sooner or later, and it is as though it had never been.
Then, for that crime, shall a soul suffer forever,--not a thousand
years, a thousand ages if you like, but forever? Out upon the
monstrous idea! Let a man do evil every moment of his life, and let
his life be the full threescore years and ten; shall there not come a
period in the endless cycles of eternity when even his punishment
shall end? What kind of a God is he whom your theologians have held up
to us,--a God who creates us at his pleasure, without asking whether
or not we wish to be created, who endows us with certain wild
passions and capacities for evil, turns us loose into a world of
suffering, and then, for our misdeeds there, our whole lives being
less than one instant's time in his sight, punishes us forever!
Never-ending tortures throughout the countless ages of eternity for
the little crimes of threescore years and ten! Heathendom shows no god
so monstrous as this. O great Creator, O Father of our souls, of all
the ills done on the face of thy earth, this lie against thy justice
and thy goodness, is it not the greatest? The thought came to me, as
I said, that no punishment could endure forever, that somewhere is the
future I, even I, should meet pardon and rest. That day I found by the
wayside a little child, scarcely more than a baby; it had wandered out
of the poorhouse, where its mother had died the week before, a
stranger passing through the village. No one knew anything about her
nor cared to know, for she was almost in rags, fair and delicate once
they told me, but wasted with illness and too far gone to talk. Then a
second thought came to me,--expiation. I would take this forlorn
little creature and bring her up as my own child, tenderly,
carefully,--a life for a life. My poor old sister took to it
wonderfully, it seemed to brighten her desolation into something that
was almost happiness; we wandered awhile longer, and then came
westward through the lakes, but it was several years before we were
fairly settled here. Shadow took care of the baby and made her little
dresses; then, when the time came to teach her to sew and read, she
said more help was needed, and went alone to the towns below to find a
fit servant, coming back in her silent way with old Orange; another
stray lost out of its place in the world, and suffering from want in
the cold Northern city. You must not think that Silver is totally
ignorant; Shadow had the education of her day, poor thing, for ours
was a good old family as old families go in this new country of ours,
where three generations of well-to-do people constitute aristocracy.
But religion, so called, I have not taught her. Is she any the worse
for its want?

'I will teach her,' said Waring, passing over the question (which was
a puzzling one), for the new idea, the strange interest he felt in the
task before him, the fair pure mind where his hand, and his alone,
would be the first to write the story of good and evil.

'That I should become attached to the child was natural,' continued
old Fog; 'but God gave it to me to love her with so great a love that
my days have flown; for her to sail out over the stormy water, for her
to hunt through the icy woods, for her to dare a thousand deaths, to
labor, to save, to suffer,--these have been my pleasures through all
the years. When I came home, there she was to meet me, her sweet voice
calling me father, the only father she could ever know. When my poor
old sister died, I took her away in my boat by night and buried her in
deep water; and so I did with the boy we had here for a year or two,
saved from a wreck. My darling knows nothing of death; I could not
tell her.'

'And those wrecks,' said Waring; 'how do you make them balance with
your scheme of expiation?'

The old man sat silent a moment; then he brought his hand down
violently on the table by his side. 'I will not have them brought up
in that way, I tell you I will not! Have I not explained that I was
desperate?' he said in an excited voice. 'What are one or two
miserable crews to the delicate life of my beautiful child? And the
men had their chances, too, in spite of my lure. Does not every storm
threaten them with deathly force? Wait until you are tempted, before
you judge me, boy. But shall I tell you the whole? Listen, then.
Those wrecks were the greatest sacrifices, the most bitter tasks of my
hard life, the nearest approach I have yet made to the expiation. Do
you suppose I wished to drown the men? Do you suppose I did not know
the greatness of the crime? Ah, I knew it only too well, and yet I
sailed out and did the deed! It was for her,--to keep her from
suffering; so I sacrificed myself unflinchingly. I would murder a
thousand men in cold blood, and bear the thousand additional
punishments without a murmur throughout a thousand ages of eternity,
to keep my darling safe and warm. Do you not see that the whole was a
self-immolation, the greatest, the most complete I could make? I
vowed to keep my darling tenderly. I have kept my vow; see that you
keep yours.'

The voice ceased, the story was told, and the teller gone. The
curtain over the past was never lifted again; but often, in after
years, Waring thought of this strange life and its stranger
philosophy. He could never judge them. Can we?

The next day the talk turned upon Silver. 'I know you love her,' said
the old man, 'but how much?'

'Does it need the asking?' answered Waring with a short laugh; 'am I
not giving up my name, my life, into her hands?'

'You could not give them into hands more pure.'

'I know it; I am content. And yet, I sacrifice something,' replied the
young man, thinking of his home, his family, his friends.

Old Fog looked at him. 'Do you hesitate?' he said, breaking the pause.

'Of course I do not; why do you ask?' replied Waring, irritably. 'But
some things may be pardoned, I think, in a case like mine.'

'I pardon them.'

'I can teach her, of course, and a year or so among cultivated people
will work wonders; I think I shall take her abroad, first. How soon
did you say we could go?'

'The ice is moving. There will be vessels through the straits in two
or three weeks,' replied Fog. His voice shook. Waring looked up; the
old man was weeping. 'Forgive me,' he said brokenly, 'but the little
girl is very dear to me.'

