The Maze at Windermere

by Gregory Blake Smith

  For my eyes alone I will record here that while I moved amongst those several acres of men (some of them younger than I!) who had had their lives so wretchedly altered, I bethought my and William’s earlier enthusiasm for enlisting in the war effort and realized as deeply as I have ever realized anything how thankful I was that that had not come to pass. For no decision I ever make in life could be as wrong and against my being as would be the decision to go to war. I do not mean only that I recognized at that moment that I am no soldier, and could never be one, and that so inept would I be that surely my fate would have been as these around me, or worse. I mean rather that as I stood there and saw so many destroyed bodies, so much amputated life, I knew in the deepest part of my being that there was no cause, no country’s existence, no slave’s freedom that was worth my life, worth the mutilation of my consciousness and the extinguishment of my senses. Yes, how horrible to admit this of myself, and yet how true! I cannot, in my own presence, deny it! And what awe and wonder I felt for these men (and Wilky and Bob!) who had so selflessly given of themselves. Did they know and still give?

  I am not proud of this—I will not call it cowardliness, rather egotism. (The bosom serpent!) But I will see clearly. Even to my own failings.

  In one of the pavilions there was a quarter given over to cots on which lay soldiers of the Confederacy. They were attended to, so the Chaplain had said, without distinction. Whether that is true in practice I do not know, but they seemed no different than the Union troops, though there were none of the visitors about them. Maugre my dismal shyness, I had grown a little more at ease with the wounded, and with Miss Taylor’s deportment as my model had begun to ask the invalids little questions, and even came across one who hailed from Cambridge and so was able to speak some of his home. Another I sat beside because I saw Emerson’s Representative Men on his cot and so asked him about it. He said that though he read it he did not understand it, that at times it was just words to him, and he did not know whether this was the fault of his injuries or of Mr. Emerson. I in turn did not know whether he meant this humorously or not, so fell to explaining what I thought were the intention of the essays, getting quite stuck on Napoleon. I am afraid I left him in a worse state than I found him.

  It was only then, upon standing up, that I became aware that Miss Taylor had crossed to the Confederate cots, was going from one to the next as she had been doing with the others. There was something of a stir in the room, I thought, something of disapproval. But those amongst the Confederate soldiers who could do so raised themselves in their cots, smiled at her coming, and thanked her. When she came to one who could not raise himself and who bore the signs of a dreadful fever, she sat beside him and spoke to him, and then (most boldly! most beautifully!) she took from her reticule a comb and, first wiping the fever-sweats from the boy’s face, began to comb his hair as we had seen one of the nurses do. The boy seemed only half-aware of her, yet I think he did calm at her touch. When she was done she straightened his bedclothes, and with a gentle caress of his feverish cheek rose and moved on.

  “A very different excursion,” she said to me when we had regained the outdoors. I took her to mean different from our last to the breakwater.

  “And which do you prefer?” I asked that I might fall in with her. She kept her gaze from me, and looked rather at the horizon.

  “Both,” she said, inhaling so her chest swelled, as if it were life itself she breathed. She exhaled, and then let a weary look fall upon me, saying: “But I think I have had enough of this for now.”

  We rejoined her mother, and then not knowing where else we might go, walked back to the wharf area, though it was still an hour before the steamboat returned from Providence. There were no benches there, but as we were tired and the day itself had broken decorum, we lowered ourselves and sat on a spot of turf under the spreading branches of an oak tree. We were shortly joined by some others who had as well had their fill. There was conversation of what we had seen and heard, and protestations over the inhumanity of the war and the evil of the South and its seceding. I stupidly found myself saying that though the South was surely evil, that evil was not due to its seceding, which I believed (and do believe) it had the right to do. Some of the others took me up on this (was I a sympathizer? etc.) and I found I had to defend myself, first marshaling much of Father’s rhetoric and lofty fire against slavery, but then more boldly explaining my belief that, slavery aside, any region of any country has the right to secede from that country. That to hold against their will those who wish to leave any union is itself an evil, the imposing by force of one will upon another.

  “Which is,” I rather magnificently wound up, “the essence of slavery, is it not?”

  There was much consternation over this, but I did not retreat, and went even further, maintaining that each person’s consciousness was a country unto itself, accountable to its own laws and truths. (To which someone said surely, I meant conscience, didn’t I? I did not.) And if those truths brought the solitary consciousness to seceding from the values and structures of the society it found itself in, then it must do so. For fidelity to the truth one found within oneself was, to me, the highest good.

  To which Mrs. Taylor asked surely I did not mean that every union was frangible? Were not a husband and wife indissoluble? Were they not united until death did them part? And united to their family? And that family to other families? Where did one draw the line?

  One drew the line, I answered her, always and forever, at the individual self.

  On the ferry back we sat quietly in deck chairs, for the day had been exhausting. And in the declining sun I experienced again as I had on the breakwater a sense of Miss Taylor’s fineness, and how that fineness seemed to spread over me, and include me, and seep into the world so that the air was infused with a lucid charm, and the hour it took for us to glide back to Newport seemed, by some wondrous secret, to know itself marked and charged and unforgettable.