The younger man was touched. 'She shall be as dear to me as she has
been to you,' he said; 'do not fear. My love is proved by the very
struggle I have made against it. I venture to say no man ever fought
harder against himself than I have in this old castle of yours. I kept
that Titian picture as a countercharm. It resembles a woman who, at a
word, will give me herself and her fortune,--a woman high in the
cultivated circles of cities both here and abroad, beautiful,
accomplished, a queen in her little sphere. But all was useless. That
long night in the snow, when I crawled backwards and forwards to keep
myself from freezing, it came to me with power that the whole of earth
and all its gifts compared not with this love. Old man, she will be
happy with me.'

'I know it.'

'Did you foresee this end?' asked Waring after a while, watching, as
he spoke, the expression of the face before him. He could not rid
himself of the belief that the old man had laid his plans deftly.

'I could only hope for it: I saw that she loved you.'

'Well, well,' said the younger man magnanimously, 'it was natural,
after all. Your expiation has ended better than you hoped; for the
little orphan child you have reared has found a home and friends, and
you yourself need work no more. Choose your abode here or anywhere
else in the West, and I will see that you are comfortable.'

'I will stay on here.'

'As you please. Silver will not forget you; she will write often. I
think I will go first up the Rhine and then into Switzerland,'
continued Waring, going back to himself and his plans with the
matter-of-course egotism of youth and love. And old Fog listened.

What need to picture the love-scene that followed? The next morning a
strong hand knocked at the door of the flower-room, and the shy little
maiden within had her first lesson in love, or rather in its
expression, while all the blossoms listened and the birds looked on
approvingly. To do him justice, Waring was an humble suitor when alone
with her; she was so fair, so pure, so utterly ignorant of the world
and of life, that he felt himself unworthy, and bowed his head. But
the mood passed, and Silver liked him better when the old
self-assertion and quick tone of command came uppermost again. She
knew not good from evil, she could not analyze the feeling in her
heart; but she loved this stranger, this master, with the whole of her
being. Jarvis Waring knew good from evil (more of the latter knew he
than of the former), he comprehended and analyzed fully the feeling
that possessed him; but, man of the world as he was, he loved this
little water-maiden, this fair pagan, this strange isolated girl, with
the whole force of his nature. 'Silver,' he said to her, seriously
enough, 'do you know how much I love you? I am afraid to think what
life would seem without you.'

'Why think of it, then, since I am here?' replied Silver.

'Do you know, Jarvis, I think if I had not loved you so much, you
would not have loved me, and then--it would have been--that is, I
mean--it would have been different--' She paused; unused to reasoning
or to anything like argument, her own words seemed to bewilder her.

Waring laughed, but soon grew serious again. 'Silver,' he said, taking
her into his arms, 'are you sure that you can love me as I crave?'
(For he seemed at times tormented by the doubt as to whether she was
anything more than a beautiful child.) He held her closely and would
not let her go, compelling her to meet his ardent eyes. A change came
over the girl, a sudden red flashed up into her temples and down into
her white throat. She drew herself impetuously away from her lover's
arms and fled from the room. 'I am not sure but that she is a
water-sprite, after all,' grumbled Waring, as he followed her. But it
was a pleasure now to grumble and pretend to doubt, since from that
moment he was sure.

The next morning Fog seemed unusually cheerful.

'No wonder,' thought Waring. But the character of benefactor pleased
him, and he appeared in it constantly.

'We must have the old castle more comfortable; I will try to send up
some furniture from below,' he remarked, while pacing to and fro in
the evening.

'Isn't it comfortable now?' said Silver. 'I am sure I always thought
this room beautiful.'

'What, this clumsy imitation of a second-class Western steamer?
Child, it is hideous!'

'Is it?' said Silver, looking around in innocent surprise, while Fog
listened in silence. Hours of patient labor and risks not a few over
the stormy lake were associated with each one of the articles Waring
so cavalierly condemned.

Then it was, 'How you do look, old gentleman! I must really send you
up some new clothes.--Silver, how have you been able to endure such
shabby rags so long?'

'I do not know,--I never noticed; it was always just papa, you know,'
replied Silver, her blue eyes resting on the old man's clothes with a
new and perplexed attention.

But Fog bore himself cheerily. 'He is right, Silver,' he said, 'I am
shabby indeed. But when you go out into the world, you will soon
forget it.'

'Yes,' said Silver, tranquilly.

The days flew by and the ice moved out. This is the phrase that is
always used along the lakes. The ice 'moves out' of every harbor from
Ogdensburg to Duluth. You can see the great white floes drift away
into the horizon, and the question comes, Where do they go? Do they
meet out there the counter floes from the Canada side, and then do
they all join hands and sink at a given signal to the bottom?
Certainly, there is nothing melting in the mood of the raw spring
winds and clouded skies.

'What are your plans?' asked old Fog, abruptly, one morning when the
gulls had flown out to sea, and the fog came stealing up from the
south.

'For what?'

'For the marriage.'

'Aha!' thought Waring, with a smile of covert amusement, 'he is in a
hurry to secure the prize, is he? The sharp old fellow!' Aloud he
said, 'I thought we would all three sail over to Mackinac; and there
we could be married, Silver and I, by the fort chaplain, and take the
first Buffalo steamer; you could return here at your leisure.'

'Would it not be a better plan to bring a clergyman here, and then you
two could sail without me? I am not as strong as I was; I feel that I
cannot bear--I mean that you had better go without me.'

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