  (Details I have not managed to work into the above narrative but which may someday prove useful: the stench of the latrines and outhouses; the bloody dressings; remnants of hardtack and salted beef; buttons used for checkers; bromine, quinine; one of the guards court-martialed for being “corned”; the railroad spur to the east with its solitary red boxcar; the cemetery; roll call for the able-bodied soldiers; the horses in the stables swishing their tails against the summer flies.)

  1778

  May 20

  I have been to the Jew. I went without ever making the Decision to go, but let my feet carry me there and my hand pull back the Doorknocker. It was clear from the outset he did not wish to see me. I managed a solicitous Calm all the same, asked after his recent Journey inland, expressed my Hope that he found his Wife and little ones well. Only then did I mention Judith, inquiring was she not come home. To which he responded that Miss Da Silva would for the time being continue to abide at Taunton, that the recent Entry of France into the War had given him pause as to his Daughter’s Safety, as it was now much more of a Surety that the English Fleet would be engaged and that Newport would suffer. Allowing her to stay behind in the city had perhaps been an unwise Decision all along, he said, but Judith had herself wished it so. The girl was game for the Privations of War, he said with something like Pride, yet was she now safely away, out of Harm’s way, he said pointedly, and she would remain so. I expressed my Sympathy and my understanding, adding in my best Courtly manner how impoverished the city was become without her young Beauty about, but such indeed were our own Privations. To which he bowed his head, seeming to accept the Compliment. Yet then it was that he looked across at me, and with his hard Jew’s eye (as if he were treating with some Merchant outside his Tribe whom he was about to Fleece), said there was also the matter of his hearing from a reliable Informant that a Major of the Royal Welch Fusiliers who was a frequent guest in his house had been engaged in the attempted Seduction of his Daughter.

  How to relate what t
hen happened? I do not mean what happened in Da Silva’s sitting room (with its four carved and gilded Cherubs watching us! and which I will recount below), but what happened to Major Ballard. For I found my Voice speaking on its own, and my hands gesturing, and my face working up expressions of Alarm & Entreaty. It was as if I had become translated, as if my Shadow or this Straggler of whom I have written above had exchanged places with me, so that I watched myself as from a distance, heard my Voice, saw my Face, applauded this or that Ploy, this or that impromptu Stratagem, but all from a vantage Point outside the room, as if I had been Stolen from myself.

  Yet what a Tactician this Straggler proved to be! For he did not affect Outrage, or protest the Calumny, or work up an injured Merit. Rather he confessed to the Charge! He was, he said, in love with Miss Da Silva! It had not started so, he admitted, for he had at first been merely amusing himself. So far from home, in this Miserable war, he had allowed himself to be distracted by her Beauty and her Charm. But O! how he had come to see what great Worth was at home in the young lady! How Nature had found fit to match physical Beauty with Beauty of Spirit! He had grown to have the greatest Respect for the young lady, and to value her opinion, and the Measure of her intelligence. All through the Winter he found his thoughts taken over by her until it had become a Struggle to keep away from the house. He had had to Ration his visits! he said with a rueful laugh. Did his Interlocutor not know that? And how he had scolded himself, censured himself, upbraided himself for the Futility of the Attachment. He knew the circumstances to be impossible, the Barriers many and insuperable. There was, forgive him, the difference in their Stations, and yes, the difference in their Race. Who could not see these? No wonder Da Silva’s informant, whoever he was (he was Lieutenant Smithson, wasn’t he? now, wasn’t he? the good fellow!), had mistook his intentions. He had thought himself a young man of Reason, and of balanced Comportment, yet his friendship with Miss Da Silva had made him realize he was also a man of Passion and of deep feeling! Impossible his Love might be, but he did not apologize for it. Nor like Peter at the Cockcrow would he deny it!

  The Jew demanded then what did I mean? Did I mean to offer Marriage to his daughter? he scoffed. I should get myself under Control, he said. If I had come to explain an immoral Behavior, and to explain it by confessing to a Weakness of the Heart, very well. Though he disapproved of both, the one was a greater Evil and he could understand my wishing to clear my name of it. But I had myself enumerated the many Objections, nay, the utter Impossibility, of any acceptable Union between myself and his Daughter. And still I dared speak of his Daughter in the words, and yea, with the Warmth of a Suitor!

  Gravely, I answered that I meant no Disrespect toward either him or his daughter, nor had I acted with any such Disregard. That I was a man caught in a Whirlwind. That I could not deny what I viewed as a noble Affection. And then, seeing an opportunity to move a Rook onto the seventh Rank, said that I believed his Daughter returned my Affections. That the world was filled with those who had turned aside from such natural Attachments to their great and lasting Injury. Did he wish that for his Daughter?

  And did he not then swear an Oath at me! I had never heard such from him before! O! Was I not enjoying myself! Even while I hid behind my tree and let the Straggler probe & feint & goad, I was in a rage of Pleasure. I said that it was quite impossible for me to convert, but that it seemed not so as regards the young Lady. Indeed, she had confessed to me once that she would do so if it meant we might Marry, meant she would be welcome across the ocean at Clereford Hall. Such Conversions and subsequent Alliances were not unheard of, I believed. Yes, surely, my family would be greatly Astonished by such an action on my part, but we were forward-thinking people. Indeed my brother the future Lord Stevens was regarded as something of a Freethinker and would welcome, I was sure, a converted Jew as a Sister.

  He stood then and I thought the Man must burst of an Apoplexy. He said I was no longer welcome in his house and that there was an end to our Interview. But hardly had I stood with expressions of Surprize, than he launched himself on a Tirade of Justification. Did I think, Sir, that his family had withstood two Centuries of Ignominy & Deceit, his uncle forced to Recant on his knees at the Aveiro Cathedral, his parents forced to leave behind all their worldly Riches and flee their home like Criminals, and he himself made to navigate the ignoble Duplicity of being named Sebastiao, so that once free of Intolerance & Cant & Bigotry, their Descendants might take the first opportunity to add their names to the roll at Trinity Church? He would not Countenance any such talk from me or from anyone! He would not have any such talk in this his house! He was no longer Sebastiao, he was Isaac Da Silva. He was a Jew and those who were his were Jews. And any who did not like it could be damned! Good day! he said.

  At which I smiled, bowed, and with my mind a Riot, went out.

  1692

  7th Day

  Today I have been a most wondrous slow-worm and lazy-bones! There was work to be done, yet I would not do it. It was snowing, a most beautiful, silent, slow, calming snow. I sat in the parlour with the last of Father’s cider and gaz’d in a Dream out the window. I told Ashes she might go out for the afternoon. I can at least give to Charles Spearmint that much.

  Oh, I dream’d of a great many things. Some, it is true, of the troubles I am in, but not so terribly much as to cast me down. Rather there was such a beauty in the world, the snow falling, and a hush over all, and the warm fire, and John Pettibone in my thoughts, and Mother’s blanket over me, and out the window the green spruce trees made indistinct as if by a snow fog. So lost was I in a Meditation, so under the spell of the falling dusk and the goodness of Father’s cider and the beauty of the world, that I wonder’d most Philosophically of things! I wonder’d from whence the feeling of Beauty came and was the world beautiful in itself, infus’d as it was with God, or did we paint it with our own Beauty? I write this not as richly as I felt it (such is always the way of my writing), but what I mean is this: Do we feelingly paint a world that has not feeling itself? Or when we apprehend Beauty, has it always been there, but in our Darknesse we do not see it? For I was struck so powerfully with the beauty of the falling snow that it seem’d itself a moment of Revelation, almost as if each flake was as a Piece of God’s love falling upon the world. Oh, the most odd conceit came to me! To wit, that each snowflake was the undergarment of an angel! That the tiny angels of heaven disported themselves and in their play let loose their white undergarments that they might float slowly and silently and spinningly down to us! Just so does Heaven bless the world below.

  In this warm and dreamy mood I heard Ashes come in the kitchen door and such was the strange state of my mind that I found myself blessing her, and blessing Charles Spearmint. Oh, that he might have the wife he desired, and that Ashes might be free, and Dorcas her mother restor’d to her, and all the wounds of the world heal’d by God’s love!

  I felt it deep in my heart, and staring at the red and yellow embers in the fireplace whilst Ashes put her cloak away, I wish’d it could be so, and yet knew it could not.

  3rd Day

  I have spent the day at Jane Beecher’s, for she had several Hams which wanted smoking, one of which she will give to us when it is done, and as the day was cold and gray I did not mind being in her Kitchen with the slow fire. I had a moment of Strangeness with her which I will write of here. I do not know what to think of it, or even if it be at all, and not just my Fancy.

  As I am small still she had me climb the kitchen ladder and bring down two skepfuls of Cobs from where she stores them under the Eaves. They are good for a light smoking fire and give any meat an agreeable Flavor. With what we did not first use, Dorcas and Sarah and Ruth built a cob house and play’d, and then when we must needs take parts of their house to feed the fire, play’d at hull-gull how-many.

  While the Hams smok’d, Jane and I found we might rest and talk. We had not broach’d Edward Swift’s proposal since the day we had h
uddl’d together in the cold dark and had such a lovely long Converse. That was the day she spoke so feelingly of her leaving, of her living in the Wildernesse, of how she might make a fit Life if she could be but alone. She said she had been before too chary of my Wants to ask whether I had accepted him, but that she had not heard any such News when she went out into the Town. Had I then turn’d him down?

  I told her of what had pass’d. That I had not turn’d him down but had not encourag’d him. And that I did not think I could bring myself to Accept him, as long as Dorcas and Ashes and I had enough to eat, and Wood enough. Tho’ I might bring my mind to Sense, yet I could not bring my Heart, and so would hold out until I could no more.